- The signs and symptoms of AHIs are genuine and compelling.
- A subset of AHIs have a unique combination of core characteristics that cannot be explained by known environmental or medical conditions and could be due to external stimuli.
- Electromagnetic energy, particularly pulsed signals in the radiofrequency range, plausibly explains the core characteristics, although information gaps exist.
- Ultrasound also plausibly explains the core characteristics, but only in close-access scenarios and with information gaps.
- Psychosocial factors alone cannot account for the core characteristics, although they may explain some other reported incidents or contribute to long-term signs and symptoms.
- Ionizing radiation, chemical and biological agents, infrasound, audible sound, ultrasound propagated over large distances, and bulk heating from electromagnetic energy are all implausible explanations for the core characteristics in the absence of other synergistic stimuli.
"Little research in the West has systematically explored configurations of electromagnetic energy that could cause nonthermal clinical effects. Although there is a large amount of research on such effects—an estimated 25,000 publications as of 2018 89—the vast majority has understandably focused on configurations related to the safety of commercial appliances and communication systems.Interestingly, safety standards in Russia 90 and many other former Soviet states 91 place much stricter limits on human exposure to electromagnetic fields than current Western standards.Western scientists have attempted to replicate Russian claims of biological effects at nonthermal power levels despite the absence of details about the waveforms and energy levels of greatest concern, but their efforts have failed to show similar results. Thus, the primary organizations responsible for setting Western exposure standards do not include most of the Russian studies in their considerations. 92 93The data from these incidents are generally consistent with academic research [redacted text] but are too limited to draw firm conclusions. 94 95 They seem to suggest, however, that different individuals can experience the same type of stimulus in different ways, which may help account for some of the observed heterogeneity in cases exhibiting the core characteristics. In addition, higher power exposures appear to generate symptoms that are distinct from those with less intense exposures, suggesting that more than one variable or biological mechanism may be at play. Lastly, the effects of electromagnetic exposure may be cumulative over time (e.g., over hours) and may be capable of triggering acute symptoms without warning. The Panel emphasizes, however, that confirming or disconfirming any of these preliminary observations will require systematic research."
The Archive’s 'Microwave Diplomacy, 1967-1977' posting is the second of a two-part series on the Moscow Signal. Part I, 'PANDORA/BIZARRE,' was published on September 13. A related posting concerning the Soviet beaming of ionizing radiation, 'Irradiating Richard Nixon,' will be published the week of September 19...."
"High-level U.S. efforts to press Soviet leaders to halt the radiation activity began in 1967 and continued under four administrations into the Carter era. The microwave transmissions, believed to be related to bugging devices hidden in the Embassy walls, continued for decades after they were first detected when the U.S. Chancery opened in the early 1950s...."
For more information on the Moscow Signal, see summaries of 32 recently declassified documents in addition to the original documents:
Intelligence Community Expert Panel: Executive Summary
On February 1, 2022, the executive summary from a report prepared by the IC (U.S. Intelligence Community) Expert Panel on Anomalous Health Incidents (AHIs) was declassified by Avril Haines, Director of National Intelligence.
The report makes the following conclusions:
"Four 'core characteristics' were prominent among these AHIs: the acute onset of audio-vestibular sensory phenomena, sometimes including sound or pressure in only one ear or on one side of the head; other nearly simultaneous signs and symptoms such as vertigo, loss of balance, and ear pain; a strong sense of locality or directionality; and the absence of known environmental or medical conditions that could have caused the reported signs and symptoms."
"The signs and symptoms of AHIs are genuine and compelling. The panel bases this assessment on incident reports, medical data from affected individuals and interviews with their physicians, and interviews with affected individuals themselves. Some incidents have affected multiple persons in the same space, and clinical samples from a few affected individuals have shown early, transient elevations in biomarkers suggestive of cellular injury to the nervous system. The reported signs and symptoms of AHIs are diverse and may be caused by multiple mechanisms, but no case should be discounted."
"... the combination of the four core characteristics is distinctly unusual and unreported elsewhere in the medical literature, and so far have not been associated with a specific neurological abnormality. Several aspects of this unique neurosensory syndrome make it unlikely to be caused by a functional neurological disorder. The location dependence and sudden onset and offset, for example, argue for a stimulus that is spatially and temporally discrete. The perception of sound and pain within only one ear suggests the stimulation of its mechanoreceptors, a specific cranial nerve, or nuclei in the brainstem, all of which mediate hearing and balance. The lack of other symptoms also helped rule-out known medical conditions."
"Pulsed electromagnetic energy, particularly in the radiofrequency range, plausibly explains the core characteristics, although information gaps exist. There are several plausible pathways involving various forms of pulsed electromagnetic energy, each with its own requirements, limitations, and unknowns. For all the pathways, sources exist that could generate the required stimulus, are concealable, and have moderate power requirements. Using nonstandard {redacted words} antennas and techniques, the signals could be propagated with low loss through air for tens to hundreds of meters, and with some loss, through most building materials. {redacted sentence}."
"Ultrasound also plausibly explains the core characteristics, but only in close-access scenarios and with information gaps...."
"Psychosocial factors alone cannot account for the core characteristics, although they may cause some other incidents or contribute to long-term symptoms...."
"Ionizing radiation, chemical and biological agents, infrasound, audible sound, ultrasound propagated over large distances, and bulk heating from electromagnetic energy are all implausible explanations for the core characteristics in the absence of other synergistic stimuli. These mechanisms are unlikely, on their own, to account for the required effects or are technically or practically infeasible...."
Three of the seven recommendations are completely redacted: Detectors, Biological Effects, and Devices to Aid Research.
The executive summary can be downloaded:
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Nov 9, 2021 (Updated Nov 26, 2021)
"Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Friday detailed new efforts to investigate "Havana syndrome," the mysterious health affliction affecting dozens of U.S. personnel first identified in Cuba and now including several countries."
"Symptoms include headaches, dizziness, cognitive difficulties, tinnitus, vertigo and trouble with seeing, hearing or balancing. Many officials have suffered symptoms years after reporting an incident, while some have been diagnosed with traumatic brain injuries."
"In an effort to learn more, Blinken confirmed Friday that the State Department has deployed new technology to U.S. missions around the world to help understand the cause.
'The details I can provide on this are limited as well, but I can say that new technology is helping us more quickly and thoroughly evaluate a variety of potential causes of these incidents, and we've distributed across posts so that we can respond rapidly to new reports,' he said."
(Conor Finnegan and Matt Seyler, "Blinken details new efforts to investigate 'Havana syndrome," ABC News, Nov 5, 2021)
"The finding that the attacks led to perceptible changes in their brains is also one of several factors fueling growing skepticism that some kind of sonic weapon was involved.
'This makes me think the victims may have developed electromagnetic hypersensitivity (EHS) from exposure to electromagnetic fields in the embassy,' Joel Moskowitz, a community health professor at the University of California, Berkeley, told Daily Mail Online.
'This happened during the Cold War to personnel stationed in the US embassy in Moscow when the Soviets were bombarding the embassy with microwaves to monitor oral communications in the ambassador's office.'"
When considering safety standards for human exposure to radiofrequency (RF) and microwave energy, the dominant concerns pertain to a thermal effect. However, in the case of high-power pulsed RF/microwave energy, a rapid thermal expansion can lead to stress waves within the body. In this study, a computational model is used to estimate the temperature profile in the human brain resulting from exposure to various RF/microwave incident field parameters. The temperatures are subsequently used to simulate the resulting mechanical response of the brain. Our simulations show that, for certain extremely high-power microwave exposures (permissible by current safety standards), very high stresses may occur within the brain that may have implications for neuropathological effects. Although the required power densities are orders of magnitude larger than most real-world exposure conditions, they can be achieved with devices meant to emit high-power electromagnetic pulses in military and research applications.
Excerpts
"The bulk of scientific literature uses continuous waves and moderate field strengths (typical of real-life scenarios), with less emphasis on pulsed fields of very high peak strength that may occur with ultrawideband pulse generators or EM pulse simulators (4). It is worth investigating whether extremely high peak power sources applied with a slow repetition frequency, or low duty cycle, can induce injurious effects without thermal buildup greater than a few degrees Celsius."
"With the exception of low intracranial absorption at 1400 MHz, the highest ratio of peak average intracranial SAR* to peak average skin SAR* occurs between 1 to 1.8 GHz."
"The MAE, also referred to as “microwave hearing” or the “Frey effect” due to its discovery by Allan Frey in 1961 (7, 8), was initially observed when subjects standing up to hundreds of feet away from a radar transponder could hear an audible tonal noise (e.g., chirping, buzzing, or clicking). The scientific underpinnings of the MAE were controversial for the first several years (9–11). After more than a decade of investigations, it became generally accepted that the perceived sound is due to the cochlea detecting stress waves that result from a rapid temperature rise in tissues within the head due to pulsed RF/microwave exposure (11, 12)."
"Typically, relatively low-average powers and small temperature changes (10−6°C) are required to elicit the MAE (12). Although adverse health effects from the MAE have not been previously established, one study on rodents suggests that very high–peak power pulsed microwaves can result in cognitive deficits (13)."
"This study uses a two-simulation approach to investigate whether an HPM source could theoretically induce adverse mechanical responses within the brain."
"This study has shown that, by applying a small temperature increase (<0.0005°C) in a very short amount of time (less than several microseconds), potentially injurious stress waves are created."
"For frequencies between 400 MHz to 2 GHz, the IEEE C95.1 RF exposure guidelines limit the exposure reference limit (ERL) to fmhz/200 (W/m2) over an averaging time of 30 min. For 1-GHz exposures, the IEEE C95.1 ERL of 5 W/m2 over 30 min would equate to an average energy density of 9000 J/m2. Our computational model shows that, for sufficiently high incident power densities, a single pulse could potentially result in biologically meaningful pressures. For example, large pressures may occur following 1-GHz frequency, a pulse duration of 5 μs, and incident power densities of at least 1.5 × 107 W/m2. The energy density associated with such a pulse would be equal to PIN×τd or 75 J/m2 (significantly less than the ERL standard)."
"Note that the proposed HPM power densities in this study are extremely large and several orders of magnitude larger than power densities typically experienced by the public. As an illustrative example, at around 200 feet from a cell phone base station, a person will be exposed to a power density of only 0.001 mW/cm2 or less (36). This study establishes a testable hypothesis between potential neurocognitive effects and the thermoelastic mechanism from HPM systems. To date, however, adverse effects from HPM systems have not been established in the scientific literature."
News Release, National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, December 5, 2020
WASHINGTON — Government personnel and their families at the U.S. embassy in Havana, Cuba, in late 2016, and later at the U.S. consulate in Guangzhou, China, began suffering from a range of unusual — and in some cases suddenly occurring — symptoms such as a perceived loud noise, ear pain, intense head pressure or vibration, dizziness, visual problems, and cognitive difficulties, and many still continue to experience these or other health problems. As part of its effort to ascertain potential causes of the illnesses, inform government employees more effectively about health risks at posts abroad, and determine best medical practices for screening, prevention, and treatment for both short- and long-term health problems, the U.S. Department of State asked the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to provide advice. After undergoing a security review, the National Academies’ report is now available.
The study — undertaken by the Standing Committee to Advise the U.S. Department of State on Unexplained Health Effects on U.S. Government Employees and Their Families at Overseas Embassies — was sponsored by the U.S. Department of State. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine are private, nonprofit institutions that provide independent, objective analysis and advice to the nation to solve complex problems and inform public policy decisions related to science, technology, and medicine. They operate under an 1863 congressional charter to the National Academy of Sciences, signed by President Lincoln.
Consensus Study Report: An Assessment of Illness in U.S. Government Employees and Their Families at Overseas Embassies
In late 2016, U.S. Embassy personnel in Havana, Cuba, began to report the development of an unusual set of symptoms and clinical signs. For some of these patients, their case began with the sudden onset of a loud noise, perceived to have directional features, and accompanied by pain in one or both ears or across a broad region of the head, and in some cases, a sensation of head pressure or vibration, dizziness, followed in some cases by tinnitus, visual problems, vertigo, and cognitive difficulties. Other personnel attached to the U.S. Consulate in Guangzhou, China, reported similar symptoms and signs to varying degrees, beginning in the following year. As of June 2020, many of these personnel continue to suffer from these and/or other health problems. Multiple hypotheses and mechanisms have been proposed to explain these clinical cases, but evidence has been lacking, no hypothesis has been proven, and the circumstances remain unclear.
The Department of State asked the National Academies to review the cases, their clinical features and management, epidemiologic investigations, and scientific evidence in support of possible causes, and advise on approaches for the investigation of potential future cases. In An Assessment of Illness in U.S. Government Employees and Their Families at Overseas Embassies, the committee identifies distinctive clinical features, considers possible causes, evaluates plausible mechanisms and rehabilitation efforts, and offers recommendations for future planning and responses.
Abstract
Between 1953 and 1979, the USSR irradiated the United States embassy in Moscow with microwaves. This episode, a classic Cold War affair, has acquired enormous importance in the discussions on the effect of non-ionizing radiation on people's health. In 2011, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified radiofrequency electromagnetic fields as being a possible human carcinogen (Group 2B), but the results of recent laboratory and epidemiological studies have led some researchers to conclude that radiofrequency electromagnetic fields should be reclassified as a human carcinogen instead of merely a possible human carcinogen. In 1978, the "Moscow signal" case was officially closed after the publication of the epidemiological study of (Lilienfeld AM, Tonascia J, Tonascia S, Libauer CA, Cauthen GM. Foreign Service health status study. Evaluation of health status of foreign service and other employees from selected Eastern European posts. Report on Foreign Service Health Status Study, U.S. Department of State 6025-619073, 1978.), showing no apparent evidence of increased mortality rates and limited evidence regarding general health status. However, several loose ends still remain with respect to this epidemiological study, as well as the affair as a whole. In this paper, we summarize the available evidence concerning this case, paying special attention to the epidemiological study of Lilienfeld et al. After reviewing the available literature (including declassified documents), and after some additional statistical analyses, we provide new insights which do not complete the puzzle, but which may help to better understand it.
To activate listening devices on the walls? This may well have been, as we have just indicated, one of the explanations given by the Americans, but serious doubts had, by this time, been cast on American institutional credibility. After all, the State Department had, for more than 15 years, hidden from its own employees the fact that that they were being irradiated, had lied to them about the purpose of the blood tests, and had categorically denied that some of the results were of concern to their health. For example, the State Department had reported that Ambassador Walter Stoessel was in good health and that blood tests showing high levels of white blood cells were unrelated to leukemia (13). Nevertheless, Stoessel died of leukemia on December 9, 1986, aged 66 (27).
The mind control hypothesis was also considered by the American government (28). The Americans themselves had been experimenting on mind control as part of the MK ULTRA project, and suspected that the Soviets might be doing the same.
The former CIA agent Victor Marchetti claimed that the microwave bombardment had nothing to do with a threat to health, but with a strategy of confusion in order to waste the time of the American government while it studied and analyzed what it believed might be taking place (13). Whether this is true or not, the reality is that the American government had indeed devoted huge resources and efforts to analyzing what had happened, especially with the epidemiological study of Lilienfeld et al. (1).
The Soviets, on the other hand, finally admitted at the beginning of 1976 to the use of microwaves, after denying it for 15 years. The official version until then had been that the radiation detected by the Americans at the embassy was caused by the industrial activity of a large city such as Moscow. When they finally came clean, they indicated that the purpose of the bombardment had not been to damage the health of the American personnel, but to interfere in the communications of the embassy (11).
In the end, both official versions concurred, which, given the history of lies and deceit by the two sides involved, may be equally suspect....
Four decades on, the “Moscow signal” case has transmuted into “the Thing” or “the Havana syndrome” (45). From December, 2016, to August, 2017, some State Department personnel and other CIA employees began to suffer a series of neurological symptoms, including headaches, dizziness and sleep abnormalities, while working at the Cuban embassy, or staying at other places in Havana, such as the Capri and Nacional hotels.
Because of the political nature of this affair, many details remain undisclosed, such as the names of the CIA employees affected, who exactly was responsible for the attack (the Cuban government continues to deny all knowledge), or the specific “weapon” employed (some scientists suspect a microwave attack). However, the preliminary results of the study of Swanson et al. (7) on 21 individuals identified by the US Department of State as having possibly been exposed, showed persistent cognitive, vestibular, and oculomotor dysfunction, as well as sleep impairment and headaches, along with reports of directional audible and/or sensory phenomena of unclear origin. As Swanson et al. (7) concluded, these individuals appeared to have sustained injury to widespread brain networks without an associated history of head trauma.
Therefore, there exist clear similitudes with the Moscow embassy case; a (hypothesized) directional weapon that produces several identifiable neurocognitive symptoms and that leaves no detectable traces, contextualized in a framework of secrecy and political tension. The main difference is that, in the Cuban case, there is still no confirmation of the use of microwaves....