Congress Takes Another Swing at Havana Syndrome

House panel seems poised to double down on alleged Russian connection to mysterious incidents

JEFF STEIN
MAY 08, 2024

Today a congressional committee will take another whack at Havana Syndrome, the confounding stream of complaints, mostly from overseas CIA officers and U.S. diplomats, that they suffered severe headaches and other debilitating maladies accompanied by a loud “mechanical” or“metallic” sound.

60 Minutes and an FBI agent identified only as Carrie discuss an alleged Havana Syndrome incident in a widely watched March 31 broadcast (CBS)

I say “whack” because the previous congressional panels, intelligence community and scientific probes of what the government calls Anomalous Heath Incidents, or AHI have served mostly only to further perplex those who care deeply about the suffering of these devoted public servants.

Wednesday’s hearing, conducted by the​​ House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Counterterrorism, Law Enforcement, and Intelligence, chaired by Rep. August Pfluger (R-TX), will not likely get us any closer to an incontestable scientific explanation of the incidents and their causes. The featured witnesses are Christo Grozev, the lead investigative journalist for The Insider, a magazine run by Russians exiles; Greg Edgreen, a retired U.S. Army colonel who led the Defense Intelligence Agency investigation into AHI, and Mark Zaid, a Washington lawyer who has represented many Havana Syndrome complainants.

All three were featured in the 60 Minutes broadcast on the medical miasma, entitled “Targeting Americans.”

“For the first time, there’s evidence of who might be responsible for brain injuries suffered by U.S. officials,” anchor Scott Pelley intoned. (Transcript here.)

The culprit? Russia, they said. Grosev, who previously helped the late Alexei Navalny uncover the involvement of Russian FSB agents in his poisonings, detailed his investigation into a mysterious Russian arrested on a traffic charge in Florida and extensively interrogated by an FBI agent before he was released and deported. The man’s military record showed extensive electronic training “with a particular focus on use within the military of microelectronics,” he said. Grosev connected another Russian, a member of assassination unit, to a suspected AHI incident in Tbilisi, Georgia.

Greg Edgreen, who led the DIA’s investigation into AHI incidents from 2021 to 2023, also told 60 Minutes he thought Russia was responsible. “We were collecting a large body of data, ranging from signals intelligence, human intelligence, open source reporting, anything regarding the internet, travel records, financial records, you name it,” he told Pelley. “Unfortunately, I can’t get into specifics based on the classification, but I can tell you at a very early stage, I started to focus on Moscow.”

“One of the things I started to notice,” Edgreen continued, “was the caliber of our officer that was being impacted. This wasn’t happening to our worst or our middle-range officers. This was happening to our top five, 10% performing officers across the Defense Intelligence Agency, and consistently, there was a Russia nexus. There was some angle where they had worked against Russia, focused on Russia, and done extremely well.”