Senate Intelligence Committee criticizes CIA’s treatment of ‘Havana syndrome’ patients

(CNN) — A bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report released Friday slammed the CIA for its treatment of patients with a mysterious ailment known as “Havana syndrome,” determining that “many individuals faced obstacles to timely and sufficient care.”

The report outlines 11 recommendations for the CIA to implement to address key concerns such as a lack of an “established clear and documented policies, guidance, and criteria for how it refers AHI (anomalous health incidents) reporters to facilitated treatment programs.” The recommendations also include developing written policies for medical care and benefit programs associated with AHIs, conducting a comprehensive organizational assessment of the CIA’s response to AHIs, and reestablishing a standard post-AHI evaluation to all AHI reporters who request one.

Examples of insufficient care outlined in the report included patients who “experienced delayed, denied, or pre-conditioned care,” including “long wait times to access facilitated treatment options; were denied facilitated care by a CIA care adjudication board; perceived that their access to facilitated medical care was contingent on their willingness to participate in a NIH clinical research study.”

A spokesperson for the CIA told CNN that during the periods covered in the report, the agency worked to both understand the problem and investigate the “possibility that foreign actors were harming US government personnel and their families.”

“In that environment, supporting our officers and their families required us to dynamically adapt our programs and processes to changing needs and circumstances. Whether, in hindsight, we could have done better is for others to evaluate, but our commitment to ensuring that our officers and their families had access to the care they needed has never wavered,” the spokesperson said, emphasizing that the agency has “no greater responsibility than to care for the health and safety of our people.”

The mysterious illness first emerged in late 2016, when a cluster of diplomats stationed in the Cuban capital of Havana began reporting symptoms consistent with head trauma, including dizziness and extreme headaches.

In subsequent years, there have been cases reported around the world, including clusters of at least 60 incidents in Bogota, Colombia, and Vienna, Austria. There have been about 1,500 reported cases across the US government in 96 different counties, officials said last year, but the number of reported incidents has dropped significantly in recent years.

One problem facing the medical community is that there is still not a clear definition of Havana syndrome, which the government refers to as “anomalous health incidents” (AHIs). These tests were done, in some cases, long after symptoms began, making it harder to understand what physically happened.

The illness and its cause have remained frustratingly opaque to both the intelligence community and the medical community.

Despite long-standing speculation that the illness could have been the result of a targeted campaign by an enemy of the US, the US intelligence community said last year that it cannot link any cases to a foreign adversary, ruling it unlikely that the unexplained illness was the result of a targeted campaign by an enemy of the US. The Senate report, however, recommends that the US intelligence community should continue research as “there remain many unanswered questions about these incidents given information and research gaps.”

“The IC must remain objective and must continue to actively collect intelligence: conduct analysis and pursue information that could shed light on AHI reports in general and foreign adversary emerging technologies, to include directed energy weapons in particular.”

“Moreover, U.S. adversaries are likely developing directed energy technologies that may plausibly explain some of the reported symptoms community associated with AHls,” the report states.

The report also denounces the CIA for halting its collection of clinical research on Havana syndrome while the Pentagon’s research efforts continue.

“CIA has halted its own internal clinical research efforts related to AHIs. Specifically, the Agency stopped promoting pre-AHI baseline medical assessments in December 2021 and stopped conducting post-AHI medical assessments in January 2022. As a result, CIA may be missing out on important clinical data that could advance its understanding of AHIs,” it says.

The committee also warns about the risks posed by the CIA’s lack of preparedness to respond quickly. “The Committee nevertheless assesses that CIA may not be well postured to respond to future AHI reports and to facilitate quick, accessible, high-quality medical care for those who need it, particularly in the case of another AHI cluster.”

Additionally, the report lays out three recommendations for Congress to consider, including codifying into law the two Federal Employees’ Compensation Act bulletins pertaining to AHI-related claims and amending the Expanded Care Program.

The findings are “based largely off testimonial evidence provided by CIA officials, other USG (US government) officials, medical professionals who provided care to AHI reporters as part of a facilitated medical care program, and AHI reporters.”

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