Merged US may close Cuba Embassy over 'health attacks'

[dann]

And the children! What about the children?!

Officials and diplomats are not the only ones who have reported unexplained symptoms at home and abroad. Strange illnesses and injuries have also impacted some of their children.The youngest victims of "Havana Syndrome" (60 Minutes on YouTube, Feb 21 - 6:14 min.)

Scott Pelley and two Americans who were stationed in China (Guangzhou, I suppose), Robin Garfield and his wife:

SP: They told us that they were attacked in their homes with severe impacts that caused them to be medically evacuated back to the United States. And they were attacked again, after they returned to the United States:
SP: You believe that someone in the room above you was using some kind of a weapon to attack your family in the hotel room below?
RG: I do.
SP: And that they specifically targeted your children in their beds?
RG: Yes, I do.
SP: If these are actual attacks, the cases of the children being wounded is an indication of just how callous this is, about people who are being attacked in their residences, in their homes, a board (?). And there seems to be no concern about the indiscriminate nature of this, that spouses are being injured, that little children are being injured.
RG: This is the most difficult aspect of this whole issue for me, are, are the children who've been impacted, both mine as well as many others. I personally know the parents of, I believe, eight other children. I can tell you I've personally seen balance issues in children that have never had that, trouble with finding their words, stuttering, and then continuing challenges around vision.
Wife of RG: Our children are the forgotten victis of the Havana Syndrome. Their illness is real. And we don't want this to be what they are associated with for the rest of their lives.

'If these are actual alien abductions, the cases of innocent earthlings being anally probed are an indication of just how callous this is.'
These people appear to let their children believe that the monsters under the bed (or, in this case, in the room above) are real! No doubt this will stay with them for the rest of their lives!

And new (i.e. old) cases start appearing immediately! From the comments section on YouTube:

Interesting. Some of the things talked about in the video are similar to when I was a kid in the 70s. For some reason, I had extremely bad bloody noses while sleeping. Would wake up the next morning and have caked blood on my face resembling a beard and the sheets with a good size blood circle. Would occur at times when I was awake as well. This would happen on a pretty consistent basis. Also got to the point where I had trouble speaking (like stuttering, difficulty in pronouncing words, like my tongue was too big for my mouth). All that went away when we returned to NH after my dad retired from the Marine Corps in Camp Lejeune.

 

[dann]

Havana Syndrome: High-level national security officials stricken with unexplained illness on White House grounds (CBS News, 60 Minutes, Feb 20, 2022)
(...)
I will return with comments about other parts of the 'report'.

Taylor says he became alarmed by that threat in 2018 after he heard of another case like his in the Washington area.
Miles Taylor: I became aware of a U.S. government official more senior than me who'd experienced similar episodes at their place of residence.
Scott Pelley: You say more senior than you. Are you talking about a cabinet level secretary?
Miles Taylor: This was an individual that, yes, was roughly at the cabinet level in the Trump administration who had similar episodes occur. That to me, as a homeland security professional, was a big blinking red light. I mean, to me this said, "five-alarm fire." We may have ongoing activity targeting U.S. government officials here in our country.
Scott Pelley: Who was it?
Miles Taylor: I can't say the individual outta respect for, you know, their privacy. I'll leave it at that. But someone senior enough to say, this is more than just a fluke.
Havana Syndrome: High-level national security officials stricken withunexplainedillness on White House grounds (CBS News, 60 Minutes, Feb 20, 2022)

A classical case of mass psychogenic illness. 'This is someone I respect and look up to, so it must be real! I hope it doesn't happen to me, too!'

Etiology
Qualities of MPI outbreaks often include:
(...)
symptoms that are spread via sight, sound or oral communication;
a spread that moves down the age scale, beginning with older or higher-status people;
Mass Psychogenic Illness (Wikipedia)

 

[dann]

I will return with comments about other parts of the 'report'.

In 2019, during a visit by President Trump to London, two members of John Bolton's national security staff became ill in a hotel.
John Bolton: And that it was on the floor where we'd completely taken up with personnel from the White House and White House agencies struck me as being pretty good evidence of a deliberate attack.
Scott Pelley: You believe it was an attack?
John Bolton: I don't think there's any other hypothesis when you begin to look at the number and the pattern that we've experienced[/hilite].
Havana Syndrome: High-level national security officials stricken withunexplainedillness on White House grounds (CBS News, 60 Minutes, Feb 20, 2022)

The number as well as the pattern makes another hypothesis much more likely than the idea that foreign agents installed elaborate microwave pulse weapons in a London hotel - or anywhere else. Notice that John Bolton, unlike CIA's Mr. Burns at this point, talks about attacks. Burns gave that up after the CIA interim report was released. Nowadays, he stresses that the symptoms of his agents and of the diplomats are real. He no longer claims that their ideas of being victims of an attack are based in reality.

William Burns: The intelligence community assesses now that there's not a single cause that-- it would explain the more than 1,000 incidents that have been reported since Havana in 2016. We've also not yet been able to link a foreign state actor or an external device or mechanism to any of those cases.
Havana Syndrome: High-level national security officials stricken with unexplained illness on White House grounds (CBS News, 60 Minutes, Feb 20, 2022)

External devices, if they existed, should have been pretty easy to discover and link to the respective cases. I assume that no such device has been found and linked to any of "the more than 1,000 incidents that have been reported since Havana in 2016," and that this is the reason why the idea of a hostile foreign power as the cause of these cases has now been dismissed.
This ought to be the end of the story of the 'Havana Syndrome', but it obviously isn't.

 

[dann]

I will return with comments about other parts of the 'report'.

Notice that Robyn Garfield and his wife are the couple from the other 60 Minutes video mentioned in post 1301.

Recently, Garfield told us his family was hit again during their year of treatment in Philadelphia.
Robyn Garfield: My wife catapulted out of bed and sprinted down the hallway to check the children without any word. And she came back, and she told me that an extremely loud, painful, sound had woken her up.
So, they moved to a hotel where Garfield says it happened again.
Robyn Garfield: And we woke up around I believe 2:00 a.m. with strange vibrations in our bodies, and a sound.
(...)
Robyn Garfield: I saw an extremely eerie scene where both (the children) were thrashing in their beds-- asleep. But both kicking and moving pretty aggressively. And I went over to my daughter, and I put my head down next to her head. And I heard a very distinct sound, just right there sort of like water rushing. So, I picked her up, took her and put her with my wife, and I came back and I checked my son. Same sound just right next to his head. So, I picked him up, put him on my shoulder, walked over to my wife and I said, "We're getting out of here."
Havana Syndrome: High-level national security officials stricken with unexplained illness on White House grounds (CBS News, 60 Minutes, Feb 20, 2022)

So this alleged weapon is supposed to have been so precise that it could be aimed not only at the heads of the parents but also at the heads of their children, individually, at a hotel that they had moved to after having had the same experience during their treatment. I am not a professional, but to me, persecutory delusion sounds like a better explanation than an actual attack. At this point, I would have expected somebody engaged in investigative journalism to ask investigative questions: Did they immediately report this new alleged attack to their superiors? Who occupied the hotel room above theirs? Russian agents? Chinese? Cubans? And even if they didn't report it immediately: Don't hotels usually have records of things like that?

 

[dann]

I will return with comments about other parts of the 'report'.

Persistent neurological symptoms are not the only fight these Americans have faced. Some of their early reports were dismissed as psychosomatic, or illnesses connected to an infection or exposure to pesticides. Some were told that they were suffering the effect of old sports injuries. One theory had it that the sound these victims heard during the incidents was actually a particular species of cicada.
Havana Syndrome: High-level national security officials stricken with unexplained illness on White House grounds (CBS News, 60 Minutes, Feb 20, 2022)

Yes, and so what?! Gross negligence and/or injustice is implied to have taken place because the theories (never the symptoms) of the 'Havana Syndrome' sufferers were dismissed, but why doesn't Scott Pelley interview the experts who analyzed the recordings and came to the conclusion that the sound was from crickets?

The new director of the CIA, William Burns, told us one thing is already clear: after early disbelief, these injured Americans can no longer be doubted.
Havana Syndrome: High-level national security officials stricken with unexplained illness on White House grounds (CBS News, 60 Minutes, Feb 20, 2022)

What exactly can't be doubted? Their symptoms or the idea that those symptoms are caused by some kind of attack?

 

[dann]

I will return with comments about other parts of the 'report'.

Dr. David Relman: What we found was, we thought clear evidence of an injury to the auditory and vestibular system of the brain. Everything, starting with the inner ear where humans perceive sound and sense balance and then translate those perceptions into brain electrical signals.
(...)
Dr. David Relman: This subset of cases had a very unusual, so-called acute sensory event, an experience that consisted of the abrupt onset of intense pressure or vibration in the face or head sometimes with the abrupt onset of sound.
Sound, like that described by the officials who spoke to us.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: And then this just loud sound just absolutely filled my room.
This former official, who we agreed not to name, recorded the sound at his home in Havana. Understand that the sound does not cause the injury, it is a byproduct. Like the sound of a gun which is not what does the harm.
Havana Syndrome: High-level national security officials stricken withunexplainedillness on White House grounds (CBS News, 60 Minutes, Feb 20, 2022)

In the case of a gun, the harm is caused by the bullet. So where are the bullets (or the rays) in the case of the 'Havana Syndrome'? Where are the microwaves? Where are the entry and/or exit wounds?
Once again, the closest thing to a 'smoking gun' in the case of the 'Havana Syndrome' appears to be the sound of crickets. It is what made the 'syndrome' sufferers think that they were under attack in the first place, but now that it is obvious that the sound couldn't harm anybody, it has become a "byproduct". But a byproduct of what exactly?
It can't be the Frey effect since the Frey effect can't be recorded.
So do the microwave weapons make the crickets horny and thus louder than usual?
Or did the hostile foreign agents play the sound of crickets when they were using their ray guns on the spies and diplomats - kind of like the torture scene in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly to hush up the screams of people being microwaved?

The injured officials we spoke with said the sound or a feeling of pressure came from one direction and focused in one location.
Miles Taylor: It was a continuous sound and one that only changed based on my location.
Dr. David Relman: They left, it dissipated. They returned, it recurred. That to us was something that we had never heard of, we could not explain by known medical or environmental conditions, and to us deserved our special attention in an effort to understand what might be the plausible mechanism.
That mechanism, Dr. Relman's committees concluded, was most likely "pulsed electromagnetic energy." In other words, a focused beam of microwaves fired from a distance.
Havana Syndrome: High-level national security officials stricken withunexplainedillness on White House grounds (CBS News, 60 Minutes, Feb 20, 2022)

Really?! You have never ever heard of this phenomenon? You hear a sound in a room, then you leave the room, and the sound dissipates. When you return, you hear the sound again. Where's the mystery? It is how acoustics usually works. Why would you need to resort to microwaves to explain it?
Zebras and horses ...

James Benford: I think the best explanation, the most plausible, is that it's a high-power microwave weapon.
(...)
James Benford: There are many kinds, and they can go anywhere in size from a suitcase all the way up to a large tractor trailer unit. And the bigger the device, the longer the range.
Scott Pelley: This would be able to transmit its microwave energy through the wall of a van, the wall of a home, something like that?
James Benford: Vans have windows, microwaves go through glass. They go through brick. They go through practically everything.
Havana Syndrome: High-level national security officials stricken with unexplained illness on White House grounds (CBS News, 60 Minutes, Feb 20, 2022)

I doubt that a tractor trailer unit would fit in a hotel elevator, but suitcases obviously will. Were the neighboring rooms investigated? Was anything found in those rooms? Who booked those rooms?
Aren't the license plates of vans near the White House systematically registered? Don't they have surveillance cameras covering the streets surrounding the White House?

 

[dann]

More 'Havana Syndrome' Regurgitation

'60 Minutes' Releases Eerie 'Havana Syndrome' Audio after White House Incidents (HuffPost, Feb 21, 2022)
I don't know if the recording is the same as the one released by AP in October, 2017:


I can't hear any difference, so I assume it's just another cricket recording.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

'60 Minutes' Releases Eerie 'Havana Syndrome' Audio after White House Incidents (HuffPost, Feb 21, 2022)
I don't know if the recording is the same as the one released by AP in October, 2017:


I can't hear any difference, so I assume it's just another cricket recording.

I only hear the insect noise in one of those clips. The rest all sound like wind and white noise in a couple.

Is the pitch too high for me to hear it?

Either way this is nonsense (we all know that). Why could the US not just use equipment to detect the electromagnetic wave-lengths outside human hearing range? There was a comment that one couldn't record sounds outside the human hearing range. But that doesn't mean said radio spectrum waves cannot be detected. Of course they can.

 

[dann]

Sorry, my mistake. I thought the HuffPost had simply copied the recording from Havana Syndrome: High-level national security officials stricken with unexplained illness on White House grounds (CBS News, 60 Minutes, Feb 20, 2022). At 20:00.

My hearing is pretty bad, but the frequency of cicadas is at about 7.000, if you remember Alphaba's analysis from Oct 13 and Oct 18, 2017.

I can no longer hear grasshoppers, but I have no problem with the cicada recordings. Grasshoppers are at a higher frequency than the Cuban crickets.

Your description of "sound like wind and white noise" probably corresponds to this description from the CBS link above:

Robyn Garfield: I saw an extremely eerie scene where both were thrashing in their beds-- asleep. But both kicking and moving pretty aggressively. And I went over to my daughter, and I put my head down next to her head. And I heard a very distinct sound, just right there sort of like water rushing. So, I picked her up, took her and put her with my wife, and I came back and I checked my son. Same sound just right next to his head. So, I picked him up, put him on my shoulder, walked over to my wife and I said, "We're getting out of here."

I suspect that it is what you may record if there is no actual discernible sound (other than the one in your head), so your recording device turns the recording level up automatically as far as it will go, thus producing white noise.

By the way, this reminds me that I will have to go back and find something that calebprime wrote. It was great to have the contributions from the two sound-and-acoustics experts, Alphaba and calebprime, at the beginning of the thread back in 2017.

 

[dann]

This was what made me think of calebprime:

The injured officials we spoke with said the sound or a feeling of pressure came from one direction and focused in one location.
Miles Taylor: It was a continuous sound and one that only changed based on my location.
Dr. David Relman: They left, it dissipated. They returned, it recurred. That to us was something that we had never heard of, we could not explain by known medical or environmental conditions, and to us deserved our special attention in an effort to understand what might be the plausible mechanism.
That mechanism, Dr. Relman's committees concluded, was most likely "pulsed electromagnetic energy." In other words, a focused beam of microwaves fired from a distance.
Havana Syndrome: High-level national security officials stricken withunexplainedillness on White House grounds (CBS News, 60 Minutes, Feb 20, 2022)

Really?! You have never ever heard of this phenomenon? You hear a sound in a room, then you leave the room, and the sound dissipates. When you return, you hear the sound again. Where's the mystery? It is how acoustics usually works. Why would you need to resort to microwaves to explain it?
Zebras and horses ...

Calebprime wrote this on Oct 15, 2017:

A tone at 8k is very directional, very hearable, and won't penetrate most solid walls.

There may have been other elements to the sound, but if that 8k was there, all you had to do was locate the sound by ear and say wtf, maybe put in some foam earplugs, go to a different room or leave the building. I do that kind of thing all the time in response to noise.

Dr. David Relman is an idiot! He doesn't know what he is talking about! "Pulsed electromagnetic energy," my ***!


ETA: I wonder what Randi would have had to say about NAS expert David Relman. Maybe something like this:

Randi died aged 92. His central message is as important for scientists as for everyone else: “Don’t be too sure of yourself. No matter how smart or well educated you are, you can be deceived.”
James Randi (1928–2020) (Nature, Oct 29, 2020)

 

[dann]

People buy it hook, line and sinker! Two threads at Democratic Underground:
Anyone watched "60 Minutes" earlier? The stories about the "Havana Syndrome" (Feb 21, 2022)
60 Minutes segment on Havana Syndrome (Feb 21, 2022)


ETA: Some of them are particularly impressed by this case:

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: And then the severe ear pain started. So, I liken it to if you put a Q-tip too far and you bounce it off your eardrum. Well, imagine taking a sharp pencil and just kinda poking that. It was very jarring and painful. And eventually, I started blacking out.

With the first public reports coming from Cuba the affliction became known as "Havana Syndrome." More than two dozen embassy officials reported injury, but an early FBI report speculated it was all mass hysteria. His brain injuries left him disabled, essentially retired, at the age of 36. A weighted vest helps him balance. His service dog helps with walking and his loss of vision.
Scott Pelley: Legally blind in one eye?
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Correct. Yeah.
Scott Pelley: What have the doctors told you?
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: It's not the eye, it's the wiring.
Scott Pelley: What do you mean?
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: The eye function as itself is completely correct and appropriate. It's the signal that comes out the back of the eye into the brain, is where the problems are. And no one really knows how to fix that.
Havana Syndrome: High-level national security officials stricken with unexplained illness on White House grounds (CBS News, 60 Minutes, Feb 20, 2022)

I wonder why Scott Pelley didn't ask to see the actual diagnosis. I would really like to see it. To me, it sounds like a case of conversion disorder (Wikipedia), but I am obviously no expert:

"Hysterical blindness" redirects here. For other uses, see Hysterical blindness (disambiguation).
Conversion disorder (CD), or functional neurologic symptom disorder, is a diagnostic category used in some psychiatric classification systems. It is sometimes applied to patients who present with neurological symptoms, such as numbness, blindness, paralysis, or fits, which are not consistent with a well-established organic cause, which cause significant distress, and can be traced back to a psychological trigger.

 

[dann]

The National Academy of Sciences report was released in December 2020. It found that microwave radiation was the most plausible cause, but it stressed that given the data, no firm conclusion could be reached.
“Sometimes you don’t come up with an answer. That’s sometimes really hard for people to understand, but that's really actually common in toxicology: you may not get the answer. You do the best you can for your patient, and you do the best you can in making a diagnosis, but sometimes you don't have the precise answer,” said Ehrich.
Professor emerita participated in National Academy of Sciences' Havana syndrome report (Virginia Tech, Feb 21, 2022)

Maybe David Relman should read the NAS report again ...

 

[Bob001]

.....
Either way this is nonsense (we all know that). Why could the US not just use equipment to detect the electromagnetic wave-lengths outside human hearing range? There was a comment that one couldn't record sounds outside the human hearing range. But that doesn't mean said radio spectrum waves cannot be detected. Of course they can.

The allegation appears to be that if such devices were used, they were transportable and were only used at specific places for short times. It's not like scientists could roll up a week later and play "What's that sound?
"

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

The allegation appears to be that if such devices were used, they were transportable and were only used at specific places for short times. It's not like scientists could roll up a week later and play "What's that sound?
"

Is this serious or sarcasm?

So what the sound (or whatever) was intermittent. Detection equipment can be set to record for days or longer.

 

[dann]

I am not sure if the devices Bob001 is talking about are imaginary rayguns or, probably actual, ray detectors.

I assume that detectors were placed everywhere after the 'anomalous health incidents' in Havana. I also assume that they didn't detect one single sign of a ray gun attack, which is the reason why the interim CIA report could exclude the possibility that a foreign enemy was behind the vast majority of the hundreds of cases all around the world.

But since each and every private home and hotel room in Havana occupied by U.S. diplomats and CIA operatives may not have had this kind of surveillance apparatus installed in late 2016 and early 2017, there is no such evidence of the absence of a microwave attack there and then.

Add to that the agenda that it serves to keep the idea alive that U.S. diplomats were harmed in Havana.

For the past two months or so, CIA's Mr. Burns seems to have been doing his utmost to avoid offending the 'Havana Syndrome' sufferers and researchers like David Relman who have staked their careers on having discovered a brand-new raygun-induced syndrome. At the same time, Burns has avoided supporting the idea of an attack because he knew it was wrong well in advance of the release of the interim report.

Telling the intelligence community that the cases in the rest of the world weren't the result of any kind of attack was damage control, an attempt to limit the damage that the MPI has already done to the intelligence and diplomacy communities. The politicians in the Senate committee have also gone awfully quiet after the interim report was released. I think that even Marc Rubio is now aware that he doesn't have a good case, that there was no Communist attack on American diplomats in Havana, and that it will become the accepted truth at some point when the 'syndrome' sufferers have had time to digest it.

 

[Bob001]

Is this serious or sarcasm?

So what the sound (or whatever) was intermittent. Detection equipment can be set to record for days or longer.

I certainly don't have any specialized knowledge. But I think it's a mistake to claim that numerous intelligent, responsible officials at multiple sites who have no obvious axes to grind are imagining pain and injury. And it's quite a stretch to imagine that the U.S. could install specialized microwave detection equipment in every official's homes and offices.

From the transcript:

James Benford is a physicist and leading authority on microwaves. He was not part of the government studies, but he co-wrote the book on microwave transmission. These are portable microwave transmitters of the kind that could damage the tissues of the brain.

James Benford: There are many kinds, and they can go anywhere in size from a suitcase all the way up to a large tractor trailer unit. And the bigger the device, the longer the range.

Scott Pelley: This would be able to transmit its microwave energy through the wall of a van, the wall of a home, something like that?

James Benford: Vans have windows, microwaves go through glass. They go through brick. They go through practically everything.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/havana-syndrome-white-house-cabinet-60-minutes-2022-02-20/

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I certainly don't have any specialized knowledge. But I think it's a mistake to claim that numerous intelligent, responsible officials at multiple sites who have no obvious axes to grind are imagining pain and injury. And it's quite a stretch to imagine that the U.S. could install specialized microwave detection equipment in every official's homes and offices. ...

Gawd I don't know where to start.

No it is not a mistake. It is a well known phenomena previously called mass hysteria. That term was replaced with a less offensive term, mass psychogenic illness. There are also a number of other formal terms used.

Look at the medical citations in the last half dozen posts to read more about it. This article in Skeptical Inquirer is a good place to start.


As for detecting the supposed weapon, if there was one it would be detectable. It's as simple as that. Jumping through hoops to explain why no 'waves' have been detected is akin to Christian Apologetics.

 

[mgidm86]

I only hear the insect noise in one of those clips. The rest all sound like wind and white noise in a couple.

Is the pitch too high for me to hear it?

Either way this is nonsense (we all know that). Why could the US not just use equipment to detect the electromagnetic wave-lengths outside human hearing range? There was a comment that one couldn't record sounds outside the human hearing range. But that doesn't mean said radio spectrum waves cannot be detected. Of course they can.

One could (Options For Recording Ultrasounds). Depends on how high you want to go.

 

[dann]

The point is that ordinary recording devices (cell phones, for instance) don't have that option.

And even if they had, you still wouldn't be able to hear a recording of ultrasound since it would still be ultrasound. You could slow it down, of course, until it came within hearing range, but then it would no longer be ultrasound, obviously.

Besides, the 'syndrome' sufferers who recorded the 'attack' sounds (i.e. the crickets) said that those recordings were of the sounds they actually heard, i.e. per definition not ultrasound.

Go back and look at Alphaba and calebprime's analyses and comments on the first couple of pages of this thread!

It is safe to assume that no ultrasounds have been recorded in the context of the 'Havana Syndrome' - other than, possibly, the occasional bats or dog whistles, which don't harm people's hearing or their brains. They also don't cause any MPI or social panics for the obvious reason that people can't hear them.

People need to be able to hear the sounds in order to imagine that those sounds represent a clear and present danger. The combination of cicada and (paranoid) human imagination caused the 'Havana Syndrome'.

 

[dann]

I certainly don't have any specialized knowledge. But I think it's a mistake to claim that numerous intelligent, responsible officials at multiple sites who have no obvious axes to grind are imagining pain and injury.

That these people are somehow immune to mass psychogenic illness is a claim that we have seen since day one. Literally!

Mass hysteria among trained diplomats is unlikely.

However,
1) at this point, it should have become obvious to everybody how delusional this trust in "intelligent, responsible officials at multiple sites" is: The CIA interim report dismissed the idea that all those cases except for a small handful were caused by enemy attacks! Yet all of those intelligent, responsible officials believed that it might be the case! How do you explain this obvious contradiction?
2) Nobody is saying that they are "imagining pain and injury." Everybody from Burns, to Blinken, to Baloh and to Bartholomew say that their their symptoms are real. It's the sinister enemiy with rayguns that is made up! (And please use the word injury with more caution!)
3) It also isn't true that they have no obvious axes to grind. What do you think they were doing in Cuba in the first place? It's their mission to grind those axes! And their fear of retaliation for grinding those axes is the cause of their paranoia, which is an essential part of the narrative that constitutes the 'Havana Syndrome'.

And it's quite a stretch to imagine that the U.S. could install specialized microwave detection equipment in every official's homes and offices.

No, it's not a stretch. And at this point, I think they probably have installed that detection equipment everywhere. It's how they have come to know that the hundreds of cases weren't caused by microwave attacks.

From the transcript:

James Benford is a physicist and leading authority on microwaves. He was not part of the government studies, but he co-wrote the book on microwave transmission. These are portable microwave transmitters of the kind that could damage the tissues of the brain.

James Benford: There are many kinds, and they can go anywhere in size from a suitcase all the way up to a large tractor trailer unit. And the bigger the device, the longer the range.

Scott Pelley: This would be able to transmit its microwave energy through the wall of a van, the wall of a home, something like that?

James Benford: Vans have windows, microwaves go through glass. They go through brick. They go through practically everything.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/havana-syndrome-white-house-cabinet-60-minutes-2022-02-20/

Now I'll have to ask you to put in a little effort, Bob001. Tell us how it would be possible to have all of those suitcase- or tractor-trailer-unit-sized microwave-energy transmitters pointed directly at the heads of the parents and at the heads of two children in a hotel room - not in Cuba, but in the USA. (Or at the head of somebody walking down the stairs from a building at the White House site.) Tell us how the hostile enemy managed to fry the brains of those two adults and two children without leaving the least visible marks on their skin.

No such weapon exists, and no such weapon can exist!