US Vice President Kamala Harris is in Vietnam as part of a Southeast Asia trip where she is seeking to rally regional allies as the United States' superpower status takes a hit over Afghanistan.
But her departure for Vietnam was delayed by several hours on Tuesday afternoon after her office was informed by the US embassy in Hanoi, Vietnam, of a "possible anomalous health incident", an apparent reference to the so-called "Havana syndrome", which has sickened diplomats in several countries.
Origin
The "Havana syndrome", initially unnamed, first surfaced in December, 2016, among officials who were part of the American and Canadian diplomatic missions to Havana, Cuba, in the wake of an apparent thaw in the US-Cuba relations. Its symptoms range from mild headaches to permanent brain damage and the mysterious illness since then has affected scores of diplomats, spies and their family members.
With the cause of the "disease" yet to be discovered, the CIA and the Pentagon believe that the Havana syndrome is a deliberate act of aggression... "directed" at US targets.
Now, following the Hanoi incident, former CIA operative Marc Polymeropoulos, himself a victim in Moscow in 2017, said, "It would seem to me that our adversaries are sending a clear message that they are not only able to get at our intelligence officers, diplomats and US military officers... This is a message that they can get at our senior VIPs," to Cipher Brief Open Source Report on Wednesday.
Effects of Havana Syndrome
- Hearing harsh mechanical sounds and/or experiencing uncomfortable pressure
- Vertigo, vision problems, and difficulty concentrating
- Hearing loss
- Intense nausea and headaches
- Insomnia
- Brain damage
- Memory loss
- Cognitive difficulties
The theories
- Some researchers believe that ultrasound via intermodulation distortion caused by malfunctioning or improperly placed Cuban surveillance equipment could be a likely theory
- With so many officials complaining of hearing high-pitched ringing in their ears, initially it was believed that some kind of "acoustic weapon". But the US Air Force, after some experiments, concluded that any such effort using sound waves would be "unlikely" to succeed due to "basic physical principles."
- A 2018 study published in the journal Neural Computation by Beatrice Alexandra Golomb concluded that the syndrome was caused by pulsed radiofrequency/microwave radiation exposure.
Who is behind the attack
While some officials in the Trump and Biden administrations believe Russian intelligence is responsible for the attacks, they have not yet found solid evidence.
Biden administration's take
US president Joe Biden made a rare public reference to the issue in a speech to intelligence officials last month. He said the administration is "coordinating a government-wide effort to respond to these incidents, because this challenge demands that departments and agencies, including the entire intelligence community, work together with urgency."
Earlier in June, US secretary of state Antony Blinken, said the United States is conducting a government-wide review to get to the bottom of who or what caused the suspected "directed" radio frequency attacks that on US diplomats that resulted in various neurological ailments known as "Havana syndrome".
Via Firstpost World Latest News https://ift.tt/2Nairz4
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