Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy defended the Cuban government Sunday, saying there is no evidence to suggest the mysterious symptoms dubbed “Havana syndrome” affecting some U.S. spies and foreign service employees is a result of an attack by the Communist regime.
“Several Members of Congress, among others, who rushed to judgment when these illnesses were first reported and publicly accused the Cuban Government, did so without any evidence or factual basis,” Leahy said in a statement released Sunday.
“None of the investigations and studies that have occurred since then, including by the FBI and the NAS, produced evidence implicating the Cubans, yet they have never retracted those accusations,” the senior senator added.
Leahy’s comments come after a report by the National Academies of Science (NAS) went public that said the odd symptoms — which include hearing high-pitched sounds, feeling changes in air pressure, dizziness, headaches, sleep issues, unsteadiness and blurred vision — that U.S. diplomats in China and Cuba have experienced since 2016 are the result of targeted microwave energy.
The State Department and U.S. intelligence officials have signaled it is their belief that the illness is part of an attack on Americans.
In 2018, NBC News reported that the Russian government was deemed a prime suspect for targeting U.S. consulate workers.
While the report by the National Academies of Science makes no claims about any entity behind the symptoms, it does conclude that they are the result of targeted forms of electromagnetic energy, backing up a long held claim by members of the intelligence committee.
“The committee felt that many of the distinctive and acute signs, symptoms and observations reported by employees are consistent with the effects of directed, pulsed radio frequency energy,” the report says.
Since 2016, more than 40 U.S. diplomats who worked at the U.S. Embassy in Havana, Cuba, and more than a dozen employees at consulates across China have complained about the odd and mysterious symptoms.
The New York Times, NPR, NBC News and other news organizations have also reported that members of the CIA working in Russia, across Europe and in Asia have experienced similar symptoms.
State Department diplomats have been examined at the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Brain Injury and Repair, the University of Miami and the National Institutes of Health. However it remained unclear what was causing the symptoms.
The State Department had requested the National Academies of Sciences study the mysterious cases in 2019, and while the document had been completed in early August of this year, the findings were not released until Friday.
New Hampshire Democrat Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, who sits on both the committees on foreigh relations and armed services, played an integral role making sure the report became public.
Shaheen told NBC the findings in the report are concerning and that she believes U.S. foreign service employees will continue to face these health issues.
“I fear that what we have seen to date is not going to end. We are going to see more of these kinds of attacks in the future and we need to be prepared for them,” she said.
Leahy echoed his colleague’s fears in his own statement.
“There are reasons to be seriously concerned with the safety of our embassy personnel, wherever they are posted overseas, based on the findings and conclusions of this report,” he said.
The dean of the Senate, who has worked throughout his career in Congress to thaw relations between Cuba and the U.S., also rebuked the Trump administration for how it responded to the illnesses at the U.S. Embassy in Havana.
“Secretary Pompeo slashed our Embassy staff in Havana to a skeleton crew, and kicked out most of the Cubans at their embassy in Washington, while U.S. embassies in China and elsewhere, despite similar incidents, have remained fully operational and no punitive action was taken,” Leahy said.
In 2017, the State Department, at the time helmed by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, said that American embassy employees were being attacked and that the U.S. would be pulling out all nonessential personnel from the Havana Embassy.
At the time, more than two years ago, President Donald Trump had already expelled two Cuban diplomats over the mysterious illness, as what became known as ‘Havana syndrome’ threatened U.S.-Cuba relations.
While former President Barack Obama had been in office, he and Leahy had worked to broker a deal with Cuba to allow for tourism and to reopen embassies.
On the campaign trail in Florida during the 2016 election, Trump had promised to reverse aspects of the diplomatic relationship built between the two countries.
Leahy said Sunday the president has used the bizarre health issues of American diplomats to further his agenda to damage the fragile alliance.
“These incidents were exploited by the Trump administration to buttress its punitive and cynical isolationist policy toward Cuba that has failed to achieve any of its objectives,” Leahy said.
