Merged US may close Cuba Embassy over 'health attacks'

[dann]

Project BIZARRE and project PANDORA

The documents posted today record Project BIZARRE, the actual—and rather appropriate—codename for a program of radiation experiments conducted on monkeys to determine if the Moscow Signal was intended to degrade the abilities of U.S. personnel to function at the Embassy. Project BIZARRE was a highly classified component of Project PANDORA, a broader research effort undertaken by the Defense Department’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) that included evaluating blood samples of U.S. personnel posted in Moscow and surveying medical records of crew members of the aircraft carrier USS Saratoga to determine if exposure to radiation-emitting technology on board produced physiological effects.
“The Soviets have reported in the open literature that humans subjected to low-level (non-thermal) modulated microwave radiation, show adverse clinical and physiological effects,” ARPA official Richard Cesaro reported in a TOP SECRET, September 1967, update on Project BIZARRE. “The ARPA BIZARRE program will establish methods which should permit us to relate the behavior of sub-human primates to man under conditions of microwave exposure. This may require direct testing with humans under controlled conditions.”
Among the documents posted today is the original TOP SECRET “Justification Memorandum for Project Pandora,” written by Cesaro in October 1965, which stated that the White House had ordered a program of “intensive investigative research” “under the code name project ‘TUMS’’—Technical Unidentified Moscow Signal. The posting also includes a SECRET May 1965 memorandum by ARPA scientist Samuel Koslov which argued that “a program to specifically check the complex Moscow signal waveforms on higher primates should be carried out to supply some data base for possible use in a protest action” against the Kremlin. Titled “Biomedical Phenomena,” the memo was obtained by science historian Nicholas H. Steneck for his groundbreaking 1984 study, The Microwave Debate, but has never been published in full on the Internet before now.
The Moscow Signals Declassified - Microwave Mysteries: Projects PANDORA and BIZARRE (National Security Archive (nsarchive.gwu.edu), Sep 13, 2022)

OVERVIEW OF THE MOSCOW SIGNAL
Despite four years of efforts, the multi-million-dollar PANDORA-BIZARRE projects failed to prove the early hypothesis that the Russians deployed the microwave beams to degrade the mental and physical abilities of U.S. Embassy officers to perform their diplomatic and intelligence duties.
(...)
The findings, according to one CIA scientist working with ARPA, indicated that the beams were not dangerous to U.S. personnel at the Embassy.

That is, when the level of the beams were reduced to the "no greater than .05 mw/cm in the Moscow Signal." And I bet you will all be relieved to hear that the test monkey was fine! The “modulated microwave radiation did not cause the primate to degrade in conducting his work tasks.” I hope you are reading this, Amy!
I wonder what his work taks were. I don't know if the report says anything abou this.

Another group of monkeys weren't so lucky, but they weren't killed by microwaves:

Another RAND Corp evaluation of a specific set of experiments noted that it had produced “no material…which is scientifically credible” of any impact. ... “Examination of the data log indicated that of five monkeys’ deaths, three were certainly due to strangulation resulting from poor experimental design of the restraint system.”

There are no less than fifteen documents from 1964 to 1979 about the Moscow Signal and the tests related to it, and six links to articles about it.

More documents, 32! from 1967 to 1976, related to this were made public in the second part of the series:
The Moscow Signals Declassified - Microwave Diplomacy, 1967-1977 (National Security Archive (nsarchive.gwu.edu), Sep 15, 2022)

And more to follow next week in part 3:

Part III, “Irradiating Richard Nixon,” which documents ionizing radiation detected during the Vice President's 1959 trip to Moscow, will be posted the week of September 19th. A supplementary, special collection of documentation on “Moscow Signals Declassified,” will also be posted the week of September 19.

Were Nikita Khrushchev's mind-control beams the real culprit in the Watergate scandal?!

 

[dann]

It's Official: The Cricket Story Is Stone Cold Dead!

On Feb 2 of this year, I posted this:

The panel’s conclusions also undercut the arguments of some outside experts that mass hysteria, stress or psychosomatic reactions were the cause of the incidents. The panel found that stress reactions could have contributed to ongoing symptoms, but that no so-called functional illness or mass hysteria could explain the initial injuries in the cases that were the focus of its investigation.
(...)
Intelligence officials briefed on the panel’s findings did not say how many cases it had focused on, though they said between 10 and 20 victims were interviewed. They said the panel focused on cases in which victims heard a strange sound or felt pressure and then experienced a loss of balance and ear pain. In addition, the panel focused on cases in which the victims reported the sounds as coming from a specific direction.
(...)
The panel’s membership included some members of a National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine group that concluded last year that a directed radio frequency energy device or microwave device could have caused the injuries associated with Havana syndrome.
Panel Says Some Havana Syndrome Cases May Stem From Radio Energy (NYT, Feb 2, 2022)

So the panel focussed on the cricket cases. If I were the science advisor for Mark Zaid, the lawyer, I don't think I would recommend focussing on that aspect of the 'syndrome', but it is obvious that the one physical, objective piece of evidence that actually exist in this case, the recordings of crickets, is something that you don't usually have in cases of mass psychogenic illness. However, the problem remains that those recordings have already been explained, and the sounds can't have caused any physiological damage.

At this point, Mark Zaid seems to have grasped the idea, so I don't expect to see any more 'syndrome' victims play their cricket recordings on TV - at least not if they are among Zaid's clients. In episode 3 of Yahoo News' Conspiracyland podcast, It's Not What We Thought It Was (Sep 16, 2022), Mark Zaid says (at 16:00):

Zaid: They really did hear those sounds because they really did hear crickets, you know, at the time something was happening to them. But the crickets have nothing to do with, you know, whatever this is. Unless of course, I guess, some country got so advanced that they attached some sort of weapon to distract them with crickets, like passenger crickets or something, right, in a game where pigeons were actually used, were designed to be used ...
Interviewer: When you say it was unfortunate, you are talking about the recording of ...
Zaid: The recording! The recording has nothing to do with what these incidents are! It was total coincidence that at a point in time where whatever number of people recorded things, one or two, I guess, that, whatever they were experiencing, they happened to also hear crickets. And then they turned their phone on or something.

Weird coincidence, isn't it?! It is amazing that Mark Zaid at this point dismisses the one piece of actual physical evidence in the whole case as irrelevant to the story of the 'Havana Syndrome'.
Let's recapitulate:
1) CIA agents and other U.S. embassy employees heard a strange sound at their hotels or homes in Havana. They got scared and had all kinds of unpleasant symptoms like vertigo, headaches, nausea and brain fog.
2) Several of them recorded the sounds, which, when analyzed, turned out to be the mating calls of crickets.
3) Otolaryngologists assured them that the crickets couldn't possibly harm their hearing or their brains unless they were violently stuffed into their ear canals.
4) So in order to maintain the delusion that they had been harmed by the scary sounds, they shifted their story to be about microwave attacks and backed up the idea with references to the Frey effect.
5) But since the Frey effect cannot possibly be recorded on a device (like a cellphone) recording sound, they are now left with absolutely nothing other than Mark Zaid's claim that he has classified information to prove it, which he can't divulge because it's classified. ('Tip of the iceberg' etc. Listen to the rest of the podcast!)

Mark Zaid is beginning to sound like the many Trump lawyers who claimed that they had evidence that the 2020 election was stolen. At this point, I think that Mark Zaid's clients should sue him for harming them by keeping the attack delusion alive against all evidence to the contrary. They would have a better case against him than against their imaginary adversary.

 

[dann]

This quotation in some of Len Ber's tweets appears to have become his default answer to anybody who does not share his idea that he and other 'Targeted Individuals' as well as U.S. agents and diplomats in Havana were attacked by adversaries using ray guns:

“Coming to grips with the reality … technology which aims to specifically degrade neurological and cognitive functions requires the suspension of disbelief among those who reside in the comfortable confidence that no such weapon exists”
https://smallwarsjournal.com/index....nflicting-strategic-impact-non-kinetic-threat
Len Ber MD (Twitter, Sep 9, 2022)

Suspension of disbelief may be required when enjoying fiction, but it should not at all be encouraged when looking at reality. Skeptics are usually aware of this. As Wikipedia puts it:

Suspension of disbelief, sometimes called willing suspension of disbelief, is the avoidance of critical thinking or logic in examining something unreal or impossible in reality, such as a work of speculative fiction, in order to believe it for the sake of enjoyment. Aristotle first explored the idea of the concept in its relation to the principles of theater; the audience ignores the unreality of fiction in order to experience catharsis.
Suspension of disbelief (Wiki)

Len Ber gets his quotation from this recently published article: Neuro-Cognitive Warfare: Inflicting Strategic Impact via Non-Kinetic Threat (Small Wars Journal, Sep 16, 2022)
However, in spite of the date, references to any sources later than July/August 2021 are conspicuously absent, which is no coincidence since it seems to be nothing but a rephrasing (or maybe rearrangement is more fitting) of an article from Nov 15, 2021:

What is the strategic effect of a stealth weapon which debilitates or permanently impairs the minds of military and civilian leadership? If that technology is largely covert, undetectable and pervasive even if its targets are limited in number does that pose an incipient threat deserving of serious attention as geopolitical weapons leverage is considered? Symptoms of its victims cannot be readily evaluated by physicians as no case definition or peer reviewed research exists to verify its authenticity. The technology is insidious and consistently defies detection, prevention, medical verification and scientific confirmation aside from episodic reports that an anomaly has occurred and impaired the neurological and cognitive wellbeing of its intended targets.
Neuro-Cognitive Warfare: Inflicting Strategic Impact via Non-Kinetic Threat (Small Wars Journal, Sep 16, 2022)

What is the strategic effect of a stealth weapon which debilitates or permanently impairs the minds of military and civilian leadership? If that technology is largely covert, undetectable and pervasive even if its targets are limited in number, does that pose an incipient threat deserving of serious attention as geopolitical weapons leverage is considered? Symptoms of its victims cannot be readily evaluated by physicians, as no case definition or peer reviewed research exists to verify its authenticity.
The technology is insidious and consistently defies detection, prevention, medical verification and scientific confirmation aside from episodic reports that an anomaly has occurred and impaired the neurological and cognitive wellbeing of its intended targets.
Cognitive Warfare 2021: Latent Alliance Threats in Neurostrike and Havana Syndrome (VernetzteSicherheit.de, Nov 15, 2021)

This is probably the reason why the article published only two days ago has references to these cases:

In 2021 reported attacks of a similar nature were reported in Vienna and Berlin at several other US embassy sites and other media have claimed well over 300 diplomats, intelligence officers and some active duty military personnel are among the victims.

But doesn't mention the most recent cases reported on Jan 13, 2022, Paris and Geneva, only one week before the CIA interim report, which seems to have put a stop to new cases, which the article also doesn't mention.

How can an article about the alleged 'Havana Syndrome' today, after the CIA investigation revealed that the 1,100 cases around the world were not caused by R. McCreight's "NeuroStrike" but had much more mundane and not at all adversarial causes (See post 1,599), how can such an article ignore this new and entirely available knowledge?

 

[dann]

This YouTube video is based primarily on Yahoo! News' recent Conspiracyland podcast (see post 1,599. Investigative journalist Michael Isikoff, the host of Conspiracyland, is a guest on the show:

State Department officials are beginning to doubt that mysterious illnesses among CIA officials in Cuba were the result of hostile acts by a foreign power. Michael Isikoff, chief investigative correspondent for Yahoo! News, said the media was quick to adopt the "conspiracy theory" without fully examining other possibilities.
Dan Abrams Live brings a fresh, no-holds-barred approach to covering and analyzing the news.
Reports: Skepticism grows about 'Havana Syndrome' | Dan Abrams Live (NewsNation, Sep 16, 2022 - 9:19)

32 comments so far, many of them from TIs.

 

[dann]

The 'syndrome' has become a big inspiration to all kinds of musicians. I already mentioned the "British punk rock/noise rock band Occupants" in post 1,587.

Pinkville's Havana Syndrome also sounds like noise rock to me:

But this one by Paper Sailboat, the footage a mixture of Havana (the Malecon with Hotel Nacional) and Tron, is very new agey. Fans of Pink Floyd will might enjoy it.

Seth McLain's one-man-and-a-guitar version doesn't sound much like punk to me, even though he calls it Punk Rock. I don't get the lyrics. Is it, "It's time to come clean," "It's time to complete," or "It's time to complain," - or all three as the subtitles say? The former would make the most sense, in my opinion.

This techno song with footage of a spider eating a cricket is meant "to help the healing process for those brave spooks suffering from Havana Syndrome."

In this conspicuously early one from July 2017 (and thus older than this thread!), Havana Syndrome is the name of the band:

Also in this one from April 2022 where we have returned to noise rock:

I much prefer actual Habana sounds. The diplomats and spies should have taken the opportunity to enjoy them when they were there:

 

[dann]

The U.S. Embassy in Cuba will begin processing full immigrant visas in early 2023 to make it easier for immigrants to reconnect with families in the U.S.
The embassy said in a Wednesday news release that it will also increase staff as they seek to resume full immigrant visa processing for the first time since 2017.
The news comes after the resumption of the Cuban Family Reunification Parole (CFRP) last month. CFRP was created in 2007 to create a pathway to the U.S. for Cubans on family-based immigrant petitions.
In 2017, former President Trump’s administration scaled back staff and cut down on immigrant visa processing after a mysterious illness befell some embassy personnel in Havana, who reported hearing strange, high-pitched sounds.
US Embassy in Cuba to begin processing full immigrant visas (The Hill, Sep 22, 2022)

Biden is not in a hurry. There was talk of this in early May: Biden finally cracks the door open to Cuba. Shutting down the U.S. embassy's consular services went much faster "in 2017 when the State Department withdrew most of the embassy’s staff after two dozen U.S. personnel in Havana experienced unexplained symptoms that were dubbed “The Havana Syndrome.”"
Is Biden still afraid of that embassy workers will come down with "unexplaned symptoms" (or "Anomalous Health Incidents") if they hear the "strange, high-pitched sounds" of crickets?

 

[dann]

The report, said people briefed on the findings, criticized how the Central Intelligence Agency’s top physicians in the Office of Medical Services dealt with the unexplained incidents during the Trump administration, when some C.I.A. officials were doubtful about Havana syndrome-related illnesses. As a result, many people with symptoms found it difficult to get prompt medical care.
Report Criticizes C.I.A.’s Initial Handling of Havana Syndrome Cases (NYT, Oct 14, 2022)

So shouldn't the CIA "top physicians" have been doubtful? Would the correct response instead have been to jump to the conclusion that a sinister attack by foreign adversaries using pulsed microwave energy weapons had taken place - even though not a single piece of evidence to back up this insane idea has been found after six years of investigations?

Many experts who have studied brain scans of victims are convinced that at least some of the incidents were caused by directed energy or radio waves.
(...)
The C.I.A. has been investigating the incidents with a new team of officers since Mr. Burns took over. While some victims believe the incidents were caused by a foreign power, the C.I.A. investigators have not found any evidence to support that conclusion.

 

[dann]

While I was in Cuba, there was also this CIA report:

Andrews traveled to Cuba to investigate about two months after he became aware of the first cases.
He wasn’t too worried for his own safety, at first. On his first night, he went to sleep around 11:30 p.m. in his hotel room. But shortly before 5 a.m., he was awakened by severe pain in his right ear, nausea and a terrible headache. Then he began to hear a clicking noise that past victims had reported hearing at the onset of their symptoms — a sound that Andrews had previously only heard on audio clips.
CIA doctor hit by Havana syndrome says he was in ‘disbelief’ as he suffered what he was investigating (CNN, Sep 25, 2022)

CIA physician Dr. Paul Andrews was one of the first people sent to Havana, Cuba, to investigate a spate of mysterious health incidents that were impacting embassy and agency personnel in 2017 when he was struck by the same set of debilitating symptoms. CNN Special Report: "Immaculate Concussion: The Truth About Havana Syndrome."
CIA doctor investigating mysterious injuries suddenly injured himself (CNN, Sep 25, 2022)

Yes, even doctors can hear the sound of crickets. And like CIA agents and diplomats, they can succumb to vestibular problems as well as mass psychogenic illness.

The Truth Behind Havana Syndrome – Dr. Sanjay Gupta visits Cuba to look into Havana Syndrome, one of the most intricate and contentious brain mysteries of recent years. These unexplained health incidents were first brought to light by twenty U.S. officials in Havana, Cuba, beginning in 2016. Since then, there have been hundreds of reports of concussion-like injuries from all over the world. Officials from the United States have not yet clarified what caused these wounds or whether a directed energy weapon might be to blame.
CNN Special Report: Immaculate Concussion: The Truth Behind Havana Syndrome (MemorablerTV, Sep 25, 2022)

I haven't yet listened to Sanjay Gupta's report, but I assume that his vist to Cuba, like my own, had no adverse effects.

 

[dann]

And ...

In a January interim report, the CIA determined that a majority of reported cases could be explained by known means. But about two dozen cases remain unexplained, which the government vaguely refers to as “anomalous health incidents.”
“There’s just no answer,” said one House Intelligence Committee member briefed on the CIA task force’s work. “They’ve done an immense amount of work, literally spreadsheeting every catastrophic set of symptoms down to the headache and there’s just nothing. None.”
(...)
“From what I have seen, there are tons of significant, credible leads that to the best of our knowledge the agencies are not addressing,” said Mark Zaid, an attorney who is representing some of the complainants. “Leads that clients of mine put into the system — and they’re not doing it. To me, this is where they need to be held accountable to explain why.”
Exclusive: Dozens of CIA officers accuse intel agency of soft-pedaling its ‘Havana Syndrome’ investigation (CNN, Oct 5, 2022)

However, the CIA interim report released in January 2022 appears to have had an impact on the number of people reporting 'anomalous health incidents':

Last year, when the intelligence community was urging officials to report symptoms, there were reports of clusters of potential incidents in multiple cities, including Bogota and Vienna. Victims of these incidents last year – many of whom are in close contact with one another for the sake of support – say they have not heard of any large clusters of reported incidents so far this year.

Are we supposed to think that the sinister adversary with the pulsed microwaves just gave up all of a sudden?

 

[Planigale]

And ...




However, the CIA interim report released in January 2022 appears to have had an impact on the number of people reporting 'anomalous health incidents':



Are we supposed to think that the sinister adversary with the pulsed microwaves just gave up all of a sudden?

M "007 There have been a series of anomalous health incidents affecting the CIA, brain scans on your friend Felix show concussion like changes with no explanation for how they might have occurred."

JB "SMERSH! I'll just visit Q section and then I'll deal with them"

Q "Now James don't touch that! These may look like an ordinary set of noise cancelling ear buds, because that is what they are, but they should protect you from any sonic attacks"

 

[dann]

Sonic attacks are sooo 2017!
(Don't mention the crickets!)

 

[dann]

As one of the CIA’s most decorated field officers, Marc honed a unique style of leadership based on decision making under pressure, inclusivity, camaraderie, and competition. He’s the author of Clarity in Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the CIA.
Marc Polymeropoulos has a goal to pass on his knowledge to people in the sports and business world who could benefit from his unique experiences serving his country in the hotspots of the world.
(...)
Marc Polymeropoulos also shares how he had “a really awful end of his career,” due to Havana Syndrome. He got physically sick and experienced a loss of cognitive abilities, and didn’t get the help he needed.
“I was a highly decorated officer, rising to the top. I didn’t want to retire, but I had to,” he says. The clear leadership lesson for any organization is that, “You’ve got to take care of your people. And unfortunately, the CIA didn’t take care of me when I needed them most. It was a moral betrayal for me.”
A Conversation with Marc Polymeropoulos, Clarity in Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the CIA (Successful Mind Podcast, Oct 27, 2022)

It is no wonder that Polymeropoulos doesn't want his success story to be tainted by a story of cracking under too much stress and succumbing to a banal case of psychogenic illness, which I assume is the reason why he is adamant that he got "physically (!) sick" and is the victim of "moral betrayal" by his CIA superiors.
I wonder why he doesn't mention any Russian microwave attacks, but maybe he does in the podcast. Or is it possible that he has already been told that there is no reason to assume that any adversarial attacks were involved in his case?

 

[dann]

The article, The Moscow Signals Declassified: ​​​​​​​Irradiating Richard Nixon (The National Security Archive, Sep 22, 2022), mentioned in post 1,601, links to five documents related to Nixon's visit to Moscow.

It was mentioned by two British papers:

The incident was reported after Golden’s revelations in 1976, but this is the first time the underlying documentation has been made available online, after a request to the Nixon presidential library from the National Security Archive at George Washington University.
(...)
Golden was sceptical of the analysis by the state department’s medical division that the radiation came from atomic batteries used to power listening devices inside Spaso House. He pointed out that the radiation had stopped while he was in the building, so no one could have come in and removed the batteries. He concluded the state department experts were not being frank with him.
Richard Nixon exposed to radiation on Moscow trip in 1959, documents reveal (The Guardian, Sep 22, 2022)

Richard Nixon was exposed to ‘massive dosages of radiation’ during 1959 Moscow trip (The Independent, Sep 23, 2022)

 

[dann]

Havana Syndrome is a cause for alarm and mystery. But it has not happened in a vacuum but in a mindset. It maps onto pre-existing American mindsets, which include the clashes of scientific authorities, conspiracy theories, post-Cold War politics, national security politics, and the silo-ing and rivalries of government agencies. Hence, THE MINDSET LIST OF HAVANA SYNDROME traces how a great enigma maps onto typical American assumptions, attitudes, and practices. It’s been said, of Scotland, that a country capable of producing Braveheart and Rob Roy can certainly produce a Loch Ness Monster. Is there anything about America that could produce a Havana Syndrome? We have had a lot to say about the syndrome, but the syndrome has also had a lot to say about US.
The Havana Syndrome Mindset List: A Famous Medical Enigma (The Mindset List, Oct 7, 2022)

The article lists 30 points.

 

[dann]

For some reason, I can't access this article, Florida Cases of Havana Syndrome, FBI agents lawyering up (CBS12, Nov 2, 2022), but other articles are based on it:

There are over 1000 cases of government employees complaining of severe headaches, earaches, and mental disorientation.
Local Miami FBI agents have also started to say they are suffering from the attacks, some have hired attorneys to investigate.
(...)
Today local news 12 CBS receive the following statement from the FBI in Miami regarding FBI agents locally who also believe they have suffered from Havana Syndrome Attacks.
(...)
“The issue of Anomalous Health Incidents is a top priority for the FBI, as the protection, health and well-being of our employees and colleagues across the federal government is paramount. We will continue to work alongside our partners in the intelligence community as part of the interagency effort to identify the cause of these incidents and determine how we can best protect our personnel. The FBI takes all U.S. government personnel who report symptoms seriously. In keeping with this practice, the FBI has messaged its workforce on how to respond if they experience an AHI, how to report an incident, and where they can receive medical evaluations for symptoms or persistent effects.”
Havana Syndrome Direct Energy Attacks Not Just for the CIA Anymore - FBI Agents in South Florida Hire Lawyers (Deerfield, Nov 3, 2022)

Havana Syndrome Cases Explode According to News Reports (Bitchute, Nov 5, 2022)

 

[dann]

The 'syndrome' in Canada:

OTTAWA — Former Supreme Court justice Thomas Cromwell will mediate claims against the federal government from nine family members of Canadian diplomats who suffered unexplained ailments in Cuba.
The development is a step toward resolving some elements of a Federal Court action filed in 2019 by diplomats and dependants — now numbering 18 plaintiffs — who seek millions of dollars in damages from the Canadian government after becoming mysteriously ill while posted to Havana.
Former Supreme Court judge tabbed to help settle several ‘Havana Syndrome’ claims (LarongeNOW, Nov 11, 2022)

 

[Allen773]

So was there ever any actual evidence of Cubans/Russians/Chinese Bad Guys using directed energy weapons, or was this a US information operation to make sure that there will be no hope for any detente with any of these countries ever again?

 

[dann]

1. No. There was never anything other than the paranoid delusion. This year, the CIA confirmed that there was never any evidence of the 'syndrome' being caused by enemy attacks, and in January they said that they had found other causes for the vast majority of the more than 1,000 cases all around the world. Only about two dozen cases, probably the ones that David Relman & Co. insist were caused by attacks, i.e. the ones accompanied by the sounds of crickets = the original MPI cases in Havana - still haven't been dismissed as psycho-somatic - and they probably never will be since it is as impossible to prove that they aren't as to prove that they are.

2. But I wouldn't describe it as "a US information operation." A bunch of paranoid CIA operatives in Havana got scared by the sound of "lovelorn crickets," managed to spread the idea to other U.S. embassy staff as well as to Canadian colleagues in Cuba, and then Trump's State Department and guys like Marco Rubio latched on to it and used it for their own political purpose until the paranoid delusion grasped so many U.S. officials all over the world - and even in Washington - that it began to interfere with intelligence operations and diplomacy, i.e. after the number of cases had increased from the two dozen original cases in Havana in 2016-17 to more than 1,000 in the rest of the world in 2021.

3. Currentiy, the delusion is maintained mainly by by people with a vested interest in keeping it alive: the alleged victims themselves, politicians (e.g. Sens. Marco Rubio, Susan Collins, Jeanne Shaheen) and researchers (e.g. David Relman, James Giordano) who have staked their careers on it. And in addition to those, there's the whole community of Targeted Individuals, but they are not really interested in the idea of "Cubans/Russians/Chinese Bad Guys" attacking CIA agents and U.S. diplomats. Instead, they complain that they themselves are being targeted by even more sinister forces.
So not really an "information operation."

 

[dann]

Upcoming:

Sonic deception has proven vital when it comes to conflict, whether it’s animals surviving in the wild or human beings using sound tactics to turn the tide of a battle. And as audio technology becomes more and more sophisticated, its importance is only growing. In the third and last episode about acoustic stratagems, we’ll take a look at the future of warfare, from sound cannons to directed audio, and whether Havana syndrome might mark the start of a new age of sonic weaponry.
Scary Pigs And Phantom Planes: Audio Warfare Through The Ages (Jodi Krangle, voiceoversandvocals.com, Nov 23, 2022)

I hope that she will illustrate next blog post with a couple of cricket videos.

 

[dann]

Listen To 9 Of The Most Haunting Sounds Ever Recorded (All That's Interesting, Nov 24, 2022)

#8, The Unexplained Sounds That Cause Havana Syndrome, is the most relevant 'haunting sound' in this context, but some of the others are also interesting:

The Forest Grove Noise That Tormented An Oregon Town
The ‘Hum’: The Mysterious Sound Heard Across The World