CIA to Workforce: Drop Dead

The Intelligence Community previously doubled down on its denials about the true cause of “Havana Syndrome” – now it’s tripling down

Last week I came out as a “Deep State Dissident” in this newsletter, over several troubling issues, but above all the Intelligence Community’s continuing cowardice regarding the origins of the mysterious malady that has harmed hundreds of spooks, even killing some of them. Its victims include friends and colleagues of mine. During President Joe Biden’s term in office, the IC has twice made public statements on the misnamed “Havana Syndrome” (formally termed anomalous health incidents or AHIs).

Both were disappointing. In early 2022, CIA formally concluded, after reviewing over a thousand possible cases, that AHIs were not the result of hostile foreign action, without entirely ruling out such a possibility in a few cases. Following up, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in March 2023 announced that most IC agencies concluded it was “very unlikely” that AHIs were caused by a foreign adversary, without explaining the analysis leading to such a conclusion. That information was kept classified, out of public view. “Trust us, we know” was the ODNI message, which didn’t go down well with many intelligence personnel who have had their lives and careers damaged, often ruined, by whatever is causing AHIs.

However, Biden’s IC leadership, with its official denials, had the rug pulled out from under them by the recent one-two punch by CBS News’ 60 Minutes and a deep-dive by The Insider, which together made a compelling case that Russia is behind Havana Syndrome, and has been for decades. This tracked with the spook rumor mill, which for years had fingered Moscow, in particular its Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff, known as GRU. This new reporting convincingly concluded that GRU’s sinister Unit 29155, its nasty wetwork shop, was behind AHIs, attacking in dozens of locations worldwide, including inside the United States.

The response of IC leadership to this bombshell was…nothing. As I noted a week ago, Biden’s spy bosses appeared to be in hiding from this messy scandal that CIA and the DNI have simply wanted to disappear. Although the IC’s public silence continues, internally is a different matter. As reported by Tom Rogan in the Washington Examiner, who has written multiple articles on the AHI issue in recent years, yesterday CIA Director Bill Burns issued a brief internal memo to the agency’s workforce. It’s more of the same:

In that memo, Burns affirmed the agency’s support for its prior assessment on Havana syndrome, or what the intelligence community refers to as “Anomalous Health Incidents.” Namely, that Havana syndrome is highly unlikely to be the result of a foreign actor. This matters because Havana syndrome has seen hundreds of U.S. military and government officials complain of strange, unexplained ailments while serving at home and abroad. Symptoms include dizziness, extreme pressure in the head, and unsteady gait. Some suspected victims now suffer serious, lifelong ailments. Others have even died prematurely.

Denial continues to be not just a river in Egypt, per the wag, rather Langley’s official policy towards Havana Syndrome. Important new investigative journalism has appeared about AHIs, offering a compelling theory about the cause of this crisis, which has impacted many U.S. and Allied diplomats and spies. Here was a chance for CIA to set the record straight, to explain what was really going on with this scandal – at least internally, to its own workforce.

Instead, Burns tripled down, insisting that the Russians aren’t behind AHIs, contrary to substantial open-source reporting pointing to GRU’s nefarious role here. As I asked a week ago:

Moreover, the detailed evidence these reports provide is something which American intelligence, among others, must know about. And presumably has for years. If journalists can access such sensitive Kremlin records, including travel analysis, are we really expected to believe that CIA, NSA, and all their spy-partners, with their vast global intelligence collection capabilities, cannot?

Director Burns indeed expects us to believe that the vast IC, with its eyes and ears all over the globe, knows less about what’s going on with AHIs than CBS News does. Neither does IC leadership seem to be in any hurry to unmask the truth. As Tom Rogan points out, “While three sources have told me that the CIA has attempted to secure a Havana syndrome device, two sources say that this effort has been hamstrung by unwillingness on the part of the Biden administration and Burns to authorize a sufficiently aggressive physical posture against Russian intelligence operatives who, intelligence suggests, might be in possession of such devices.”

IC sources have told me the same. It’s not that Biden’s intel bosses don’t know the truth about AHIs, they don’t want to know. Discovering facts would be problematic for Team Biden, since that reality is unpleasant. However, hiding the truth even now is more dangerous. It means Moscow will keep employing GRU thugs to harm Western personnel. Worse, American spies know that their own leadership is still lying about what’s going on. Serving U.S. intelligence personnel rightly will have zero confidence in their own leadership’s ability to protect them from enemy harm – or even to be honest about what is happening. The impact of all this on IC morale will be ruinous and long-lasting.

This is one of the biggest scandals in the history of American intelligence. Bill Burns is anything but a fool. We can assume that CIA leadership knows exactly what’s going on with AHIs. NSA, my former employer, has been a tad more forthcoming about a probable Russian role in these attacks. We should therefore conclude that orders to keep the lid secured tightly on Havana Syndrome come from higher up than Langley. That means the White House.

Since the Russians are showing no signs of stopping their clandestine attacks on our people, Congress needs to ask pointed questions about the full story of AHI, starting with the House and Senate intelligence oversight committees. Lives are at risk.