Chairing a House Intelligence Select Committee hearing on Thursday, Rep. Rick Crawford (R-AR) made big progress in addressing the intelligence community’s investigation of the so-called “Havana Syndrome” concern. He got the top intelligence community leaders to touch their third rail and, indirectly, admit that a cover-up has occurred.
Referred to by the government as “Anomalous Health Incidents,” as I’ve noted, “Havana Syndrome rose to prominence in 2016, following reports of unexplained nervous system ailments suffered by U.S. diplomats and CIA officers at the U.S. Embassy in Havana, Cuba. Hundreds of subsequent incidents have been reported globally by American diplomats, intelligence officers, and military personnel. AHI symptoms include dizziness, auditory disruption, traumatic brain injury, and loss of gait. Some victims have suffered serious disabilities and premature death.”
What is causing AHIs?
As the Washington Examiner first reported in October 2021 and more precisely reported last December, the “evidence suggests that compartmented units of the Russian intelligence services … are using novel pulsed microwave weapons of different sizes and capacities to attack U.S. personnel.” That truth has been buried by the IC, too often deliberately. But Crawford moved the needle substantially on Thursday.
He did so by referencing the December 2024 intelligence community assessment on AHI, which only the National Security Agency and the U.S. Army’s Intelligence Command dissented from. The ICA stated that “it is ‘very unlikely’ a foreign adversary is responsible for the events reported as possible anomalous health incidents.”
The U.S. government’s acquisition of a pulsed microwave device in 2024 and a broad array of other evidence (read to the end of the article here) gutted this ICA’s credibility at its birth. Until yesterday, however, in a very concerning reality for policymakers who rely on the IC for honest best analysis, the ICA reflected the IC’s official judgment. But Crawford scored a big win on Thursday with a simple question. He asked the directors to provide a “yes or no answer” as to “whether this ICA should be retracted.”
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard responded robustly, “Yes.” This reflects Gabbard’s courageous re-investigation of the IC’s AHI-related assessments. Her report indicates that the IC’s analysis of AHIs has been fatally flawed. The Trump administration has thus far prevented Gabbard’s report from being published. FBI Director Kash Patel, acting director of the National Security Agency Gen. William Hartman, and director of the Defense Intelligence Agency Gen. James Adams all joined Gabbard in responding, “yes.”
Notably, however, CIA Director John Ratcliffe offered a more convoluted answer. Ratcliffe simply deferred to Gabbard’s investigation and pledged to support it. Ratcliffe knows that his seventh-floor deputies fear the truth will imprison, rather than set free, their organization’s credibility on this issue.
Still, these “yes” responses were hard to get.
Crawford has struggled mightily against an IC conspiracy against the truth. That is especially true of the CIA. But he has kept Havana Syndrome at the forefront of his work, even as many of his colleagues, including his predecessor committee chairman, decided that priority attention to it wasn’t worth the trouble.
It’s clear that the cover-up is finally breaking.
Gabbard has shown courage on this issue since entering office. But it beggars belief that her fellow intelligence directors would have so directly rebuked their respective organization’s assessments from little over a year ago. Not unless they sensed the political wind shifting. But while the Insider’s Michael Weiss last week delivered a blockbuster report on the CIA’s fastidious commitment to whitewashing, the better pursuit of the truth is long overdue.
As Crawford told the Washington Examiner in December 2024, not all AHI cases can be explained as the result of hostile foreign action: “Quite frankly, there were some folks who, I’ll say, in the field, who saw this as an opportunity — ‘I don’t really like my duty station’ — and took advantage of it.” At the same time, Crawford added that there are a very significant number of credible cases. Crawford lamented the stonewalling by intelligence agencies to congressional record requests, excessive redactions when responding to requests, and a broader disdain for their victim employees. And pushed by the Washington Examiner on the apparent targeting of Russia-focused specialists in the U.S. government, Crawford added that the profile of victims “sort of points to maybe some, some understanding of who [the adversary is] going after and the message they’re trying to send here.”
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We shouldn’t exaggerate the importance of this change in IC rhetoric. Too many careers and too many pensions depend on continued deception or the blurring of sharp assessments. When it comes to the cover-up, to borrow from Winston Churchill, this is only the end of the beginning rather than the beginning of the end.
But it is something big.