BUGGED

Secret State Department Report Suggests Likely Cause of Havana Syndrome

Officials had publicly hypothesized that the most probable cause was microwaves. But the report suggests something more innocuous.

A secret report from the State Department concluded that the likely cause of the mysterious Havana Syndrome is not nefarious microwaves, as officials have publicly hypothesized, BuzzFeed News reports. The source of the unexplained cocktail of neurological symptoms may be something you might hear on any given evening: crickets. A scientific advisory board, the JASON group, authored the report for the bureau in 2018, two years after the first reported incident of Havana Syndrome. The report reads, “No plausible single source of energy (neither radio/microwaves nor sonic) can produce both the recorded audio/video signals and the reported medical effects. We believe the recorded sounds are mechanical or biological in origin, rather than electronic. The most likely source is the Indies short-tailed cricket.”

Biologists have made the cricket hypothesis in prior studies. Government personnel ranging from State Department diplomats to CIA intelligence officers—roughly 200 in all—have suffered from the symptoms of Havana Syndrome, which include dizziness, headaches, and vertigo, since it was first reported at the U.S. embassy in Cuba in 2016.