In late 2017, it seemed that the problem had been contained.
All non-essential staff had been pulled out of Cuba.
The CIA station in Havana was indefinitely shut.
The U.S. government had sent a harsh message to the Cubans,
expelling several of their diplomats from the United States.
Meanwhile, those Americans affected are getting treatment.
But then, in a matter of months, fresh cables arrive in Washington,
reporting eerily similar instances facing CIA officers and diplomats abroad.
The Havana syndrome, it seemed, was no longer limited to Havana.
This thing, whatever it is, is spreading.
I'd have American friends of mine in New Hampshire, you know, say like,
oh, Mark, you're in that Guangzhou place or something like that.
How is it over there? Are there like donkey carts?
I was like, you need to come over and see this.
These are more developed cities than, you know, American cities.
From an engineering perspective and stuff,
to see how they pretty much built that new city of Guangzhou,
I mean, it was super impressive.
Mark Lenzi's been stationed in southern China for just over a year,
working at the U.S. consulate in Guangzhou,
a huge metropolis just north of Hong Kong.
He's an engineer with diplomatic security.
Their job is to safeguard diplomats and their communications in foreign countries.
He's the guy making sure none of the diplomats' homes or offices are bugged
and that their computers aren't hacked.
Mark's enjoying his time.
The only downside to living here is the air quality.
You won't believe the stuff that...
Sometimes the tint of the smog would be like this weird green tint.
But after a while, Mark starts to notice something else.
It was November of 2017 when we noticed a distinct increase in headaches
and also a corresponding decrease in our sleep.
And also the kids' bloody noses.
But at first, Mark and his wife think that what their children are experiencing
is a bad reaction to the city's smog.
But as 2017 turned into 2018,
my most distressing symptom for me that I couldn't ascribe to the smog
was short-term memory loss.
Then he starts hearing rumors at work.
His co-workers are saying that one of their diplomats
has just been medevaced out of the country.
And it's around the same time that Mark notices that his next-door neighbor,
who also worked at the consulate, is missing.
I haven't seen her for a long time.
From his perspective, she's gone without a trace.
My leadership is acting really weird with me about things.
But I'm starting to kind of connect the dots here.
Like, wait a second, what's going on here?
I'm John Leanderson.
And I'm Adam Entis.
From Vice World News, this is Havana Syndrome.
Episode 5
Anyone, Anywhere, At Any Time
By the end of 2017,
if you were stationed at a U.S. embassy
in any country other than Cuba,
you may not have even realized that there was any reason for concern.
But just a few months later,
people started to get sick in China.
I didn't know about Guangzhou until months later.
I heard about it from congressional sources that were briefed on it.
I started reaching out to the victims via a lawyer
that represents many of them.
Mark Lenzi was one of the first ones who responded to me,
and he had a real story to tell.
Mark found himself on the front lines
of the first major outbreak of possible cases outside of Havana.
It was not a situation he foresaw.
Not at all, actually.
Or at least what the little information I heard about Cuba
or something like that, no way.
It would not, especially in China, no.
I mean, absolutely not.
I've worked in more than 70 countries around the world
with the State Department, you know, Afghanistan.
I've been to Iraq, Chad, places like this.
So really kind of some tough countries.
I've been, let's say, pushed around before in my work.
I've done some pushing back.
That's kind of the nature of the work.
Or you said you got pushed around.
Can you talk about any of that?
Not in detail too much.
What I do as a security engineering officer,
it's not really a traditional kind of diplomat job.
We work a lot with very, let's say, specialized equipment.
I was always interested in kind of technology.
You know, James Bond, you know, tools and stuff like this growing up.
Mark grew up watching movies where secret agents
went around zapping enemy spies with ray guns.
This led to him studying engineering
and then getting a job with the State Department.
This was kind of a good way to combine the traveling
and cutting-edge technological toys, let's say,
that the U.S. government uses.
So that's why I wanted to...
Basically, Mark prevents outsiders
from infiltrating embassies and consulates.
So it might be setting up alarm systems
within, let's say, U.S. Embassy The Hague,
or it might be looking for foreign countries
trying to commit technical espionage
against U.S. Embassy The Hague.
You ever find a bug?
No, I'm not going to talk about that.
Many of the victims that I've talked to over the years
of reporting on this
have been circumspect and reluctant to point fingers.
I've often had to slowly draw them out,
sometimes over years,
before they would talk to me.
But Mark was different.
It starts in his home.
His apartment is in Tower 7,
a giant building in Guangzhou
that houses a lot of consular staff.
Mark and his wife start hearing these strange sounds.
These sounds, again,
were like nothing that we had ever heard before,
kind of like a ball bearing bouncing on glass,
kind of this high-pitched sound.
Of all the people we've talked to,
Mark's description of the sound
is by far the most specific.
You had like that ball bearing
in a six-foot diameter steel metal funnel,
and the sound that would make us
that gets progressively faster
down towards the bottom.
It's Mark's wife who hears the sounds first.
She's in bed one night when...
My wife's startled awake with the headache,
hears that sound,
and says like,
what the hell could be causing that?
Well, maybe it's our neighbor upstairs.
So she texts our neighbor.
Like, are you dropping some weird,
like, ball bearings,
like, on the floor?
I don't know how you're doing that sound,
but like...
Mark's neighbor texts his wife back
a little while later,
and she's like,
there's no one in that room above you.
No one's been in that room for,
you know, eight hours.
After that, my neighbor
kind of treated my wife
like a little bit like,
you're kind of hearing these strange sounds,
texting me at 11 o'clock at night
after your kid's in bed,
and you're in bed,
and about these strange sounds.
I was like, what the hell?
But then he notices other things.
His kids start waking up every morning
with bloody noses.
Remember that Tony,
the first CIA officer
to report getting Havana syndrome in Cuba,
told us that he had a bloody nose
so intense that it soaked through his pillow.
Mark and his wife
keep getting awful headaches.
They start popping aspirin
like they were Tic Tacs.
We were definitely taking
a lot more aspirin.
In fact, she bought, like,
a huge jar,
if you know, 500 tablets of aspirin,
and I split that
because I was taking it at work,
I was taking it at home
and stuff like that.
And so now,
Mark's coming in late to work,
calling in sick.
His job performance starts to suffer.
An important part of the job
is memorizing security codes
to let him or his bosses
into restricted areas
throughout the consulate,
like entire floors of the building
that are off-limits.
And Mark usually has dozens
of these memorized.
But now,
when he tries to get into
these restricted areas
and has to type the right code
into the keypad,
his mind goes blank.
I thought that maybe
I had, like,
early onset of Alzheimer's.
That's kind of what I thought.
Because he's forgetting
even simpler things.
One day,
when he's installing cable
with another technician,
he tries to ask for a tool
that he's used for years,
but suddenly he can't
remember the name.
And the word I was looking for
was water pump pliers.
It was like one of these
awkward moments,
and he's like,
you okay, man?
But he bailed me out, luckily,
and he said,
oh, well, you're over 40 now.
I go, yeah, yeah, yeah,
welcome to the club, man.
It's in the middle of Mark
experiencing all of these
strange symptoms
that he hears that his neighbor,
who also works at the consulate,
is gone.
Then he finds out
that she was actually medevaced
for a serious medical emergency.
Mark and his neighbor
weren't close,
but he feels that he must
talk to her.
Maybe she can help him
make sense of what
he's going through.
After some back and forth,
he gets her on the phone.
At the time,
she's actually at
the University of Pennsylvania
with some of the victims
from Cuba.
She said,
why are you calling me?
And I said,
well, I wanted to let you know
that my wife and I
are over the last
couple months.
He tells her about
their symptoms.
She's like,
okay, that's it.
I'm going to stop you
right there.
Those same symptoms
that you just described to me,
that's exactly what I had.
When Mark tells her
that he and his family
are still living
in their apartment,
she kind of freaks out.
She goes,
Mark,
you need to get them
out right now.
I'm surprised you're
even still in that apartment.
I said,
well, they're not
telling us anything.
And then she says to him,
do you know why
I'm back here?
And I was like,
no, they're not telling us.
He's like,
I'm back here.
I was diagnosed
with brain injury,
the same thing
that was going on in Cuba.
While all of this
is happening to Mark
in China,
the U.S. government
is still struggling
to figure out
what's going on.
The FBI's
Behavioral Analysis Unit
had started to examine
the Havana cases.
I got a tip
that this FBI unit
was working on it.
Soon thereafter,
I broke the news
that they had come
to the conclusion
that this was psychogenic,
meaning that the FBI unit
believed that nothing real
had happened to them.
After my article came out,
a number of people
got in touch with me.
Victims,
State Department officials,
the doctors at UPenn.
They were all pissed.
How could the FBI unit
reach this conclusion
without talking
to any of the victims?
Some of these people
were so distraught
that I was worried
that they were
potentially suicidal.
Regardless of the FBI assessment,
Havana Syndrome
just kept spreading.
Around the same time
that Mark first gets sick,
a senior CIA officer
comes down with the symptoms
in Moscow.
The events in Moscow
and Guangzhou
weren't made public
right away,
and my reporting
leads me to think
that those were
the first incidents
reported outside of Cuba.
But of course,
there could be others
that we don't know about yet.
A pattern was yet
to be detected,
and inside the government,
the new cases
weren't really
getting much attention.
There was a lot
of confusion
about what Havana Syndrome
even was,
or if it was even real.
It looked like maybe
this would never get solved.
It was going to be
Bigfoot, UFOs,
the Havana Syndrome.
It wasn't a priority.
But there were
a few people in government,
many of whom
were cold warriors,
who were dying
to get to the bottom of it,
and were frustrated
that nobody could
give them any answers.
And do you guys
need anything,
cords, blah, blah, blah?
No, I just think
the only thing
that we're going to ask
everyone in the room
to do is to, like,
probably turn off
their cell phones.
But that's not going to happen?
No, it will.
It will.
I believe that the
ambassadors is on silent.
It depends on the ring,
though.
Is it a cool ring?
No, it is not a cool ring.
I can guarantee you that.
Ambassador, John Lee Anderson.
Hi, how are you?
Nice to meet you.
They just want you
to say your name,
and, you know,
I was national security advisor
or something like that.
I'm John Bolton.
I was a national security advisor
during the Trump administration.
The best time of your life?
Except when he was
wishing me dead
from COVID-19.
Bolton was President Trump's
third national security advisor
in just over a year.
But he's served
in every Republican
presidential administration
going back to Reagan.
Is John Bolton
the most dangerous man
in the world?
He's got leaders
around the globe
terrified he could trigger
a full-scale battle.
He was the ambassador
to the U.N.
under George W. Bush.
He has a reputation
of a bit of a bomb thrower.
An institution
he didn't particularly
believe in.
I started in April of 2018,
and just a few weeks,
I think, before that,
there had been reports
of similar attacks in China.
In his second year in office,
Trump chooses Bolton
to be his national security advisor.
Soon thereafter,
he's briefed
on the latest developments
in the Havana Syndrome mystery.
Bolton forms a strong opinion
about the situation
pretty quickly.
Certainly from all
outward appearances,
it was an attack
on American personnel,
first in Cuba,
then in China.
And, you know,
we can't tolerate that.
He starts poking around,
asks his staff
to start pulling together
any inside information.
But to his surprise,
there isn't much.
In terms of your sense
of the prioritization
given to this
by the intelligence community,
what was your sense
of the way they viewed this?
I didn't sense
that they thought
it was much of a priority.
He starts pushing
for more to be done.
You can't say to Gina Haspel,
the CIA director,
I need you to, like,
double the resources on this.
You can say a lot of things.
Whether the bureaucracy responds
is a different story.
I don't command anybody
outside the relatively
small NSC staff.
Bolton starts raising
his concerns
at meetings he's having
with other principals
in government.
And what Bolton learns
is that even though
the FBI, the CIA,
and the State Department
are all investigating
Havana Syndrome,
no one is making
much progress.
Which is understandably
pretty frustrating for him
and his top advisor
at the National Security Council.
So just basically
say your name and then...
Okay.
I'm Charles Kupperman.
I was a deputy
National Security Advisor
from January 2008.
2019 until the end
of September of 2019.
Kupperman and Bolton
go way back.
They're both cold warriors,
anti-communist types.
Since the beginning
of his political career
in the late 1970s,
Kupperman has been focused
on national security,
particularly the threat
posed by Russia.
And so when he comes back
to the White House
in 2018
to join the Trump administration,
his focus is on ensuring
that we are better equipped
militarily than our adversaries.
There was a great deal
of interest on the part
of Ambassador Bolton
that we need to stay ahead
of the technology curve
and the threat curve
in technology.
So we put together
a team that would look
far out as to
what other technologies
might we pay attention to
that create threats
against the United States
and our allies.
One of the first tasks
his team takes on
is trying to figure out
what's causing
Havana Syndrome.
With limited information,
they use a process
of elimination
to rule out
potential causes.
They land on a theory
that Havana Syndrome
is caused by a weapon.
As for what kind of weapon,
they think it's one
that uses pulsed
microwave radiation.
And he came up
with a very interesting
set of conclusions.
Primarily a pulsed
microwave device
could cause the kind
of damage that
individuals were experiencing.
We'll get deeper
into how this kind
of weapon,
if it exists,
might work
in a later episode.
But for now,
all you need to know
is that it's a weapon
that supposedly
uses microwave energy,
similar to how
your home microwave works.
But the thing is,
this kind of weapon
is more theory
than reality.
Pulsed microwave weapons
have never been used
on a battlefield
that we know of.
Still,
when Kupperman
hears his team's theory,
he has an immediate
emotional reaction.
Angry.
Absolute anger.
You know,
if we're going
to negotiate
with our adversaries
and they're not
going to follow
even the most basic
international norms,
we need to change
our lenses
and look at these
countries as enemies,
not as competitors.
The enemies are enemies
and there's no difference
between what's being done
in a state of war
and attacking
American citizens.
Kupperman concludes
that the U.S.
is under siege
by a foreign adversary
and something needs
to be done about it.
They are mortified
to this day
that I sent this email.
Not because
everything in it
was 100% true
and factual.
It's because
a U.S. diplomat
is using terms like
lied to
and cover up.
That's after the break.
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In early 2018,
Mark Lindsay
is still experiencing
all these intense symptoms
in Guangzhou.
When I evacuated us
from that apartment,
the headaches get
a little bit better
for my wife and I.
So after he finds out
that his neighbor
is getting treatment
back in the States
at the University of Pennsylvania,
he's upset.
His bosses know
that he's also been sick
and that his family
has been sick.
So what do they know
that he doesn't know?
Do they know
what's put his family
at risk?
And if so,
why haven't they
done anything for them?
Why haven't they
moved him
out of Tower 7?
He's worried
that the longer
they stay,
the worse they'll get.
He starts asking
more questions,
but gets no clear answers.
One day,
he corners
one of his bosses
at the consulate.
I said,
what the hell?
That's my neighbor's apartment.
Don't you care about that?
She was medevaced back
because of a brain injury
and you weren't
going to tell me that?
He's like,
I didn't know
that you were neighbors
and I don't care.
Mark's a bit of a hothead
and his anger
is a potential problem
for his bosses.
He's a volcano
that's about to erupt.
But Mark feels like
he's being gaslit
and that he needs
to do something
before any more
of his colleagues
get hurt.
So on May 27,
2018,
he writes
a really lengthy email.
It's two Guangzhou Americans,
which is about 180,
at the time,
185 Americans.
And I cc'd Terry Branstad,
the ambassador in Beijing.
Friends, colleagues,
many of you know me
from organizing football games
with the Marines
or dissing Cornell
during Thursday street hockey.
He describes
what his family
has been going through.
I would also encourage
children who have
had to play,
who have had play dates
with Elise and Tommy,
those are my kids,
at our apartment
to get evaluated as well.
Sorry,
when I talk about
hey kids,
that's...
He doesn't just
warn his colleagues
about their health,
he takes things
a step further.
Over the past two months,
you have been poorly served
by leadership
at U.S. Consulate Guangzhou,
Embassy Beijing,
and from state leadership
in Washington.
An attempted cover-up
has taken place...
This is a stunning accusation
for an active diplomat
in-country
to accuse State Department
leadership of a cover-up,
and so publicly accusing
the American government
of a cover-up,
which it denied.
We asked the State Department
about Mark's story.
They told us that
due to privacy concerns
and for security reasons,
they do not discuss
specific individuals
or events.
Ultimately,
my reporting suggests
that over a dozen
U.S. officials
and their family members
were medically evacuated
from China,
including Mark Lenzi
and his family.
I've spoken to a number
of them,
and for the most part,
they're pissed,
because even though
they were eventually evacuated,
they feel like
they should have been told
sooner that they were
in danger
if the State Department
knew people
were getting sick.
Some of these diplomats,
like Mark,
even believe
that consulate officials
in Guangzhou
intentionally lied to them
and tried to cover up
how much danger
they were in.
I have my own assessment,
which is that
the State Department
was trying to keep things
hush-hush in Guangzhou
because they didn't know
what to make
of the China cases,
and they were trying
to buy themselves
some time
to figure out
what to do.
They didn't want
to be pressured
into a confrontation
with China
without hard information.
The trade relationship
with China
is critical,
and the diplomatic mission
there is one of our
most important
in the world.
They couldn't just use
the same playbook
they followed in Cuba.
They would be playing
with fire.
I can understand
why Mark sent the email,
because he was genuinely
concerned for his
and his family's safety,
and about the safety
of his colleagues.
But I can also understand
why American officials
were unhappy with him,
because the last thing
they wanted
was a panic
and press attention,
which is what they got.
Well, it was frustrating,
obviously,
but this is not a question
of believing
in the deep state.
I'm not saying
that at all.
John Bolton
doesn't see what happened
in China
as a cover-up.
My conclusion
toward the end
of my tenure
at the NSC
was that basically
the docs
in the CIA
and the State Department
just didn't believe
what the people
were telling them.
And if you just think
there's nothing
there there,
then that explains
why a bureaucracy
doesn't move.
This was a situation
where they said,
we don't know.
So you can pound
on somebody
as much as you want,
and if they keep saying,
we don't know,
you can't say
that they're lying.
They may actually
not know.
Regardless of not
knowing what it is,
Bolton comes up
with his own theories
of who might be
behind Havana Syndrome.
Initially,
before the China
cases emerged,
I remember us
having a conversation
in which you thought
China could be
the culprit here.
Why did you think that,
and why did you
have a revision
in your personal assessment
that more likely
it's the Russians?
My first feeling
was that it was
the Russians
because the first incident
had taken place
in Cuba.
And I didn't think
it was the Cubans.
I thought it was
the Russians
when the second
we heard
was in China.
I thought,
well, maybe that's
the Russians
playing around there too.
In a way,
maybe a false flag
operation
to get us
to suspect the Chinese.
Bolton isn't alone
in his thinking.
Because of the
historically close ties
between the Cubans
and Russians,
many assumed
that the thawing
of relations
between the U.S.
and Cuba
was bound
to ruffle feathers.
Remember,
Russia and Cuba
remain close.
And with President Putin's
increasingly hostile
relationship
of the West
ramping up,
I'd been hearing
from sources
that Putin
had been making
deliberate overtures
to keep the Cubans
closer and to expand
his spying capabilities
on the island.
There's another
very big piece
of circumstantial evidence
here.
For decades,
the Russian state
and the USSR
before it
experimented
with microwave technology,
the kind of tech
that Bolton's theme
thought was perhaps
behind Havana syndrome.
We'll go deeper
into this
in our next episode.
So there was
this belief
that Russia
was behind this,
in which case
the false flag
operation makes sense,
attacking people
in China
to make it look
like the Chinese
were involved.
This is exactly
the kind of thing
the Russian government
has done for years.
They try and confuse
and distract.
And this is where
you might assume
that Bolton,
as national security
advisor,
goes to his boss,
the president,
and says something like,
we're under attack,
we need to do something.
But that wasn't the case.
Because we thought
the most likely culprit
was the Russians,
there wasn't really
any point in talking
to Trump about it
because it would have
meant explaining
that almost certainly
with at least
the tacit approval
of Vladimir Putin,
the Russians
were attacking Americans.
At this point,
Trump has been vocal
in denying reports
that Russia
had interfered
on his behalf
in the 2016 election.
So anything involving
Putin or Russia
is already super sensitive.
And Trump is also
very suspicious
of the CIA
and dismissive
of any of their findings.
One thing that I concluded
fairly early was
there were only
so many things
you could put on
his radar screen
at any one time.
Because the Trump
administration
was so chaotic,
maybe we've grown
accustomed to stories
like this.
Still,
it's shocking to me
that a sitting
national security advisor
wouldn't tell his boss,
the president,
about his suspicions
that Russia was
attacking U.S. citizens.
This is an NBC News
special report.
Well, there were cheers
outside Buckingham Palace
here as Marine One
elegantly swooped down
behind Buckingham Palace there.
An entourage
of the royal family
who will meet
the president's.
At the end of John Bolton's
first year serving
in the Trump administration,
Havana syndrome seemed
to mostly affect diplomats
and spies who were abroad
in places with governments
hostile to the United States
like Cuba, Russia,
and China.
Bolton and Kupperman
themselves didn't know
any of the victims
personally.
But that was about to change.
In London,
the president landed
in the U.K.
a few hours ago.
He will be received
this morning
by Queen Elizabeth.
In June of 2019,
Bolton and his team
were in London
for a state visit,
staying at the same
ritzy hotel
as almost everyone else
from the White House
delegation.
And over the course
of a couple days,
two of Bolton's
own staff members
reported incidents
that sounded
eerily familiar.
What was your reaction
when you heard
that these two people
were affected like this?
Given the location,
I took it to mean
that somebody had targeted
the hotel,
knowing that that's
where pretty much
everybody on the U.S.
delegation was staying.
I guess what I thought
was thereafter
White House personnel.
I've been told
not just by Bolton,
but by other officials
in the U.S. government
that this was
a pivotal moment.
It was a wake-up call
at the White House.
It suggested that
anyone could be targeted
anywhere in the world.
And so, of course,
we wanted to visit
the scene of the crime.
What's that sound, Adam?
I think you should ask
John Lee.
I'm not actually sure
what I'm listening to.
John Lee, what's that sound?
Well, we're walking
along the side
of Buckingham Palace
and it's the changing
of the guards.
I think you know by now
that if there's one thing
you can count on
John Lee for,
it's some scenic description.
You can see them
out there in their
bear hats
and their serried ranks.
Look at what they're wearing.
They're the great,
great coats for winter.
They're gray.
Towards the end of 2021,
our team went to London.
We are visiting the site
where in June 2019,
two NSC staff members
said they were in the hotel room
when they felt tremendous pressure
in their heads
and heard a strange sound
in their ears
and believed that they were
under attack.
As journalists,
there's just no substitute
for actually going somewhere
and seeing with your own eyes
where an event has happened.
And we were sure
our keen investigative instincts
wouldn't fail us.
With two world-class reporters
on the case,
nothing was going to sidetrack us.
Hey, hey, hey, hold on.
Do you guys know
where we're going?
I thought we were
following John Lee.
Well, if you want to use your GPS,
this is telling me
we're supposed to go
around that circle.
Hmm.
Dunno.
Okay.
I'm just lost.
I'm playing some way.
Is it?
So I'm turned around.
Yeah.
We're on this side
of Buckingham Palace.
And the first way
is just to go across
and go through the park
and come across.
Okay, thank you very much.
Thank you.
We can get across
if we hurry.
Another American
told us what to do.
That's fine.
I just have to say here
that John Lee
actually lives in England.
But anyway,
now nothing is going
to sidetrack us.
I think the thing
to keep in mind
about London,
London is also
part of the Five Eyes.
So it's one of the countries,
one of the five countries
that includes
the United States,
the U.K.,
Australia,
New Zealand,
you know,
Canada,
that the U.S.
shares all of its
most sensitive intelligence
with.
This is something
that came out
of World War II.
As we walked
toward the hotel
where Bolton
and the rest
of the White House
team were staying,
we started thinking
about how much
of a game changer
it was for people
to get sick here.
Yeah,
because the U.K.
is the closest
of allies
to the United States.
Still,
though,
I wasn't entirely
shocked when I heard
that Havana syndrome
struck London.
Explosions at three
separate subway stations
tore through trains
and ripped apart
a double-decker bus
like it was a tin can.
There have been
plenty of terrorist
attacks in the U.K.
over the past few decades.
Alexander Litvinenko's
death from acute
radiation sickness
was slow
and agonizing.
As he lay
on his deathbed,
he told them
he'd been targeted
by the Russian
Secret Service.
Hold on,
so this is it?
This is the hotel?
Yeah,
this is the Park Lane
Intercontinental.
The last time I was here,
I came for tea
with General Pinochet
in 1998,
just before he was
arrested.
Pinochet,
as in the dictator
who ruled Chile
for almost two decades.
This is where he stayed.
Oh boy.
Yeah.
Every year,
he would come to London.
He was a friend
of then-former
Prime Minister
Maggie Thatcher.
You know,
this is the very heart
of elite London.
Why do,
say,
high-level foreign
delegations
stay in this area?
Because,
I mean,
look around you.
We're very near
Buckingham Palace.
We're right across
from Hyde Park.
Every other car
on the street
is either bodyguards
or chauffeured,
limos,
you know,
it's safe London.
Yeah.
So we go in?
Okay.
Let's do it.
Let me see
what I have
ready for you
if you need
the check-in now,
sir.
Thank you.
Both of the London
victims felt the symptoms
while they were
in a hotel room,
so we checked
into a room
in the hotel ourselves.
It's about 15
by 18 feet.
The room,
frankly,
wasn't much
to look at.
And then there's
a little hallway
and a bathroom.
It's a big wooden,
you know,
rosewood-type bureau
with a TV in it.
But it's,
yeah,
it's a very
overpriced
London hotel room.
It's not very impressive.
But what happened here
to John Bolton's aides
marked another turning point.
I know a lot
of the details
of what happened here.
I spoke to the victims
themselves
and their superiors.
But there are some facts
I'm still missing.
It's early on the morning
of June 3rd, 2019.
Bolton's aide
wakes up early.
And she wakes up early
because her job
is to prepare
the paperwork
for John Bolton
to start his day.
And after she finishes,
she goes to the breakfast room
in the lobby.
It's around
nine o'clock
in the morning.
She comes back up
to her room,
which overlooks the park.
The blinds are open.
And she sits down
and she's,
you know,
checking her emails
and, you know,
on her phone
and on her laptop.
And that's when she feels
a burst of pressure
in her head
and ringing in her ears.
And she has no idea
what's happening.
She freaks out
and she rushes
out the door
of her room
into the hallway.
And suddenly,
the pressure stops.
She's fine.
Then later,
during the same trip,
the second incident,
she's got a more
junior colleague
who does the same job.
They are planning
on going to dinner together.
And so,
the more senior staffer
invites the more
junior staffer
to come to her room.
And so,
they're in the room
by the couches again.
The blinds are open.
And they both feel
the pressure
and the pain.
And one of them says,
do you feel that?
The other one says,
yes, I do.
That discomfort
just kept on growing
and growing.
And they both,
again,
rush out of the room.
Immediately,
the sensations stop.
This is the first time
where you had
two people
experiencing
the same thing
at the same time.
and actually
discussing it
real time,
which made
this particular episode
especially credible
in my mind.
I see you.
Yeah,
so the room
that I was describing
is directly above us.
We head downstairs
to the hotel's bar.
The victims
were in a room
directly above us.
And when you look
out the window,
there's,
you know,
there's enough space
only that as far
as I can tell
for two vehicles.
And there are two
vans that are
parked in the spots.
Nondescript.
One is a utility van.
The other has
no markings on it.
It could be anything.
We don't know.
Yeah.
And,
but they wouldn't be there
without the hotel's
say-so or okay.
It's just hard to see,
you know,
where anybody
would have line of sight
to the rooms above us.
It just is hard to see.
I think we need
to go outside.
Yeah,
let's go outside
and see.
And see if we look up.
There's a war memorial
over there.
Oh,
sorry.
All right.
Well,
you know,
I take back
what I said.
Look.
Adam pointed up
to some windows
on the second floor
of the hotel.
We're standing
outside the hotel,
directly in front
of where
the room was,
which is above
the bar area
that we just were in
and the restaurant.
The rooms we're talking
about are,
the row that she's in
is this row.
Yeah.
And the way
it's situated
is they're built out.
Every other room
sticks out.
From where we are,
you can see
the back of the chairs
in the room.
And so,
so frankly,
I didn't realize
how visible
it would be.
But if you were,
if you were sitting
on one of those chairs,
you're,
you're a clear line of sight
from,
from the sidewalk
out front.
And if somebody
were actually
in the room
standing or sitting,
you'd be able to,
you'd see their head,
you know,
their head and shoulder
easily.
You're very exposed.
You are exposed,
actually.
Much more exposed
than I realized.
Just below those
exposed windows
is a very short street.
And on that street
are two public
parking spaces,
which is super rare.
There are almost
no parking spaces
in this entire neighborhood.
Which is all to say,
if you had a big
experimental weapon
that needed to be moved
in a large vehicle
to keep it hidden,
these two parking spots
are perhaps
the only ones
in the neighborhood
where you could park.
on that day
that we stood
in front of the hotel,
a big white van
was parked
in one of those spaces.
And it had a perfect view
of the room
in which Bolton's aides
had sat.
You could sit here
in a van
and do whatever
you were going to do
to zap somebody up front.
Our colleagues
came back from the trip
and, you know,
came in and said
something very strange
happened while we were
in London
and we don't understand it.
Charlie Kupperman,
former Deputy
National Security Advisor.
When you hear
that two people
on your team
undergo this,
have this experience,
does it feel like
the team,
the White House itself,
is the target?
Yes, it does.
It does feel like
the White House
is the target
because the National
Security Council
is a key component
in the White House.
They're basically
sending us a message
that we can reach out
and touch you
any time,
any place we want to.
After the events
in London,
Havana Syndrome
seems to keep spreading.
U.S. officials
report incidents
in Colombia,
Kyrgyzstan,
Germany,
India.
Sometimes people
get sick in their
apartments,
sometimes in their cars,
sometimes walking
down the street.
To paraphrase
Charlie Kupperman,
it seems like
Havana Syndrome
can touch anyone,
anywhere,
at any time.
which begs the question,
if Kupperman is right
and there's a weapon
making people ill,
what kind of weapon
would that be?
That's on the next episode
of Havana Syndrome.
Havana Syndrome
is hosted and reported
by Adam Entous
and me,
John Lee Anderson.
It's produced and reported
by Julia Nutter,
Jesse Alejandro Cottrell,
and Ramon Campos-Iriarte.
And edited and executive
produced by Annie Aviles
and Kate Osborne
with original composition
and sound design
by Steve Bone.