CIA Compensating Officers for Havana Syndrome

Washington, DC (WorkersCompensation.com) - The Central Intelligence Agency has started to compensation its current and former officers who sustained traumatic brain injuries from unexplained health incidents known as “Havana Syndrome.”   

Officials told the New York Times that about a dozen people suffering from Havana Syndrome have either received payments, or have been approved to receive them.   

Starting in 2016, diplomats and CIA officers started reporting ailments arising from strange incidents in Havana. Since then, government employees and their family members around the world, including in China, Austria, and Serbia, have reported having symptoms. In many cases, the victims reported hearing strange high- and low-frequency sounds just before the symptoms appeared. Some reported that they felt like they’d been hit by an invisible blast wave.   

Officials have said the symptoms are “consistent with the effects of directed, pulsed, radio frequency energy,” but that there was no concrete information on who or what could be responsible for the attack. The U.S. State Department has referred to the events as “unexplained health incidents,” while CIA director William Burns has called the events “attacks.” While there is no consensus on what causes the syndrome, an expert committee from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine found that directed pulsed RF energy appears to be the most plausible cause, but that it could also have been caused by ultrasound, pesticides, or mass psychogenic illness.   

Last year, Congress approved the Havana Act which provides up to $187,300 in compensation to each victim. Tammy Kupperman Thorp, CIA director of public affairs, told the Times the act gave the agency the authority to provide payments to CIA employees, their family members and other individuals affiliated the agency who have “a qualifying injury to the brain.”   

“The guidelines put in place were developed in partnership with the interagency and permit payments regardless of where the incident occurred,” Ms. Thorp said. “As we have previously said, these authorities are an important part of the agency’s commitment to support its work force.”  

U.S. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), one of the bill’s authors, said news that government employees who were affected by “anomalous health incidents,” or A.H.I.s, were “finally receiving the health care and financial assistance they need.”   

“Having met with several individuals affected by A.H.I.s who are experiencing debilitating symptoms from neurological and cognitive damage, I know how much this assistance is needed,” she said.  

So far, no payments have been made to State Department employees.   

Secretary of State Antony Blinken has come under fire for his handling of the situation.   

In December of 2021, Mark Lenzi, a member of the diplomatic security services, filed suit against Blinken and the State Department for alleged disability discrimination arising from his condition.  

Lenzi claims, in his suit, that he was a victim of a series of incidents beginning in Guangzhou, China in 2017 and that he, his wife and his children began experiencing “sudden and unexplained mental and physical symptoms, including headaches, lightheadedness, nausea, nosebleeds, sleeplessness and memory loss.”  

He claims that State Department officals in Guangzhou knew American federal employees were experiencing unusual symptoms, but that State Department officials wanted to keep the incident quiet.  

At the time of the filing, the State Department has said that it is trying to find the balancing point between sharing more details so diplomats can stay abreast of the situation, while not hyping the threat.  

On Jan. 20, 2022, Blinken promised to continue work to find out the causes of Havana Syndrome.   

"We have been working overtime to try to understand what happened, who might be responsible and at the same time to do everything we can to care for our colleagues who have been affected and to protect people," Blinken told reporters at a news conference in Berlin. "We will leave no stone unturned to get to the bottom of it.”  

Under State Department and CIA rules, the alleged victims must show that they had a brain injury in connection with “war, insurgency, hostile act, terrorist activity or other incidents,” as designated by the Secretary of State or CIA director, and that they have received active treatment for their injuries for at least 12 months.   

Earlier this year, an interim CIA finding was leaked that found the illnesses were unlikely to have been caused by a hostile foreign country targeting American government workers. Of the more than 1,000 cases examined by the CIA, officials explained many away as previously undiagnosed health issues, environmental factors, or psychosomatic illnesses. Roughly two dozen cases remained unexplained by the CIA’s report.   

Another report found that the injuries could have been caused by pulsed radio energy, or that the injuries could have been affected by stress reactions. The report, however, rejected the idea the mysterious injuries were some form of mass hysteria, psychosomatic responses or other functional illnesses.  

A national security lawyer, Mark Zaid, said he represents nearly two dozen people who have suffered A.H.I.s, and that they have had difficulty applying for the compensation. Others, he said, have struggled to get a formal diagnosis by government doctors, as required for approval of both benefits and medical treatment.  

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