In news that won’t be news for many observers of US-Cuba relations, Buzzfeed reported Thursday that a thorough scientific investigation completed in 2018 by an elite government science advisory body determined that the so-called Havana Syndrome that US spies and diplomats have suffered in recent years was most likely caused by crickets. Yes, those crickets.
The report, commissioned by the State Department and kept classified until last week, backs up what various observers have been saying from almost the very beginning: that the neurological injuries reported around the world by US personnel, including dizziness, headaches, and hearing loss, were most likely psychosomatic. In other words, they were probably caused by stress or emotional strain, and spread to others through the power of suggestion.
What’s critical to understand here is that since mid-2017, anti-Cuban hawks, using the establishment press as their megaphone, have baselessly and incessantly claimed that the illness was actually the result of “attacks” carried out by Washington’s geopolitical adversaries, and using a mysterious, never invented microwave weapon. This campaign began on August 9, 2017, when the Associated Press, in a report republished everywhere, from CNBC and CBS to Politico, regurgitated the supposed conclusions of nameless “US officials” that “the diplomats had been exposed to an advanced device that operated outside the range of audible sound and had been deployed either inside or outside their residences,” for which Washington expelled two Cuban diplomats as retaliation.