Two White House officials were struck late last year by a mysterious illness, including one who was passing through the gate onto White House property near the Ellipse.
Those episodes affected two members of the National Security Council in November 2020, one the day after the presidential election and one several weeks later. The first person suffered only mild symptoms including headaches and sleeplessness, all of which went away after a week. The second suffered more serious symptoms causing the person to seek immediate medical attention.
And in one case in 2019 that has not previously been reported, a military officer serving overseas pulled his vehicle into an intersection, then was overcome by nausea and headaches, according to four current and former officials briefed on the events. His 2-year-old son, sitting in the back seat, began crying. After the officer pulled away from the intersection, his nausea stopped, and the child stopped crying.
New York Times
The cases are consistent with the sensory experiences and physical symptoms that have sickened more than 100 US diplomats, spies and troops around the globe and have come to be known as “Havana Syndrome.“
The intelligence community isn’t sure who or what is causing the nervous system symptoms, or if they can be definitively termed “attacks.”
For five years now, investigators have struggled to explain the strange experiences reported by US diplomats and other government workers in Cuba, Russia, China and elsewhere — episodes that in some cases have led to chronic headaches and brain injuries. Victims have reported experiencing sudden vertigo, headaches and head pressure, sometimes accompanying by a “piercing directional noise.” Some reported being able to escape the symptoms simply by moving to another room — and step back into them by returning to their original position.
A recent report from the National Academy of Sciences points to “directed, pulsed radiofrequency energy” or microwave energy as the culprit, but there is no intelligence to suggest the theory is correct, being based on symptoms and not evidence.
Equally murky is who might be behind these incidents, if they are indeed attacks. Some evidence points to Russia as a likely culprit, officials say, but it is largely circumstantial: Russia is one of only a few countries that has dedicated research and development to what some experts believe could be the kind of weapon that could cause symptoms consistent with Havana Syndrome.
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Cheryl Rofer, a former chemist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, has questioned the NAS study’s conclusion that some type of microwave weapon has been utilized by an adversary behind the attacks.
“The evidence for microwave effects of the type categorized as Havana syndrome is exceedingly weak,” Rofer wrote in Foreign Policy. “No proponent of the idea has outlined how the weapon would actually work. No evidence has been offered that such a weapon has been developed by any nation. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and no evidence has been offered to support the existence of this mystery weapon.”