Former National Security adviser John Bolton has warned Havana syndrome could ‘disable’ the US government as Trump-era White House staff say they suffered from it.
Bolton corroborated those unnamed staffers’ accounts in a 60 Minutes special due to be screened on Sunday, and offered his own warning about the potential implications of the condition, which it is feared could be caused by a mysterious weapon.
‘If we were at war and an adversary could disable the president and his top advisers, or commanders in the field, it could render us extraordinarily vulnerable,’ Bolton told 60 Minutes.
‘We don’t know that that’s the threat we’re facing. But I would much rather focus on finding out the answer now, rather than finding out later when it may be too late.’
Former National Security Adviser John Bolton (pictured) says he fears the mysterious illness is a threat to the highest levels of the U.S. government
Multiple Homeland Security officials who worked under the Trump administration have come forward and claimed that during their tenure they were overcome with feelings of vertigo, confusion and memory loss, 60 Minutes reported.
Those officials have not yet been named, but will share their experiences on CBS’s flagship current affairs show on Sunday evening.
And their accounts have been corroborated by former National Security Advisor John Bolton, who says he is deeply concerned about the illnesses.
The symptoms are strikingly similar to those of the mysterious Havana Syndrome – an unexplained illness that has long been believed to be caused inadvertently by surveillance equipment or by a mysterious sonic weapon.
CIA director William Burns (pictured) told 60 Minutes it has been difficult for investigators to find answers as to what is causing the mystery symptoms
Symptoms of Havana Syndrome include loud noise, ear pain, intense head pressure or vibration, dizziness, visual problems, and cognitive difficulties, and many still continue to experience these or other health problems, according to a 2020 National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.
Of the roughly 200 reported cases of the yet unexplained illness, almost half of the cases involved CIA officers or their relatives, with nearly 60 have been linked to Department of Defense workers or relatives, and about 50 involved State Department personnel the outlet reported.
Although last month a CIA task force said that the illness is not the product of a sustained global campaign by a hostile power aimed at hundreds of U.S. diplomats and spies, former National Security Adviser John Bolton says he fears the mysterious illness is a threat to the highest levels of the U.S. government.
High-ranking Homeland Security officials in the Trump administration say they suffered Havana Syndrome symptoms while they were in the White House or their D.C- area homes
Mark Lenzi, a State Department security officer who worked in the U.S. Consulate in Guangzhou, China, talked to 60 Minutes in 2019 and opened up about the long-term symptoms he has suffered.
‘The symptoms were progressively getting worse with me,’ Lenzi said at the time. ‘My headaches were getting worse. The most concerning symptom for me was memory loss, especially short-term memory loss.’
CIA director William Burns told 60 Minutes it has been difficult for investigators to find answers as to what is behind the symptoms.
‘It’s a very complicated issue, you know, dealing with a whole range of incidents which have… different kinds of explanations for them as well,’ Burns said. ‘It’s a very charged issue emotionally as well. I understand that very clearly. And that’s what… makes me even more determined not only to ensure people get the care that they deserve but also that we get to the bottom of this.’
Scientists and government officials are not yet certain about who might have been behind the attacks, if the symptoms could have been caused inadvertently by surveillance equipment – or if the incidents were caused by a mysterious sonic weapon.
Symptoms of Havana Syndrome include loud noise, ear pain, intense head pressure or vibration, dizziness, visual problems, and cognitive difficulties
The sonic weapon the could cause Havana syndrome is said to be a smaller version of this 1990s Soviet microwave generator, which is kept at the University of New Mexico
Some doubt its existence, however, and call it ‘mass hysteria.’
The leading theory behind the cause of the suddenly surfaced syndrome starts with a device that scientists say Russia could have invented during the Cold War, which was later used to spy on US embassies by collecting data from laptops and cell phones.
However, experts now theorize that a hostile country – like Russia or China – may have turned this microwave technology into a weapon.
Both countries deny any involvement in any of the incidents relating to the mysterious syndrome.
Back in September, Vice President Kamala Harris’ departure from Singapore during her Asia trip was delayed by more than three hours because of an ‘anomalous health incident in Hanoi,’ which was the next stop in her Asia trip.
That was a reference to Havana Syndrome.
A December report in the Washington Examiner speculated that former President George W. Bush could have also been a victim of Havana Syndrome when he fell ill at a G8 conference in Germany in 2007.
At the gathering of world leaders, both Bush and Laura Bush fell ill with symptoms of ‘nausea or dizziness,’ as the former first lady outlined in her 2010 memoir ‘Spoken from the Heart.’ Some aides traveling with them experienced hearing and balance problems.
The official conclusion at the time was a virus. Although there was speculation that the first couple could have been poisoned.
The Examiner report points to Russia as the culprit. Havana Syndrome is believed to be caused by microwave emissions and Moscow is known to have employed RF/MW capabilities since the Cold War. During the Cold War, the Soviets repeatedly irradiated the American embassy in Moscow with low-level microwaves – known as the ‘Moscow Signal’ – for unknown reasons.
In October, three Havana Syndrome sufferers came forward to share the agonizing symptoms of the disease, with two of them claiming it left them brain damaged and destroyed their promising diplomatic careers.
Tina Onefur, Kate Husband, and Husband’s partner Doug Ferguson were all working for the US State Department, stationed in Cuba’s capital, when they found themselves afflicted with the mysterious malady.
The syndrome first surfaced at the embassy in Havana in 2016 – months before Onefur, Husband, and Ferguson were diagnosed.
The three described their debilitating symptoms – which include hearing loss, severe headaches, memory issues, dizziness, grogginess and even brain damage – in detail during an interview with NBC News last year.
Onefur, sobbed as she spoke and recalling the fact she can now only work two hours a day from home due to doctor-diagnosed brain damage, and said she was washing dishes one night in March 2017 at her home in Havana when she suddenly found herself overcome with pain.
‘The kids were upstairs playing, and I was standing at the kitchen window, and all of a sudden I felt like I was being struck with something.’
When asked what the sensation felt like, Onefur said the pain was like nothing she had ever felt before in her life, and explained, ‘It was gripping – it was like I’d been seized by some invisible hand, and I couldn’t move.’
When asked by interviewer Andrea Mitchell how her health is today, Onefur, choking back tears revealed that her symptoms were still as strong and prevalent as ever, even after more than four years.
‘It’s not easy to talk about our health because it’s an invisible injury,’ Onefur said,
‘It’s four-and-a-half years of of excruciating headaches, it’s four-and-a-half years of stumbling losing my balance, four-and-a-half years of vision degradation,’ Onefur asserts of the illness, while breaking down in tears.
In a nearby neighborhood in Havana in the winter months of 2016, Kate Husband and Doug Ferguson were working in the US embassy by day, with their nights spent together at their shared home.
But nights for the couple – who both hail from Michigan – would often be strangely interrupted, by a high-pitched, piercing noise seemingly coming from their backyard.
‘It was persistent, kind of at the same level all the time,’ Husband said of the shrill sound, which they never managed to identify, adding it was ‘very, very loud’ and ‘nothing you can sit with.’
Ferguson, however, managed to capture the mysterious noise on his phone and played it back for Mitchell during the interview.
The sound on the recording – a high-frequency ringing that somewhat resembles a dog whistle – is strikingly similar to a sound previously released by AP in a 2017 covering the then just-surfaced syndrome.
When asked if any other people in her neighborhood had heard the same sounds and was afflicted with similar symptoms, Husband said they had.
After feeling a slew of symptoms in the coming months, the couple was later examined by neurologists at the University of Pennsylvania.
In early 2017, Ferguson was cleared to go back to work, but Husband was diagnosed with brain damage by doctors, and was subsequently sent to receive treatment.
Husband told Mitchell that during the diagnosis, a doctor told her, after analyzing scans of her brain, ‘it’s like you aged 20, 25 years all at once.’
She later retired from her work for the State Department on the grounds of a medical disability.
Husband further revealed during the interview that she still suffers from balance issues associated with the brain damage she suffered after the 2017 diagnosis – a sensation that would trigger violent bouts of nausea, and a fogginess that makes even the most basic tasks difficult.
