Tapping 65-year-old CIA Director and career diplomat William Burns to investigate the so-called Havana Syndrome where U.S. diplomatic have fallen ill with mysterious symptoms, including headaches, nausea and dizziness. Burns, while working for the State Department, helped track down Osama bin Laden, is now asked to deal what promises to be a thorny subject wth the Russian Federation, possibly China, for using some kind of microwave weaponsto injure U.S. diplomatic personnel. While the U.S. has no definitive culprits yet on the radar, there’s no question that the Russian Federation has been monkeying around with new types of weapons. When State Department officials reported in 2017 Havana diplomatic personnel falling ill, the Trump administration ordered its diplomatic personnel out of the embassy. Now the same complaints have shown up in Vienna, Austria.
Knowing Russia’s longstanding relationship in Cuba, it’s doubtful the former Castro government could come up with a microwave pulse technology, most likely developed by Russian engineers. Now that the same problems showed up in Vienna, it’s possible that Russian agents may be sending a similar message that U.S. diplomatic personnel are not safe anywhere on the planet. President Joe Biden, 78, has been locked in new Cold War with the Russian Federation, meeting June 16 with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Geneva. Biden talked with Putin about recent cyber or ransomware attacks on key U.S. infrastructure from allegedly Russian cyber gangs. Putin told Biden he would look into it but made no promises, nor did he acknowledge that he knew anything about cyber gangs operating on Russian soil. Burns has his work cut out for him tracing what today remains a mystery illness of unknown origin.
Reported in the news in Dec. 2020, the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine reported that the Havana Syndrome could be caused by “directed energy” most likely microwave weapons. Vienna authorities are working with the CIA to determine the source of recent attacks on diplomatic personnel. With the microwave attacks unchecked, it’s not safe for U.S. diplomatic personnel especially in proximity to Russian operatives. Vienna is home to many nonprofits and U.N. agencies, including Russian-based agencies, trying to keep their foot in Western Europe. But Burns has a real problem, not only tracking down the source of the attacks, but, once discovered, sanctioning the culprit responsible. Since Biden took office, more that two dozen U.S. diplomats or intel officials have been stricken in Vienna, not making the important U.S. outpost unsafe.
When you consider the attacks are designed to maim U.S. diplomatic and intel personnel, it’s a matter of top priority for Burns to figure out the source. If he finds the Russians behind the attack or some other proxy group, Biden will face some tough choices, short of going to war against Moscow. Putin’s been itching for some time for a fight with the U.S. or its transatlantic partners. Recent skirmishes in the Black Sea with Russian frigates prove that Putin takes the Crimean area seriously, having no plans to give up the strategic peninsula seized from Ukraine March 1, 2014. Putin’s new aggression toward the West has a lot to do with the U.S. and EU sanctioning the Kremlin for it’s treatment of 44-year-old dissident Alexi Navalny. Putin know that support of Navalny in the West attempts to foment revolution in Russia, looking for any way necessary to remove him from power.
When you consider the effect of microwave radiation, the victim cannot point to a diagnosis like a bullet to the head. Falling ill with Havana Syndrome symptoms doesn’t leave any marks other than creating possible brain damage from harmful, concentrated microwave radiation. “High powered microwave system weapon that may have the ability to weaken, intimidate or kill and enemy over time without leaving evidence,” said an anonymous National Security Agency [NSA] official in 2014.who suffered from symptoms of headaches, dizziness and nausea. Burns knows it’s a matter of urgency to find out who’s aiming the microwave weapons at U.S. diplomatic and intel personnel. No career service person can feel safe working in a U.S. embassy, consulate or mission knowing what they face. State Department officials know the seriousness of potential Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy [CTE].
Burns needs to enlist all Western and Eastern intel agencies to find an answer to the current problems faced by U.S. diplomatic personnel. No one can expect to go into harm’s way just because they signed up for diplomatic service. That same 2014 NSA memo said that intel indicated that such a weapon was “designed to bathe a target’s living quarters in microwaves, causing numerous physical effects, including a damage nervous system.” If the U.S. were on better terms with Russia and China, they could be of assistance in trying to pinpoint the source of such attacks. If the attacks are coming from the Russian or Chinese governments, Burns will face the same kind of denials seen today by Russia regarding ransomware attacks on key U.S. infrastructure. Burns must get to the bottom of the Havana Syndrome before more U.S. diplomatic personnel are subjected to debilitating brain injuries.
