This 60 Minutes investigation was performed in collaboration with Michael Weiss at TheInsider.ru, who supplied further reporting.
Former CIA Officer Marc Polymeropoulos is amongst the victims of Anomalous Health Incidents (AHI) hoping for vindication after experiences of a categorised mission.
The mission acquired a beforehand unknown weapon probably linked to the mysterious diseases, generally often known as Havana Syndrome, reported by U.S. authorities and navy officers for greater than a decade. Polymeropoulos labored for the CIA for practically 30 years and rose to an government stage, incomes a number of awards for service.
“I did some very interesting things for the U.S. government, always with the idea that they would have my back if I got jammed up,” the former CIA officer stated. “I just needed to get medical care when I came back, and they wouldn’t even do that. So this moral injury, this sense of betrayal is so acute with me. That’s something that I can never forgive them for.”
Victims hope experiences of newly found weapon will vindicate them
Polymeropoulos, who stated he isn’t a disgruntled former worker, stated the CIA didn’t defend him after he was struck in 2017 in a resort room in Moscow. He remembers waking up with vertigo, a blinding headache, and tinnitus.
“It was a terrifying feeling where I lost control. You know, something had seriously happened to me,” Polymeropoulos stated. “I remember feeling, you know, that this is so unusual. I’d been shot at in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. I’d been in physical danger. But this was terrifying.”
He skilled vertigo, extreme migraines, lack of imaginative and prescient, and hassle with reminiscence and focus. Disabled, he retired. Polymeropoulos and different victims have been doubted by the U.S. authorities for years.
“This is a massive CIA cover-up, and I say this with great regret,” Polymeropoulos stated. “It’s an organization that I loved. I believe in the mission. I was really good at this job. To this day I want to see the CIA operate in a strong and effective manner.”
Dr. David Relman, a Stanford University professor who was requested by the authorities to guide two scientific investigations into Havana Syndrome, stated he additionally believes there was a authorities cover-up, although he stated he doesn’t consider it was pre-planned. He additionally stated his research have been downplayed by components of the U.S. authorities.
“And not only downplayed but dismissed, in some cases, buried,” Relman stated.
Dr. Relman and Polymeropoulos have been each amongst those that attended a gathering at the Biden White House shortly earlier than the finish of the president’s time period in 2024. Dr. Relman was a White House adviser at the time who helped manage the assembly. He stated some in the Biden White House had come to consider that the victims’ accidents weren’t attributable to identified medical or environmental circumstances, as the CIA has asserted. Members of the National Security Council advised Polymeropoulos and 5 different victims at the White House assembly, “We believe you,” based on Relman and Polymeropoulos.
“What the Biden administration was telling us was, something had changed,” Polymeropoulos stated. “New intelligence had come in. Now, I don’t have a security clearance, and this was an unclassified meeting, so they could not put forth that this was based on new intelligence, but it was clear to me that that was what they were insinuating.”
Dr. Paul Friedrichs, a retired main basic and previously considered one of the Pentagon’s high medical doctors, introduced a message to the assembly. Polymeropoulos stated Friedrichs personally apologized to victims for the method they’d been handled.
“I have chills now thinking about it. I had chills then,” Polymeropoulos stated. “It was an indication that at least some people in the Biden administration, in the Biden White House, believed us.”
Sources advised 60 Minutes the Biden White House wrote a public assertion backing the victims, however by no means launched it. So far, the Trump administration has not modified the phrases in the 2023 Intelligence Community Assessment that it’s “very unlikely” the victims have been attacked by a international adversary. But sources additionally stated the Trump administration has briefed high intelligence officers in Congress and proven them a categorised image of a newly bought gadget. At the Pentagon, a few of the individuals who have investigated the assaults for the Department of Defense have been moved to a unit that develops new weapons, sources stated.
The Department of Defense declined to touch upon the 60 Minutes report. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which oversees 18 intelligence companies, together with the CIA, stated a brand new evaluation of AHI will likely be “comprehensive and complete” with the workplace remaining “committed to delivering the truth.” (See ODNI’s full assertion at the backside of this text.)
A Havana Syndrome investigation
The ODNI, which oversees the CIA, made an official willpower on Havana Syndrome that it was “very unlikely” victims have been attacked by a state actor or international adversary. The report, referred to as an Intelligence Community Assessment, was issued in 2023 and up to date in 2025, each underneath the Biden administration.
A former CIA officer who labored on the agency’s investigation into AHI alleged the CIA’s investigation basically led to 2022 and that it appeared to him his superiors wished to push the conclusion that AHIs have been psychosomatic, atmospheric, and environmental. He additionally stated they made enjoyable of AHI victims. The former officer says this bothered him after he personally witnessed the affect of AHI on fellow officers whereas at a posting overseas in Central Asia.
He says the CIA didn’t need folks suggesting a international adversary was behind mysterious diseases suffered by U.S. nationwide safety officers. 60 Minutes agreed to not use the identify of the former officer, who in the end resigned in 2022, however verified his work at the CIA.
“I left because I saw the personal impact of this issue,” he stated. “And for me, it became a moral issue because they kept saying ‘Our people are our highest priority.’ But when it came down to it, that wasn’t the case from what I saw. And it was something that tore me up emotionally.”
Despite the 2023 official intelligence evaluation that its “very unlikely” victims of Havana Syndrome have been attacked by a state actor or international adversary, Dr. Relman developed a distinct concept based mostly on the science. He says each panels decided, “the most plausible explanation for a subset of these cases was a form of radiofrequency or microwave energy.”
Sources say U.S. obtained a weapon probably linked to Havana Syndrome
60 Minutes has discovered new particulars from three unbiased sources from totally different authorities companies a couple of categorised mission involving Homeland Security brokers who, in 2024, bought a beforehand unknown miniaturized microwave weapon from a fancy Russian felony community. Over $15 million in funding for the mission got here from the Pentagon. While the particular gadget they bought was not linked to anybody AHI assault, it incorporates the pulsed microwave know-how that would probably trigger Havana Syndrome signs, sources say.
Sources say that some in the CIA believed that any microwave weapon able to inflicting the signs described by Havana Syndrome victims would must be the measurement of a truck, which implies it would not be believable in the a whole lot of instances.
But based on sources, the microwave weapon obtained by brokers in 2024 is man-portable, concealable and makes use of comparatively little energy. The gadget would not look something like a gun. It is silent and would not create warmth the method a microwave oven would. The gadget, based on sources, is programmable for various situations and will be operated by distant management. The vary of the beam is a number of hundred ft, and it could penetrate home windows and drywall.
Sources say the key to the gadget will not be the {hardware}, however the software program. The programming shapes a singular, electromagnetic wave that rises and falls abruptly and pulses quickly.
Sources advised 60 Minutes the very important parts have been made in Russia. A Russian nexus was revealed throughout an earlier 60 Minutes Havana Syndrome investigation.
Dr. Relman wouldn’t focus on categorised info however stated his panels’ analysis had discovered that Russian scientists had been perfecting the idea of a pulsed microwave weapon for many years.
“What the Russians spoke about was the importance of the energy being pulsed in order to have biological effects on humans,” Relman stated. “When you produce pulses like this, you can actually stimulate electrically active tissue like brain tissue and the heart, for that matter, mimicking what the brain normally does, but now you’re driving it with your pulses from the outside.”
Dr. Relman agreed this might be a really perfect stealth weapon.
“Ideal, because literally the person feels as if this is in my head,” he stated.
Sources advised 60 Minutes the categorised weapon obtained by the authorities has been tested in a U.S. military lab for greater than a yr. Tests on rats and sheep present accidents per these seen in people with Havana Syndrome.
Also, of observe, sources have advised 60 Minutes of safety digital camera movies that present Americans being hit abroad. The movies are categorised, and 60 Minutes hasn’t seen them, however they have been described by sources. One is safety digital camera video from a restaurant in Istanbul which captures two FBI brokers on trip, sitting at a desk with their households. A person with a backpack walks in and, out of the blue, everybody at the desk grabs their heads, as if in ache. Sources stated one other video is from a stairwell in the U.S. embassy in Vienna, exhibiting two folks on the stairs out of the blue collapsing.
The troubling actuality forward
The sources who spoke with 60 Minutes stated the categorised mission to acquire the microwave weapon factors to a troubling actuality. They say there are seemingly many of those units and if undercover brokers might buy one from gangsters, then the Russians have misplaced management of a stealth weapon that might be utilized by anybody, anyplace.
Looking again, the CIA officer who investigated Havana Syndrome at the company earlier than quitting in disgust stated that, in his view, the CIA was careless in opposition to a ruthless adversary, which he says he believes is Russia. If a international adversary was discovered to be behind Havana Syndrome assaults, he says, the operation can be thought of a serious success for that adversary.
“Let’s say one of these cases was real and it created all this fear, paranoia, anxiety here in the United States and overseas,” he stated. “The impact of that is astronomical. And it’s something you can’t almost even calculate.”
ODNI’s full assertion:
- The staff conducting the evaluation of AHI intelligence has been and continues to be relentless in its work and pursuit of the reality to finish the evaluation.
- ODNI’s evaluation of this concern will likely be complete and full earlier than it’s launched. DNI Gabbard has supplied the time, sources, and assist wanted to make sure the evaluation is fulsome and correct.
- We stay dedicated to delivering the reality that the American folks deserve.
