In late 2017, while traveling to Moscow on official duty, I experienced a sudden, debilitating health incident. After a long and arduous battle with the CIA to obtain treatment, military doctors at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center outside Washington ultimately diagnosed and treated me for a line-of-duty traumatic brain injury. I was never the same after the incident and years of painful recovery continue to this day.
I served for 26 years in the U.S. intelligence community, rising to the Senior Intelligence Service’s top ranks and receiving the Distinguished Career Intelligence Medal upon retirement. Yet my departure from government was not voluntary, it was by necessity.
Since 1996, intelligence officers, diplomats, and military servicemembers have reported hundreds of cases of what is commonly known as Havana Syndrome — a misnomer for a condition officially designated by the U.S. government as “Anomalous Health Incidents.” I am one of them.
After several internal reviews, the CIA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence under the Biden administration issued judgments that downplayed the possibility of foreign involvement, often attributing Havana Syndrome symptoms to “environmental factors” or pre-existing conditions without further explanation. At the CIA, senior leaders in the office of the Chief Operating Officer, the Office of Medical Services, and the Directorate of Analysis often privately denigrated victims — including me — by accusing us of fabricating our conditions for financial gain. After I retired, I testified in closed sessions to Congress about my experiences with such gaslighting. On one occasion, then-Sen. Marco Rubio was in the audience. He seemed like such an advocate for us when we spoke afterwards — but has very surprisingly done nothing since.
In my view, the U.S. intelligence community’s assessment of Havana Syndrome reflected a serious medical and analytic bias — anchored by early CIA senior leadership judgments — that shaped how medical professionals and analysts treated the issue. To date, there has been little visible accountability for those decisions made by CIA senior leaders from both the first Trump administration and then more critically, the Biden team at the agency.
Since late 2024, however, new public reporting and official government statements signaled a possible shift. On Dec. 5, 2024 the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence released an unclassified summary that challenged prior assessments. A month later, the National Security Council put out a press statement saying earlier judgments were under review. Both documents, now in the public record, questioned the assessment that there was no intelligence suggesting foreign involvement with Havana Syndrome. Something had changed.
In January of last year, House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence then-chairman Rep. Mike Turner went further, stating that “a foreign adversary is likely responsible.” A CIA Subcommittee report criticized the intelligence community for thwarting congressional investigation and said there was “direct evidence” that a 2023 assessment “was developed in a manner inconsistent with analytic integrity.” As of Dec. 2025, Rep. Rick Crawford, the current chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, committed to further investigation and transparency. Press reporting in Oct. 2025 indicated that the committee sent criminal referrals to the Department of Justice, due to potential illegal actions by intelligence officials. Even before these developments, the tide began to turn during the final months of the Biden administration.
On Nov. 12, 2024, senior National Security Council staff invited multiple affected intelligence officers — including me — to a White House Situation Room meeting. By that point, some of us had been meeting with the council for years, as it had pressed a recalcitrant CIA on Havana Syndrome. Many of us leaned on the council’s intelligence shop as an ally — albeit an imperfect one — while our parent agencies had been involved in gaslighting us and rejecting our medical claims. This unclassified session in the Situation Room was extraordinary.
Several senior officials told us directly: “We believe you.” One even admitted, “We failed you.” For those of us long dismissed and doubted, these words mattered. I left the meeting feeling that perhaps the U.S. government had turned a corner. Later, one of the senior officials at the meeting, Dr. David Relman, the senior advisor in the Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy at the White House, urged that Havana Syndrome be taken seriously.
Even before the Nov. 2024 Situation Room meeting, a few National Security Council officials privately conceded to the victims — including me — that the intelligence community’s approach had been terribly flawed. They acknowledged that CIA leaders and analysts had resisted and ultimately ignored compelling intelligence that challenged their beliefs. From my perspective, the CIA’s resistance in particular caused victims to suffer without care, unable to access government medical facilities.
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