CIA picks Bin Laden hunter to head ‘Havana syndrome’ task force as more diplomats fall ill

The CIA has picked a US veteran officer who took the lead in the decade-long hunt for Osama Bin Laden to investigate the so-called “Havana syndrome” afflicting US spies and diplomats overseas.

CIA Director William Burns recently tapped the officer, who has not been identified, to lead a task force probing the unexplained symptoms, the the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.

The agency launched the task force in February as a separate State Department investigation was underway, led by Pamela Spratlen, a former US ambassador to Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan.

The inexplicable constellation of physical symptoms have struck up to 200 US spies, diplomats and troops around the world, notably in Cuba and China, Russia and Western Europe.

The mysterious illness came to be known as "Havana syndrome" after US diplomatic personnel in Cuba in 2016 experienced the occurrence, which disrupted the nervous system  and caused vertigo, pounding headaches, nausea and a "piercing directional noise".

The reports of mysterious health symptoms began to emerge between 2016 and into 2017, but the task force was not formed by the CIA until December 2020. 

The sluggish pace of the investigations has angered officials, with US diplomats and government employees suffering from the mysterious illness criticizing the Biden administration's slow response and warning that the afflicted individuals are denied enough medical care.

The new CIA appointment has caused irony, with some observers recalling that the search for the al-Qaeda leader took over a decade following US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.

The heads of the US Senate Intelligence Committee warned that the mysterious illness targeting American diplomats "appears to be increasing," calling the occurrences "debilitating attacks".

Mystery illness in Washington raises concerns over ‘directed energy attacks’ on US soil

US launches investigation into a series of mysterious illness among several White House officials, possibly caused by directed energy weapons, late last year.

A report by the US National Academy of Sciences concluded that the strange health incidents were most likely caused by exposure to "directed, pulsed radiofrequency energy", also known as microwave energy.

A National Security Agency memo had revealed that the agency had intelligence, which pointed to the possible existence of "a high-powered microwave system weapon ... designed to bathe a target's living quarters in microwaves, causing numerous physical effects, including a damaged nervous system."

Some experts, however, have voiced doubt about the "directed energy" hypothesis.

“The evidence for microwave effects of the type categorized as Havana syndrome is exceedingly weak,” said Cheryl Rofer, who worked as a chemist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, a US Department of Energy national laboratory.

“No proponent of the idea has outlined how the weapon would actually work. No evidence has been offered that such a weapon has been developed by any nation.”

The US has subtly blamed Russia for the strange symptoms, with media reports citing unnamed “top officials” who “privately suspect that Russia is responsible for the Havana syndrome.” 

Congress has expressed concern that the US government has failed to coordinate efforts out of multiple agencies -- including the Pentagon, intelligence community and State Department -- to address the mysterious illness among US spies and diplomats. 

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