A former CIA officer has made explosive claims that the U.S. government is keeping the truth about "Havana syndrome" hidden from the public. The condition was so named as it was first reported in Havana in 2015. It involved a laundry list of health complaints that appeared in American intelligence officers, then spread to diplomats at the American Embassy and later around the world. The new claims were made in an interview conducted by former CBS News investigative journalist Catherine Herridge. Her post on the social media platform X has more than 6 million views in just one week.

Her report is a classic example of cherry-picking information to breathe new life into a story that the U.S. intelligence community put to rest in March 2023, when it concluded that evidence of a foreign adversary zapping Americans with an energy weapon was “highly unlikely.” Instead, it blamed the scare on an array of factors including pre-existing medical conditions and anxiety-related ailments that had been redefined under a new label—"Havana syndrome."

Herridge dramatically asserts that a new Congressional report from December 2024 found that “it appears increasingly likely that a foreign adversary is behind these injuries.” What she doesn’t mention is that this was a partisan report overseen by a group of Republicans who were intent on discrediting the intelligence community assessment. I should know—I gave testimony to the panel. Here is an excerpt:

“This subcommittee Hearing on Counterterrorism, Law Enforcement, and Intelligence is a sham. The very title: ‘Silent Weapons: Examining Foreign Anomalous Health Incidents Targeting Americans in the Homeland and Abroad’ shows the game that is being played. It has been framed with a blatant bias and stacked with testimony from believers to score political points by attempting to embarrass the intelligence community under the Biden Administration by perpetuating the myth that Americans are being targeted with directed energy weapons.”

The ex-CIA officer told Herridge that while serving in Africa, she “experienced an Anomalous Health Incident” in her home. Herridge asks: "You were attacked…You were attacked by an energy weapon?" The woman responds: "Yes. A directed energy weapon. My ear started hurting. I started having vertigo, the room was spinning. My head started pulsing, like, it hurts so badly. A ton of pain in my left ear. And my ears started ringing and I thought I was going to pass out." She then asserts it was Russian intelligence agents who targeted her.

Herridge never questions the woman’s claims, how she knew it was a directed energy weapon or that the Russians were behind it—nor does she ask her to describe the sound. In Cuba, after several U.S. diplomats recorded their "attacks," scientists concluded they were caused by the mating calls of crickets. The symptoms the woman describes are remarkably similar to problems with the vestibular system, which is located in the inner ear and regulates balance, spatial orientation, and coordination of movement.

Her symptoms are neither unique nor unusual. There are many common conditions that could be responsible. According to the Vestibular Disorders Association, 35 percent of American adults over 40 will experience a vestibular issue. The most common symptoms include vertigo and dizziness, visual disturbances, hearing issues, and problems with balance and spatial orientation.

So ask yourself, what is more likely: that this ex-CIA officer was the victim of a directed energy weapon while in her house in Africa, a claim for which there is no concrete evidence and the intelligence community has assessed to be “highly unlikely,” or that she was the victim of a condition that will be experienced by 35 percent of the population in their lifetime?

Humans are prone to self-deception and cherry-picking information to try to prove a point while minimizing or ignoring conflicting evidence. People are prone to seeing what they want to see—in this case, a new revelation on an old story. One well-known psychological process that often leads to cherry-picking is confirmation bias, which is the tendency to seek out information that reinforces existing beliefs while disregarding evidence to the contrary. A related concept is "motivated reasoning," where people tend to select information that supports their ideological beliefs or emotional preferences.

As part of the evidence for these "directed energy attacks," Herridge reads part of a memo from the National Security Agency dated October 16, 2014, discussing the alleged existence of “a high-powered microwave system weapon that may have the ability to weaken, intimidate, or kill an enemy over time and without leaving evidence.”

This sounds very dramatic—but what Herridge does not read is the rest of the memo. For, in the very next sentence, it states that “The National Security Agency has no evidence” that such a weapon ever existed. The NSA receives all sorts of information each year including people claiming that the government has remains of a crashed "flying saucer" in storage along with alien bodies.

Perhaps the more relevant question to be answered is why, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, the myth of Havana syndrome continues to persist.

References

Baloh, Robert W., and Bartholomew, Robert E. (2020). Havana Syndrome. Cham, Switzerland: Copernicus Books.

Bartholomew, Robert E., & Weatherhead, Paul (2024). Social Panics & Phantom Attackers: A Study of Imaginary Assailants. Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan.

Bartholomew, Robert E. (2024). Written testimony of Dr. Robert E. Bartholomew, Honorary Senior Lecturer in the Department of Psychological Medicine at the University of Auckland in New Zealand & American citizen.

“Dizziness and Balance Problems Related to Vision.” Neuro-Optometric Rehabilitation Association: https://bit.ly/3IEsRnQ

Herridge, Catherine (2024). “Government Gaslighting: When America’s National Security Agencies Betray their Own Operative.” December 31, 2024.

Investigating the Intelligence Community’s Conclusions on Anomalous Health Incidents: Is the Intelligence Community Hiding the Real Reason for This Phenomenon? Interim Report by Chairman Rick Crawford of the Subcommittee on the Central Intelligence Agency of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence U.S. House of Representatives.

© Psychology Today