‘THE VICTIMS ARE NOT GOING TO STOP’ — It’s a report that’s been years in the making: a statement from the intelligence community that the ailments known as “Havana Syndrome” do not result from any actions of a foreign adversary. According to POLITICO’s Lara Seligman and Erin Banco, five of the seven U.S. intelligence agencies that participated in the review had moderate to high confidence that it’s “very unlikely” that a foreign power was responsible for the “anomalous health incidents” that afflicted American diplomats, intelligence officials and their families in foreign countries. The other two intelligence agencies reported that it’s “unlikely” a foreign adversary was involved, but did so with low confidence. The mysterious symptoms — thought by some to be caused by an intentional weaponized attack — included a buzzing or ringing in the ears, headaches and nausea. But after examining over 1,500 cases, analysts said that they found no clear pattern of conditions among patients that could tie the symptoms to an adversary’s actions. “The intelligence community assessment released today by ODNI [Office of the Director of National Intelligence] reflects more than two years of rigorous, painstaking collection, investigative work, and analysis by IC agencies including CIA,” CIA Director Bill Burns said in a statement. “We applied the agency’s very best operational, analytic, and technical tradecraft to what is one of the largest and most intensive investigations in the agency’s history.” Not everyone’s convinced by the findings. Nightly spoke with Mark S. Zaid, an attorney who represents over two dozen intelligence and government officials who have been afflicted with symptoms that they describe as lining up with the pattern of “Havana Syndrome.” Zaid said his clients were “very demoralized” by the release of today’s assessment and argues that it isn’t the final word on this issue. This interview has been edited. What does the new “Havana Syndrome” report tell us that we didn’t know before? Well, it is a more categorical denial than ever before that a foreign actor was involved, or that these are deliberate incidents. It’s that denial, to me, that raises more red flags, than if it had been wishy-washy. Given how long I have worked on this, the access to information that I have, unclassified and classified, I have so many questions in my head that they have not answered that I find it very difficult to understand how they could reach such a categorical denial, particularly knowing what I know they haven’t addressed. There’s no smoking gun out there that I know of, not even rumors, like ’we captured a device,’ or ’we captured intel that a foreign intelligence officer was perpetrating an attack.’ We do know of quite a number of very suspicious surveillance and counterintelligence incidents with human individuals that are directly involved with intelligence community victims. We are also aware of a number of incidents of domestic and foreign locations where multiple people were involved. And not just humans, but technology. So, computers would go strange, and phones would go strange. All of that evidence exists, and it’s been offered to various agencies of the US government, and oftentimes, it hasn’t been taken. There are also lots of children of federal employees who have been impacted, or spouses who are in their homes at the same time who experienced the same effect. How does that get explained? How many clients do you have that are suffering from the illness? How have your clients responded to this finding? I have over two dozen clients from multiple agencies: CIA, DIA, NSA, State, Commerce, USAID, FBI, ODNI. In some cases, that includes their family members. They are very demoralized by today’s assessment. One said the report is ’humiliating, so disheartening.’ Another said ’today is just so terrible;’ yet another argued ’the findings are particularly egregious.’ One client said they broke down crying. Now, the good thing about today is that the side-messaging that agencies are putting out there is that they are not challenging the veracity of the individual victims having suffered adverse health effects and that they are promising to take care of them. We’ll see what that translates to. Has that side-messaging also suggested that this is not a psychogenic illness? Or is that still being discussed as a possibility? I think there’s no doubt still some within the government who believe that it’s psychosomatic but it’s a minority view, because it’s virtually impossible to attribute a large number of these cases to psychosomatic, particularly because individuals had no idea what was happening to the other people. Where it’s potentially psychosomatic is as the case became more public. But anecdotally, the large number of cases that I’m aware of — dozens and dozens, if not more — they had no idea that this was a thing, when they first reported that they encountered something. When did you and your firm first get involved with this case? How have your feelings on the issue evolved? I got involved a decade ago, dealing with a client named Michael Beck who was an NSA employee at the time and was injured in 1996. This all predates Havana — whatever this is has been going on for a long time; it’s evolved. I can’t tell you what’s happening now is exactly the same. I doubt it is, the technology has evolved. But the only thing that has probably changed in my mind over the decades I’ve been working on this is my eyes have opened up to how wide a problem this really is, how long it’s been going on in some form or another. I haven’t seen anything that has led me to believe this is not real for a large number of the people affected. Have you noticed any patterns with regards to when and where these cases seem to be popping up? The biggest problem with this case is, it really resides within the intelligence community and the classified sphere. It’s like an iceberg. You only see about the top third, the dangerous part is all beneath the surface. So when the intelligence community issues an assessment like this, there’s little by way that they present as evidence. In fact, what they’re presenting today is the absence of evidence. And to be able to refute things is very difficult because of the classified nature of most of these incidents. I deal with conspiracy theories all the time. And I’m not prone to them. I can be very easily persuaded by a reasonable explanation. All I hear is, ‘we have no evidence to show that this is ongoing.’ And I know that not to be true. Former Obama White House official Ben Rhodes suggested today that it’s possible “the Trump Administration used ‘Havana syndrome’ to rollback the opening to Cuba knowing that there wasn’t evidence of the Cuban government being responsible.” How would you respond to that? Well, there’s no doubt the incidents in Havana in 2016 were relied upon by those in the Trump administration to roll back our relations with Cuba. But I think it was just an opportunity for exploitation by them, to use this as an excuse. One of the reasons why I don’t think it was the Cubans is because why would the Cuban government have gone to such lengths to re-establish connections with the U.S. government, to have President Obama go down there and then sabotage it? That doesn’t mean that there weren’t radical Cubans in the government or with the help of the Russians, but the anti-Cuba factions within our government are still very strong. So it was an ample opportunity for them to exploit. But no one I know on the inside thinks that this was the Cuban government. And it’s certainly not the Cuban government who are hitting our people in Colombia, Austria, Vietnam, England, Poland, Guatemala. I can continue to rattle off the countries on pretty much every continent. What’s next with “Havana Syndrome” research? Why isn’t this report the final word? I think this is just one page in the book. The intelligence committees in Congress remain very seized with this issue. They’re receiving the same classified info I’m receiving that contradicts a number of the assertions that the government’s executive branch is making. So, I think they’re going to continue to push forward with this. And the victims are not going to stop. You’re going to see increasing frustration from within that community, and a desire and opportunity to speak out and humanize this. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com. Or contact tonight’s author at cmchugh@politico.com or on Twitter at @calder_mchugh.
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