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The top brass of the CIA work on the 7th floor of headquarters in Langley, Virginia.
A place of thick carpets and heavy wood, where secrets gather like dust.
For years, what those people really thought about Havana Syndrome, or anomalous health incidents, was a mystery.
Then, in 2023, they declared there was nothing to see.
No weapon. No enemy. No proof.
Some heard clarity. Others smelled a cover-up.
I am convinced that the evidence that exists in the classified arena directly contradicts the public conclusions expressed by federal agencies as to the origin, cause, and scope of AHIs.
The timing mattered. Havana Syndrome emerged at the dawn of Trump's first term in office.
When Americans couldn't even agree on what counted as fact, Russiagate, fake news, the so-called deep state.
The country was split. Each side convinced the other was lying.
If Havana Syndrome was a weapon, maybe its real force was never the injury. Maybe it was the doubt.
Yeah, it's sort of a perfect attack in that way.
It's absolutely perfect. I know I was the victim of it, but, like, it's so good. It's so good. Perfectly executed. I mean, the whole thing.
It's like a symphony. You took someone like me off the playing field, who's worth a lot of time, money, effort, energy, and training, and all you did was point, shoot, run away, and there's no evidence of it, and you just sit back and call me crazy.
Can you watch the fire burn from across the fence because we're just fighting each other?
I mean, they don't have to do anything. We're busy yelling at each other, and we should be looking outwards.
Bravo. Brilliant. It's so good. It's so good.
In the myth of Jason and the Argonauts, the hero is facing an army of warriors conjured from the earth.
Jason throws a single rock into their ranks. Struck without knowing the source, suspicion turns inward.
Each warrior strikes the other, on and on until the whole army has defeated itself, always looking inwards instead of out.
I'm Jennifer Ford.
I'm Sam Bungi, and this is Havana Helmet Club, Episode 10, The Seventh Floor.
Adam is in a neighborhood outside Washington, D.C. around twilight on a Wednesday in November 2023.
I'm just going to go to the supermarket and grab some carrots for the dog.
Homeowners are out on their lawns blowing leaves into great piles with petrol-spewing machines.
I'm just getting my head mentally around the map here. It takes me a second to figure out.
Is this not your old, um...
I trained out here.
Yeah.
Something bad.
Yeah.
So, I'm pretty familiar. It's just been a little while.
When Adam was learning to be a CIA field agent a decade ago, he did training missions here.
Adam should be using that training in the field.
Instead, he's back here, navigating these old streets with the aid of a support dog.
And, you know, you look at where this topic sits in public today, and if you ask the common person on the street that isn't following this,
they'll say, oh, well, they didn't find anything. It's nothing. It's over.
And the building has shut this down. It's like it never existed.
There's no talk of it. There's no any support. There's no nothing. Zero.
It's like they put out that report, and then it just vanished.
He and others have been pushing for a government inquiry, but the problem has been getting a formal investigation off the ground.
Adam has come to Washington to try to force the issue.
If he can succeed in putting what he believes happened in the case of Havana syndrome on the record,
he thinks he can kick-start inquiries in the U.S. Senate and Congress.
He guides us to a little park to talk.
I'm going to tell them the facts of what happened.
What happened to you?
What happened to me? What happened to General?
Who did what, when, where, why, and how?
They get to determine if they consider that a cover-up or not.
You know, if you ask me, if the question was, do you think this was a cover-up?
Yeah, 100%.
But I'm not going to march in there and go, this was a cover-up, da-da-da.
No, I'm going to sit there and answer their questions.
And at the end of their investigation, with not just me, everyone else that will be involved or is involved,
then they can make the determination if they think it's a cover-up or not.
I'm just, I'm tired, which is probably why you're getting a more open stance on all of this.
But I'm just, I think I'm just, I'm fed up because I've spent so long over the last few weeks
going through so much information that I'd forgotten about.
And it's just made me angry again.
In preparation for this week, Adam's been compiling all the information he's gathered
since that night in Havana in 2016 that he believes makes his case.
Part of preparing for this testimony was going through my records.
And, you know, I'd forgotten how many people on both sides of the river.
Um, when you say that, you mean, like, CIs on one side of the river and the State Department's on the other side of the river.
Okay.
Um, worked against, against us.
Written cables, audio, and other material.
Details of the saga that he believes demonstrate a cover-up.
He has all this in a backpack that never leaves his side.
The same backpack he threw all his belongings into the last time he left Havana, seven years ago.
It's a long, long time.
And I, this can't define me in my life.
This is a part of it.
It's a big chapter, but this can't be what defines me.
I need to run a tinfoil hat brigade.
That's what will define me.
I will become their chief.
We'll march around.
He wants to get these investigations rolling, and then try to move on with his life.
There's rats running out of there.
I was going to say we're surrounded by rats.
There's a lot of rats out.
There's a lot of rats over here.
Yeah, I know.
It definitely takes away from the, um, charm of the...
It's a gorgeous spot.
And then you're like, well, there's a lot of rats here.
Adam has dragged himself to the Washington swamp, but the rats seem a little on the nose.
How did things get so bad between Adam and the others and the CIA?
About 18 months before Adam's trip to Washington, when we'd just started working on this story for the BBC, a series of confusing messages came out of Washington.
At the end of January 2022, the CIA briefed a small group of journalists that Havana syndrome could be explained by other medical causes.
Ten days later, in early February, there was news of another US intelligence community report.
I went to talk with Gordon Carrera, who was the BBC's security correspondent at the time.
Carrera had covered Havana syndrome since the story broke, and I wanted to know how he was squaring these two reports.
Well, well, you know what? It is odd.
To me, one plausible reason is that there are kind of still quite different opinions within the intelligence community and kind of, you know, rival camps.
And some who are, who remain quite dismissive of Havana syndrome and others who believe that there is something there.
And I feel like on this story generally, there's a lot of people with entrenched positions.
The first paper did mention a core of around two dozen cases that remained unexplained.
But it said it was very unlikely that any of it was the result of a concerted global campaign by a foreign adversary.
I felt the key takeaway was to play down the sense that there was some massive campaign going on.
So they wanted to kind of...
By a foreign...
By a foreign state, you know, that they're...
You know, in the last year, you got more and more cases coming in.
And it felt like every month you were getting, like, his case is in Vienna, his case is in Berlin, his case is in Hanoi, you know, his case is in Latin America.
And it felt like it was kind of building and building and building the volume.
And so you could imagine the kind of sense that people might have that actually, is there something really huge going on?
And I guess the message from that first CIA study was to say, no.
Calm down.
I think there was a bit of a sense in some quarters, well, maybe that's, maybe that's Havana syndrome kind of, you know, done and dusted, you know.
But then came that other report, which was from the wider intelligence community, including the CIA, FBI and NSA.
And it had a different focus.
It was focused on that small group of cases that couldn't be explained by other factors and basically said, it looks like there's something to those cases, which isn't environmental or medical or psychological or social, and could well be directed energy or perhaps ultrasound.
And that, that was, because suddenly you're back in the, well, well, you know, that's a device, you know, that's someone doing something to someone.
They'd only released the executive summary, and a good half of that was blacked out.
You can do quite a lot of interpretation with a declassified document, even where bits are classified.
Yeah.
You can see why some bits are still classified.
So there's a bit here.
Pulsed electromagnetic energy, particularly in the radio frequency, plausibly explains the core characteristics, although information can be used.
And then there's a big blacked out section.
It's very interesting.
Yeah.
Using, so just going back to that, seems like some kind of device.
Yeah, exactly.
That, that looks like what's been blacked out there is the technical details of a device.
It was all hypothetical.
And this hypothetical device didn't even need to be a weapon.
As all the American spies posted to Havana told us, Cuba was a surveillance state.
Maybe this was eavesdropping gone wrong.
So, you know, at the most malicious, you've got someone going around trying to harm deliberately U.S. spies and diplomats, you know, by, by, by hurting their brains.
Another theory is that someone is trying to carry out electronic surveillance of U.S. diplomats and spies.
And as a by-product, it's caused harm to them.
And so that's the slight distinction between a weapon and a device.
Who knows?
Device takes it both.
This week, Adam's staying in a furnished apartment in Arlington, Virginia.
It's on a lower ground floor and has one of those keys with a PIN code.
Adam's fumbling with the numbers.
Welcome to brain damage.
Adam's dressed casually.
Sneakers, a baseball cap.
The backpack he's never without slung over his shoulder.
Anything that I don't want to lose, you know, stays with me on my person.
I'm coming out here to testify and if some of the information I need is in my bag.
And I left it here and we got home and it was gone.
How devastating that would be, you know.
Yeah.
Not only is it gone for the purposes of what I'm here to do, but who took it and, you know, what are they going to do with it?
He has cameras set up around the rented apartment.
He says it's to thwart foreign intel.
We might try to mess with him while he's here, like he says they did back in Philadelphia.
Just, if there's anyone walking in or out that shouldn't be, you just have some external proof, you know.
I always travel with my own cameras.
Not a big deal, not a big footprint.
It's just an extra layer for me.
Adam is concerned about being spied on, robbed or even targeted with something while he's here.
But for everything he's doing this week, he doesn't expect his own government is going to bother him.
I don't think I'm of interest to anyone, frankly, anymore.
I think they're annoyed with me, but I think that's as far as it goes.
The information I have is dated.
I'm a dated individual.
I'm not.
I don't have the most damaging information anymore.
I always act on the premise that they're up on my phone, but again, that's the conceded notion of you're important enough for that.
I just don't think I am anymore.
I don't think I am.
Now he's picked up word about another report that's coming down the track.
The findings from a study by the National Institutes of Health.
Adam himself made just one visit to that program before deciding he didn't trust them.
He's learned they'll dismiss Havana Syndrome and point to psychogenic illness.
What a stupid game.
You know, I look at this at the grand scheme of things.
I go, the hours and hours and hours and all the money and all the time and efforts and energies towards making this go away.
And it's like, we probably could have rock solidly solved this if we took the same amount of people and effort and energy and put it towards the actual problem versus calling us the problem.
That new report did find that 40% of the patients studied met the criteria of functional neurological disorders, as in psychogenic illness.
So where are we on that whole question?
Well, it seems like everyone accepts that it has played some part in Havana Syndrome.
Adam thinks there are likely cases.
Basically, my client base is as strong as the weakest link, right?
If I introduce a case that turns out to be false, it potentially undermines the credibility of everybody else.
So I have to be very cautious in the clients I take and the advocacy that I push and the statements that I make.
For one thing, I'm only representing federal government employees.
So I am not representing civilians in that sense, non-federal employees, which I get contacted by all the time.
One of the consequences of Havana Syndrome is that it's become like a lightning rod for members of the public, who are also convinced that they are being targeted by directed energy.
Zade says people get in touch with him all the time looking for help.
For one thing, clearly these people are suffering from something.
I mean, they send me photographs of what their body looks like, and one person sent me a frickin' supposedly bone fragment of their skull in a box that I did not open and returned, because I'm like, no thank you.
They send you a bit of that.
That's what they said.
That's what the letter said.
I'm like, okay, thanks, but no thanks.
Look, I will not belittle that they're suffering from something, but I live by Occam's razor.
The simplest explanation is the best explanation, and there is no reason to believe, based on any evidence we know so far, that person X who lives in city Y in the middle of nowhere, USA-ville, is subject of Russian microwave weapons.
And quite frankly, a lot of these people come to me and they say, it's the U.S. government that's microwaving them.
Some people say it's the FedEx driver who's microwaving them.
He's heard about one theory he finds almost irresistible, that if the aim is confusion, then this is all part of the dastardly plan, to target civilians too and throw any investigation off track by muddying the waters.
Like, deliberately doing it for disinformation purposes to create this mass hysteria and notion of everybody's crazy.
I mean, it's a beautiful spy thriller theory.
And I don't know, maybe it's true, but, you know, that's, I think, it's more the work of fiction and our vivid imaginations at this point.
Zaid recognized the challenge in working out where to draw the line between genuine cases and everyone else that was now coming forward.
It's something that former State Department Medical Director Dr. Charles Rosenfarb had struggled with too.
Something happened to some people, no doubt.
Back when he was trying to figure out the scope of the problem, he says they'd been inclusive, sending everyone to UPenn's Center for Brain Injury and Repair.
But the problems began when they decided that not everyone in that group was a genuine case.
You would think people would be happy to find out that they don't have something really wrong with them.
But for whatever reason, this is a situation where people feel that they feel wronged if they're not told they have something that's serious like this.
People want a diagnosis.
Yeah.
And again, for many, and I'm not criticizing any of the patients.
It's just that I think in human nature that it becomes part of your identity, you know.
And I think in this situation, the nature of it, they are now, for better or worse, you know, Havana Syndrome victims.
Professor Simon Wesley, who investigates mass psychogenic illness cases, says there often comes a point when distrust of authority is so ingrained,
and people have built so much of their identity around one particular understanding of their illness, that that line can no longer be found.
So you've got to find an explanation that isn't stigmatizing.
And unfortunately, we're probably past that.
In so many of the episodes that go on and on and on, we've passed the point of no return.
And that's what really worries me about this particular thing, that it doesn't really matter now what causes it, because the battle lines are drawn.
So, you know, any form of kind of reason, rational discussion flies out of the window, emotions rise, and positions are taken.
And also, and then by that time, it's like looking for footprints on a beach, which has just been driven over by a tank.
It's gone, vanished, and won't return.
And, um, I personally can't see a simple way out.
It's the start of the morning rush hour, and I'm out on the street with Adam.
I'm outside his apartment, waiting for an Uber that will accommodate a dog.
We're on our way to the capital, where Adam is hoping to testify.
Out on the street, a man is berating a woman for her parking skills.
But Adam points out it's perfectly legal for your tire to touch the curb.
A little over ten years ago, Adam was a small-town police officer.
He's gone from that fraternity to the CIA, where he believed he'd found his people,
to being alone, at home, but in hostile territory.
I'm glad you're here, because if someone tries to kill me in the next 20 minutes,
at least it'll be on, uh, radio.
Yeah, that's good.
I saw you give that guy a second look there.
Yeah, yeah, I wasn't happy with him.
He's been picking up mixed signals about whether his appearance in front of Congress will go ahead.
I'd be curious to see if today actually happened.
The previous evening, after I left Adam, I got a text message...
Is this her guy?
...saying he'd been the subject of a drawn-out fight in Congress that day.
Hey, that's your service dog.
Yeah. Down.
Subtle.
If you jump on the other side.
Yeah.
Apparently, Adam has had a visit from a Congressional staff member
and learned there are people trying to stop the whole thing from going ahead.
Morning.
Hey, good morning, sir.
How are you?
Fine, thank you.
So, go on. What happened last night, then, after I left?
Um, someone came over to, um, discuss today, and it looked real, they looked really rough, frankly.
Um, so I asked what was, you know, what's going on.
They're like, well, the good news is tomorrow is likely still happening.
Well, you thought it was, you didn't know that it wasn't going to happen, yeah.
Well, I guess yesterday was just a knockdown, drag them out, screaming fights, everything,
um, in Congress to make today happen.
Because there were people trying to stop it again.
So, it's, so, it was indirectly implied that, um, the agency was trying to stop today from happening.
Whether that's true or not, I don't know.
Yeah, so you have to come prepared, but...
Yeah, you come prepared, but I may be, I may just be going and showing my dog off to everyone,
and then walk leaving.
You know, it could be a very brief, uh, endeavor, or it might go ahead as planned.
We'll see.
Adam has brushed his hair, and he's wearing a suit and tie, and another item,
that at first glance looks like a waistcoat, but is, in fact, a weighted balance vest.
Yeah, yeah.
I usually, well, you, you have been wearing a jumper, so you've not seen it.
You were wearing it yesterday?
Yeah, yeah, I wear it all the time.
When I'm here, it's just, it helps free up a bit of brain space.
Yeah, it doesn't help when it looks like a suicide vest inside.
What does it do?
It gives me a, like, if, if there's a pendulum swinging,
you know, the pendulum always stops in the center where gravity is.
It helps give me a pendulum to operate on subconsciously, so I know where the ground is.
If I, if I don't have it, I'm just kind of floating around in space.
What's this, um, pen?
Uh, it's for the Exceptional Service Medal.
It's a very inconvenient document that they've handed us, um, that says we were victims of attacks.
I bet they wish they could take that shit off me now, but they can't.
The CIA gave Adam the Exceptional Service Medallion back in 2020 for being attacked in Havana
and stepping up to bring the issue to light.
He's wearing it as a reminder of how much the CIA has changed its position.
One man's whistleblower is another's conspiracy theorist.
It seems that at one time or another, Adam has been both for the CIA.
He has his backpack with all his data.
He seems eager to pass its contents off, to get it out of his life.
It's going to the appropriate places, and then it will be destroyed on my end.
There's a lot of information that a lot of people would be upset about,
and they can be upset, but if they want to send the Bureau to come raid the house,
that's great. It's not going to exist anymore in my home.
It will exist in the hands of the people that it gets given to over this week, and that's it.
But today, he's hoping to stand in front of Congress and lay it all out.
Today is what happened, so it's documented, like, what, you know, what is the,
how did everything happen, how did it play out, what was the timeline look like,
and eventually who did what, why, when, and should they be held accountable for some of their actions.
And I guess, you know, in the context of yesterday, it's like,
why is the agency still saying that it didn't happen?
It's a great question, yeah.
Because they've put their final stamp on things,
and so I think the hope is that they can just walk, you know,
I think they tried to drop the mic and walk away,
and we're not allowing them to get away with that so easily.
Adam talks about a cover-up, but what would the CIA be hiding?
I find that it is very seldom that at least the US government can keep a real secret for very long.
Something gets out. It just ultimately does.
This is attorney Mark Zaid again.
Now, there are secrets, of course, that never get out,
and there are secrets that are kept secret for decades and decades.
I mean, if you're right, they're keeping a good secret here.
It's, yeah, it is. It's a very good secret here.
After, you know, the FBI, CIA, the Canadian Mounties,
all of the people investigating this, you know, since 2016,
why do we still not have any information on a weapon?
Yeah, and it's a great question, and it's a troubling question.
People have suggested that the government is trying to avoid spiraling compensation claims,
or to stop it taking a toll on morale at the agency.
Havana syndrome was reportedly making it harder to recruit young people to work abroad.
But one big reason that several people have suggested
is that it's because they are trying to divert attention away
from whatever America might be developing itself.
And I would not discount this yet,
that we've done the same thing to the other side.
Now, I certainly hope it wasn't for the purpose of trying to harm them,
but if it was a technology that was being utilized
to extract information from, especially, some sort of technological systems.
We, the United States, invented most of this microwave technology
in the 50s and 60s.
The odds are we were doing it too.
Directed energy is used in surveillance.
The U.S. has its own directed energy weapons program.
But it's all, as one expert described it, incredibly classified.
Why do you think they're so heavily classified?
Well, the government's spending a billion dollars a year
on weapons designed to shoot down drones.
This is Professor Kenneth Foster.
And so they're not about to explain what they're doing
to let their opponents develop countermeasures against these weapons.
The government is very secretive about its directed energy weapons
because of its tremendous military application.
Foster is the microwaves expert
that the neurologist Professor John Stone contacted
to discuss that theory of his
that some more low-key device
could have triggered a functional illness in the patients.
Foster had told Stone that, yes,
it was totally possible to have a device
that the target would feel.
In fact, Foster knows firsthand what it feels like
to be the target of a microwave beam.
He's worked in the field since the 1970s.
Back then, it was his job to look after
the safety of Navy officers working with microwaves.
He studied the fray effect,
those sounds that radar operators reported hearing inside their heads.
You didn't try it on yourself, right?
Sure, I did.
Of course.
And I tried it.
My commanding officer came in,
and I stuck his head in the microwave beam, too.
Foster said he and his buddies used to take turns
putting their heads in the path of the microwaves,
all in the name of research.
What does it sound like?
When I put my head in,
it sounded as if one would experience
by putting a head underwater
and banging two sharp objects together
in a very sharp, high-frequency sound.
Foster had been a sceptic on Havana syndrome.
He was the one who declared,
you might as well say,
little green men from Mars
were throwing darts of energy.
The U.S. military has a high-powered microwave weapon
used for crowd control,
but it causes no permanent harm,
and it's also so enormous,
it has to be mounted on the back of a truck.
Most of the microwave weapons we know about
are used to target drones, not people.
But Foster said,
the truth is,
there's a huge amount that we just don't know.
The government releases almost nothing at all
about possible microwave effects
because microwave-directed energy weapons
are so incredibly classified.
And since this whole Havana syndrome thing
is, for better or worse,
tied at the waist with the directed energy weapons,
even though there may be no real connection,
that prevents people like me
from finding reliable information.
Several microwaves experts that we spoke to
didn't want to talk on the record
for fear of losing government contracts,
or they would only speculate on rumors.
It means whatever the U.S. government knows
about the feasibility of a device
that could cause Havana syndrome,
including whether America has one itself,
lies in this black hole.
The issue of anomalous health incidents
or unidentified health incidents
are a perfect example
of where the system is broken.
Mark Zade, the whistleblower attorney.
It is an indication of where the agencies
and the U.S. government
has sacrificed the individual employees
for whatever greater good
they think they are protecting.
What struck us most is how little has changed.
Back in the 1920s,
scientific American reporters
were chasing rumors of ray guns.
One story claimed a prototype
had blown up a taxi in Paris,
another that a beam could wipe out an army
without leaving a trace.
A hundred years on,
people say the same about Havana syndrome.
The proof?
Always just out of reach.
It was like to tip in cash before they rate you on Uber.
Back in Washington,
our Uber has left us on Independence Avenue
and we're approaching the West Lawn of the Capitol.
The brilliant white buildings,
familiar from countless movies
and also riot footage,
look surreal,
like set dressing.
This guy showed up with a dog.
I started talking about the CIA.
I know.
So, it's a big first step for the investigations,
but it feels kind of,
I don't know,
it feels nice to be the first one in, I guess.
It kind of feels fitting.
Why does it feel good or fitting to be the first?
I just think that,
not that I was the first to be hit in all of this,
but I think I was the first to certainly raise the alarm
and to keep fighting.
I guess that's why, you know,
I was named Patient Zero by the press for so many years,
is that they all thought I was the first one.
I mean, I wasn't.
I was just the first one to fight and to make it public.
What I'm most pleased about
is that this will be written forever.
It kind of lets me close some doors mentally
and knowing that I've kind of done everything
I've set out to do, hopefully,
in doing this.
So, yeah, we'll see.
We'll see how it all turns out.
During this visit,
I've seen how much a full day takes out of Adam.
He takes naps,
but even then,
he can be fine one moment
and the next,
it's as if he's being drugged.
So, do you have,
do you have, like,
techniques and stuff
if you start getting tired with it?
I'm assuming this will be really taxing.
Yeah, I've got,
you know,
I've got five-hour energies
and a bunch of shit caffeine in it
and, I mean,
this could be,
like, say,
it could be 20 minutes,
could be four or five hours,
I don't know.
Yeah.
Or nothing.
Yeah.
Might just be a,
go look at the decor.
We reach the side entrance
of the Capitol building.
I'm just trying to blend it.
All right, I'll let you go here.
Okay.
Good luck.
A woman in a navy suit and heels
and a lanyard
appears out of the Capitol
and guides Adam and his dog inside.
I stick around
to see if he'll re-emerge.
He doesn't.
Today, it seems,
is going ahead after all.
But what about Cuba's day in court?
Though the CIA determined
no state actor
had attacked its people in Havana,
there's been no public statement
about their decision
to abandon the Cuba post,
kicking off a mass exodus
and unravelling the U.S.-Cuba thaw.
Ambassador Jose Cabana
says that as soon as Havana Syndrome
got into the hands
of some Washington politicians,
it became America's weapon
against Cuba.
He wonders
if they did genuinely believe
that Cuba had attacked
either their people
or at the very least
failed to protect them.
Why not go after
the other countries
where this had happened
in the same way?
Why, if you had
so many people
living in so many countries
feeling the same symptoms,
your only reaction
is against Cuba?
The only people
the State Department
severed the ties
was with Cuba.
Why?
Do they have any explanation
why they did that?
Why they didn't do it
with foreign countries?
When Havana Syndrome emerged,
as far as the Cubans
were concerned,
it was a case of
here we go again.
I have said as a joke
several times
that when I retire,
I will probably write
a book on arguments
that the Americans
has put forward
to damage
the bilateral relationship.
Every time.
It's like a routine.
Strict sanctions imposed
in retribution
for Havana Syndrome
remain in place.
Biden waited
until he was almost
out of office
to remove Cuba
from the state sponsor
of Terror List.
Then, on day one
of his return
to the presidency,
Trump put them back on.
And it has
serious implications
for Cuba.
It has serious implications
for the United States.
This is retired CIA analyst
Fulton Armstrong.
It is for you too.
Because if you come here
in the United States
on an ESTA visa waiver
and you go to Cuba,
you can't come in
on an ESTA ever again
for the rest of your life
because you've gone
to a terrorist
supporting country.
Armstrong says
the idea that Cuba
had been behind attacks
on U.S. diplomats
never made sense to him.
Even if you do it
like a policeman
and say,
OK, well,
we have a body,
we don't have a weapon,
do we have a motive?
There was no motive.
The Cubans,
especially at that time,
wanted to be very careful
not to shake up
the bilateral relationship
because they knew
that Trump was coming in
looking for a dog to kick
and they didn't want
to be the dog.
He says a Russia connection
didn't make much sense
to him either.
He thought they would
likely be happy about
America and Cuba
making up
since it would make Cuba
less financially
dependent on them.
The Russians had no motive
at all
to sour
Cuban-American
normalization.
They were huge proponents
of normalization.
But if they were doing it,
which is a huge if,
you're saying
that the Cuban government
and the Chinese government
don't know
their own operating turf?
That's a stretch.
As an analyst,
Armstrong spent his career
weighing up intelligence
and possible scenarios.
His guiding principle...
Don't trick yourself
and fall in love
with one particular
interpretation
and scenario.
He worries that
that's what's happened here.
Once people were seeing
this as an attack,
they were on a single-minded
hunt for a weapon.
The biggest beef
isn't that people
politicized it
and that opportunists
in the Trump administration
used it
to shut down
normalization.
but the real problem
was that
if you look for
the wrong thing,
you will not see
the right thing.
But what was
the right thing?
No one could decide.
Was it a weapon?
Was it surveillance?
Some strange
Cuban intelligence mission
that played out
against unfamiliar
and hostile surroundings,
where deafening crickets
get mistaken
for electronic weapons.
Did people's symptoms
trip over
into a functional illness
at some point?
so long ago
that it's impossible now
to see the join.
As Simon Wesley said,
it's like looking
for footprints in the sand
that have been
driven over by a tank.
Adam's worry
was that everyone
had to stop looking.
Watching him
and his dog
entering the colossal
Capitol building
drove home
just what he was up against.
Would he convince others
of what he so strongly believed?
And if so,
would anyone be willing
to do something about it?
It was the CIA
who had pulled out of Cuba
and triggered a mass exodus.
The CIA
who had directed the patients
to a brain injury clinic,
telling those doctors
that they'd been exposed
to something.
Now they were coming out
and saying definitively,
no attack,
no foreign actor,
no weapon.
Many people told us,
you can't easily roll back
a diagnosis like that.
Like the diplomats
exposed to Moscow's signal
or even the young soldiers
abandoned at the Bay of Pigs,
the Havana Syndrome patients
were collateral damage
in a fiasco.
It was down to them
to pick up the pieces
or to try to work out
the meaning behind it all.
I thought about Dr. Andrews.
He was the CIA doctor
who was the first
to take Adam's cable seriously,
only to wind up
becoming sick himself
after travelling to Havana
to help.
He told me about
what life is like for him now
while making tea
in his kitchen.
Problems with balance,
headaches, nausea,
visual problems
are still a little better
but still bad enough
that I have trouble reading,
using a computer
for prolonged times.
It really impairs
a lot of things
that you want to do.
Can I get through a day?
I'm kind of getting
through today.
How do you think
this day now,
talking for several hours
will affect you?
I'll have a headache tonight.
The nausea is already
building up.
I won't be able
to focus at all
and tomorrow
I'll be exhausted.
It didn't make you
reconsidered
or consider not doing it?
Yeah.
It's like,
why bother?
I know I'm gonna get sick
but you have some duty
to counter
some of the noise out there
that this is all
a bunch of baloney.
You need to step out there
and say,
excuse me,
but there is something here
that can't just be written off.
To these patients,
it seems like
that's exactly
what the CIA
are now trying
to do with them.
To just look the other way
and hope it all dies down.
Have you always
kind of remained
steadfast in it
or have you ever
doubted yourself?
You know,
in any disease,
is there also
a psychological component?
When you have
a chronic condition,
when you can't work,
when you're disabled,
does that also
then affect
your symptoms?
Of course it does.
That doesn't mean
you made it up.
Back in Washington,
four hours later,
Adam does reappear
a few blocks away,
having used
the underground trolley system
connecting
the government buildings.
How are you doing?
I always forget
about the topography here.
Adam seems suddenly energized,
as alert and animated
as I've ever seen him.
It's funny,
if you wear a suit,
you can kind of go
anywhere around here.
They don't stop you.
It's like,
hello.
I don't think
you should be
letting me through here.
In the Capitol,
Adam had been put
in a room
with court reporters
and lawyers
who took him through
his version of events
beat by beat.
At the end,
Adam signed a document
saying he wouldn't
discuss anything
that had been said.
Let's see if we can
find a bench in here.
Way back when,
when I was having
secret meetings
with intelligent staff members,
I was meeting them
on these benches.
We were letting them
know what was happening
because the building
was lying to them
or wasn't being forthcoming.
I would say lying
through a mission.
Those were off-book meetings,
ones they didn't
want a paper trail of.
Now he's delivered
his story for the record.
So how do you feel
about what you just did?
Um,
I will say that
I'm glad we did it.
I don't know
what they're going
to do with it.
I don't know
what the plan is,
um,
but now it's
officially on the record
so people can use it,
access it,
manipulate it,
whatever they want
to do with it,
um,
going forward,
but it's present now.
It's something
that people can refer back to.
Adam still has his backpack,
but he's passed on
whatever information
it was carrying,
and he seems
somehow lighter.
I just don't feel like
there's anything left
for me to push
for anymore,
you know?
And so
it felt like
our big push
was getting it
to where we're at now,
and I just don't know
that there's much
we can do to impact.
It feels like
the last piece
of the puzzle to me.
Like, I just kind of
have that voice
deep down that's like,
okay, that's it.
You can,
you can let it go now.
You feel like you're done.
It feels like I'm done.
Yeah.
So that's it, yeah.
That's all she wrote.
The Congressional Inquiry
eventually heard
from 48 witnesses
and received
3,400 pages
of whistleblower documents.
The findings amounted
to a vindication
of some of Adam's claims.
They concluded
that the intelligence community
attempted to shape
their 2023 assessment,
cherry-picking facts
to create
a politically palatable
conclusion
that was dubious
at best
and misleading
at worst.
The inquiry said
intelligence had placed
hurdles
on who could testify
at the inquiry
and said that
those who spoke
did so despite
fear of retaliation.
Congressman Rick Crawford
vowed that the report
was just the beginning
of a fight
to get better answers
from the intelligence community.
If they didn't outright
declare a cover-up
over Havana Syndrome,
they came close.
Adam had done
what he set out to do.
But if he thought
it was over,
he was kidding himself.
Around the world,
courts are clogged
with people
who tried to fight back,
against a bad loan,
an unfair dismissal,
and found the system
wouldn't help them.
Most give up.
The ones who don't
can get dragged
into an endless spiral,
where one injustice
breeds another.
Adam and the Havana
Helmet Club
are formidable,
but they're up against
forces far more powerful,
with ways to stop them
that they can't yet imagine.
We did catch up
with Adam
one more time recently.
He's now putting his faith
in the mercurial team
of the new
Trump administration,
with its revolving door
of staff.
But he says
a major announcement
is in the works.
There has never been
the mountain
of evidence
that I know
currently exists.
The truth will prevail.
We've always stood on that.
Because the one thing
that has never changed
in all these years
is the truth.
And we'll keep pushing
on that
until it finally comes out.
He's talking about
irrefutable evidence
of something that can
definitively explain
his symptoms.
He says the question
that remains
is whether anyone
is willing
to bring this evidence
to light.
you know,
they can lie
and cover up
and do everything
they want,
but it will not hold up
to the scrutiny of time.
And I've got all the time
in the world.
From BBC Radio 4,
this is Havana Helmet Club.
Listen to the latest episodes
first on BBC Sounds.
If you want to be notified
when the latest episode drops,
make sure you're subscribed
to Havana Helmet Club
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and have push notifications
turned on.
Havana Helmet Club
is written and presented
by Sam Bunke
and Jennifer Ford
and edited by Guy Crossman.
Our story editor
is Mike Olive
and our producer
is Larry Ryan.
Jesse Baker
is our editorial advisor.
Additional editing
by Simon Pearce.
Original music
by Tom Pintons.
Sound design
by Meryn Royards
and mix
by Joe McDonnell.
Commissioning editor
for the BBC
is Dylan Haskins.
Assistant commissioners
are Sarah Green
and Natasha Johansson.
Havana Helmet Club
is a Yarn production
for BBC Radio 4
and BBC Sounds.
Script advisor
is John Mullen.
Archive help
from Miriam Walsh
and Helen Carr.
With special thanks
to Gabby Hornsby
and Seema Karner.
Thanks also to
Media Milk,
Ed Augustin,
Michelle McCafferty
and Stephanie Ford.
And special thanks
to Ronan Percival,
James McSweeney,
Conan Fagan,
Kieran Mooney,
Ronan Lavery,
Hugh O'Donnell
and Stuart O'Sullivan.
Havana Helmet Club
was edited
by Guy Crossman.
He's the editor
we mentioned
in the first episode
who had a glass shatter
in his hand
one afternoon
in Shabba's bush.
Guy died in June.
He was a good friend
and a joy to work with
and he's sorely missed.
In today's digital world,
it's easier than ever
to invade someone's life
and far harder to escape.
Anyone determined enough
to do harm
can find a way to do harm.
I'm Carol Cadwallader,
an investigative journalist.
In this podcast,
I follow the story
of Hannah
whose life
was turned upside down
by an anonymous stalker.
I no longer know
who I can trust.
What began
as one woman's nightmare
became a chilling investigation
into deception,
control
and the faceless power
of the internet.
Stalked.
Listen on BBC Sounds.