Day: July 8, 2024

Federal agencies are investigating at least two possible incidents on US soil, including one near the White House in November of last year, that appear similar to mysterious, invisible attacks that have led to debilitating symptoms for dozens of US personnel abroad.

Multiple sources familiar with the matter tell CNN that while the Pentagon and other agencies probing the matter have reached no clear conclusions on what happened, the fact that such an attack might have taken place so close to the White House is particularly alarming.

Defense officials briefed lawmakers on the Senate and House Armed Services Committees on the matter earlier this month, including on the incident near the White House. That incident, which occurred near the Ellipse, the large oval lawn on the south side of the White House, sickened one National Security Council official, according to multiple current and former US officials and sources familiar with the matter.

In a separate 2019 episode, a White House official reported a similar attack while walking her dog in a Virginia suburb just outside Washington, GQ reported last year.

Those sickened reported similar symptoms to CIA and State Department personnel impacted overseas, and officials quickly began to investigate the incident as a possible “Havana syndrome” attack. That name refers to unexplained symptoms that US personnel in Cuba began experiencing in late 2016 – a varying set of complaints that includes ear popping, vertigo, pounding headaches and nausea, sometimes accompanied by an unidentified “piercing directional noise.”

Rumors have long swirled around Washington about similar incidents within the United States. While the recent episodes around Washington appear similar to the previous apparent attacks affecting diplomats, CIA officers and other US personnel serving in Cuba, Russia and China, investigators have not determined whether the puzzling incidents at home are connected to those that have occurred abroad or who may be behind them, sources tell CNN.

Defense officials who briefed lawmakers said it was possible Russia was behind the attacks, but they did not have enough information to say for sure. Another former US official involved in the investigation at the time said China was also among the suspects.

The US has struggled to understand these attacks since 2016 and 2017, when diplomatic and intelligence personnel in Cuba first began reporting alarming symptoms that seemed to appear out of the blue. Intelligence and defense officials have been reluctant to speak publicly about the strange incidents, and some who were impacted have complained publicly that the CIA did not take the matter seriously enough, at least initially.

The attacks eventually led to a dramatic drawdown of staff at the outpost in Havana under the Trump administration. Personnel in Russia and China reported similar, unexplained incidents. Though there’s no consensus as to what causes the symptoms, one State Department-sponsored study found they likely were the result of microwave energy attacks.

Another mystery surrounding “Havana syndrome” is how the US government is confronting the problem. Among those investigating the mysterious pattern of possible attacks are the CIA, the State Department and the Defense Department.

Near the end of the Trump administration, the Pentagon sought to take the lead out of perceived frustration that other agencies were not doing enough to address the issue.

“I knew CIA and Department of State were not taking this sh*t seriously and we wanted to shame them into it by establishing our task force,” Chris Miller, who was acting defense secretary at the time, told CNN last week.

Pentagon leaders set up the task force to track reports of such symptoms hitting Defense Department personnel overseas, an effort that Miller said was intended in part as a “bureaucratic power play” to force CIA and State to take the problem more seriously in their own personnel.

Miller said he began to see reports of these mysterious symptoms as a higher priority in December, after interviewing an alleged victim with extensive combat experience.

“When this officer came in and I knew his background and he explained in an extraordinarily detailed but more military style that I could understand, I was like this is actually for real,” Miller said. “This kid had been in combat a bunch and he knew.”

The CIA began its task force in December 2020, and expanded its efforts under new Director William Burns, who vowed during his confirmation hearings to review the evidence on the alleged attacks on CIA personnel overseas, which have long been publicly reported. The State Department named a senior official to lead the department’s response to the “Havana syndrome” attacks in March.

The Defense Department’s effort is thought to be among the most robust, potentially explaining why a defense official, rather than the intelligence community or the FBI, briefed lawmakers on the incident at the Ellipse, even though it took place on US soil.

Miller tapped Griffin Decker, a career civil servant from US Special Operations Command, to run the effort. Decker would track and verify reports in the military of what by then had become known informally as “Havana syndrome.” Miller says Griffin would report a new case to him “every couple of weeks,” although he cautioned that they were on the lookout for false reporting, psychosomatic episodes or hypochondria. Some of the cases they tracked included the children and dependents of Defense Department personnel overseas, Miller said.

Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines was asked about CNN’s reporting by Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, a New Hampshire Democrat, at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Thursday. Haines did not discuss the specifics but called the issue of the mysterious attacks “critically important” and added, “across the intelligence community, frankly, leaders are focused on this issue.”

Haines also defended the classification of information related to the attacks but said members of Congress “should certainly have access to the classified information.”

A White House spokesperson said in a statement, “The White House is working closely with departments and agencies to address unexplained health incidents and ensure the safety and security of Americans serving around the world. Given that we are still evaluating reported incidents and that we need to protect the privacy of individuals reporting incidents, we cannot provide or confirm specific details at this time.”

Decker and Jennifer Walsh, who was the acting under secretary of defense for policy, briefed House and Senate lawmakers over the last two weeks on the possible attacks, two sources familiar with the briefings told CNN. Politico first reported on the committee briefings.

In one incident that was investigated, Marines on a remote base in Syria developed flu-like symptoms shortly after a Russian helicopter flew over the base – raising immediate concerns that it could be one of these strange attacks. But “it was quickly traced, where they had bad food and where no one else on the base had the same symptoms,” said one former US official with knowledge of the incident. It was also determined by a defense physician that the symptoms had begun prior to the Russia patrol, a defense official told CNN.

The Syria episode highlights the difficulties that US officials face in trying to pin down what is and isn’t an attack. The symptoms often vary, and officials still have no clear sense of how the unknown adversary is doing what it’s doing. At least one former US official with knowledge of the matter said that investigators still haven’t completely ruled out the possibility that the symptoms are caused by some kind of naturally occurring phenomenon rather than a weapon.

Another US defense official confirmed that the Pentagon’s investigation is ongoing. The official would offer no details, but said, “We would not still be looking at this if we didn’t have equities in it.”

“There is nothing that the Secretary of Defense takes more seriously that the safety, health and welfare of our personnel serving around the globe in defense of our values and freedoms,” Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said in a statement. “Any concerns on issues that call that into question are thoroughly reviewed, and the appropriate actions are taken to mitigate risks to our personnel.”

A March report from the National Academy of Sciences found that “directed, pulsed radiofrequency energy” was the most likely cause of the strange set of symptoms. While the report was carefully written not to overstate its findings, it offered some of the clearest public evidence to date that the incidents could be attacks, attributing the afflictions to “pulsed” or “directed” energy.

Some personnel have been seriously injured from the alleged attacks, with at least one career CIA officer forced to retire last year and diagnosed with a traumatic brain injury.

This story has been updated with comments from the White House and also the Director of National Intelligence.

A key reason for brushing aside Putin’s threats, U.S. officials say, is a dynamic that has held since the opening days of the war: Russia’s president has not followed through on promises to punish the West for providing weapons to Ukraine. His bluffing has given U.S. and European leaders some confidence they can continue doing so without severe consequences — but to what extent remains one of the conflict’s most dangerous uncertainties.

“Russia has devalued its red lines so many times by saying certain things would be unacceptable and then doing nothing when they happen,” said Maxim Samorukov, a Russia expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “The problem is that we don’t know the actual red line. It’s in one person’s head, and it can change from one day to the next.”

U.S. officials say managing the risk of escalation remains one of the most difficult aspects of the war for Biden and his foreign policy advisers. When deciding what new weapons systems to provide Ukraine, they focus on four key factors, officials said.

“Do they need it? Can they use it? Do we have it? What is the Russian response going to be?” said a senior State Department official. Like others interviewed for this report, this person spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal deliberations.

The official said Russia’s reluctance to retaliate has influenced the risk calculus of Secretary of State Antony Blinken, a key Biden confidant who has been an influential voice encouraging the administration and U.S. allies to do more to support Ukraine.

“You factor that in your decision-making. We did this — there was no escalation or response — can we do the next thing? We’re constantly weighing those factors, and it becomes the hardest judgment call we have to make,” said the official.

Like Blinken, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan also has viewed the benefits of supplying more lethal weaponry to Ukraine as outweighing the risks of escalation and has worked extensively with European allies on providing F-16s to Ukraine, said a White House official.

The administration has juggled these concerns amid a clamor from Ukrainians and hawks in Congress frustrated by the incremental approach and eager for Biden to move faster in sending more advanced equipment to the battlefield amid Russia’s brutal onslaught.

At the outset of Russia’s invasion in February last year, Putin warned that any country that tried to “impede” his forces “must know that the Russian response will be immediate and lead to consequences you have never seen in history.”

As the war has dragged on, the warnings from Putin and his subordinates have only become more bombastic, threatening a nuclear holocaust if Russia faced setbacks on the battlefield.

“If Russia feels its territorial integrity is threatened, we will use all defense methods at our disposal, and this is not a bluff,” Putin said last September.

Dmitry Medvedev, who serves as deputy chairman of Putin’s powerful security council, was more explicit in January. “The defeat of a nuclear power in a conventional war may trigger a nuclear war,” he said.

While Putin has challenged the United States — suspending participation in a critical arms control treaty, imprisoning Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and overseeing a court’s decision to sentence WNBA star Brittney Griner to a nine-year prison term before insisting on a one-for-one trade for a notorious arms merchant — he has not lashed out militarily at Washington or its allies.

But Western officials are cognizant that that doesn’t mean he never will — particularly as the conflict escalates.

On Tuesday, drones struck affluent districts of Moscow in what one Russian politician called the worst attack on the capital since World War II. Ukraine has denied involvement in such strikes within the Russian mainland, and the Biden administration said it neither enables nor encourages Ukrainian attacks inside Russia. But Kyiv appears content with Russian civilians experiencing the fears that Ukrainians have lived with for more than a year as their population centers have come under relentless Russian missile and drone attacks.

A possible explanation for Putin’s reluctance to hit the West is the diminished state of Russia’s military, according to U.S. officials.

“It would not seem to be in their interest to get into a direct confrontation with NATO right now,” said the senior U.S. official. “They are not well positioned to do so.”

Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, estimated in a recent interview with Foreign Affairs that Russia has suffered as many as 250,000 dead and wounded since its full-scale invasion began — staggering losses for any conflict.

Putin has replaced them on the battlefield, Milley said, but with reservists who are “poorly led, not well trained, poorly equipped, not well sustained.”

As Russian fatalities have mounted, Putin has recalibrated his war aims, from seizing control of Kyiv and decapitating the government of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to controlling and annexing a swath of territory across eastern and southern Ukraine.

Still, U.S. officials remain wary that Russia, home to the world’s largest nuclear arsenal, could escalate in Ukraine or elsewhere. Last year, amid heightened concerns that Russia was considering deploying a nuclear weapon, senior State Department officials privately warned Moscow about the consequences of doing so — messages that were eventually followed by public warnings.

As the Biden administration has weighed such risks, Ukrainian leaders, including Zelensky, have expressed their consternation publicly. The perceived dithering and delay, they have claimed, has prolonged the bloodshed by inhibiting Ukraine’s ability to overwhelm the Russian military and force an end to the war.

Republican hawks in Congress, meanwhile, have said the threat of Russian escalation should not even be a consideration. Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, has called the administration “cowardly” for not sending tactical missile systems known as ATACMS. The weapons, with a range up to about 190 miles, have been high on Ukraine’s wish list for almost the entirety of the war.

“Every time the administration has delayed sending Ukraine a critical weapon system, from Stingers to HIMARS to Bradleys, over fears of Russian escalation, they have been proven completely and utterly wrong,” he said earlier this year.

Britain approved the transfer of weapons with a similar range, air-launched cruise missiles known as Storm Shadows, in early May.

Inside the Biden administration, the Pentagon is considered more cautious than the White House or State Department about sending more sophisticated weaponry to Ukraine, but officials there deny that fear of escalation plays any role in their calculations.

The Defense Department has focused on what Ukraine needs at any given moment, said a senior Pentagon official who defended its role and counsel as Kyiv’s ambitious requests throughout the war have been slow-rolled or turned down. The official cited how the United States has evolved from providing anti-armor missiles such as the Javelin, when it was clear columns of Russian military vehicles would invade, to sending artillery as the war shifted into a bloody duel waged from trenches — and to more recent Western commitments of tanks and F-16 fighter jets.

Before almost any Western arms or equipment can be transferred to the units that will use them, Ukrainian forces first must learn how to operate and maintain what they receive, this person said, praising “how amazing” they have been at “standing up what is now a very sophisticated maintenance and sustainment system that did not exist at the beginning of the war.”

In one example, Ukrainian officials for months last year requested the billion-dollar Patriot air defense missile system. U.S. officials held back, citing concerns about training, maintenance and cost, but ultimately relented in December after repeated Russian missile barrages targeted Ukrainian civilian infrastructure. One such system donated by the West was damaged after a Russian strike in mid-May, requiring U.S. assistance to repair.

The senior defense official disputed any suggestion that other U.S. agencies are looking to do more to help Ukraine than the Pentagon is. “I think the folks in the Defense Department have a unique understanding of what is practically possible, and how to best support the Ukrainian armed forces in a way that supports them at any given moment on the battlefield,” the official said.

Unquestionably, the Biden administration’s willingness to cross Putin’s red lines has bolstered Ukraine’s ability to defend itself and recapture territory in the east and south. What remains to be seen, however, is whether Putin will continue to allow the West to defy his threats without consequence.

“Certain red lines exist,” said Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin, “… but because we don’t have a way to know for sure what they are, that’s what creates risk.”