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HAVANA AND THE GLOBAL HUNT FOR U.S. OFFICERS

October 24th, 2021 by The Cipher Brief | 0 Comments

EXPERT OPINION — More than 200 U.S. officers have been hunted around the globe
and targeted by an adversary using a mysterious weapon that causes permanent
brain injury. It’s time to get serious about fighting back.

The Authors:

Paul Kolbe served for 25 years in the CIA’s Directorate of Operations. He is
currently Director of the Intelligence Project at Harvard Kennedy School’s
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

Marc Polymeropoulos worked for the CIA for 26 years. He is author of “Clarity in
Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the CIA.

John Sipher worked for the CIA’s clandestine service for 28 years. He is now a
nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and a co-founder of Spycraft
Entertainment.

Prior to 9/11, al Qaida declared war on the United States, bombed the USS Cole,
and blew up U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salam. Despite heavy
casualties, America viewed successive al Qaida terrorist attacks as somehow
unique, not representative of a larger threat or state of war. We went about our
business and failed to take hard action against al Qaida despite clear warning.
Our failure to respond forcefully led to 9/11 and the two decades of war that
followed.

Fast forward to today.  Since 2016, more than 200 U.S. officials have reportedly
suffered from a mysterious series of symptoms which have caused long-lasting,
debilitating injuries. Suffering from searing headaches, vertigo, vision
impairment, and nausea, many victims have been formally diagnosed with traumatic
brain injuries (TBI) at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center and
other leading hospitals. Family members and young children have suffered as
well. Some medical tests can now confirm the markers of brain injury, similar to
those suffered by victims of concussive injuries in Iraq and Afghanistan.

These injuries began with a cluster of reports from Cuba in 2016 and have become
commonly referred to as Havana Syndrome. Moscow, Vienna, Belgrade, and Hanoi are
among more than a dozen cities where U.S. officials reportedly have been
attacked and injured. In residences, on the street, in vehicles, and even at
secure U.S. facilities, U.S. officers are being hunted. Stunningly, even a close
aide to CIA Director Bill Burns was reportedly attacked on a trip to India just
this past August.

The CIA, after a period of confusion, delay, and even denial at times, now
appears to take these threats very seriously. CIA Director Burns and Deputy
Director David Cohen have publicly stated that U.S. officials are being
“attacked.” They have improved health care for CIA officers who are hurt. And an
agency task force is hard at work trying to obtain additional intelligence on
those responsible. We credit Director Burns for his solid leadership.

The cause of these injuries? The National Academy of Sciences has pointed to
Directed Energy Weapons – devices which emit microwave pulses which can inflict
pain and damage tissue. The United States, Russia, China, and others have all
developed Directed Energy Weapons to destroy equipment, counter drones, and
control crowds. This is not science fiction.

Directed energy weapons would account for the highly directional and locational
nature of these incidents. When victims can “move off the x,” the signature
sounds, sensations, and pain that goes with the attacks often stop, though
damage has already occurred. The amount of exposure seems to affect the degree
of injury. Other technologies could be at play and are being investigated, but
microwaves appear to be the most likely vector. Russia has used them before,
flooding the U.S. Embassy in Moscow with microwave radiation for decades.

Regardless of form, the weapons being used in these attacks are nothing less
than weapons of terror, designed to cause injury to non-combatants. Who would
use such a weapon to attack U.S. intelligence officers, diplomats, and military
personnel, and to what conceivable end?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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CIA Deputy Director Cohen stated at a recent intelligence summit, that the U.S.
was closer to identifying the culprit, and Politico has reported that members of
the Senate Intelligence Committee are increasingly convinced that Russia or
another hostile adversary is behind the attack, although reportedly, no smoking
gun has been found.

As former CIA operations officers with extensive experience dealing with both
counterterrorism and counterintelligence issues, we have few doubts about who
will be named as the culprit. For at least a decade, Russia has conducted itself
as in a state of conflict with the West in general and the United States in
particular. Russia has launched cyberattacks impacting critical infrastructure
and supply chains, assassinated opponents with nuclear poisons and chemical
weapons, gunned down people in the streets using criminal proxies, sabotaged a
Czech ammunition depot, and mounted a violent coup attempt in Montenegro. It has
also bombarded the U.S. embassy in Moscow with microwave radiation and used
carcinogenic “spy dust” without regard to health effects. The attacks on U.S.
officials would fit this pattern of behavior.

We recognize that it is important to let the intelligence community do its job
and its findings must inform policy action. Congress and the administration must
work together to formulate a range of possible responses and it is not too early
to begin. As Senator Collins and others have stated, these attacks are “an act
of war,” and as such, preparation for a future attribution call by the national
security establishment is in order. So how could the U.S. respond?

Let’s start with what doesn’t work – sanctions. Sanctions feel good and satisfy
an action imperative but they are feckless. Sanctions have not stopped Russia
from killing dissidents, halted the Nordstream II pipeline, compelled a pull
back from occupied territories, reduced support for tyrants, or hindered oil and
gas production. Sanctions have simply forced Russia to develop more creative
money laundering and sanction circumvention mechanisms.

So, what would work? For starters, we must understand that the Putin regime
considers itself in a state of conflict with the U.S., short of war, but
nonetheless deadly real. We are dealing with a state sponsor of terror which
conducts operations across the globe to weaken the U.S. abroad, divide it from
its allies, and sow discord at home. Our policy must be calibrated to win this
conflict, without sparking a shooting war, but at risk of one.

Russia understands reciprocity and strength. When four Russian diplomats were
kidnapped by extremists in Beirut in 1985, and one of them was killed, Russia
reportedly responded by kidnapping and gruesomely killing a relative of the
group’s leader. The surviving diplomats were released immediately. The story may
be apocryphal, but it does illustrate the Russian approach. Tempting as it may
be for America to retaliate tit for tat, we need not mirror Russia’s actions.
Instead, we should play to our greater economic, diplomatic, and military
advantages.

We offer five elements to frame a response: enlist U.S. allies, expand forward
deterrence, limit the adversary’s reach, choke off money, and bring those
accountable to justice.

NATO: With proof of the attacks on U.S. officials, we should activate NATO’s
Article Five collective defense clause. The only other time this was enacted was
after 9/11. As justification, in addition to the Havana Syndrome attacks, (which
also caused Canadian casualties), we would include GRU and FSB assassination
operations across Europe, deadly sabotage in the Czech Republic, a coup attempt
in Montenegro, persistent cyberattacks, and a litany of other actions that can
only be described as irregular warfare directed against NATO members.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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Brief’s Daily Open-Source Podcast.  Listen here or wherever you listen to
podcasts.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Forward Presence: A crystal clear signal that we understand the nature of
Russian hybrid warfare and are responding would be to enhance our deployed
military presence in Poland, the Baltic States, and in the Black Sea region.
These units would pose no offensive threat to Russia but would be a clear signal
that the U.S. is prepared to counter any Russian shenanigans. We should also
significantly ramp up our lethal aid and training to the Ukraine, where the
nature of Russian aggression is well known. Weakness in Eastern Europe is an
invitation to conflict.

Travel and Presence: We should drastically limit Russian business and tourist
travel which is being used as cover for FSB and GRU operations. We would reduce
Russian diplomatic presence in each capital to the bare minimum – handfuls not
hundreds. American and European counterintelligence experts believe there are
more Russian intelligence officers operating from embassies than during the Cold
War. Limiting the size of Russia’s espionage infrastructure will complicate the
planning and execution of all of its intelligence operations.

Finance: A key tool in counterterrorism operations is the ability to target
sources of finance which constitute material support to terrorism. In this case,
we would apply that principle to the Russian government, state enterprises, and
individuals who provide cover, tools, and sources of funding to Russia’s
campaign to undermine the West with violence, terror, and media manipulation.
Russia’s dirty money has been used to undermine the west and poison our
politics. We should limit the easy access of shady money to western banks.

Criminal Cases: We need bring war crime cases to the International Court of
Justice (ICJ) in the Hague. Following a decade of conflict in the Balkans, the
ICJ brought to justice 161 indicted Serbian, Croatian, and Bosnian war
criminals. This was an astounding success – a manhunt which included American
and European law enforcement and intelligence services. Just as in Nuremberg
after World War II, these actions to hold war criminals accountable drew a line
in the sand.

This is a start.  Successive Democratic and Republican administrations have
pursued Russia policies which represent the triumph of hope over experience. We
have treated the symptoms of malign Russian actions rather than the underlying
pathology. It is now time to finally acknowledge that we are in a long-term
hybrid conflict and forget the fantasy of changing Putin’s behavior. Only a new
regime in the Kremlin would hold the hope of bringing about a change in actions.
Eventually, the Putin regime will wither or collapse, but until it does, we and
our allies must do a better job of defending ourselves.

Read more expert-driven national security insights, perspective and analysis in
The Cipher Brief

Categorized as:CIA Havana Syndrome RussiaTagged with:CIA Espionage Havana
Syndrome Russia


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