Solving the Mystery of Havana Syndrome

Havana syndrome is a collection of baffling neurological symptoms that were first documented in State Department employees in Cuba in 2017--including persistent dizziness, headaches, memory deficits, sleep disorders and mental fog. Thus far, there are 130 acknowledged cases in American officers posted outside the US and two cases inside the US, very near the White House, There are also 26 documented cases in Canadian diplomats. Some published medical studies blame mass hysteria or insecticide exposure, but others point to organic brain damage, such as white matter abnormalities, similar to those present with severe concussions.

Despite the considerable risk Havana syndrome now poses for thousands of American officers overseas, and documented attacks surfacing this year near the White House, the US Government doesn't know how to stop the Havana Syndrome from afflicting more officers. A New York Times article last month quoted a senior US Intelligence official who stated, "As of now, we have no definitive information about the cause of these incidents, and it's premature and irresponsible to speculate."

Sadly, I don’t think this uncertainty of national security officials is strange because, as a former Director of Science and Technology for the US Intelligence Community, and head of Research and Development at NSA, I’ve seen this befuddlement before, on multiple occasions.

A Clue from the Cold War

In my non-fiction book, The Spy in Moscow Station, I describe the confusion, denial and outright hostility directed by CIA and State Department at an NSA officer, Charles Gandy, who had identified both the source of electronic espionage in our Moscow embassy and the means by which the Soviet KGB hid that source from our most sophisticated surveillance detection systems.

It took Gandy more than six years to convince CIA and the State Department of his discoveries, despite presenting incontrovertible evidence from the very beginning. And even with an abundance of evidence, it still required a direct order from President Reagan, who’d grown weary of the Moscow embassy confusion, to give Gandy the freedom to assemble and present all of his proof.

What was the reason for CIA and State Department’s intransigence in the face of overwhelming evidence? Good old-fashioned bureaucratic infighting and blame avoidance. For those agencies to accept Gandy’s findings, they’d have to acknowledge embarrassing failures to detect and stop the devastating leaks from the embassy.

The Spy in Moscow Station is relevant today because the story contains all the clues—but one—to the current Havana “mystery.” The book, which both NSA and CIA approved for release in 2019, describes two Russian espionage techniques, radar flooding and radio frequency (RF) signal hiding, that are highly pertinent to the Havana syndrome.

Radar Flooding

Since the late 1940s, Russian intelligence has been beaming microwave and UHF signals at our Moscow embassy to collect intelligence from electronic devices. This technique, called radar flooding in the West and high-frequency imposition by the Russians themselves, is capable of retrieving information from microphones and other types of electronics in a manner similar to the way today’s radio frequency ID (RFID) systems work. During his two trips to Moscow, NSA officer Gandy carefully studied the microwave energy beamed into the embassy from KGB listening posts surrounding the embassy.

A 2020 report by the US National Academy of Science concluded that pulsed microwave energy, (which is similar to the radar attacks on our Moscow embassy) most likely caused the brain damage and symptoms of Havana syndrome.

RF Signal Hiding

In Moscow, Gandy also discovered that the KGB was stealthily “exfiltrating” (transmitting from the embassy) data from special bugs planted inside electric typewriters through burst transmissions under “ghost signals” that looked like garden variety artifacts to US bug detection gear, and were therefore ignored by American officials charged with bug sweeping.

Ghost signals are formed in RF receivers, such as bug detection gear, when energy from two very strong transmission sources, such as TV stations, interact in a receiver’s electronics in a manner that creates strong “ghosts” that appear real, but in fact exist only in the receiver, the RF equivalent of optical illusions, if you will.

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Thus, when American counterintelligence officers in Moscow saw energy exactly in the region of the RF spectrum where illusory “ghost signals” from Moscow TV stations were located, they assumed, incorrectly, that the signals from the typewriter bugs were normal and innocent (just as the KGB assumed they would conclude).

The Last Piece of the Puzzle

Taken together, radar flooding and RF signal hiding could explain both what type of energy is responsible for Havana syndrome (microwave attacks to collect electronic espionage) and the method the perpetrators used to make those signals very difficult to detect. As with the Moscow embassy bug, those responsible for beaming microwaves at our officers could have chosen frequencies in “ghost signal” regions of the spectrum and thus hidden them using masking signals from TV, radio or other strong RF sources.

But radar flooding signals used in espionage never were transmitted at energies anywhere close to the power required to cause brain damage, let alone even be noticed under normal circumstances.

A 2011 blog post on an open-to-the-public Russian language information security website, bimchik.ru, speculated about the existence of a “viral gun” (high power radar) capable of injecting malware into computers from some distance away as “the next threat to information security.”

The blog author mentioned that such a radar would have to operate at “high power” in order to change ones and zeros in computer circuits to inject malware — perhaps (my words, not the blog author’s) at a power high enough to cause brain damage to anyone unfortunate to be in the radar beam’s path.

How to Catch the Bad Guys

If my conclusions about the source of the Havana syndrome are correct, then we could start to detect the dangerous RF signals by building a special receiver that, like the Russian espionage gear described in my book, filters out innocent ghost signals to reveal the malicious signals underneath. Then, once detected, conventional direction-finding gear might pinpoint the source of the transmissions and lead us to their operators.

Notice I just said “start to detect” and “might pinpoint.” The reason for those equivocations is that Russian intelligence tradecraft (for example) doesn’t rely on just one “hide” (such as masking with ghost signals), but layers many “hides” on top of each other to make it extraordinarily difficult for victims of their espionage to detect attacks.

Charles Gandy uncovered 18 separate “hides” of the Moscow embassy typewriter bug, all of which had to be peeled away to reveal the ultimate truth of Russian espionage penetration of our embassy. For instance, the Russians made their “exfiltration” RF transmissions extremely brief and encrypted them.

Thus, if Russian intelligence is behind the Havana syndrome attacks, it’s highly probable these RF transmissions are being masked with many, simultaneous “hides.” The “viral guns” might be disguised as innocent-looking cameras, for instance, use extremely short bursts of energy contained in very narrow beams that are difficult to detect, even with “ghost” signals eliminated.

The Havana syndrome perpetrator’s use of multiple clever “hides” might explain why US officials have not yet been able to confirm even the existence of a microwave weapon, despite 130 cases of the syndrome in our officers.

So, although we urgently need to catch the bad guys to prevent more Americans and Canadians from suffering permanent damage, the task will not be easy.

And I worry that, on top of the technical difficulties of unmasking “hides,” history will repeat itself, and bureaucratic inertia and infighting will prevent us from mounting a concerted effort to unravel the mystery.

Meanwhile more American officers could suffer the consequences.