As Cuba seeks respite from its grave economic and energy crisis, the Trump administration must make any U.S. support contingent upon systemic political reforms by the communist regime. But Cuba must also be made to come clean on “Havana Syndrome,” or what the U.S. government refers to as anomalous health incidents.
The time for action is now. Right now.
After all, CIA Director John Ratcliffe met with Cuban officials during a visit to Havana on Thursday. As CBS News’s Olivia Gazis notes, Ratcliffe was photographed in front of the U.S. Embassy, where, starting in 2016, numerous American diplomats and intelligence officers suffered AHI incidents. As the Washington Examiner has noted previously, “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.”
Cuba remains crucial to resolving the AHI investigation.
While some AHIs are the result of otherwise explainable ailments or psychosomatic concerns, as the Washington Examiner first reported in October 2021 and more precisely reported in December 2025, 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.”
While the intelligence community has persisted in a cover-up of Russia’s culpability for these attacks, oversight efforts by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Rick Crawford (R-AR) are slowly unveiling the truth that the intelligence community doesn’t want the public to see. Namely, that Russia has been attacking and even, via AHI, resulting in ailments such as Parkinson’s Disease and cancer, killing people for serving their country.
Still, what makes Cuba particularly important is not that AHIs first began to occur at scale in Cuba — preceding attacks also occurred, including one which targeted then-National Security Agency officers Mike Beck and Charles Gubete in Moscow in 1996, causing them both premature deaths. Rather, what makes Cuba important is the certain role of its Intelligence Directorate in the Cuba-based attacks and, potentially, other attacks on U.S. soil.
The DI is generally an exceptionally capable intelligence service that operates well beyond what otherwise might be expected of a small, impoverished state. But it also maintains a persistent and extensive monitoring of all foreign intelligence officers operating out of embassies in Havana. Moreover, the Russian intelligence services are the DI’s closest foreign partners. Considering this relationship and the DI’s counterintelligence apparatus, it is inconceivable that Russia could have conducted the 2016 operations without the knowledge and support of at least some elements of the DI. The Russians and Cubans do not hide this relationship: Russian spymaster Nikolai Patrushev, the likely linchpin behind the Russian AHI effort, met with DI leaders during a 2024 visit to Cuba.
Ratcliffe and Secretary of State Marco Rubio should thus insist that their Cuban negotiating interlocutor and grandson of de facto Cuban leader Raul Castro, Raul “Raulito” Castro, now disclose exactly how the DI has supported Russian AHI operations. One focus should be on the activities of the now-deceased director of Cuban military counterintelligence, Julio Cesar Gandarilla Bermejo, for example.
TRUMP’S STATE VISIT IS A GOLDMINE FOR CHINA’S SPIES
The interrogation of this issue is a big test for Ratcliffe and Rubio’s honesty and Raulito Castro’s credibility. Ratcliffe and Rubio have repeatedly pledged to address the AHI crisis, though they have pushed it to the side since entering the Trump administration. And while Castro wants to save his grandfather’s regime, if he insists there is nothing to see in relation to the DI’s role in the 2016 AHI incidents, it will prove he is an utterly untrustworthy negotiating partner.
And, thus, that the very possibility of new U.S.-Cuba cooperation should be terminated before it even begins.