‘It’s an act of war’:Trump’s acting Pentagon chief urges Biden to tackle attacks

This week, CNN reported a shocking story: federal agencies are investigating whether a hostile foreign intelligence service is staging microwave energy attacks on U.S. government officials in and around the nation’s capital. One incident occurred in late 2019, when a White House staffer who was walking her dog in Arlington, Virginia, a close-in suburb of Washington, DC, suffered an apparent microwave attack (she had previously been attacked in a similar fashion while on a trip to London a few months before).

More shocking still was an apparent microwave attack on a National Security Council staffer last November on the Ellipse, the oval lawn on the south side of the White House. The 2019 and 2020 incidents in and around the nation’s capital resemble other suspected microwave attacks on State Department, Pentagon, and CIA personnel in several countries in recent years. These are commonly called the “Havana syndrome” since diplomats getting sick while assigned to the U.S. Embassy in Cuba got the media’s attention. Starting in 2016, more than two dozen Americans serving at Embassy Havana fell ill with mysterious symptoms stemming from what appeared to be microwave attacks. Canadian diplomats fell ill with identical symptoms. The attacks effectively shut down the American and Canadian embassies in Cuba. A recent assessment by the National Academy of Sciences, conducted at State Department request, concluded that the “Havana syndrome” is likely caused by directed, pulsed radio frequency energy.

It’s been happening in many places beyond Cuba too.

The suspected directed-energy attacks on U.S. government personnel worldwide are “an act of war,” said former acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller, who launched an initiative to investigate the incidents during his time at the Pentagon last year and is urging the new administration to stay on the issue.

“If this plays out and somebody is attacking Americans [even] with a nonlethal weapon … we owe it to our folks that are out there,” Miller, who served as former President Donald Trump’s acting defense chief from November until January, told POLITICO. “We owe it to them to get to the bottom of this.”

Miller’s comments come as U.S. officials increasingly sound the alarm about the suspected attacks, which cause symptoms similar to those reported in recent years by American spies and diplomats in Cuba affected by the so-called “Havana syndrome.” Victims report lasting headaches, loss of hearing and balance, ringing and pressure in the ears, fatigue, and sometimes long-term brain damage.

POLITICO first reported that Pentagon officials last month briefed lawmakers on the “urgent” and growing threat to U.S. government personnel, including troops. The Senate Intelligence Committee has since vowed to “get to the bottom” of the issue.

When the first reports surfaced of a mysterious disorder that was afflicting dozens of US diplomats in Cuba, Mike Beck’s reaction was one of recognition and relief.

Beck, a retired National Security Agency counterintelligence officer, was at his home in Maryland, scrolling through the day’s news on his computer when he spotted the story, and remembers shouting out to his wife.

After years of lonely struggle, he now feels vindicated. Last December the National Academy of Sciences published a report finding that the scores of CIA and state department officials affected by “Havana syndrome” in Cuba, China and elsewhere, were most likely suffering the “effects of directed, pulsed radio frequency energy”.

Washington (CNN)A briefing on suspected energy attacks on US intelligence officers turned contentious last week, two sources told CNN, as senators demanded more information about the mysterious incidents from the CIA and accountability for how the agency has handled them.

Senators on the Intelligence Committee were baffled that they were just learning about significant developments for the first-time and they were also frustrated that they were not given more details. The classified briefing was one of the most contentious in the committee's recent memory, according to the two sources familiar with the briefing.

The briefers made clear that they believe the attacks on intelligence officials overseas are ongoing and they discussed previously unreported suspected cases that emerged in a European country this year, according to two sources familiar with the cases.

My most recent Top Secret Umbra column, last Friday, which revealed that the mysterious “Havana syndrome” problem goes back two decades longer than the public knows and involves clandestine attacks on Americans far beyond just Cuba...

200+ victims. One confirmed death. Dozens disabled. Now, the children of US diplomats are among the victims.

We know who's doing this. How much more of this does DC plan to tolerate?
Russia’s Life-Threatening Attacks on American Spies Are Accelerating
John Schindler, Top Secret Umbra | September 25, 2021

Dozens of US personnel in the Austrian capital and their children have reported symptoms of the syndrome, according to the Washington Post.

There have been more cases of the syndrome in Vienna than in any city other than Havana, the Post reports.

Earlier this week it emerged that a CIA officer travelling to India this month with the agency's director, William J Burns, had reported symptoms of the syndrome.

And in August, Vice President Kamala Harris's flight from Singapore to Hanoi, Vietnam, was briefly delayed after an American official reported symptoms.

“In terms of have we gotten closer? I think the answer is yes — but not close enough to make the analytic judgment that people are waiting for,” CIA Deputy Director David Cohen said last week on a panel at the 2021 Intelligence and National Security Summit.

Three consecutive administrations have suspected that Russia is the most likely culprit, and administration officials referenced the matter with their Russian counterparts during President Joe Biden’s summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier this year.

“When you go after the VP’s party, you’re getting pretty close to the top. And to do it in a foreign country, as opposed to trying to do it in the United States or something like that — that indicates they believe they’re effectively immune from retaliation,” he said.

But recently, another possibility  has come into the frame - one whose roots lay in the darker recesses of the Cold War, and a place where science, medicine, espionage and geopolitics collide.  

When James Lin, a professor at the University of Illinois, read the first reports about the mysterious sounds in Havana, he immediately suspected that microwaves were responsible. His belief was based not just on theoretical research, but first-hand experience. Decades earlier, he had heard the sounds himself. 

Two Berlin-based US diplomats diagnosed with brain injuries of type seen in people exposed to shockwaves from explosions that could be from microwave attacks worked on countering Russian disinformation & NS2. Had reported being followed by Russian agents.
www.bild.de/politik/inland/politik-inlan...d-77430684.bild.html

BERLIN—At least two U.S. officials stationed in Germany sought medical treatment after developing symptoms of the mysterious health complaint known as Havana Syndrome, U.S. diplomats said.

Thus far, there are 130 acknowledged cases in American officers posted outside the US and two cases inside the US, very near the White House, There are also 26 documented cases in Canadian diplomats.

Sadly, I don’t think this uncertainty of national security officials is strange because, as a former Director of Science and Technology for the US Intelligence Community, and head of Research and Development at NSA, I’ve seen this befuddlement before, on multiple occasions.