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CIA director "fuming" after Havana syndrome strikes team member in India
A US intelligence officer traveling in India earlier this month with CIA director William Burns reported experiencing a mysterious health incident and symptoms consistent with so-called Havana syndrome, according to a report by CNN. The officer received immediate medical care upon returning to the US.
The case raises fears that such incidents are not only increasing, but potentially escalating, unnamed officials told CNN and The New York Times. The new incident within Burns' own team reportedly left the CIA chief "fuming" with anger.
The director's schedule is tightly guarded, and officials do not know if the affected intelligence officer was targeted because the officer was traveling with the director. If the health incident was an attack carried out by an adversarial intelligence agency—as feared—it's unclear how the adversarial agency learned of the trip and was able to prepare an attack. It's also possible, however, that the officer was targeted for other reasons and without knowledge that the officer was traveling with the director.
[...] The incident is the second high-profile case in less than a month. On August 24, another so-called "anomalous health incident" affecting US embassy staff in Hanoi, Vietnam, came to light. It is still unclear how many staff members were affected in that incident, but NBC News reported that two US personnel were medevaced out of the country.
Previously:
US Embassy Employees in Cuba Possibly Subjected to 'Acoustic Attack'
U.S. State Department Pulls Employees From Cuba, Issues Travel Warning Due to "Sonic Attacks"
Latest Explanation for Cuban Embassy Symptoms: Microwave Weapons
"Sonic Attack" Recording Made by Diplomats is Actually a Recording of Crickets
Mysterious health "attack" cases rise to 130, US officials confirm
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 23 2021, @03:31AM (16 children)
I don't know, deploy Faraday cages. For all we know the "mysteriousness" is entirely because the US is doing it to its own employees, because it's that fucking desperate to get into a "great power conflict."
(Score: 4, Informative) by c0lo on Thursday September 23 2021, @04:15AM (8 children)
Tin foil hats would suffice [matthey.com]
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 5, Funny) by Unixnut on Thursday September 23 2021, @07:58AM (3 children)
I so wish this to be the only true solution to this ailment, just so I can watch all the politicians and diplomatic staff walk around with tin foil on their heads. It would look so fitting with the western worlds current descent into collective insanity.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 23 2021, @09:36AM
Engineering-wise, this is the most effective solution in both cost and protection terms. For these very reasons, I don't expect they'll follow it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 23 2021, @11:32AM (1 child)
This is just silly. Obviously they will need tin-foil bracelets around their wrists and ankles as well
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 24 2021, @03:11AM
And be put in steel cages lockable from the outside. For their protection.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 23 2021, @11:29AM
lol you beat me to it
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 23 2021, @02:57PM (2 children)
uhm ... this episode of Kick farted begs to differ
$40 Tinfoil Hat?? - KICKFARTED Ep. 2
Linus Tech Tips
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJJENB1UsIU [youtube.com]
It turns out that wearing a tin foil hat could actually make the problem worse because it reflects the radiation that went to your head back to your head again. You might need something like a tin foil helmet? I would like to see the experiments on that. Imagine CIA agents walking around wearing tin foil helmets ...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 23 2021, @03:10PM
In all seriousness what you probably need is a tin foil hat with some inside padding that absorbs the unwanted radiation and doesn't let it get reflected back. Or just a hat made out of said material ...
uhm ... maybe I can sell such a product, I'm sure there are enough suckers willing to buy it to make me rich. The CIA might even be interested.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 23 2021, @05:05PM
Perhaps all that concentrated radiation from the tin foil hats is what's responsible for the fuming.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Thursday September 23 2021, @05:04AM
It'll never work. You put popcorn in the nuker for 20 minutes, the building gets condemned. It's that simple. No cage will prevent it.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by HammeredGlass on Thursday September 23 2021, @11:22AM (1 child)
They don't actually have to do anything to their people. All they have to do is report to the world that something happened to their people. It's not like they are going to parade their classified agent out to a press pool to answer questions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 24 2021, @03:15AM
Exactly. What if Russia started reporting agitators on their Western border. All of a sudden there's soldiers in Crimea and a landslide vote to become part of Russia. I guess it must be true.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday September 23 2021, @07:24PM (1 child)
People who actually get whacked with accidental microwave exposure tend to have more interesting skin, eye, and general thermal problems. It just seems odd that ONLY these microwave victims get this entire class of weird effect.
Seriously the most realistic proposal I've ever seen is during the Zika virus propaganda they supposedly sprayed Havana with all kinds of crazy anti-bug shit and historically insecticides have had a troubling relationship with the human nervous system, so after they figured it out maybe they continue using bug spray as a weapon or just to F with the CIA in general.
"whoopsie guess we discovered the hard way that cans of SUPER-RAID anti-mosquito spray makes people kinda chronically sick? Well we got plenty of cans of the shit sitting around, and they got plenty of CIA agents, so lets F with them"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 24 2021, @01:21AM
You may have some troubling world views but this is a great theory.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday September 23 2021, @07:48PM (1 child)
Sci Fi movie plot:
We thought we invented a simple improvement to the polygraph test we give our higher level personnel; whoopsie, it makes them horribly sick a half decade later.
Could be a secondary thing too. Maybe their magic truth serum drug refined from opium poppies and hallucinogenic mushrooms works perfectly fine, but the dumb bastards used a solvent accidentally contaminated with (insert some nasty as hell solvent here that has neurological symptoms). Damnfino maybe DMSO plus a metric shitton of raw benzene is a bad idea but it works great if uncontaminated.
Then the next layer of the onion is the dumb bastard who used contaminated solvent was a Chinese agent paid by the Chinese govt to kill all those CIA bastards so there was a plausibly deniable lab accident and then the wrong beaker was dumped in the wrong test tube and half a decade later you got a hundred slowly dying mid to upper level spies.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 24 2021, @03:19AM
OK stop now.