The 60 Minutes investigation into Havana Syndrome
In a Nutshell
60 Minutes' nine-year investigation into Havana Syndrome reveals over 65 US officials and families targeted by directed energy weapons—likely Russian radio frequency or microwave devices—causing severe symptoms like head pain, vertigo, cognitive issues, and injuries in diplomats in Havana, Guangzhou, Shanghai, and even on White House grounds. Evidence includes victim testimonies, a Kremlin document confirming Russian tests, National Academy of Sciences findings on pulsed energy as the plausible cause, and US discovery of a matching classified Russian weapon tested on animals. Despite government denials and alleged cover-ups, producers believe a subset of cases involved deliberate foreign attacks, detailed further in their upcoming book.
These notes were generated by AI and may contain inaccuracies.
It's a sound like I've never heard before. Was this subtle? Like, did I hear that? No, it was actually somewhat loud. I heard it about three or four times. Always in the same spot, always over my son's crib and always right before we would go to bed.
When we first heard all of these stories, it sounded odd and hard to believe that some invisible ray gun was hitting these people and hurting them. It was like this piercing feeling on the side of my head. I remember it was on the right side of my head and I got like vertigo.
But these are top officials in the US government. They've gone through lots of vetting. Many of them have security clearances. I'm here because I'm tired of the gaslighting that keeps happening from the US government.
And when they got sick, the US government tended to doubt their stories and we wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt. The worst pain I have ever felt. It felt like a vice gripping my brain stem was there.
We did our best to investigate what had happened to them and that we now believe there are directed energy weapons that can do this and we believe in a subset of the large body of cases that that's what happened. This was a directed standoff attack against my apartment. It was a weapon. Of course it was a weapon. An energy weapon. Absolutely.
My name is Oriana Zil de Granados and I'm a producer at 60 Minutes. My name is Michael Ray. I'm a producer at 60 Minutes. We've been reporting for nine years on what's called the Havana syndrome.
We've spoken to over 65 people who say they were targeted by a directed energy weapon. In 2016 and 2017, there was a series of reported attacks on US diplomats and intelligence officers in Havana, Cuba. They sustained head injuries, traumatic brain injuries, difficulties in hearing, cognitive difficulties, and nobody could quite say what it was. So, it created this sort of global mystery known as the Havana syndrome.
For me, it was November of 2017 when I started to feel laded a lot. I was getting more headaches.
We met Mark Lindsay. He is a State Department official who's responsible for keeping embassies safe and making sure they're not being attacked electronically. He had been posted in Guangzhou, China. He and his family, including young children, had ongoing experiences with pressure, pain, noise in their apartment.
It was intense pressure on both of my temples. At the same time, I heard this low humming sound and it was oscillating.
And he found out that his other neighbor was also experiencing symptoms. My symptoms would get so bad that I would throw up or I would wake up with nosebleeds. And both of them, his family and the neighbor, their health was going downhill rapidly.
They were developing cognitive issues, vision, hearing, headaches, all sorts of problems. The most concerning symptom for me was memory loss, especially short-term memory loss.
And he's been struggling. He's still getting treatment and he's battling these long-term cognitive issues, balance issues, issues with his vision and his hearing. There is no shadow of a doubt in my mind that this was a directed attack against my neighbor and I.
Something I felt like hit me from the left side. And at first it felt like an electric shock. And then it paralyzed me.
So Robin and Bridget Garfield were among the first victims that we'd spoken to. He was a trade officer, commerce officer posted in Shanghai, China. Over a period of months experienced a series of incidents with loud noises, pressure, vibrations, and that the whole family started getting ill. Even unfortunately the children.
They say the children suffered blurred vision and loss of balance. We went on a walk and she just fell on her face. It was very abnormal. She never does that. And then a second time she completely lost her balance and fell to the side.
We spent about a year reporting the next piece. Basically looked at domestic incidents where there were reported cases on the White House grounds.
It was very much the feeling of vertigo and dizziness. And I felt like I couldn't really walk.
We couldn't quite believe that this was happening in the US. How could it be happening in the US?
This is the world's preeminent intelligence agency. Why is this so hard to figure out?
In 2022, we interviewed Director William Burns, who was the head of the CIA at the time, who followed along with what the agency had been saying about this issue that they found it still unlikely that there was a foreign adversary behind these incidents.
You understand how frustrating your comments must be to some of these people who believe they know exactly what happened to them on what day and at what time and what happened to their children. And yet the director of the CIA is saying we can't connect the dots. We don't know enough yet.
We're not at a position yet where we can offer hard evidence that would connect all those dots. But we're not done yet. We still have a lot of work to do.
As we built a database of victims, we started to see, well, most of these people worked on issues related to Russia in their jobs. Whether they were at CIA or Department of Defense, they all kind of touched the Russia issue.
Greg Ed Green ran the investigation for the Defense Intelligence Agency.
This was happening to our top 5-10% performing officers across the Defense Intelligence Agency. And consistently there was a Russia nexus.
Everyone theorized that there were only a few countries who could have done something like this around the world. One of them obviously was Russia top suspect.
So we decided to partner with investigative journalists who work at a Russian dissident magazine called The Insider. And we found one particular document in the bowels of the Kremlin that indicated that a Russian intelligence officer had been paid to test just such a weapon.
This particular unit had been engaged with somewhere somehow empirical tests of a directed energy unit.
There it is. Written down in black and white. It's the closest to a receipt you can have for this.
The day the story airs, the US government's policy on Havana syndrome is that it's still unlikely that a foreign adversary is involved in this.
Do you believe the victims? Absolutely.
Dr. David Relman is a microbiologist from Stanford University and in 2020 he was asked to head up an experts panel for the National Academy of Sciences to look into the Havana syndrome incident. That was followed a few years later by another study that was initiated by the intelligence community itself.
The most plausible explanation for a subset of these cases was a form of radio frequency or microwave energy.
At the exact same time, the US government is saying we don't see any evidence of any device or any attack and we don't see a way that this could be done. The panel was initially distributed among highly classified intelligence officials, but it was very quickly pulled back and people even today can't get access to the reports.
Do you believe that your studies were downplayed by the US government? By parts of the US government? Absolutely. And not only downplayed, but dismissed in some cases buried.
For this report, the Department of Defense declined to comment. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which oversees 18 agencies, including the CIA, told us that a new review of AHI will be comprehensive and complete, and we remain committed to delivering the truth.
Today, more than four sources have told us about a new weapon that's been discovered by the US government. This device uses the technology that Relman's panels theorized could be used to inflict these same injuries. We know also that the source was Russia.
Our confidential sources tell us the still classified weapon has been tested in a US military lab for more than a year. Tests on rats and sheep show injuries consistent with those seen in humans.
Michael and I have written a book about our 9-year investigation that's coming out in September. And our biggest hope with writing this book is that the 60 Minutes stories tell part of the story, but we wanted to tell the full story.
And part of that story is looking into the cover up, which we believe has taken place within the intelligence community. We're trying to pull out more of the victim stories to give much more detail about how this happens, what happens, the impact on families, the impact on government.
We did it for the victims because they deserve to have their true stories told.
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