US Embassy Employee's in Cuba Possible Acoustic Attack

[clutch5150]

http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/09/politics/us-cuba-acoustic-attack-embassy/index.html

http://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2017/08/09/us-expelled-cuban-diplomats-physical-symptoms-nr.cnn

CNN reporting again on these incidents just now. Cuba is even allowing FBI agents into the country to investigate which is profound. Interesting.

[Customsfan]

3 hours ago, clutch5150 said:

http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/09/politics/us-cuba-acoustic-attack-embassy/index.html

http://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2017/08/09/us-expelled-cuban-diplomats-physical-symptoms-nr.cnn

CNN reporting again on these incidents just now. Cuba is even allowing FBI agents into the country to investigate which is profound. Interesting.

I agree.  Very, Very interesting and profound. 

[clutch5150]

Let's just hope with all viscous vicious and dangerous DPRK stuff going on, they are not involved.

[Bartolomeo]

Just doesn't add up to me that certain people were affected while others were not, no matter if the device was inside or outside, seems like it would affect all others around it.......

[PigFish]

44 minutes ago, Bartolomeo said:

Just doesn't add up to me that certain people were affected while others were not, no matter if the device was inside or outside, seems like it would affect all others around it.......

... what? -LOL

-Piggy

[Fuzz]

Hmm... I'm not too sure about this. I had a quick look at the symptoms of a concussion: headaches, blackouts, poor balance, disorientation, mental confusion, nausea, etc. I had some of these symptoms too when I was in Cuba last year. But that was due to all the rum and cigars.

[luckme10]

1 hour ago, Fuzz said:

Hmm... I'm not too sure about this. I had a quick look at the symptoms of a concussion: headaches, blackouts, poor balance, disorientation, mental confusion, nausea, etc. I had some of these symptoms too when I was in Cuba last year. But that was due to all the rum and cigars.

Me too. But I'm blaming the ice, not the mojito.

[clutch5150]

2 hours ago, Weaponiz'd1 said:

I agree. Much to easy to get maple syrup these days, and don't get me started on molasses. It's the devil's condiment!

 

Sorry, couldn't resist.

LoL thanks, I hate cell phone typing with my fat fingers. Fixed it

[JohnInCleveland]

12 hours ago, luckme10 said:

Me too. But I'm blaming the ice, not the mojito.

You gotta watch out for that ice.  Got the worst case of Castro's revenge when I got back stateside.  My fragile first world belly couldn't handle that water supply.  

[Customsfan]

I hope that the the Cuban government letting the FBI in is a sign that the two governments have been in negotiations to better there relationship. 

[oakalley]

Why not let them come in and investigate? If it was some sort of sonic "attack", the device is long gone now, so no real evidence remains.
The Cuban government is anything but stupid. They see the tremendous influx of dollars flowing in to Cuba by American tourists. They want to keep the flights and cruise ships coming in. Cuba is cash poor and every American who comes to Cuba and leaves lots of dollars when they leave is important to the Cuban government. Their ultimate goal is to get the embargo lifted which would result in a huge amount of US investment in Cuba.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[TomF]

Very suspicious.

[helix]

Hahaha sounds preposterous .

[clutch5150]

Fox News reports this evening that this actually happened late last year and effected 12-18 Americans (a few actually went deaf). Diplomats and one Canadian. 2 Cuban Diplomats were also expelled from America and some are accusing Russia due to sanctions that Obama imposed.  Investigation still on-going.

[PaulP]

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/some-u-s-diplomats-in-cuba-diagnosed-with-serious-health-conditions-medical-records-show/

[BrightonCorgi]

On 8/10/2017 at 6:32 PM, Bartolomeo said:

Just doesn't add up to me that certain people were affected while others were not, no matter if the device was inside or outside, seems like it would affect all others around it.......

The sonic pulse may have some direction to it like those new "guns" the pulse intense heat at an object from 100's of yards away. 

[oliverdst]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/25/botched-surveillance-job-may-have-led-to-strange-injuries-at-cuban-embassy

Botched surveillance job may have led to strange injuries at US embassy in Cuba

At first thought to be a deliberate attack, the outbreak of mysterious symptoms may be the result of shoddy espionage equipment, experts say

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Julian Borger in Washington

Friday 25 August 2017 12.54 EDTLast modified on Friday 25 August 2017 17.00 EDT

An outbreak of hearing loss and other health problems affecting at least 16 employees at the US embassy in Havana could have been caused by an electronic surveillance operation that went wrong, former intelligence officials said on Friday.

US says 16 people were affected by unexplained health problems at Havana embassy

 

 

Read more

The state department said it was investigating the outbreak, and that some of the worst affected diplomats had been evacuated to Miami for examination and treatment.

“This is something that we have not experienced in the past,” Heather Nauert, the department’s spokeswoman, said. “We are working very hard to try to take care of our folks who are there on official duty – and trying to provide them all the care and the treatment and the support that they would need.”

“Why do it when you want things to go well, and why the Canadians? Nobody dislikes the Canadians!”

James Lewis

Earlier this months, US officials had said the symptoms appeared to have resulted from a covert sonic device. But Nauert said on Thursday no device nor any perpetrator had yet been found and that Cuba was cooperating with the US investigation.

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The US asked two Cuban diplomats to leave in May, after American embassy officials were forced to leave Cuba because of serious symptoms. But the Cuban diplomats were not banned from returning, as normally happens in expulsions linked to espionage, and the US has so far not explicitly blamed the Castro government.

Two former US officials with a background in intelligence and surveillance said they had doubts that the health problems were the result of a deliberate attack with a sonic weapon. They pointed out that the symptoms were first noticed in late 2016, when US-Cuban relations were the best they had been in decades, following the visit of Barack Obama to Havana.

CNN quoted a US official saying Washington was investigating whether a third country was involved as “payback” for actions the US has taken elsewhere and to “drive a wedge between the US and Cuba”. However, at least one Canadian diplomat is also said to have been affected, suggesting whatever happened did not exclusively target the US embassy.

“You can’t rule out harassment, but why do it when you want things to go well, and why the Canadians? Nobody dislikes the Canadians!” said James Lewis, a former state department official and US military adviser with expertise in intelligence and spy technology.

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Lewis said it was much more likely that a sonic surveillance device, designed to remotely pick up the vibrations caused by speech, could have been wrongly configured and emitted harmful sound waves as a result.

“We know with 100% certainly that the embassies are under surveillance, and the technology being used could just be crude and over-powered,” he added. Although Nauert had said the Cuban incidents was unprecedented, Lewis pointed to a wave of health problems at the US embassy in Moscow in the 1970s thought to be linked to the use of microwave surveillance devices.

John Sipher, who spent 28 years in the CIA’s National Clandestine Service, argued that while direct targeting of US diplomats is rare, unintended harm caused by surveillance efforts that go wrong are much more common.

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“These efforts, while designed to further surveillance and eavesdropping and not to cause malicious damage, nevertheless risked or resulted in residual physical harm to US diplomats,” Sipher said in a commentary on the Just Security website.

Sonic weapons are being developed by security forces around the world. The Israeli defence forces have a vehicle-mounted blaster called The Scream, while cruise shipshave adopted a military grade “sound cannons” to project deafening noise over 300 metres to defend against possible pirate attacks.

However, such weapons have an immediate, crippling effect. Whatever has happened in Havana appears to have crept up on its victims more gradually and subtly.

[oliverdst]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/29/us-warns-americans-not-to-visit-cuba-and-withdraws-embassy-staff

US warns Americans not to visit Cuba and withdraws embassy staff after sonic attacks

US embassy in Havana will lose about 60% of its staff following sonic weapon attacks, while new travel warning says incidents have occurred in Cuban hotels

 

 

Friday 29 September 2017 15.35 BST Last modified on Friday 29 September 2017 15.41 BST

The US government is warning Americans not to visit Cuba and will withdraw more than half of its embassy staff, in a dramatic response to what senior officials described as “specific attacks” on diplomats.

The decision deals a blow to the halting rapprochement between the US and Cuba, longtime enemies who only recently began putting their hostility behind them. The embassy in Havana will lose roughly 60% of its US staff, and will stop processing visas in Cuba indefinitely, the American officials said.

In a new travel warning to be issued Friday, the US will say some of the attacks have occurred in Cuban hotels, and that while American tourists aren’t known to have been hurt, they could be exposed if they travel to Cuba.

Almost a year after diplomats began describing unexplained health problems, US investigators still don’t know what or who is behind the attacks, which have harmed at least 21 diplomats and their families, some with injuries as serious as traumatic brain injury and permanent hearing loss.

Although the state department has called them “incidents” and generally avoided deeming them attacks, officials said Friday the US now has determined there were “specific attacks” on American personnel in Cuba.

For now, the United States is not ordering any Cuban diplomats to leave Washington, another move that the administration had considered, officials said. Several US lawmakers have called on the administration to expel all Cuban diplomats. In May, Washington asked two to leave, but emphasized it was to protest Havana’s failure to protect diplomats on its soil, not an accusation of blame.

Cubans seeking visas to enter the US may be able to apply through embassies in nearby countries, officials said. The US will also stop sending official delegations to Cuba, though diplomatic discussions will continue in Washington.

The moves deliver a significant setback to the delicate reconciliation between the US and Cuba, two countries that endured a half-century estrangement despite their locations only 90 miles apart. In 2015, Barack Obama and Cuba’s president Raul Castro restored diplomatic ties. Embassies re-opened, and travel and commerce restrictions were eased. Trump has reversed some changes, but has broadly left the rapprochement in place.

The Trump administration has pointedly not blamed Cuba for perpetrating the attacks. Officials involved in the deliberations said the administration had weighed the best way to minimize potential risk for Americans in Havana without unnecessarily harming relations between the countries. Rather than describe it as punitive, the administration will emphasize Cuba’s responsibility to keep diplomats on its soil safe.

To investigators’ dismay, the symptoms in the attacks vary widely from person to person. In addition to hearing loss and concussions, some experienced nausea, headaches and ear-ringing, and the AP has reported some now suffer from problems with concentration and common word recall.

Though officials initially suspected some futuristic “sonic attack,” the picture has grown muddier. The FBI and other agencies that searched homes and hotels where incidents occurred found no devices. And clues about the circumstances of the incidents seem to make any explanation scientifically implausible.

Some US diplomats reported hearing various loud noises or feeling vibrations when the incidents occurred, but others heard and felt nothing yet reported symptoms later. In some cases, the effects were narrowly confined, with victims able to walk “in” and “out” of blaring noises audible in only certain rooms or parts of rooms, the AP has reported.

Though the incidents stopped for a time, they recurred as recently as late August. The US has said the tally of Americans affected could grow.

Already, staffing at the embassy in Havana was at lower-than-usual levels due to recent hurricanes that have whipped through Cuba. In early September, the state department issued an “authorized departure,” allowing embassy employees and relatives who wanted to leave voluntarily to depart ahead of Hurricane Irma.

Though Cuba implored the United States not to react hastily, it appeared that last-minute lobbying by Castro’s diplomats was unsuccessful. The days leading up to the decision involved a frantic bout of diplomacy that brought about the highest-level diplomatic contacts between the countries since the start of Trump’s administration in January.

Last week, the Cuban official who has been the public face of the diplomatic opening with the US, Josefina Vidal, came to the state department for a meeting with American officials in which the US pressed its concerns.

As concerns grew about a possible embassy shut-down, Cuba requested an urgent meeting Tuesday between Rodriguez and Tillerson in which the Cuban again insisted his government had nothing to do with the incidents. Rodriguez added that his government also would never let another country hostile to the US. use Cuban territory to attack Americans.

Citing its own investigation, Cuba’s embassy said after the meeting: “There is no evidence so far of the cause or the origin of the health disorders reported by the US diplomats.”

[clutch5150]

Yea, I just read this once as well. Getting a bit serious. Not sure the answer is leaving a large hole on our diplomatic presence in Cuba, especially with Raul stepping down soon.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/29/politics/us-cuba-sonic-attacks-pulls-out-diplomats/index.html

[BrightonCorgi]

Do you think that it is Cuba doing this?  North Korea, Russia or someone else?  I'd like to think it is not Cuba, but in this world the truth can be anything!

[clutch5150]

20 hours ago, BrightonCorgi said:

Do you think that it is Cuba doing this?  North Korea, Russia or someone else?  I'd like to think it is not Cuba, but in this world the truth can be anything!

My money is on North Korea, I do not think Cuba is officially involved with this. It was unprecedented they (the Cuban Government) actually let FBI agents into the country to give them total access to investigate.  That raised my eye brows to say the least, like wow, never heard or seen that before...If Cuba was involved somehow, it was definitely a rogue operation of "for hire" types IMHO and not officially sanctioned. 

[oliverdst]

US spies in Cuba were among first victims of mysterious sonic 'attacks'

The incidents, which have caused hearing loss and brain injury, began within days of Donald Trump’s election but the motives and culprits remain obscure

 

 

 

 The Hotel Capri in Havana is one of the sites of apparent sonic ‘attacks’ on US diplomatic personnel. Photograph: Desmond Boylan/AP

US intelligence operatives in Cuba were among the first and most severely affected victims of a string of baffling sonic attacks which has prompted Washington to pull out more than half of its diplomatic staff from Havana, the Associated Press has learned.

 

It was not until US spies, posted to the embassy under diplomatic cover, reported hearing bizarre sounds and experiencing even stranger physical effects that the United States realized something was wrong, individuals familiar with the situation said.

The attacks started within days of Donald Trump’s surprise election win in November, but the precise timeline remains unclear, including whether intelligence officers were the first victims hit or merely the first victims to report it. The US has called the situation “ongoing”.

To date, the Trump administration has largely described the 21 victims as US embassy personnel or “members of the diplomatic community”. That description suggested only bona fide diplomats and their family members were struck, with no logical motivation beyond disrupting US-Cuban relations.

Behind the scenes, though, investigators immediately started searching for explanations in the darker, rougher world of spycraft and counterespionage, given that so many of the first reported cases involved intelligence workers posted to the US embassy. That revelation, confirmed to the AP by a half-dozen officials, adds yet another element of mystery to a year-long saga that the Trump administration says may not be over.

The state department and the CIA declined to comment for this story.

The first disturbing reports of piercing, high-pitched noises and inexplicable ailments pointed to someone deliberately targeting the US government’s intelligence network on the communist-run island, in what seemed like a bone-chilling escalation of the tit-for-tat spy games that Washington and Havana have waged over the last half century.

But the US soon discovered that actual diplomats at the embassy had also been hit by similar attacks, officials said, further confounding the search for a culprit and a motive.

Of the 21 confirmed cases, American spies suffered some of the most acute damage, including brain injury and hearing loss that has not healed, said several US officials who were not authorized to speak publicly on the investigation and demanded anonymity. They heard an unsettling sound inside and in some cases outside their Havana homes, described as similar to loud crickets. Then they fell ill.

Over time, the attacks seemed to evolve.

In many of the more recent cases, victims did not hear noises and were not aware an attack was occurring, identifying the symptoms only later. That has raised concerns among investigators that the attacks may be getting more sophisticated and harder to detect, individuals briefed on the investigation said.

Though the state department has called all the cases “medically confirmed”, several US officials said it was unclear whether all of the victims’ symptoms can be conclusively tied to attacks. Considering the deep sense of alarm among Americans working in the embassy, it is possible some workers attributed unrelated illnesses to attacks.

Almost nothing about what has transpired in Havana is perfectly clear. But this is Cuba.

For decades, Washington and Havana pushed their rivalry to unprecedented levels of covert action. The former enemies tracked each other’s personnel, turned each other’s agents and, in the case of the CIA, even mounted a failed attempt to overthrow the Cuban government in the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion.

There were hopes, though, that the two countries were starting to put that bitter history behind them after renewing diplomatic relations in 2015. When the attacks first occurred, the US and Cuban governments were hard at work on clinching new commercial and immigration agreements. No new spat among intelligence services was publicly known.

 

 The US ordered the withdrawal of all its non-essential personnel at its embassy in Cuba in response to the mysterious attacks. Photograph: Alejandro Ernesto/EPA

Eleven months on, the US cannot guarantee the threat is over. Last week, the state department warned Americans to stay away from Cuba and ordered more than half the embassy staff to leave indefinitely. The US had previously given all embassy staff the option to come home, but even most of those struck by the mysterious attacks had opted to stay, individuals familiar with the situation said.

For those staying and new arrivals, the US has been giving instructions about what to watch and listen for to identify an attack in progress. They’re also learning steps to take if an attack occurs that could mitigate the risk, officials said.

But the US has not identified whatever device is responsible for the harm. FBI sweeps have turned up nothing.

To better identify patterns, investigators have created a map detailing specific areas of Cuba’s capital where attacks have occurred, several individuals familiar with the matter said. Three “zones”, or geographic clusters of attacks, cover the homes where US diplomats live and several hotels where attacks occurred, including the historic Hotel Capri.

Since first disclosing the situation in August, the United States had generally avoided the word “attacks”. It called them “incidents” instead until last Friday. Now, the state department deems them “specific attacks” targeting Americans posted in Havana, without saying what new information, if any, prompted the newfound confidence they were indeed deliberate.

The most obvious motive for attacking Americans in Havana would be to drive a wedge between the US and Cuba. If that is the case, the strategy appears to be succeeding.

Last week’s embassy drawdown added to the growing friction between the countries. And an accompanying new travel warning deemed Havana’s hotels unsafe for visitors, threatening to drive down tourism, a backbone of Cuba’s economy.

Cuba has vehemently denied involvement or knowledge of the attacks. Some in the US government believe the Cubans may be telling the truth, officials said.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/02/cuba-sonic-attacks-us-spies

 

[oliverdst]

US orders 15 Cuban diplomats to leave Washington embassy over sonic 'attacks'

• State department says Cuba has failed to protect US diplomats in Havana
• Reduction follows withdrawal of 60% of US embassy personnel from Cuba

 

 The new Cuban embassy in Washington will have fewer occupants. The reduction aims to ‘ensure equity in the impact of our respective operations’. Photograph: Carlos Barria/Reuters

The US has ordered 15 Cuban embassy officials to leave the country as result of a string of mysterious health incidents affecting 22 of its diplomats in Havana, which Washington says were the result of deliberate attacks.

 

The state department said the expulsions did not necessarily mean the US had concluded that the Cuban government was responsible for a variety of symptoms including hearing loss, headaches and cognitive problems, but it said Cuba had failed to live up to its obligations under international law to protect diplomats.

The US also said that the move was designed to achieve parity in each country’s embassy functions, after Washington announced the withdrawal on Friday of non-emergency personnel – more than half its diplomats in Havana, as well as all family members. Those US nationals are still in the process of leaving Cuba, while the 15 Cuban embassy staff are being given a week to leave.

“The decision was made due to Cuba’s failure to take appropriate steps to protect our diplomats in accordance with its obligations under the Vienna Convention,” the secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, said in a written statement. “This order will ensure equity in our respective diplomatic operations

A state department official said that the move did not signal a change of policy towards Cuba. “We are maintaining diplomatic relations with Havana.,” the official said.

Havana angrily protested the move, calling it “irresponsible” and “hasty.”

Foreign minister Bruno Rodríguez called a news conference to again deny involvement and defend his country’s efforts to assist in the US investigation.

“The ministry of foreign affairs strongly protests and condemns this unfounded and unacceptable decision as well as the pretext used to justify it,” Rodriguez said.

The state department said the US was cooperating with that investigation while conducting its own. Officials have said there was still no evidence of the source of the attack. Speculation has included the possibility of some form of sonic weapon and a surveillance operation that went wrong.

US officials said they were confident that the incidents were targeted attacks, pointing out that some of the affected diplomats had been staying in a hotel, where none of the hotel workers seem to have been affected. The Associated Press reported over the weekend that US intelligence officials were among the first to be affected. The incidents began late last year with the last being recorded in August.

The state department said 22 of its personnel had been affected, an increase of one since Friday. An official said that the new victim had experienced health problems in January but only now has a determination been made that they were connected to the other health incidents.

“We have underscored repeatedly to the Cuban government its responsibility for the safety, wellbeing, security and protection of our diplomatic staff under the Vienna Convention in Havana,” the state department official said. “We will need full reassurances from the Cuban government these attacks will not continue before we even contemplate returning personnel.”

The moves deliver a significant blow to the rapprochement between the Washington and Havana that was launched by Barack Obama and Cuba’s president Raúl Castro in 2015.

Democratic congressman Eliot Engel criticised the decision to expel the Cuban officials.

“It appears that this plays right into the hands of a potential rogue actor – Russia, perhaps – that is trying to create a further wedge between our two countries and other nations in the hemisphere. We need to be smart and thoughtful in responding to these attacks. Unfortunately, today’s response was extremely shortsighted.”

Geoff Thale at the Washington Office of Latin America (Wola), a human rights thinktank, said that there was no logic to the move.

“The United States is using the confusion and uncertainty surrounding these events as justification to take a big step backwards in US-Cuban relations,” he said. “This doesn’t serve our national interests, or our diplomacy, and it most certainly doesn’t do anything to help advance human rights or a more open political climate in Cuba.”

 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/03/us-orders-cuban-diplomats-leave-washington-embassy-sonic-attacks

 

[BrightonCorgi]

I believe the USA govt is being coy on the details and know a lot more on who is the genesis than they are announcing.  Keeping us in the dark?  Maybe?

[Habana Mike]

On 9/29/2017 at 10:52 AM, oliverdst said:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/29/us-warns-americans-not-to-visit-cuba-and-withdraws-embassy-staff

US warns Americans not to visit Cuba and withdraws embassy staff after sonic attacks

US embassy in Havana will lose about 60% of its staff following sonic weapon attacks, while new travel warning says incidents have occurred in Cuban hotels

Friday 29 September 2017 15.35 BST Last modified on Friday 29 September 2017 15.41 BST

The US government is warning Americans not to visit Cuba and will withdraw more than half of its embassy staff, in a dramatic response to what senior officials described as “specific attacks” on diplomats.

In a new travel warning to be issued Friday, the US will say some of the attacks have occurred in Cuban hotels, and that while American tourists aren’t known to have been hurt, they could be exposed if they travel to Cuba.

Aside from helping the people directly, yet another good reason to stay in Casa Particulares.....