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--:-- Noam Hassenfeld: Back in November of 2018, we published an episode titled Those Weird Cuban Attacks. It was about what's now commonly referred to as Havana Syndrome, though it would appear the Biden administration is trying to get away from that name. They're apparently calling them unexplained health incidents or UHIs now because there's still a lot of mystery surrounding what exactly is going on here and whatever is happening is no longer limited to Havana. Just this week, the Pentagon asked all of its military personnel, civilian officials, and contractors to report any health issues similar to what diplomats and CIA officers first experienced in Havana. years later they're still trying to figure out what exactly is going on as is vox's unexplainable podcast today we're bringing you a recent episode of theirs tackling havana syndrome uhis or those weird attacks on diplomats and also other people whatever you want to call it you can find unexplainable wherever you find today explained here is that episode
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--:-- Noam Hassenfeld: It's unexplainable. I'm Noam Hassenfeld. Remember a few years ago when those invisible attacks were messing with U.S. diplomats in Cuba? The Trump administration announced that it is pulling more than half of its staff out of the American embassy in Havana. This comes after diplomats and staff suffered mysterious health attacks that caused minor brain injuries. These symptoms have been called Havana syndrome, and new incidents are still being reported. Except they're not just happening in Cuba anymore. Incidents have been reported in Russia, China, the U.S., and just in the last few months, there were reports of incidents in Austria, Germany, and Vietnam. About 200 incidents of Havana syndrome have now been reported around the world, with many requiring hospitalization or outpatient treatment. But what's causing Havana syndrome is still a mystery.
--:-- Noam Hassenfeld: On this week's episode, a potential reason why. We may have been looking for the wrong kind of answers. We'll start from the beginning. So in late 2016, two intelligence operatives who recently arrived at the United States embassy in Cuba, they hear what they consider to be a bizarre noise. This sound is a recording obtained by the AP of what some diplomats claimed they heard. It's a very bizarre, otherworldly noise. Journalist Dan Hurley wrote about the science behind Havana syndrome for The New York Times magazine. And they begin to develop headaches, fatigue, dizziness, hearing loss, nausea. Word reaches the head U.S. diplomat in Cuba, who eventually calls a meeting of his senior staff. And he tells them there's these weird noises, makes people feel sick. We're trying to figure out what's going on. And if any of you feel it, please let us know. But don't tell anybody. This is confidential. But more and more people start reporting these strange symptoms. So the head diplomat starts telling other countries' ambassadors who are also in Cuba. And once he tells the Canadian ambassador, 12 of the people who are in the Canadian embassy say, I'm feeling the same thing. Cases continue to rise, and the State Department's medical director sends patients to get examined at the University of Pennsylvania.
--:-- Douglas Smith: I'm Douglas Smith. I'm a professor of neurosurgery and director of the Center for Brain Injury and Repair at the University of Pennsylvania. Douglas first examined the patients in 2017. I have to tell you that patients have a great sense of humor despite the suffering they had. And some call this immaculate concussion because it sure seemed like concussion symptoms, but without the actual head impact. It was intense pressure on both of my temples. I mean, the room is spinning. I can't stand up. I'm falling over. I feel physically sick. You're dizzy. Your head is splitting. The majority of them heard sounds, but not all the sounds were the same. Some were high-pitched, kind of a trilling type of sound. A very high-pitched sound in Catherine's bedroom. You know, akin to a cicada, some said. Actually, scientists who later analyzed the AP recording concluded that at least that particular sound was likely generated by Caribbean crickets. But not everybody had those sounds. Some didn't hear anything, and some heard entirely different sounds. So they weren't all consistent. Some reported sounds that were kind of low-grinding metal-type sounds. At the same time, I heard this low humming sound, and it was oscillating. And others even reported sounds like, you know, this baffling noise when you have the back window of a car open on the highway, that kind of, kind of sound. And they could actually sense what direction this phenomena was coming from. Something, I felt, like hit me from the left side, and it paralyzed me, so I was not able to move or speak. Some of them would even duck behind a concrete wall and the feeling would go away. They'd come back again, like to a window, for example, and the symptoms would return. And I remember looking around for where this sound was coming from because it was painful. It made them feel kind of like they're dizzy or ringing in their ears or visual problems. I'm able to function for two or three hours a day and concentrating, but that's about it. You're in a fog. It's as if everything is moving in slow motion. But nobody in our group had ever heard of sound hurting the brain.
--:-- Douglas Smith: In 2018, Douglas and his team at Penn published a study which found that these government officials did appear to have sustained brain injuries, but they didn't know what could have caused them. The team left that open claiming the symptoms were due to a quote unknown energy source associated with auditory and sensory phenomena Meanwhile the U government seemed split on how to refer to the episodes While some called them incidents, others, like former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, started calling them attacks. We hold the Cuban authorities responsible for finding out who is carrying out these health attacks on not just our diplomats, but as you've seen now, there are other cases with other diplomats. The U.S. ended up withdrawing most of its staff from the Cuban embassy, but more and more incidents kept being reported, this time outside of Cuba. First, it was in Moscow. An invisible attack in a Moscow hotel. Then it was in China. Abnormal sound left a consulate worker with a mild brain injury. It was in Australia. Two senior CIA agents may have been attacked. In Washington, D.C., on the National Mall. We want to turn now to a mystery right here in the nation's capital. The reports kept on coming. It's been reported in Poland, London, and Taiwan. And even this past summer, there were incidents in Vienna. So this is a big issue for the Austrian authorities and clearly for the United States.
--:-- Scott Pelley: I'm Scott Pelley. You know, there appears to be a hostile foreign government's plan to target Americans serving abroad and their families. At first, the U.S. blamed Cuba. The Cubans were saying, we don't even know what you're talking about. This is not us. Then the U.S. blamed the Russians. They blamed the Chinese. But incidents have continued to be reported. As of now, it's up to around 200 people. But, you know, the truth is there's no evidence of any foreign government being involved. Is there any type of sonic weapon that could do this? Like, could cicadas be weaponized? No. And it's not— No, no, no. So there is this strange effect that's called the Frey effect. Okay. Back in the 60s, a scientist named Alan Frey found that microwaves aimed at the head could cause a clicking sound. You had to be in a very quiet room to even notice it. But the Frey effect cannot cause brain damage. It's just something people grabbed on. One of the engineers I spoke to who did a study of the Frey effect, Kenneth Foster, professor of bioengineering, he said... The kind of effect that is being talked about with the embassy is purely a fairy tale. He said, you might as well be talking about little green men from Mars throwing darts of energy. I can't conceive of a microwave weapon as it's being thought about in this case. No one has measured microwaves in the embassy, as far as I know. It's just purely speculation that there's anything at all involving microwaves in this case.
--:-- Dan Hurley: And if you take that low level of energy that gets you the fray effect and just turn it up a lot, could that be a possible cause here? Like, shoot a lot of microwaves? So there's something else called an active denial system, which the U.S. government, the military has used to disperse a crowd. It's called millimeter waves instead of microwaves. It's 95 gigahertz instead of two and a half gigahertz. OK, so like higher frequency than microwaves. Yeah, and it only goes skin deep. So it makes you feel like you've got a burning sensation on your skin, and it's never been known to produce any sounds or to cause chronic brain damage. What if you did this with actual microwaves and not millimeter waves? Well, that would be exactly like climbing inside a microwave oven. And it wouldn't be something that they hear a noise and go, gee, what's that? No, it would be like getting microwaved. It heats up your body and it would be a painful experience. Okay. Outside of microwaves or millimeter waves, are there any other possible causes here? Ultrasound. And that, I guess, is very high-pitched frequencies? Yes. Now, apparently, if you took an ultrasound generator and you put it in a bucket of water, you could make little bubbles appear. And I talked to Timothy Layton, who's a professor of ultrasonics, and he told me, you know, if you send it through the air, you will never get that effect. You know, with the pregnant woman, the reason they use the slippery gel is you can't have an air gap. So essentially the idea here is that you couldn't get this effect from far away, right? Someone would have to sneak up behind them and touch them with an ultrasound machine or something? Yeah. You know, what Leighton said was, we have no evidence and no theories of how it could do that. And he said, the idea of some kind of secret ultrasonic death ray going through the air to hit you, it's nonsensical. And that's a quote. And one of the key things is, even if you got a concussion, it is unusual for people to develop chronic long-term sickness from that. And yet most of the people with this syndrome do seem to have chronic symptoms. I mean, it just doesn't fit with what's known about mild traumatic brain injuries. None of it makes sense by any physical means.
--:-- Catherine Lefevre: Havana syndrome could be an example of something called a functional disorder. These kinds of disorders are just beginning to be understood because they don't usually involve observable structural damage in the brain. A functional disorder is less about how the brain looks than about how it works, how it's communicating. I mean, a structural brain injury would be having a stroke or a brain tumor or, you know, difference in the brain anatomy, essentially. But functional difference or change is really just how the different parts of the brain interact with each other.
--:-- John Stone: If you came to my clinic in Edinburgh and sat in the room, you would watch me interview lots of people who've been nowhere near an embassy. who have persistent dizziness and cognitive problems, fatigue, which means they have to leave their jobs. After reading the Penn study, he wrote a letter to the editor of the medical journal claiming functional disorders should be in the conversation. To me, when I read about these patients, I'm reading about patients who are just people I would see every time I do a clinic. These are not unusual illnesses. But it's not like you can easily do a brain scan and just point to the functional disorder. It's sometimes possible with something called a functional MRI, but they're most often diagnosed based on symptoms. And it's very much a topic of active research. It's really very poorly taught, if taught at all, at medical school. But in the last 10 or 20 years, a sort of flowering of research in this area has helped to understand these disorders as ones that are the interface between neurology and psychiatry, where it is reasonable to talk about them as clinical brain disorders.
--:-- John Stone: So here's how a functional disorder might have been involved with Havana syndrome. Functional disorders are pretty common to start with. John actually did a study which found that they're one of the most common diagnoses given by neurologists. Then diplomats might be especially susceptible because of the added stress that comes with life as a foreign official. And then on top of that, they're hearing stories or reading reports about other officials being attacked by invisible weapons. I think it is possible a lot of anxiety may be caused about the possibility of having a brain injury from a sonic attack. And that that concern is heightening people's vigilance for events that might be consistent with a sonic attack and then symptoms that might be consistent with a sonic attack.
--:-- Douglas Smith: Individuals who examine the patients believe that this is a neurological issue. People from the outside feel very confident in their diagnosis of patients they have never seen. I have never met any of these patients with Havana syndrome. I do not know what they have. My only interest in this is that I see functional disorders being thoroughly misrepresented. I completely understand that what he's seeing in front of him are patients with genuine conditions, but that is not reason to dismiss the possibility of functional disorders playing at least a part in what's happening. A functional disorder is a genuine disorder, just as much as a brain injury. I see this all the time in my clinical practice. So I see people who have had minor head injuries. They've had concussion symptoms for a while and then they gradually get worse because they develop a functional disorder and it becomes very harmful to them if they're caught in a medical system that's telling them this is all brain damage.
--:-- Dan Hurley: Nobody understands how our brain works. He's only slightly exaggerated. How does your brain right now create the impression that you are here, that this is your body, that that's the clock on the wall? You know where you are, who you are. Your brain is this incredible organ that creates your reality. It creates your reality. So maybe it's created a reality that isn't actually consistent with the physical body. You know, we need to be humble in our appreciation of what we don't know about the brain.
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--:-- Noam Hassenfeld: This episode was produced and scored by Noam Hassenfeld. There were edits from Meredith Hoddenot and Brian Resnick, with some help from Daniel Gross and Julian Weinberger. The mixing and sound design was done by Christian Ayala, and the fact-checking was done by me, Manny Nguyen. Special thanks to Adam Entis, Afim Shapiro, Julia Belouz, and Emily Sen. Bird Pinkerton is very noisy, but not in a mysterious way. Lauren Katz heads up our newsletter, and Liz Kelly Nelson is the VP of Vox Audio. You can sign up for our newsletter or read our articles or look at our show transcripts at vox.com slash unexplainable. Unexplainable is a part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
