Over the past several years, more than a thousand U.S. national security officials have suffered neurological disorders, which are suspected to have been caused by targeted microwave attacks, according to numerous former and current Beltway insiders.
Since 2016, otherwise generally healthy U.S. staffers, officials, and their families around the world and in the nation’s capital have reported symptoms of so-called Havana Syndrome, which include vertigo, nausea, head pain, and impaired thinking. Some of them developed long-term neurological issues such as impairment of memory, eyesight, and balance. The information was revealed by the senior officials who served in former President Donald Trump’s administration during a 60 Minutes episode that aired last week.
Olivia Troye, former homeland security and counter-terrorism adviser to Vice President Mike Pence, said her story was typical among the official reports of the symptoms she personally experienced in Washington, D.C.
In 2019, Troye worked in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building beside the White House’s West Wing. As she was descending stairs on a summer day that year toward the White House, Troye felt she had been “physically struck.”
She said, “It was like this piercing feeling on the side of my head, it was like, I remember it was on the right side of my head and I got like, vertigo. I was unsteady.… I felt nauseous, I was somewhat disoriented.… I remember thinking, ‘OK you gotta—don’t fall down the stairs. You’ve gotta find your ground again and steady yourself.’”
Troye said that while she managed to steady herself, she felt like she could not think straight, and experienced a “paralyzing panic attack.” She said she never experienced anything like that in her life. “I thought to myself ‘Do you I have a brain tumor out of the blue?’” But she did not have a tumor.
A year later, nearly identical incidents happened to Troye again on the Ellipse, an area just south of the White House. Both times, the former official said she experienced very distinct sensations of vertigo and dizziness.
“I felt like I couldn’t really walk.… It was like I had a depth perception issue where I couldn’t figure out where the ground was. I felt like I was just gonna fall right into the ground,” Troye shared.
Troye added that her experience made her wonder about those staffers who could have gone through the same experience but remained silent over fears of losing their security clearances.
According to the report, there were “several” high-ranking officials who had been struck the way Troye was right outside the White House. One of them shared his experience with his close colleague, former national security advisor John Bolton.
“They had disorientation and ringing in their ears. And just a general inability to function,” Bolton said. While the incident happened in November 2020, the person has not yet fully recovered and remains an outpatient at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.
“I’m still recovering and suffering from headaches and other symptoms and have been diagnosed with two other medical conditions that are believed to be the result of the attack,” the unnamed official said.
What Bolton called “a very debilitating attack,” hit, among others, Miles Taylor, who served as a deputy chief of staff and, later, chief of staff of DHS under Trump.
In April 2018, when Miles started his job with the DHS, he got attacked late at night. He woke up to a “sort of a chirping,” and when he looked out the window of his apartment on Capitol Hill, he saw a white van with brake lights turned on. As Miles looked at it, the van “pulled off and it sped away.”
The next morning, Miles felt so sick he had to take a day off. He was “feeling off balance” and had “sort of concussion-like symptoms.”
Miles continued to be sick for quite a while, when five weeks later, he got struck again.
“And that incident stood out to me, because I was actually just getting ready to leave to go to Israel on a congressional delegation. We were going to meet the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, have some sensitive conversations with the Israelis on important cybersecurity issues. And I remember because I got to the airplane at Andrews Air Force Base to take off and thought, ‘I’m already nauseous. I don’t know if I can do this flight,'” he recalled.
“We may have ongoing activity targeting U.S. government officials here in our country,” Miles said, adding that he knew of the episodes of cabinet-level officials being attacked in the same manner that he was.
Commerce Department high-ranking official Robyn Garfield shared on the program that he, his wife, and his two children were “repeatedly” attacked in China.
The episodes were troubling enough for Garfield and his family to be evacuated and enrolled in a State Department treatment program at the University of Pennsylvania. Nonetheless, another attack occurred. The Garfields moved to a hotel, where they were attacked again. This time, Garfield saw his children “where both … thrashing in their beds — asleep.” The official noticed a “distinct sound” — “sort of like water rushing” — near their heads. Garfield and his family are now stationed abroad, where they’re working “to improve balance, eyesight and memory.” He added that he personally knew other families working for the government who were attacked.
Dr. David Relman, who helped lead two government panels that investigated the said cases, explained that the targeted officials all experienced “an injury to the auditory and vestibular system of the brain.” He also stressed that in all cases, the incidents were preceded by a so-called acute sensory event, such as a loud sound.
CIA Director William Burns told 60 Minutes that “one thing is already clear: after early disbelief, these injured Americans can no longer be doubted.” The incidents at home and abroad are now being investigated.
Burns denied that the national security structure “is in danger of being incapacitated,” or that the White House grounds are no longer safe.
According to American University, the first public reports of the affliction officially called anomalous health incidents came from American officials stationed in Havana, Cuba, in 2016, when “dozens were suddenly and without warning falling ill with headaches, fatigue, hearing and vision loss, severe and debilitating cognitive impairment, tinnitus, brain fog, vertigo, and loss of motor control.”
To date, scientists believe that the most plausible explanation to the syndrome is an attack with a microwave weapon, which uses pulses of microwaves to disrupt frequencies at which the human brain normally operates. The leading countries that are working on such weapons’ development are the United States, China, and Russia.
Besides incidents that occurred in Washington, D.C., later incidents of American officials being reportedly targeted were reported in China, Russia, Colombia, Austria, Uzbekistan, the United Kingdom, Poland and other countries.
