In the latest development from their years-long investigation into the bizarre phenomenon known as “Havana Syndrome,” the team at 60 Minutes has uncovered evidence potentially linking the debilitating attacks on American diplomats and spies to a secretive Russian intelligence unit.
The news magazine’s producers have spent over five years pulling back layers of secrecy around the unexplained brain injuries impacting U.S. personnel overseas and even on American soil.
Victims have reported experiencing piercing sounds or pressure sensations followed by symptoms like vertigo, memory problems, and even brain damage.
While the U.S. government had initially dismissed the incidents as psychosomatic issues or potential surveillance tactics gone awry, 60 Minutes’ reporting helped bring credibility to theories of intentional directed-energy attacks using microwave or acoustic weapons.
Now, after interviews with intelligence sources and expert investigators, 60 Minutes has traced some of the mysterious events to Unit 29155 – an elite Russian military unit engaged in sabotage, assassination, and developing cutting-edge weapons like acoustic devices.
“We believe members of Unit 29155 were there in order to facilitate, supervise, or maybe even personally implement attacks on American diplomats, on American government officials, using an acoustic weapon,” renowned investigator Christo Grozev told the program.
Grozev, who previously identified the Russian operatives behind the poisonings of dissidents like Alexei Navalny, uncovered an email he calls “a receipt” showing Unit 29155 conducted testing on acoustic weaponry capabilities.
He also found evidence potentially placing one of the unit’s members in the Georgian capital Tbilisi during a spate of Havana Syndrome cases there.
A retired U.S. Army official who led the Pentagon’s Havana Syndrome probe expressed confidence the incidents represent malign activity by Russia.
“If my mother had seen what I saw, she would say, ‘It’s the Russians, stupid,'” Lt. Col. Greg Edgreen told 60 Minutes.
While the investigation has indeed advanced an understanding of Havana Syndrome and provided strong circumstantial evidence, many key questions remain unanswered. Intelligence agencies have issued conflicting assessments, with some doubting a foreign adversary is involved in orchestrating any deliberate attack campaign.
Regardless, the previously inexplicable cases impacting American officials and their families around the world now have a clearer, if still murky, lineage traced back to Russia’s clandestine operatives.