A former U.S. military investigator believes that health incidents known as “Havana syndrome” have been the result of attacks by Russia, according to the results of an investigation issued by the 60 Minutes program.

The report comes out as a result of a joint investigation by the CBS television network, the Russian media outlet The Insider, and the German magazine Der Spiegel.

Retired Army Lieutenant Colonel Greg Edgreen, who handled the Pentagon’s investigation into what the United States officially describes as “anomalous health incidents,” said on the 60 Minutes program that the affected officials received an attack from Russia.

More than 200 American diplomats and relatives destined for different countries have suffered symptoms of the so-called “Havana syndrome,” which was first detected in the Cuban capital in 2016 and would manifest with dizziness, nausea, hearing problems or migraines.

A little more than a year ago, the United States intelligence concluded that it was “very unlikely” that a foreign adversary will provoke the so-called “Havana syndrome.”

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Edgreen told CBS that, in the investigation, the criterion for validating the evidence was very strict because the government does not want to accept realities such as the possible omission in its duty to protect Americans.

“Unfortunately, I can’t give the details, due to the classification,” he added. “But I can tell you that from very early (in research) I began to focus on Moscow.”

Edgreen said that the affected officials have excelled in their performance and “there was constantly a Russian link.”

According to the former soldier, “they worked against Russia, focused on Russia, and they did it extremely well.”
The then-President Donald Trump (2017-2021) decided following the detection of these health incidents to suspend consular services in Havana in 2017 and minimize diplomatic staff on the island.

Havana has denied any responsibility and set up a commission of experts that found no scientific or criminal evidence that linked the symptoms to possible sonic attacks, microwaves or other deliberate action.

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The Insider, for its part, published the testimony of Mar Polymeropoulos, identified as a former operations officer in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), with assignments in places such as Baghdad and Kabul, and who suffered the symptoms related to “Havana syndrome” after a trip to Moscow in 2017.

The symptoms, according to this report, corresponded to the “Havana syndrome,” and for years Polymeropoulos had to struggle with his employer to access the medical care that his condition demanded.

60 Minutes indicated that, according to several of its informants last year, when President Joe Biden attended a North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit in Lithuania, a high-ranking official in the Pentagon became ill.

Edgreen pointed out that, in his opinion, “that indicates that there are no barriers to what Moscow will do, or who it will attack and that, if we do not face this head-on, the problem will get worse.”

A senior official of the United States Department of Defense who attended the NATO summit in Vilnius (Lithuania) in 2023 experienced strange symptoms similar to those of the so-called ‘Havana syndrome’, the Pentagon confirmed on Monday.

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“I can confirm that a senior official of the Department of Defense experienced symptoms similar to those reported in other instances,” Sabrina Singh, one of the Pentagon’s spokespersons, said on Monday during a press conference.

The official, whose identity was not revealed, was not part of the official delegation of the Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, at the NATO summit in Vilnius, but attended “separately, meetings that were part of the summit,” the spokeswoman explained.

Singh did not specify what type of symptoms the affected person suffered, citing medical privacy.