Havana Syndrome is a cluster of neurological symptoms — including nausea, ringing in the ears, vertigo, and traumatic brain injury — reported by American diplomatic and intelligence personnel beginning in Havana, Cuba, and subsequently at posts around the world. The cause has been attributed by many analysts to directed-energy or acoustic weapons deployed by a hostile foreign intelligence service.
John Kiriakou described his initial skepticism and subsequent change of view on the reality of the condition.[1]
Initial skepticism
Kiriakou said he had for a long time attributed reports of Havana Syndrome to mental illness. He receives emails daily — he said literally not a single day passes without such messages — from people claiming the CIA is beaming waves at their heads and communicating with them through dental fillings or implanted chips. He described this, on the basis of a conversation at an American Psychological Association luncheon, as “the most basic entry-level mental illness” — a well-documented phenomenon in which individuals feeling overwhelmed reset cognitively to the simplest available explanation for their difficulties, with the CIA serving as the universal boogeyman.[2][3]
At the APA lunch, Kiriakou was the only non-psychologist among thirteen attendees. When he described the emails he was receiving, the psychologists laughed and explained the phenomenon to him. His practice, for a long time afterward, was simply to delete such emails.[3][4] He has described the same phenomenon elsewhere: not a single day goes by without an email from someone claiming the CIA planted a chip in their brain, is communicating through a dental filling, or is beaming waves at their head — people who call themselves “targeted individuals.” Psychologists have told him this is the most common “entry-level” mental illness they diagnose.[5][6] He separately described a diplomat’s wife in Virginia whose apartment he found with the floor, walls and ceiling covered in aluminum foil “to reflect the waves”; concluding she was mentally ill, he declined to take her money and instead referred her to specialists.[7]
Kiriakou has also traced his early view of such claims to his work co-authoring, at the American Psychological Association’s request, a set of interrogation guidelines called the Brookline Protocols — the same APA-luncheon conversation in which psychologists told him these emails reflect a common entry-level mental illness.[8]
Change of view
Kiriakou’s position changed when a friend of his developed Havana Syndrome. The friend described the same sensations Kiriakou had been dismissing in the emails: nausea, ringing in the ears, vertigo, the sensation of having been struck by something. His friend’s MRI showed a traumatic brain injury. The friend could identify the precise moment and location where he had first felt the impact — he had been standing outside the Russian Foreign Ministry, having just come out of a meeting, when he felt as though something had hit him. He stumbled to a taxi and made it home.[4][9][10]
He has given other accounts of the same shift. He initially dismissed Havana Syndrome as “sorcery,” but changed his mind after several longtime friends came down with it and their MRIs showed traumatic brain injuries.[11] He separately credited CIA Moscow station chief Marc Polymeropoulos coming forward with an MRI showing traumatic brain injury as the turning point.[12] He was in Cuba, attending a ceremony because his books had been added to the collection of Cuba’s National Library, when the Havana Syndrome story first broke.[13]
Cuba’s response
Kiriakou noted that when Havana Syndrome first emerged, the Cuban government invited the FBI and CIA to come to Cuba to investigate, stating: “Whatever it is, it’s not us.” He described this as credible.[10]
Attribution and U.S. use
Kiriakou stated his belief that Havana Syndrome is probably the work of the Russians or the Chinese, while cautioning that these attributions should not be treated as mutually exclusive — multiple countries may possess and use such weapons. He stated that the United States itself used a directed-energy or sonic weapon during the operation to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro: the operation resulted in no American casualties despite killing 45 Venezuelan soldiers and 35 Cuban soldiers. Kiriakou’s account: “We zapped them with this sound weapon, whatever it was, and just incapacitated them.”[14][15]
He added that other known possessors of these weapons include Russia, Israel, and China, and that their use on the battlefield is a violation of international law — “but we used it anyway.”[15] Elsewhere he has named Russia, China, and Israel as possible sources, saying he does not know which is responsible but that the technology is real and in use.[16]
Kiriakou wrote a series of articles criticizing the New York Times’s coverage of Havana Syndrome, arguing the paper pushed the theory that Russia or Cuba was responsible without knowing what the underlying technology or the affected officers’ actual medical situations were.[17] He credited then-CIA Director Bill Burns with handling the resulting controversy well by lowering the temperature, noting the agency acknowledged around the start of 2022 that no foreign actor could be identified and that a “psychogenic” component might be involved in some cases.[18] He has also noted a quiet, radio-silent area of Highland County, in western Virginia — with no cable TV or cell towers because NASA operates large radio telescopes there — where people especially sensitive to microwaves report feeling better.[19]
Mark Polymeropoulos — Moscow station chief, TBI, directed-energy weapon
John Kiriakou described his relationship with Mark Polymeropoulos — a highly respected CIA officer whose family is from the island of Mykonos, while Kiriakou’s is from Rhodes, which generated an ongoing friendly competition between them about which island was superior (“Mykonos is too expensive, too commercialized, and just too many weirdos”).[20][21]
Polymeropoulos, Kiriakou noted, rose faster through the agency than he himself had and became the CIA station chief in Moscow — a position reflecting the highest organizational trust. He retired from the CIA because he was suffering from Havana Syndrome. When he went public, he released his MRI imaging. The MRIs showed a traumatic brain injury.[21][22]
Kiriakou stated: “If Mark says there’s a miniaturized directed-energy weapon — a microwave weapon — I believe him.” He also stated: “If Mark believes the CIA experimented on its own people causing Havana syndrome, I believe him.” He cited MK-Ultra as precedent for the CIA conducting experiments on its own personnel without accountability.[22][23]
A colleague’s brain injury
John Kiriakou says he believes Havana syndrome is real because a former CIA colleague of 35 years developed nausea, dizziness and an MRI showing traumatic brain injury. A CIA psychologist advised him to ask claimants whether the “waves” follow them when they travel: the Pentagon’s directed-energy equipment is not portable, so someone who feels the effect “everywhere I go” is likely describing a mental illness, whereas relief while traveling “might be something.”[24][25][26]