This week on 60 Minutes, Scott Pelley and a staff of producers continued their five-year investigation into Havana Syndrome, the phenomenon of mysterious mind accidents to U.S. nationwide safety officers and diplomats, and their households, each overseas and at dwelling, that in some instances have led to main well being circumstances, like blindness, reminiscence loss, and vestibular harm.
This fourth installment introduced main developments to the story: a suspected hyperlink between assaults in Tbilisi, Georgia and a top-secret Russian intelligence unit, and new proof {that a} dependable supply calls “a receipt” for acoustic weapons testing carried out by the identical Russian intelligence unit.
A retired Military lieutenant colonel who led the Pentagon investigation into these incidents, Lt. Col. Greg Edgreen, informed 60 Minutes he’s assured that Russia is behind these assaults, and that they’re a part of a worldwide marketing campaign to neutralize U.S. officers.Â
“If my mom had seen what I noticed, she would say, ‘It is the Russians, silly,'” Edgreen informed 60 Minutes.
60 Minutes Additional time spoke to producers Oriana Zill de Granados and Michael Rey concerning the story’s evolution over the course of their investigation, as they pulled again layers of presidency secrecy to talk with victims, determine a possible know-how used to assault them, and study a Russian intelligence unit that will have been behind among the Havana Syndrome incidents.
“Within the first story we mentioned, ‘Hmm. Is that this Russia?’ Second spherical of tales we felt, ‘That is beginning to appear to be Russia.’ And on this story, our sources are telling us that it is Russia,” producer Michael Rey informed 60 Minutes Additional time.Â
The investigation begins
In 2014, producer Oriana Zill de Granados labored on a 60 Minutes story concerning the opening of the U.S. embassy in Cuba underneath then-President Obama. After the embassy had opened in 2015, media retailers started reporting on a sequence of unusual medical signs exhibited by U.S. embassy personnel working in Cuba: dizziness, fatigue, issues with reminiscence, and impaired imaginative and prescient.Â
“And we very early on began approaching folks throughout the intelligence neighborhood and the Division of State, to search out out what these incidents have been. That led us to China, which actually expanded the story past Havana, Cuba,” Zill de Granados informed 60 Minutes Additional time.Â
The primary installment of their sequence of investigative reviews, referred to as “Concentrating on Individuals,” targeted on Commerce and State Division officers who reported listening to unusual sounds of their houses whereas they have been stationed abroad in China. The officers, and relations who lived with them, suffered from mysterious accidents afterward, with signs like complications, nausea, reminiscence issues and problem balancing.
Producers Zill de Granados and Rey interviewed Mark Lenzi, a State Division safety officer who labored within the U.S. consulate in Guangzhou, China. He informed 60 Minutes that each he and his spouse started to undergo signs after listening to weird sounds of their house in 2017.Â
“He informed us quite a lot of issues once we first met him that we sort of could not consider. And now, years later, we consider the whole lot he informed us,” Rey informed 60 Minutes Additional time.
Lenzi described the sound as a “marble” circling down a “steel funnel.” He mentioned he heard the sound 4 instances, at all times in the identical spot and on the identical time of day: proper above his son’s crib when he put him to mattress at evening. He mentioned the sound was like nothing he’d ever heard earlier than and “pretty loud.” Shortly after listening to the sounds, he and his spouse started to really feel in poor health.
“He suffered via migraines, dizziness, [and] reminiscence points. And his large concern was that no one believed him. He had a really onerous time convincing his superiors one thing was up and this wanted to be addressed,” Rey defined.Â
Lenzi informed 60 Minutes he believed he was focused due to his work, utilizing top-secret tools to research digital threats to diplomatic missions.Â
“This was a directed standoff assault towards my house…it was a weapon,” he informed Scott Pelley. “I consider it is RF, radio frequency power, within the microwave vary.”
“Whether or not it was an intentional use of know-how that could possibly be adjusted to harm folks, or whether or not it was a tool that was particularly designed to harm folks…we nonetheless do not know,” Rey informed 60 Minutes Additional time.Â
“We discovered to sort of belief what he was saying, that, in his expertise, the capabilities exist on this planet.”
Home instances and microwave know-how
In 2022, the second and third installment of the investigative sequence took a more in-depth take a look at Havana Syndrome incidents that had occurred on U.S. soil and had not been beforehand reported. It additionally examined microwave know-how that would have been used as a possible weapon towards these officers and their households.
One in every of these home incidents concerned Olivia Troye, a former Homeland Safety and counterterrorism adviser to then-Vice President Mike Pence, who mentioned she was bodily struck whereas descending the steps of the Eisenhower constructing, only a brief distance away from the West Wing of the White Home in Washington, D.C.Â
“It was like this piercing feeling on the aspect of my head…and I obtained like, vertigo. I used to be unsteady. I felt nauseous. I used to be considerably disoriented,” she informed Scott Pelley.
“I keep in mind pondering like, ‘OK…do not fall down the steps. You have to discover your floor once more and regular your self,'” she informed Pelley.
One other U.S. authorities official, Miles Taylor, who was deputy chief of employees for the Division of Homeland Safety on the time, informed 60 Minutes he woke as much as a wierd sound in his house close to Capitol Hill in 2018.Â
“I went to the window, opened up my window, appeared down on the avenue… I see a white van, and the van’s brake lights turned on. And it pulled off and it sped away.”
Taylor mentioned he felt “off” and “sick” the following day. About 5 weeks later, it occurred once more. He mentioned he felt “concussion-like signs,” like he’d been “knocked fairly onerous in a sport.”Â
Whereas reporting the story, producers Rey and Zill de Granados started listening to about different instances of U.S. officers who mentioned they have been attacked whereas abroad after which later attacked once more after that they had returned to the USA.Â
Robyn Garfield, a Commerce Division official, and his spouse Britta Garfield informed 60 Minutes that that they had heard unusual sounds within the evening once they have been residing abroad in Shanghai, China. This was adopted by signs of reminiscence loss, impaired imaginative and prescient, and problem with stability, for each them and their two kids.Â
In 2020, they spoke to 60 Minutes once more, saying that they had been attacked once more, in the course of the evening, in Philadelphia, the place that they had been receiving therapy for the accidents they sustained in China.Â
Late one evening, Britta Garfield awoke instantly, saying she had heard a loud, painful sound. They gathered their youngsters and booked a room at a resort. However no matter had “hit” them of their house earlier than had adopted them to their resort.Â
“And we awakened, round, I consider, 2 a.m., with unusual vibrations in our our bodies, and a sound,” Garfield informed Pelley.Â
Involved, he ran to his kids’s bedside to examine on them and noticed an eerie scene.Â
“Each have been thrashing of their beds— asleep. However each kicking and transferring aggressively. And I went over to my daughter, and I put my head down subsequent to her head. And I heard a really distinct sound, excellent there, kind of like water speeding,” Garfield mentioned.Â
They reported the occasion to the FBI. The household continues to work on bettering their stability, eyesight, and reminiscence.
“That is essentially the most tough side of this complete difficulty for me are the youngsters who’ve been impacted, each mine in addition to many others. I personally know the dad and mom of, I consider, eight different kids. I can let you know I’ve personally seen stability points in kids which have by no means had that,” Garfield informed Pelley.
“One of many arguments that got here out from researchers across the Havana Syndrome difficulty was that that is psychosomatic, that persons are listening to of those signs, they’re careworn, they’re nervous. It is a regular response,” Rey informed 60 Minutes Additional time.Â
“One of many issues that dissuaded us of that was the truth that kids have been getting… bloody noses [and] bleeding from the ear. There have been seizures taking place in kids. After which pets reacting to noises or pressures that folks have been feeling on the identical time.”
60 Minutes Additional time examined the case of two Canadian diplomats, who have been additionally interviewed for “Concentrating on Individuals,” who mentioned they have been attacked of their houses whereas they have been stationed in Havana, Cuba. They mentioned their kids suffered from signs like nosebleeds, fainting, imaginative and prescient issues, and dizziness afterward.
The 2022 installment of “Concentrating on Individuals” additionally examined the opportunity of microwave know-how getting used as a possible weapon towards these officers and their households.Â
“We’ve not discovered the smoking gun, actually. However there’s quite a lot of scientific analysis on the market that’s concrete on the sort of know-how,” Zill de Granados informed 60 Minutes Additional time.
In 2022, 60 Minutes spoke with James Benford, a physicist and main authority on microwaves. In an interview with Scott Pelley, he mentioned the existence of transportable microwave transmitters that would harm the tissues of the mind. He mentioned these transmitters have been studied for over 50 years.Â
“There are lots of varieties, and so they can go anyplace in measurement, from a suitcase all the way in which as much as a big tractor trailer unit. And the larger the gadget, the longer the vary,” he defined.Â
He mentioned the units can transmit microwave power via partitions, glass, and brick. “Virtually the whole lot,” he informed Pelley.Â
“It has been developed extensively in, maybe, a dozen international locations. The first international locations are the USA, Russia, and China.”
Unit 29155
The newest installment of “Concentrating on Individuals” introduced a serious growth to the story with the assistance of a famend investigative journalist, Christo Grozev.
Grozev famously recognized the lads behind the August 2020 poisoning of the late Russian dissident Alexey Navalny. He additionally recognized different males who tried to poison Sergei Skripal, a Russian army intelligence officer, who later grew to become a double agent for the UK, and his daughter Yulia.
In 2018, Grozev was the primary to determine the existence of a top-secret Russian intelligence unit, Unit 29155. He informed 60 Minutes that this elite unit consists of assassins and saboteurs who use countersurveillance, explosives, poison, and technologically superior tools on their targets.Â
Grozev believes he has discovered a doc that may hyperlink the 29155 intelligence unit to an acoustic power weapon.
Grozev labored with investigative companions, who collaborated with 60 Minutes on this report: {a magazine} referred to as The Insider and German information publication Der Spiegel.
He tracked down an electronic mail that he says is for providers offered to the Russian authorities by a member of Unit 29155 for “potential capabilities of non-lethal acoustic weapons.”
“Which informed us that this specific unit had been engaged with someplace, in some way, empirical assessments of a directed power unit,” he informed Scott Pelley.Â
60 Minutes sources mentioned {that a} suspected member of Russia’s 29155-unit, Albert Averyanov, who can also be the son of the commander of the 29155 unit, is the topic of an investigation into Havana Syndrome incidents reported by Individuals residing in Tbilisi, Georgia.
Grozev discovered Albert Averyanov’s cellphone was turned off throughout the Tbilisi incidents. However 60 Minutes sources say there’s proof somebody in Tbilisi logged in to Averyanov’s private electronic mail throughout the time these incidents occurred. Grozev believes it was Averyanov himself— inserting him within the metropolis at the moment.
“We consider members of Unit 29155 have been there in an effort to facilitate, supervise, or possibly even personally implement assaults on American diplomats, on American authorities officers, utilizing an acoustic weapon,” Grozev informed Pelley.Â
Questions stay
Producers Rey and Zill de Granados informed 60 Minutes Additional time that a lot stays unknown. Regardless of their latest findings, there isn’t any clear reply as to who, or what nation, was behind these incidents. There’s additionally no “smoking gun” that confirms the victims’ suspicions that the Havana Syndrome signs they skilled have been the results of a deliberate assault.
In 2022, a few month earlier than the second installment of their investigation aired on 60 Minutes, the CIA gave an interim evaluation that mentioned, “We assess it unlikely {that a} overseas actor, together with Russia, is conducting a sustained, worldwide marketing campaign harming U.S. personnel with a weapon or a mechanism.”
Final 12 months, in 2023, the Director of Nationwide Intelligence mentioned that it is “not possible a overseas adversary is accountable,” however some intelligence companies had solely “low” or “reasonable” confidence in that evaluation.Â
“This has by no means, for us, been an adversarial course of. As a result of who’re we to inform the intelligence neighborhood of the USA, ‘We’re proper and also you’re flawed’? That is not our job,” Rey defined.
“Our job is to ask questions and share data that we have discovered that will counter the narrative that is on the market…in case you say there is not any proof of a overseas adversary concerned, then what are we ?”
The video above was produced by Will Croxton. It was edited by Sarah Shafer.Â
This week on 60 Minutes, Scott Pelley and a staff of producers continued their five-year investigation into Havana Syndrome, the phenomenon of mysterious mind accidents to U.S. nationwide safety officers and diplomats, and their households, each overseas and at dwelling, that in some instances have led to main well being circumstances, like blindness, reminiscence loss, and vestibular harm.
This fourth installment introduced main developments to the story: a suspected hyperlink between assaults in Tbilisi, Georgia and a top-secret Russian intelligence unit, and new proof {that a} dependable supply calls “a receipt” for acoustic weapons testing carried out by the identical Russian intelligence unit.
A retired Military lieutenant colonel who led the Pentagon investigation into these incidents, Lt. Col. Greg Edgreen, informed 60 Minutes he’s assured that Russia is behind these assaults, and that they’re a part of a worldwide marketing campaign to neutralize U.S. officers.Â
“If my mom had seen what I noticed, she would say, ‘It is the Russians, silly,'” Edgreen informed 60 Minutes.
60 Minutes Additional time spoke to producers Oriana Zill de Granados and Michael Rey concerning the story’s evolution over the course of their investigation, as they pulled again layers of presidency secrecy to talk with victims, determine a possible know-how used to assault them, and study a Russian intelligence unit that will have been behind among the Havana Syndrome incidents.
“Within the first story we mentioned, ‘Hmm. Is that this Russia?’ Second spherical of tales we felt, ‘That is beginning to appear to be Russia.’ And on this story, our sources are telling us that it is Russia,” producer Michael Rey informed 60 Minutes Additional time.Â
The investigation begins
In 2014, producer Oriana Zill de Granados labored on a 60 Minutes story concerning the opening of the U.S. embassy in Cuba underneath then-President Obama. After the embassy had opened in 2015, media retailers started reporting on a sequence of unusual medical signs exhibited by U.S. embassy personnel working in Cuba: dizziness, fatigue, issues with reminiscence, and impaired imaginative and prescient.Â
“And we very early on began approaching folks throughout the intelligence neighborhood and the Division of State, to search out out what these incidents have been. That led us to China, which actually expanded the story past Havana, Cuba,” Zill de Granados informed 60 Minutes Additional time.Â
The primary installment of their sequence of investigative reviews, referred to as “Concentrating on Individuals,” targeted on Commerce and State Division officers who reported listening to unusual sounds of their houses whereas they have been stationed abroad in China. The officers, and relations who lived with them, suffered from mysterious accidents afterward, with signs like complications, nausea, reminiscence issues and problem balancing.
Producers Zill de Granados and Rey interviewed Mark Lenzi, a State Division safety officer who labored within the U.S. consulate in Guangzhou, China. He informed 60 Minutes that each he and his spouse started to undergo signs after listening to weird sounds of their house in 2017.Â
“He informed us quite a lot of issues once we first met him that we sort of could not consider. And now, years later, we consider the whole lot he informed us,” Rey informed 60 Minutes Additional time.
Lenzi described the sound as a “marble” circling down a “steel funnel.” He mentioned he heard the sound 4 instances, at all times in the identical spot and on the identical time of day: proper above his son’s crib when he put him to mattress at evening. He mentioned the sound was like nothing he’d ever heard earlier than and “pretty loud.” Shortly after listening to the sounds, he and his spouse started to really feel in poor health.
“He suffered via migraines, dizziness, [and] reminiscence points. And his large concern was that no one believed him. He had a really onerous time convincing his superiors one thing was up and this wanted to be addressed,” Rey defined.Â
Lenzi informed 60 Minutes he believed he was focused due to his work, utilizing top-secret tools to research digital threats to diplomatic missions.Â
“This was a directed standoff assault towards my house…it was a weapon,” he informed Scott Pelley. “I consider it is RF, radio frequency power, within the microwave vary.”
“Whether or not it was an intentional use of know-how that could possibly be adjusted to harm folks, or whether or not it was a tool that was particularly designed to harm folks…we nonetheless do not know,” Rey informed 60 Minutes Additional time.Â
“We discovered to sort of belief what he was saying, that, in his expertise, the capabilities exist on this planet.”
Home instances and microwave know-how
In 2022, the second and third installment of the investigative sequence took a more in-depth take a look at Havana Syndrome incidents that had occurred on U.S. soil and had not been beforehand reported. It additionally examined microwave know-how that would have been used as a possible weapon towards these officers and their households.
One in every of these home incidents concerned Olivia Troye, a former Homeland Safety and counterterrorism adviser to then-Vice President Mike Pence, who mentioned she was bodily struck whereas descending the steps of the Eisenhower constructing, only a brief distance away from the West Wing of the White Home in Washington, D.C.Â
“It was like this piercing feeling on the aspect of my head…and I obtained like, vertigo. I used to be unsteady. I felt nauseous. I used to be considerably disoriented,” she informed Scott Pelley.
“I keep in mind pondering like, ‘OK…do not fall down the steps. You have to discover your floor once more and regular your self,'” she informed Pelley.
One other U.S. authorities official, Miles Taylor, who was deputy chief of employees for the Division of Homeland Safety on the time, informed 60 Minutes he woke as much as a wierd sound in his house close to Capitol Hill in 2018.Â
“I went to the window, opened up my window, appeared down on the avenue… I see a white van, and the van’s brake lights turned on. And it pulled off and it sped away.”
Taylor mentioned he felt “off” and “sick” the following day. About 5 weeks later, it occurred once more. He mentioned he felt “concussion-like signs,” like he’d been “knocked fairly onerous in a sport.”Â
Whereas reporting the story, producers Rey and Zill de Granados started listening to about different instances of U.S. officers who mentioned they have been attacked whereas abroad after which later attacked once more after that they had returned to the USA.Â
Robyn Garfield, a Commerce Division official, and his spouse Britta Garfield informed 60 Minutes that that they had heard unusual sounds within the evening once they have been residing abroad in Shanghai, China. This was adopted by signs of reminiscence loss, impaired imaginative and prescient, and problem with stability, for each them and their two kids.Â
In 2020, they spoke to 60 Minutes once more, saying that they had been attacked once more, in the course of the evening, in Philadelphia, the place that they had been receiving therapy for the accidents they sustained in China.Â
Late one evening, Britta Garfield awoke instantly, saying she had heard a loud, painful sound. They gathered their youngsters and booked a room at a resort. However no matter had “hit” them of their house earlier than had adopted them to their resort.Â
“And we awakened, round, I consider, 2 a.m., with unusual vibrations in our our bodies, and a sound,” Garfield informed Pelley.Â
Involved, he ran to his kids’s bedside to examine on them and noticed an eerie scene.Â
“Each have been thrashing of their beds— asleep. However each kicking and transferring aggressively. And I went over to my daughter, and I put my head down subsequent to her head. And I heard a really distinct sound, excellent there, kind of like water speeding,” Garfield mentioned.Â
They reported the occasion to the FBI. The household continues to work on bettering their stability, eyesight, and reminiscence.
“That is essentially the most tough side of this complete difficulty for me are the youngsters who’ve been impacted, each mine in addition to many others. I personally know the dad and mom of, I consider, eight different kids. I can let you know I’ve personally seen stability points in kids which have by no means had that,” Garfield informed Pelley.
“One of many arguments that got here out from researchers across the Havana Syndrome difficulty was that that is psychosomatic, that persons are listening to of those signs, they’re careworn, they’re nervous. It is a regular response,” Rey informed 60 Minutes Additional time.Â
“One of many issues that dissuaded us of that was the truth that kids have been getting… bloody noses [and] bleeding from the ear. There have been seizures taking place in kids. After which pets reacting to noises or pressures that folks have been feeling on the identical time.”
60 Minutes Additional time examined the case of two Canadian diplomats, who have been additionally interviewed for “Concentrating on Individuals,” who mentioned they have been attacked of their houses whereas they have been stationed in Havana, Cuba. They mentioned their kids suffered from signs like nosebleeds, fainting, imaginative and prescient issues, and dizziness afterward.
The 2022 installment of “Concentrating on Individuals” additionally examined the opportunity of microwave know-how getting used as a possible weapon towards these officers and their households.Â
“We’ve not discovered the smoking gun, actually. However there’s quite a lot of scientific analysis on the market that’s concrete on the sort of know-how,” Zill de Granados informed 60 Minutes Additional time.
In 2022, 60 Minutes spoke with James Benford, a physicist and main authority on microwaves. In an interview with Scott Pelley, he mentioned the existence of transportable microwave transmitters that would harm the tissues of the mind. He mentioned these transmitters have been studied for over 50 years.Â
“There are lots of varieties, and so they can go anyplace in measurement, from a suitcase all the way in which as much as a big tractor trailer unit. And the larger the gadget, the longer the vary,” he defined.Â
He mentioned the units can transmit microwave power via partitions, glass, and brick. “Virtually the whole lot,” he informed Pelley.Â
“It has been developed extensively in, maybe, a dozen international locations. The first international locations are the USA, Russia, and China.”
Unit 29155
The newest installment of “Concentrating on Individuals” introduced a serious growth to the story with the assistance of a famend investigative journalist, Christo Grozev.
Grozev famously recognized the lads behind the August 2020 poisoning of the late Russian dissident Alexey Navalny. He additionally recognized different males who tried to poison Sergei Skripal, a Russian army intelligence officer, who later grew to become a double agent for the UK, and his daughter Yulia.
In 2018, Grozev was the primary to determine the existence of a top-secret Russian intelligence unit, Unit 29155. He informed 60 Minutes that this elite unit consists of assassins and saboteurs who use countersurveillance, explosives, poison, and technologically superior tools on their targets.Â
Grozev believes he has discovered a doc that may hyperlink the 29155 intelligence unit to an acoustic power weapon.
Grozev labored with investigative companions, who collaborated with 60 Minutes on this report: {a magazine} referred to as The Insider and German information publication Der Spiegel.
He tracked down an electronic mail that he says is for providers offered to the Russian authorities by a member of Unit 29155 for “potential capabilities of non-lethal acoustic weapons.”
“Which informed us that this specific unit had been engaged with someplace, in some way, empirical assessments of a directed power unit,” he informed Scott Pelley.Â
60 Minutes sources mentioned {that a} suspected member of Russia’s 29155-unit, Albert Averyanov, who can also be the son of the commander of the 29155 unit, is the topic of an investigation into Havana Syndrome incidents reported by Individuals residing in Tbilisi, Georgia.
Grozev discovered Albert Averyanov’s cellphone was turned off throughout the Tbilisi incidents. However 60 Minutes sources say there’s proof somebody in Tbilisi logged in to Averyanov’s private electronic mail throughout the time these incidents occurred. Grozev believes it was Averyanov himself— inserting him within the metropolis at the moment.
“We consider members of Unit 29155 have been there in an effort to facilitate, supervise, or possibly even personally implement assaults on American diplomats, on American authorities officers, utilizing an acoustic weapon,” Grozev informed Pelley.Â
Questions stay
Producers Rey and Zill de Granados informed 60 Minutes Additional time that a lot stays unknown. Regardless of their latest findings, there isn’t any clear reply as to who, or what nation, was behind these incidents. There’s additionally no “smoking gun” that confirms the victims’ suspicions that the Havana Syndrome signs they skilled have been the results of a deliberate assault.
In 2022, a few month earlier than the second installment of their investigation aired on 60 Minutes, the CIA gave an interim evaluation that mentioned, “We assess it unlikely {that a} overseas actor, together with Russia, is conducting a sustained, worldwide marketing campaign harming U.S. personnel with a weapon or a mechanism.”
Final 12 months, in 2023, the Director of Nationwide Intelligence mentioned that it is “not possible a overseas adversary is accountable,” however some intelligence companies had solely “low” or “reasonable” confidence in that evaluation.Â
“This has by no means, for us, been an adversarial course of. As a result of who’re we to inform the intelligence neighborhood of the USA, ‘We’re proper and also you’re flawed’? That is not our job,” Rey defined.
“Our job is to ask questions and share data that we have discovered that will counter the narrative that is on the market…in case you say there is not any proof of a overseas adversary concerned, then what are we ?”
The video above was produced by Will Croxton. It was edited by Sarah Shafer.Â
This week on 60 Minutes, Scott Pelley and a staff of producers continued their five-year investigation into Havana Syndrome, the phenomenon of mysterious mind accidents to U.S. nationwide safety officers and diplomats, and their households, each overseas and at dwelling, that in some instances have led to main well being circumstances, like blindness, reminiscence loss, and vestibular harm.
This fourth installment introduced main developments to the story: a suspected hyperlink between assaults in Tbilisi, Georgia and a top-secret Russian intelligence unit, and new proof {that a} dependable supply calls “a receipt” for acoustic weapons testing carried out by the identical Russian intelligence unit.
A retired Military lieutenant colonel who led the Pentagon investigation into these incidents, Lt. Col. Greg Edgreen, informed 60 Minutes he’s assured that Russia is behind these assaults, and that they’re a part of a worldwide marketing campaign to neutralize U.S. officers.Â
“If my mom had seen what I noticed, she would say, ‘It is the Russians, silly,'” Edgreen informed 60 Minutes.
60 Minutes Additional time spoke to producers Oriana Zill de Granados and Michael Rey concerning the story’s evolution over the course of their investigation, as they pulled again layers of presidency secrecy to talk with victims, determine a possible know-how used to assault them, and study a Russian intelligence unit that will have been behind among the Havana Syndrome incidents.
“Within the first story we mentioned, ‘Hmm. Is that this Russia?’ Second spherical of tales we felt, ‘That is beginning to appear to be Russia.’ And on this story, our sources are telling us that it is Russia,” producer Michael Rey informed 60 Minutes Additional time.Â
The investigation begins
In 2014, producer Oriana Zill de Granados labored on a 60 Minutes story concerning the opening of the U.S. embassy in Cuba underneath then-President Obama. After the embassy had opened in 2015, media retailers started reporting on a sequence of unusual medical signs exhibited by U.S. embassy personnel working in Cuba: dizziness, fatigue, issues with reminiscence, and impaired imaginative and prescient.Â
“And we very early on began approaching folks throughout the intelligence neighborhood and the Division of State, to search out out what these incidents have been. That led us to China, which actually expanded the story past Havana, Cuba,” Zill de Granados informed 60 Minutes Additional time.Â
The primary installment of their sequence of investigative reviews, referred to as “Concentrating on Individuals,” targeted on Commerce and State Division officers who reported listening to unusual sounds of their houses whereas they have been stationed abroad in China. The officers, and relations who lived with them, suffered from mysterious accidents afterward, with signs like complications, nausea, reminiscence issues and problem balancing.
Producers Zill de Granados and Rey interviewed Mark Lenzi, a State Division safety officer who labored within the U.S. consulate in Guangzhou, China. He informed 60 Minutes that each he and his spouse started to undergo signs after listening to weird sounds of their house in 2017.Â
“He informed us quite a lot of issues once we first met him that we sort of could not consider. And now, years later, we consider the whole lot he informed us,” Rey informed 60 Minutes Additional time.
Lenzi described the sound as a “marble” circling down a “steel funnel.” He mentioned he heard the sound 4 instances, at all times in the identical spot and on the identical time of day: proper above his son’s crib when he put him to mattress at evening. He mentioned the sound was like nothing he’d ever heard earlier than and “pretty loud.” Shortly after listening to the sounds, he and his spouse started to really feel in poor health.
“He suffered via migraines, dizziness, [and] reminiscence points. And his large concern was that no one believed him. He had a really onerous time convincing his superiors one thing was up and this wanted to be addressed,” Rey defined.Â
Lenzi informed 60 Minutes he believed he was focused due to his work, utilizing top-secret tools to research digital threats to diplomatic missions.Â
“This was a directed standoff assault towards my house…it was a weapon,” he informed Scott Pelley. “I consider it is RF, radio frequency power, within the microwave vary.”
“Whether or not it was an intentional use of know-how that could possibly be adjusted to harm folks, or whether or not it was a tool that was particularly designed to harm folks…we nonetheless do not know,” Rey informed 60 Minutes Additional time.Â
“We discovered to sort of belief what he was saying, that, in his expertise, the capabilities exist on this planet.”
Home instances and microwave know-how
In 2022, the second and third installment of the investigative sequence took a more in-depth take a look at Havana Syndrome incidents that had occurred on U.S. soil and had not been beforehand reported. It additionally examined microwave know-how that would have been used as a possible weapon towards these officers and their households.
One in every of these home incidents concerned Olivia Troye, a former Homeland Safety and counterterrorism adviser to then-Vice President Mike Pence, who mentioned she was bodily struck whereas descending the steps of the Eisenhower constructing, only a brief distance away from the West Wing of the White Home in Washington, D.C.Â
“It was like this piercing feeling on the aspect of my head…and I obtained like, vertigo. I used to be unsteady. I felt nauseous. I used to be considerably disoriented,” she informed Scott Pelley.
“I keep in mind pondering like, ‘OK…do not fall down the steps. You have to discover your floor once more and regular your self,'” she informed Pelley.
One other U.S. authorities official, Miles Taylor, who was deputy chief of employees for the Division of Homeland Safety on the time, informed 60 Minutes he woke as much as a wierd sound in his house close to Capitol Hill in 2018.Â
“I went to the window, opened up my window, appeared down on the avenue… I see a white van, and the van’s brake lights turned on. And it pulled off and it sped away.”
Taylor mentioned he felt “off” and “sick” the following day. About 5 weeks later, it occurred once more. He mentioned he felt “concussion-like signs,” like he’d been “knocked fairly onerous in a sport.”Â
Whereas reporting the story, producers Rey and Zill de Granados started listening to about different instances of U.S. officers who mentioned they have been attacked whereas abroad after which later attacked once more after that they had returned to the USA.Â
Robyn Garfield, a Commerce Division official, and his spouse Britta Garfield informed 60 Minutes that that they had heard unusual sounds within the evening once they have been residing abroad in Shanghai, China. This was adopted by signs of reminiscence loss, impaired imaginative and prescient, and problem with stability, for each them and their two kids.Â
In 2020, they spoke to 60 Minutes once more, saying that they had been attacked once more, in the course of the evening, in Philadelphia, the place that they had been receiving therapy for the accidents they sustained in China.Â
Late one evening, Britta Garfield awoke instantly, saying she had heard a loud, painful sound. They gathered their youngsters and booked a room at a resort. However no matter had “hit” them of their house earlier than had adopted them to their resort.Â
“And we awakened, round, I consider, 2 a.m., with unusual vibrations in our our bodies, and a sound,” Garfield informed Pelley.Â
Involved, he ran to his kids’s bedside to examine on them and noticed an eerie scene.Â
“Each have been thrashing of their beds— asleep. However each kicking and transferring aggressively. And I went over to my daughter, and I put my head down subsequent to her head. And I heard a really distinct sound, excellent there, kind of like water speeding,” Garfield mentioned.Â
They reported the occasion to the FBI. The household continues to work on bettering their stability, eyesight, and reminiscence.
“That is essentially the most tough side of this complete difficulty for me are the youngsters who’ve been impacted, each mine in addition to many others. I personally know the dad and mom of, I consider, eight different kids. I can let you know I’ve personally seen stability points in kids which have by no means had that,” Garfield informed Pelley.
“One of many arguments that got here out from researchers across the Havana Syndrome difficulty was that that is psychosomatic, that persons are listening to of those signs, they’re careworn, they’re nervous. It is a regular response,” Rey informed 60 Minutes Additional time.Â
“One of many issues that dissuaded us of that was the truth that kids have been getting… bloody noses [and] bleeding from the ear. There have been seizures taking place in kids. After which pets reacting to noises or pressures that folks have been feeling on the identical time.”
60 Minutes Additional time examined the case of two Canadian diplomats, who have been additionally interviewed for “Concentrating on Individuals,” who mentioned they have been attacked of their houses whereas they have been stationed in Havana, Cuba. They mentioned their kids suffered from signs like nosebleeds, fainting, imaginative and prescient issues, and dizziness afterward.
The 2022 installment of “Concentrating on Individuals” additionally examined the opportunity of microwave know-how getting used as a possible weapon towards these officers and their households.Â
“We’ve not discovered the smoking gun, actually. However there’s quite a lot of scientific analysis on the market that’s concrete on the sort of know-how,” Zill de Granados informed 60 Minutes Additional time.
In 2022, 60 Minutes spoke with James Benford, a physicist and main authority on microwaves. In an interview with Scott Pelley, he mentioned the existence of transportable microwave transmitters that would harm the tissues of the mind. He mentioned these transmitters have been studied for over 50 years.Â
“There are lots of varieties, and so they can go anyplace in measurement, from a suitcase all the way in which as much as a big tractor trailer unit. And the larger the gadget, the longer the vary,” he defined.Â
He mentioned the units can transmit microwave power via partitions, glass, and brick. “Virtually the whole lot,” he informed Pelley.Â
“It has been developed extensively in, maybe, a dozen international locations. The first international locations are the USA, Russia, and China.”
Unit 29155
The newest installment of “Concentrating on Individuals” introduced a serious growth to the story with the assistance of a famend investigative journalist, Christo Grozev.
Grozev famously recognized the lads behind the August 2020 poisoning of the late Russian dissident Alexey Navalny. He additionally recognized different males who tried to poison Sergei Skripal, a Russian army intelligence officer, who later grew to become a double agent for the UK, and his daughter Yulia.
In 2018, Grozev was the primary to determine the existence of a top-secret Russian intelligence unit, Unit 29155. He informed 60 Minutes that this elite unit consists of assassins and saboteurs who use countersurveillance, explosives, poison, and technologically superior tools on their targets.Â
Grozev believes he has discovered a doc that may hyperlink the 29155 intelligence unit to an acoustic power weapon.
Grozev labored with investigative companions, who collaborated with 60 Minutes on this report: {a magazine} referred to as The Insider and German information publication Der Spiegel.
He tracked down an electronic mail that he says is for providers offered to the Russian authorities by a member of Unit 29155 for “potential capabilities of non-lethal acoustic weapons.”
“Which informed us that this specific unit had been engaged with someplace, in some way, empirical assessments of a directed power unit,” he informed Scott Pelley.Â
60 Minutes sources mentioned {that a} suspected member of Russia’s 29155-unit, Albert Averyanov, who can also be the son of the commander of the 29155 unit, is the topic of an investigation into Havana Syndrome incidents reported by Individuals residing in Tbilisi, Georgia.
Grozev discovered Albert Averyanov’s cellphone was turned off throughout the Tbilisi incidents. However 60 Minutes sources say there’s proof somebody in Tbilisi logged in to Averyanov’s private electronic mail throughout the time these incidents occurred. Grozev believes it was Averyanov himself— inserting him within the metropolis at the moment.
“We consider members of Unit 29155 have been there in an effort to facilitate, supervise, or possibly even personally implement assaults on American diplomats, on American authorities officers, utilizing an acoustic weapon,” Grozev informed Pelley.Â
Questions stay
Producers Rey and Zill de Granados informed 60 Minutes Additional time that a lot stays unknown. Regardless of their latest findings, there isn’t any clear reply as to who, or what nation, was behind these incidents. There’s additionally no “smoking gun” that confirms the victims’ suspicions that the Havana Syndrome signs they skilled have been the results of a deliberate assault.
In 2022, a few month earlier than the second installment of their investigation aired on 60 Minutes, the CIA gave an interim evaluation that mentioned, “We assess it unlikely {that a} overseas actor, together with Russia, is conducting a sustained, worldwide marketing campaign harming U.S. personnel with a weapon or a mechanism.”
Final 12 months, in 2023, the Director of Nationwide Intelligence mentioned that it is “not possible a overseas adversary is accountable,” however some intelligence companies had solely “low” or “reasonable” confidence in that evaluation.Â
“This has by no means, for us, been an adversarial course of. As a result of who’re we to inform the intelligence neighborhood of the USA, ‘We’re proper and also you’re flawed’? That is not our job,” Rey defined.
“Our job is to ask questions and share data that we have discovered that will counter the narrative that is on the market…in case you say there is not any proof of a overseas adversary concerned, then what are we ?”
The video above was produced by Will Croxton. It was edited by Sarah Shafer.Â
This week on 60 Minutes, Scott Pelley and a staff of producers continued their five-year investigation into Havana Syndrome, the phenomenon of mysterious mind accidents to U.S. nationwide safety officers and diplomats, and their households, each overseas and at dwelling, that in some instances have led to main well being circumstances, like blindness, reminiscence loss, and vestibular harm.
This fourth installment introduced main developments to the story: a suspected hyperlink between assaults in Tbilisi, Georgia and a top-secret Russian intelligence unit, and new proof {that a} dependable supply calls “a receipt” for acoustic weapons testing carried out by the identical Russian intelligence unit.
A retired Military lieutenant colonel who led the Pentagon investigation into these incidents, Lt. Col. Greg Edgreen, informed 60 Minutes he’s assured that Russia is behind these assaults, and that they’re a part of a worldwide marketing campaign to neutralize U.S. officers.Â
“If my mom had seen what I noticed, she would say, ‘It is the Russians, silly,'” Edgreen informed 60 Minutes.
60 Minutes Additional time spoke to producers Oriana Zill de Granados and Michael Rey concerning the story’s evolution over the course of their investigation, as they pulled again layers of presidency secrecy to talk with victims, determine a possible know-how used to assault them, and study a Russian intelligence unit that will have been behind among the Havana Syndrome incidents.
“Within the first story we mentioned, ‘Hmm. Is that this Russia?’ Second spherical of tales we felt, ‘That is beginning to appear to be Russia.’ And on this story, our sources are telling us that it is Russia,” producer Michael Rey informed 60 Minutes Additional time.Â
The investigation begins
In 2014, producer Oriana Zill de Granados labored on a 60 Minutes story concerning the opening of the U.S. embassy in Cuba underneath then-President Obama. After the embassy had opened in 2015, media retailers started reporting on a sequence of unusual medical signs exhibited by U.S. embassy personnel working in Cuba: dizziness, fatigue, issues with reminiscence, and impaired imaginative and prescient.Â
“And we very early on began approaching folks throughout the intelligence neighborhood and the Division of State, to search out out what these incidents have been. That led us to China, which actually expanded the story past Havana, Cuba,” Zill de Granados informed 60 Minutes Additional time.Â
The primary installment of their sequence of investigative reviews, referred to as “Concentrating on Individuals,” targeted on Commerce and State Division officers who reported listening to unusual sounds of their houses whereas they have been stationed abroad in China. The officers, and relations who lived with them, suffered from mysterious accidents afterward, with signs like complications, nausea, reminiscence issues and problem balancing.
Producers Zill de Granados and Rey interviewed Mark Lenzi, a State Division safety officer who labored within the U.S. consulate in Guangzhou, China. He informed 60 Minutes that each he and his spouse started to undergo signs after listening to weird sounds of their house in 2017.Â
“He informed us quite a lot of issues once we first met him that we sort of could not consider. And now, years later, we consider the whole lot he informed us,” Rey informed 60 Minutes Additional time.
Lenzi described the sound as a “marble” circling down a “steel funnel.” He mentioned he heard the sound 4 instances, at all times in the identical spot and on the identical time of day: proper above his son’s crib when he put him to mattress at evening. He mentioned the sound was like nothing he’d ever heard earlier than and “pretty loud.” Shortly after listening to the sounds, he and his spouse started to really feel in poor health.
“He suffered via migraines, dizziness, [and] reminiscence points. And his large concern was that no one believed him. He had a really onerous time convincing his superiors one thing was up and this wanted to be addressed,” Rey defined.Â
Lenzi informed 60 Minutes he believed he was focused due to his work, utilizing top-secret tools to research digital threats to diplomatic missions.Â
“This was a directed standoff assault towards my house…it was a weapon,” he informed Scott Pelley. “I consider it is RF, radio frequency power, within the microwave vary.”
“Whether or not it was an intentional use of know-how that could possibly be adjusted to harm folks, or whether or not it was a tool that was particularly designed to harm folks…we nonetheless do not know,” Rey informed 60 Minutes Additional time.Â
“We discovered to sort of belief what he was saying, that, in his expertise, the capabilities exist on this planet.”
Home instances and microwave know-how
In 2022, the second and third installment of the investigative sequence took a more in-depth take a look at Havana Syndrome incidents that had occurred on U.S. soil and had not been beforehand reported. It additionally examined microwave know-how that would have been used as a possible weapon towards these officers and their households.
One in every of these home incidents concerned Olivia Troye, a former Homeland Safety and counterterrorism adviser to then-Vice President Mike Pence, who mentioned she was bodily struck whereas descending the steps of the Eisenhower constructing, only a brief distance away from the West Wing of the White Home in Washington, D.C.Â
“It was like this piercing feeling on the aspect of my head…and I obtained like, vertigo. I used to be unsteady. I felt nauseous. I used to be considerably disoriented,” she informed Scott Pelley.
“I keep in mind pondering like, ‘OK…do not fall down the steps. You have to discover your floor once more and regular your self,'” she informed Pelley.
One other U.S. authorities official, Miles Taylor, who was deputy chief of employees for the Division of Homeland Safety on the time, informed 60 Minutes he woke as much as a wierd sound in his house close to Capitol Hill in 2018.Â
“I went to the window, opened up my window, appeared down on the avenue… I see a white van, and the van’s brake lights turned on. And it pulled off and it sped away.”
Taylor mentioned he felt “off” and “sick” the following day. About 5 weeks later, it occurred once more. He mentioned he felt “concussion-like signs,” like he’d been “knocked fairly onerous in a sport.”Â
Whereas reporting the story, producers Rey and Zill de Granados started listening to about different instances of U.S. officers who mentioned they have been attacked whereas abroad after which later attacked once more after that they had returned to the USA.Â
Robyn Garfield, a Commerce Division official, and his spouse Britta Garfield informed 60 Minutes that that they had heard unusual sounds within the evening once they have been residing abroad in Shanghai, China. This was adopted by signs of reminiscence loss, impaired imaginative and prescient, and problem with stability, for each them and their two kids.Â
In 2020, they spoke to 60 Minutes once more, saying that they had been attacked once more, in the course of the evening, in Philadelphia, the place that they had been receiving therapy for the accidents they sustained in China.Â
Late one evening, Britta Garfield awoke instantly, saying she had heard a loud, painful sound. They gathered their youngsters and booked a room at a resort. However no matter had “hit” them of their house earlier than had adopted them to their resort.Â
“And we awakened, round, I consider, 2 a.m., with unusual vibrations in our our bodies, and a sound,” Garfield informed Pelley.Â
Involved, he ran to his kids’s bedside to examine on them and noticed an eerie scene.Â
“Each have been thrashing of their beds— asleep. However each kicking and transferring aggressively. And I went over to my daughter, and I put my head down subsequent to her head. And I heard a really distinct sound, excellent there, kind of like water speeding,” Garfield mentioned.Â
They reported the occasion to the FBI. The household continues to work on bettering their stability, eyesight, and reminiscence.
“That is essentially the most tough side of this complete difficulty for me are the youngsters who’ve been impacted, each mine in addition to many others. I personally know the dad and mom of, I consider, eight different kids. I can let you know I’ve personally seen stability points in kids which have by no means had that,” Garfield informed Pelley.
“One of many arguments that got here out from researchers across the Havana Syndrome difficulty was that that is psychosomatic, that persons are listening to of those signs, they’re careworn, they’re nervous. It is a regular response,” Rey informed 60 Minutes Additional time.Â
“One of many issues that dissuaded us of that was the truth that kids have been getting… bloody noses [and] bleeding from the ear. There have been seizures taking place in kids. After which pets reacting to noises or pressures that folks have been feeling on the identical time.”
60 Minutes Additional time examined the case of two Canadian diplomats, who have been additionally interviewed for “Concentrating on Individuals,” who mentioned they have been attacked of their houses whereas they have been stationed in Havana, Cuba. They mentioned their kids suffered from signs like nosebleeds, fainting, imaginative and prescient issues, and dizziness afterward.
The 2022 installment of “Concentrating on Individuals” additionally examined the opportunity of microwave know-how getting used as a possible weapon towards these officers and their households.Â
“We’ve not discovered the smoking gun, actually. However there’s quite a lot of scientific analysis on the market that’s concrete on the sort of know-how,” Zill de Granados informed 60 Minutes Additional time.
In 2022, 60 Minutes spoke with James Benford, a physicist and main authority on microwaves. In an interview with Scott Pelley, he mentioned the existence of transportable microwave transmitters that would harm the tissues of the mind. He mentioned these transmitters have been studied for over 50 years.Â
“There are lots of varieties, and so they can go anyplace in measurement, from a suitcase all the way in which as much as a big tractor trailer unit. And the larger the gadget, the longer the vary,” he defined.Â
He mentioned the units can transmit microwave power via partitions, glass, and brick. “Virtually the whole lot,” he informed Pelley.Â
“It has been developed extensively in, maybe, a dozen international locations. The first international locations are the USA, Russia, and China.”
Unit 29155
The newest installment of “Concentrating on Individuals” introduced a serious growth to the story with the assistance of a famend investigative journalist, Christo Grozev.
Grozev famously recognized the lads behind the August 2020 poisoning of the late Russian dissident Alexey Navalny. He additionally recognized different males who tried to poison Sergei Skripal, a Russian army intelligence officer, who later grew to become a double agent for the UK, and his daughter Yulia.
In 2018, Grozev was the primary to determine the existence of a top-secret Russian intelligence unit, Unit 29155. He informed 60 Minutes that this elite unit consists of assassins and saboteurs who use countersurveillance, explosives, poison, and technologically superior tools on their targets.Â
Grozev believes he has discovered a doc that may hyperlink the 29155 intelligence unit to an acoustic power weapon.
Grozev labored with investigative companions, who collaborated with 60 Minutes on this report: {a magazine} referred to as The Insider and German information publication Der Spiegel.
He tracked down an electronic mail that he says is for providers offered to the Russian authorities by a member of Unit 29155 for “potential capabilities of non-lethal acoustic weapons.”
“Which informed us that this specific unit had been engaged with someplace, in some way, empirical assessments of a directed power unit,” he informed Scott Pelley.Â
60 Minutes sources mentioned {that a} suspected member of Russia’s 29155-unit, Albert Averyanov, who can also be the son of the commander of the 29155 unit, is the topic of an investigation into Havana Syndrome incidents reported by Individuals residing in Tbilisi, Georgia.
Grozev discovered Albert Averyanov’s cellphone was turned off throughout the Tbilisi incidents. However 60 Minutes sources say there’s proof somebody in Tbilisi logged in to Averyanov’s private electronic mail throughout the time these incidents occurred. Grozev believes it was Averyanov himself— inserting him within the metropolis at the moment.
“We consider members of Unit 29155 have been there in an effort to facilitate, supervise, or possibly even personally implement assaults on American diplomats, on American authorities officers, utilizing an acoustic weapon,” Grozev informed Pelley.Â
Questions stay
Producers Rey and Zill de Granados informed 60 Minutes Additional time that a lot stays unknown. Regardless of their latest findings, there isn’t any clear reply as to who, or what nation, was behind these incidents. There’s additionally no “smoking gun” that confirms the victims’ suspicions that the Havana Syndrome signs they skilled have been the results of a deliberate assault.
In 2022, a few month earlier than the second installment of their investigation aired on 60 Minutes, the CIA gave an interim evaluation that mentioned, “We assess it unlikely {that a} overseas actor, together with Russia, is conducting a sustained, worldwide marketing campaign harming U.S. personnel with a weapon or a mechanism.”
Final 12 months, in 2023, the Director of Nationwide Intelligence mentioned that it is “not possible a overseas adversary is accountable,” however some intelligence companies had solely “low” or “reasonable” confidence in that evaluation.Â
“This has by no means, for us, been an adversarial course of. As a result of who’re we to inform the intelligence neighborhood of the USA, ‘We’re proper and also you’re flawed’? That is not our job,” Rey defined.
“Our job is to ask questions and share data that we have discovered that will counter the narrative that is on the market…in case you say there is not any proof of a overseas adversary concerned, then what are we ?”
The video above was produced by Will Croxton. It was edited by Sarah Shafer.Â
This week on 60 Minutes, Scott Pelley and a staff of producers continued their five-year investigation into Havana Syndrome, the phenomenon of mysterious mind accidents to U.S. nationwide safety officers and diplomats, and their households, each overseas and at dwelling, that in some instances have led to main well being circumstances, like blindness, reminiscence loss, and vestibular harm.
This fourth installment introduced main developments to the story: a suspected hyperlink between assaults in Tbilisi, Georgia and a top-secret Russian intelligence unit, and new proof {that a} dependable supply calls “a receipt” for acoustic weapons testing carried out by the identical Russian intelligence unit.
A retired Military lieutenant colonel who led the Pentagon investigation into these incidents, Lt. Col. Greg Edgreen, informed 60 Minutes he’s assured that Russia is behind these assaults, and that they’re a part of a worldwide marketing campaign to neutralize U.S. officers.Â
“If my mom had seen what I noticed, she would say, ‘It is the Russians, silly,'” Edgreen informed 60 Minutes.
60 Minutes Additional time spoke to producers Oriana Zill de Granados and Michael Rey concerning the story’s evolution over the course of their investigation, as they pulled again layers of presidency secrecy to talk with victims, determine a possible know-how used to assault them, and study a Russian intelligence unit that will have been behind among the Havana Syndrome incidents.
“Within the first story we mentioned, ‘Hmm. Is that this Russia?’ Second spherical of tales we felt, ‘That is beginning to appear to be Russia.’ And on this story, our sources are telling us that it is Russia,” producer Michael Rey informed 60 Minutes Additional time.Â
The investigation begins
In 2014, producer Oriana Zill de Granados labored on a 60 Minutes story concerning the opening of the U.S. embassy in Cuba underneath then-President Obama. After the embassy had opened in 2015, media retailers started reporting on a sequence of unusual medical signs exhibited by U.S. embassy personnel working in Cuba: dizziness, fatigue, issues with reminiscence, and impaired imaginative and prescient.Â
“And we very early on began approaching folks throughout the intelligence neighborhood and the Division of State, to search out out what these incidents have been. That led us to China, which actually expanded the story past Havana, Cuba,” Zill de Granados informed 60 Minutes Additional time.Â
The primary installment of their sequence of investigative reviews, referred to as “Concentrating on Individuals,” targeted on Commerce and State Division officers who reported listening to unusual sounds of their houses whereas they have been stationed abroad in China. The officers, and relations who lived with them, suffered from mysterious accidents afterward, with signs like complications, nausea, reminiscence issues and problem balancing.
Producers Zill de Granados and Rey interviewed Mark Lenzi, a State Division safety officer who labored within the U.S. consulate in Guangzhou, China. He informed 60 Minutes that each he and his spouse started to undergo signs after listening to weird sounds of their house in 2017.Â
“He informed us quite a lot of issues once we first met him that we sort of could not consider. And now, years later, we consider the whole lot he informed us,” Rey informed 60 Minutes Additional time.
Lenzi described the sound as a “marble” circling down a “steel funnel.” He mentioned he heard the sound 4 instances, at all times in the identical spot and on the identical time of day: proper above his son’s crib when he put him to mattress at evening. He mentioned the sound was like nothing he’d ever heard earlier than and “pretty loud.” Shortly after listening to the sounds, he and his spouse started to really feel in poor health.
“He suffered via migraines, dizziness, [and] reminiscence points. And his large concern was that no one believed him. He had a really onerous time convincing his superiors one thing was up and this wanted to be addressed,” Rey defined.Â
Lenzi informed 60 Minutes he believed he was focused due to his work, utilizing top-secret tools to research digital threats to diplomatic missions.Â
“This was a directed standoff assault towards my house…it was a weapon,” he informed Scott Pelley. “I consider it is RF, radio frequency power, within the microwave vary.”
“Whether or not it was an intentional use of know-how that could possibly be adjusted to harm folks, or whether or not it was a tool that was particularly designed to harm folks…we nonetheless do not know,” Rey informed 60 Minutes Additional time.Â
“We discovered to sort of belief what he was saying, that, in his expertise, the capabilities exist on this planet.”
Home instances and microwave know-how
In 2022, the second and third installment of the investigative sequence took a more in-depth take a look at Havana Syndrome incidents that had occurred on U.S. soil and had not been beforehand reported. It additionally examined microwave know-how that would have been used as a possible weapon towards these officers and their households.
One in every of these home incidents concerned Olivia Troye, a former Homeland Safety and counterterrorism adviser to then-Vice President Mike Pence, who mentioned she was bodily struck whereas descending the steps of the Eisenhower constructing, only a brief distance away from the West Wing of the White Home in Washington, D.C.Â
“It was like this piercing feeling on the aspect of my head…and I obtained like, vertigo. I used to be unsteady. I felt nauseous. I used to be considerably disoriented,” she informed Scott Pelley.
“I keep in mind pondering like, ‘OK…do not fall down the steps. You have to discover your floor once more and regular your self,'” she informed Pelley.
One other U.S. authorities official, Miles Taylor, who was deputy chief of employees for the Division of Homeland Safety on the time, informed 60 Minutes he woke as much as a wierd sound in his house close to Capitol Hill in 2018.Â
“I went to the window, opened up my window, appeared down on the avenue… I see a white van, and the van’s brake lights turned on. And it pulled off and it sped away.”
Taylor mentioned he felt “off” and “sick” the following day. About 5 weeks later, it occurred once more. He mentioned he felt “concussion-like signs,” like he’d been “knocked fairly onerous in a sport.”Â
Whereas reporting the story, producers Rey and Zill de Granados started listening to about different instances of U.S. officers who mentioned they have been attacked whereas abroad after which later attacked once more after that they had returned to the USA.Â
Robyn Garfield, a Commerce Division official, and his spouse Britta Garfield informed 60 Minutes that that they had heard unusual sounds within the evening once they have been residing abroad in Shanghai, China. This was adopted by signs of reminiscence loss, impaired imaginative and prescient, and problem with stability, for each them and their two kids.Â
In 2020, they spoke to 60 Minutes once more, saying that they had been attacked once more, in the course of the evening, in Philadelphia, the place that they had been receiving therapy for the accidents they sustained in China.Â
Late one evening, Britta Garfield awoke instantly, saying she had heard a loud, painful sound. They gathered their youngsters and booked a room at a resort. However no matter had “hit” them of their house earlier than had adopted them to their resort.Â
“And we awakened, round, I consider, 2 a.m., with unusual vibrations in our our bodies, and a sound,” Garfield informed Pelley.Â
Involved, he ran to his kids’s bedside to examine on them and noticed an eerie scene.Â
“Each have been thrashing of their beds— asleep. However each kicking and transferring aggressively. And I went over to my daughter, and I put my head down subsequent to her head. And I heard a really distinct sound, excellent there, kind of like water speeding,” Garfield mentioned.Â
They reported the occasion to the FBI. The household continues to work on bettering their stability, eyesight, and reminiscence.
“That is essentially the most tough side of this complete difficulty for me are the youngsters who’ve been impacted, each mine in addition to many others. I personally know the dad and mom of, I consider, eight different kids. I can let you know I’ve personally seen stability points in kids which have by no means had that,” Garfield informed Pelley.
“One of many arguments that got here out from researchers across the Havana Syndrome difficulty was that that is psychosomatic, that persons are listening to of those signs, they’re careworn, they’re nervous. It is a regular response,” Rey informed 60 Minutes Additional time.Â
“One of many issues that dissuaded us of that was the truth that kids have been getting… bloody noses [and] bleeding from the ear. There have been seizures taking place in kids. After which pets reacting to noises or pressures that folks have been feeling on the identical time.”
60 Minutes Additional time examined the case of two Canadian diplomats, who have been additionally interviewed for “Concentrating on Individuals,” who mentioned they have been attacked of their houses whereas they have been stationed in Havana, Cuba. They mentioned their kids suffered from signs like nosebleeds, fainting, imaginative and prescient issues, and dizziness afterward.
The 2022 installment of “Concentrating on Individuals” additionally examined the opportunity of microwave know-how getting used as a possible weapon towards these officers and their households.Â
“We’ve not discovered the smoking gun, actually. However there’s quite a lot of scientific analysis on the market that’s concrete on the sort of know-how,” Zill de Granados informed 60 Minutes Additional time.
In 2022, 60 Minutes spoke with James Benford, a physicist and main authority on microwaves. In an interview with Scott Pelley, he mentioned the existence of transportable microwave transmitters that would harm the tissues of the mind. He mentioned these transmitters have been studied for over 50 years.Â
“There are lots of varieties, and so they can go anyplace in measurement, from a suitcase all the way in which as much as a big tractor trailer unit. And the larger the gadget, the longer the vary,” he defined.Â
He mentioned the units can transmit microwave power via partitions, glass, and brick. “Virtually the whole lot,” he informed Pelley.Â
“It has been developed extensively in, maybe, a dozen international locations. The first international locations are the USA, Russia, and China.”
Unit 29155
The newest installment of “Concentrating on Individuals” introduced a serious growth to the story with the assistance of a famend investigative journalist, Christo Grozev.
Grozev famously recognized the lads behind the August 2020 poisoning of the late Russian dissident Alexey Navalny. He additionally recognized different males who tried to poison Sergei Skripal, a Russian army intelligence officer, who later grew to become a double agent for the UK, and his daughter Yulia.
In 2018, Grozev was the primary to determine the existence of a top-secret Russian intelligence unit, Unit 29155. He informed 60 Minutes that this elite unit consists of assassins and saboteurs who use countersurveillance, explosives, poison, and technologically superior tools on their targets.Â
Grozev believes he has discovered a doc that may hyperlink the 29155 intelligence unit to an acoustic power weapon.
Grozev labored with investigative companions, who collaborated with 60 Minutes on this report: {a magazine} referred to as The Insider and German information publication Der Spiegel.
He tracked down an electronic mail that he says is for providers offered to the Russian authorities by a member of Unit 29155 for “potential capabilities of non-lethal acoustic weapons.”
“Which informed us that this specific unit had been engaged with someplace, in some way, empirical assessments of a directed power unit,” he informed Scott Pelley.Â
60 Minutes sources mentioned {that a} suspected member of Russia’s 29155-unit, Albert Averyanov, who can also be the son of the commander of the 29155 unit, is the topic of an investigation into Havana Syndrome incidents reported by Individuals residing in Tbilisi, Georgia.
Grozev discovered Albert Averyanov’s cellphone was turned off throughout the Tbilisi incidents. However 60 Minutes sources say there’s proof somebody in Tbilisi logged in to Averyanov’s private electronic mail throughout the time these incidents occurred. Grozev believes it was Averyanov himself— inserting him within the metropolis at the moment.
“We consider members of Unit 29155 have been there in an effort to facilitate, supervise, or possibly even personally implement assaults on American diplomats, on American authorities officers, utilizing an acoustic weapon,” Grozev informed Pelley.Â
Questions stay
Producers Rey and Zill de Granados informed 60 Minutes Additional time that a lot stays unknown. Regardless of their latest findings, there isn’t any clear reply as to who, or what nation, was behind these incidents. There’s additionally no “smoking gun” that confirms the victims’ suspicions that the Havana Syndrome signs they skilled have been the results of a deliberate assault.
In 2022, a few month earlier than the second installment of their investigation aired on 60 Minutes, the CIA gave an interim evaluation that mentioned, “We assess it unlikely {that a} overseas actor, together with Russia, is conducting a sustained, worldwide marketing campaign harming U.S. personnel with a weapon or a mechanism.”
Final 12 months, in 2023, the Director of Nationwide Intelligence mentioned that it is “not possible a overseas adversary is accountable,” however some intelligence companies had solely “low” or “reasonable” confidence in that evaluation.Â
“This has by no means, for us, been an adversarial course of. As a result of who’re we to inform the intelligence neighborhood of the USA, ‘We’re proper and also you’re flawed’? That is not our job,” Rey defined.
“Our job is to ask questions and share data that we have discovered that will counter the narrative that is on the market…in case you say there is not any proof of a overseas adversary concerned, then what are we ?”
The video above was produced by Will Croxton. It was edited by Sarah Shafer.Â
This week on 60 Minutes, Scott Pelley and a staff of producers continued their five-year investigation into Havana Syndrome, the phenomenon of mysterious mind accidents to U.S. nationwide safety officers and diplomats, and their households, each overseas and at dwelling, that in some instances have led to main well being circumstances, like blindness, reminiscence loss, and vestibular harm.
This fourth installment introduced main developments to the story: a suspected hyperlink between assaults in Tbilisi, Georgia and a top-secret Russian intelligence unit, and new proof {that a} dependable supply calls “a receipt” for acoustic weapons testing carried out by the identical Russian intelligence unit.
A retired Military lieutenant colonel who led the Pentagon investigation into these incidents, Lt. Col. Greg Edgreen, informed 60 Minutes he’s assured that Russia is behind these assaults, and that they’re a part of a worldwide marketing campaign to neutralize U.S. officers.Â
“If my mom had seen what I noticed, she would say, ‘It is the Russians, silly,'” Edgreen informed 60 Minutes.
60 Minutes Additional time spoke to producers Oriana Zill de Granados and Michael Rey concerning the story’s evolution over the course of their investigation, as they pulled again layers of presidency secrecy to talk with victims, determine a possible know-how used to assault them, and study a Russian intelligence unit that will have been behind among the Havana Syndrome incidents.
“Within the first story we mentioned, ‘Hmm. Is that this Russia?’ Second spherical of tales we felt, ‘That is beginning to appear to be Russia.’ And on this story, our sources are telling us that it is Russia,” producer Michael Rey informed 60 Minutes Additional time.Â
The investigation begins
In 2014, producer Oriana Zill de Granados labored on a 60 Minutes story concerning the opening of the U.S. embassy in Cuba underneath then-President Obama. After the embassy had opened in 2015, media retailers started reporting on a sequence of unusual medical signs exhibited by U.S. embassy personnel working in Cuba: dizziness, fatigue, issues with reminiscence, and impaired imaginative and prescient.Â
“And we very early on began approaching folks throughout the intelligence neighborhood and the Division of State, to search out out what these incidents have been. That led us to China, which actually expanded the story past Havana, Cuba,” Zill de Granados informed 60 Minutes Additional time.Â
The primary installment of their sequence of investigative reviews, referred to as “Concentrating on Individuals,” targeted on Commerce and State Division officers who reported listening to unusual sounds of their houses whereas they have been stationed abroad in China. The officers, and relations who lived with them, suffered from mysterious accidents afterward, with signs like complications, nausea, reminiscence issues and problem balancing.
Producers Zill de Granados and Rey interviewed Mark Lenzi, a State Division safety officer who labored within the U.S. consulate in Guangzhou, China. He informed 60 Minutes that each he and his spouse started to undergo signs after listening to weird sounds of their house in 2017.Â
“He informed us quite a lot of issues once we first met him that we sort of could not consider. And now, years later, we consider the whole lot he informed us,” Rey informed 60 Minutes Additional time.
Lenzi described the sound as a “marble” circling down a “steel funnel.” He mentioned he heard the sound 4 instances, at all times in the identical spot and on the identical time of day: proper above his son’s crib when he put him to mattress at evening. He mentioned the sound was like nothing he’d ever heard earlier than and “pretty loud.” Shortly after listening to the sounds, he and his spouse started to really feel in poor health.
“He suffered via migraines, dizziness, [and] reminiscence points. And his large concern was that no one believed him. He had a really onerous time convincing his superiors one thing was up and this wanted to be addressed,” Rey defined.Â
Lenzi informed 60 Minutes he believed he was focused due to his work, utilizing top-secret tools to research digital threats to diplomatic missions.Â
“This was a directed standoff assault towards my house…it was a weapon,” he informed Scott Pelley. “I consider it is RF, radio frequency power, within the microwave vary.”
“Whether or not it was an intentional use of know-how that could possibly be adjusted to harm folks, or whether or not it was a tool that was particularly designed to harm folks…we nonetheless do not know,” Rey informed 60 Minutes Additional time.Â
“We discovered to sort of belief what he was saying, that, in his expertise, the capabilities exist on this planet.”
Home instances and microwave know-how
In 2022, the second and third installment of the investigative sequence took a more in-depth take a look at Havana Syndrome incidents that had occurred on U.S. soil and had not been beforehand reported. It additionally examined microwave know-how that would have been used as a possible weapon towards these officers and their households.
One in every of these home incidents concerned Olivia Troye, a former Homeland Safety and counterterrorism adviser to then-Vice President Mike Pence, who mentioned she was bodily struck whereas descending the steps of the Eisenhower constructing, only a brief distance away from the West Wing of the White Home in Washington, D.C.Â
“It was like this piercing feeling on the aspect of my head…and I obtained like, vertigo. I used to be unsteady. I felt nauseous. I used to be considerably disoriented,” she informed Scott Pelley.
“I keep in mind pondering like, ‘OK…do not fall down the steps. You have to discover your floor once more and regular your self,'” she informed Pelley.
One other U.S. authorities official, Miles Taylor, who was deputy chief of employees for the Division of Homeland Safety on the time, informed 60 Minutes he woke as much as a wierd sound in his house close to Capitol Hill in 2018.Â
“I went to the window, opened up my window, appeared down on the avenue… I see a white van, and the van’s brake lights turned on. And it pulled off and it sped away.”
Taylor mentioned he felt “off” and “sick” the following day. About 5 weeks later, it occurred once more. He mentioned he felt “concussion-like signs,” like he’d been “knocked fairly onerous in a sport.”Â
Whereas reporting the story, producers Rey and Zill de Granados started listening to about different instances of U.S. officers who mentioned they have been attacked whereas abroad after which later attacked once more after that they had returned to the USA.Â
Robyn Garfield, a Commerce Division official, and his spouse Britta Garfield informed 60 Minutes that that they had heard unusual sounds within the evening once they have been residing abroad in Shanghai, China. This was adopted by signs of reminiscence loss, impaired imaginative and prescient, and problem with stability, for each them and their two kids.Â
In 2020, they spoke to 60 Minutes once more, saying that they had been attacked once more, in the course of the evening, in Philadelphia, the place that they had been receiving therapy for the accidents they sustained in China.Â
Late one evening, Britta Garfield awoke instantly, saying she had heard a loud, painful sound. They gathered their youngsters and booked a room at a resort. However no matter had “hit” them of their house earlier than had adopted them to their resort.Â
“And we awakened, round, I consider, 2 a.m., with unusual vibrations in our our bodies, and a sound,” Garfield informed Pelley.Â
Involved, he ran to his kids’s bedside to examine on them and noticed an eerie scene.Â
“Each have been thrashing of their beds— asleep. However each kicking and transferring aggressively. And I went over to my daughter, and I put my head down subsequent to her head. And I heard a really distinct sound, excellent there, kind of like water speeding,” Garfield mentioned.Â
They reported the occasion to the FBI. The household continues to work on bettering their stability, eyesight, and reminiscence.
“That is essentially the most tough side of this complete difficulty for me are the youngsters who’ve been impacted, each mine in addition to many others. I personally know the dad and mom of, I consider, eight different kids. I can let you know I’ve personally seen stability points in kids which have by no means had that,” Garfield informed Pelley.
“One of many arguments that got here out from researchers across the Havana Syndrome difficulty was that that is psychosomatic, that persons are listening to of those signs, they’re careworn, they’re nervous. It is a regular response,” Rey informed 60 Minutes Additional time.Â
“One of many issues that dissuaded us of that was the truth that kids have been getting… bloody noses [and] bleeding from the ear. There have been seizures taking place in kids. After which pets reacting to noises or pressures that folks have been feeling on the identical time.”
60 Minutes Additional time examined the case of two Canadian diplomats, who have been additionally interviewed for “Concentrating on Individuals,” who mentioned they have been attacked of their houses whereas they have been stationed in Havana, Cuba. They mentioned their kids suffered from signs like nosebleeds, fainting, imaginative and prescient issues, and dizziness afterward.
The 2022 installment of “Concentrating on Individuals” additionally examined the opportunity of microwave know-how getting used as a possible weapon towards these officers and their households.Â
“We’ve not discovered the smoking gun, actually. However there’s quite a lot of scientific analysis on the market that’s concrete on the sort of know-how,” Zill de Granados informed 60 Minutes Additional time.
In 2022, 60 Minutes spoke with James Benford, a physicist and main authority on microwaves. In an interview with Scott Pelley, he mentioned the existence of transportable microwave transmitters that would harm the tissues of the mind. He mentioned these transmitters have been studied for over 50 years.Â
“There are lots of varieties, and so they can go anyplace in measurement, from a suitcase all the way in which as much as a big tractor trailer unit. And the larger the gadget, the longer the vary,” he defined.Â
He mentioned the units can transmit microwave power via partitions, glass, and brick. “Virtually the whole lot,” he informed Pelley.Â
“It has been developed extensively in, maybe, a dozen international locations. The first international locations are the USA, Russia, and China.”
Unit 29155
The newest installment of “Concentrating on Individuals” introduced a serious growth to the story with the assistance of a famend investigative journalist, Christo Grozev.
Grozev famously recognized the lads behind the August 2020 poisoning of the late Russian dissident Alexey Navalny. He additionally recognized different males who tried to poison Sergei Skripal, a Russian army intelligence officer, who later grew to become a double agent for the UK, and his daughter Yulia.
In 2018, Grozev was the primary to determine the existence of a top-secret Russian intelligence unit, Unit 29155. He informed 60 Minutes that this elite unit consists of assassins and saboteurs who use countersurveillance, explosives, poison, and technologically superior tools on their targets.Â
Grozev believes he has discovered a doc that may hyperlink the 29155 intelligence unit to an acoustic power weapon.
Grozev labored with investigative companions, who collaborated with 60 Minutes on this report: {a magazine} referred to as The Insider and German information publication Der Spiegel.
He tracked down an electronic mail that he says is for providers offered to the Russian authorities by a member of Unit 29155 for “potential capabilities of non-lethal acoustic weapons.”
“Which informed us that this specific unit had been engaged with someplace, in some way, empirical assessments of a directed power unit,” he informed Scott Pelley.Â
60 Minutes sources mentioned {that a} suspected member of Russia’s 29155-unit, Albert Averyanov, who can also be the son of the commander of the 29155 unit, is the topic of an investigation into Havana Syndrome incidents reported by Individuals residing in Tbilisi, Georgia.
Grozev discovered Albert Averyanov’s cellphone was turned off throughout the Tbilisi incidents. However 60 Minutes sources say there’s proof somebody in Tbilisi logged in to Averyanov’s private electronic mail throughout the time these incidents occurred. Grozev believes it was Averyanov himself— inserting him within the metropolis at the moment.
“We consider members of Unit 29155 have been there in an effort to facilitate, supervise, or possibly even personally implement assaults on American diplomats, on American authorities officers, utilizing an acoustic weapon,” Grozev informed Pelley.Â
Questions stay
Producers Rey and Zill de Granados informed 60 Minutes Additional time that a lot stays unknown. Regardless of their latest findings, there isn’t any clear reply as to who, or what nation, was behind these incidents. There’s additionally no “smoking gun” that confirms the victims’ suspicions that the Havana Syndrome signs they skilled have been the results of a deliberate assault.
In 2022, a few month earlier than the second installment of their investigation aired on 60 Minutes, the CIA gave an interim evaluation that mentioned, “We assess it unlikely {that a} overseas actor, together with Russia, is conducting a sustained, worldwide marketing campaign harming U.S. personnel with a weapon or a mechanism.”
Final 12 months, in 2023, the Director of Nationwide Intelligence mentioned that it is “not possible a overseas adversary is accountable,” however some intelligence companies had solely “low” or “reasonable” confidence in that evaluation.Â
“This has by no means, for us, been an adversarial course of. As a result of who’re we to inform the intelligence neighborhood of the USA, ‘We’re proper and also you’re flawed’? That is not our job,” Rey defined.
“Our job is to ask questions and share data that we have discovered that will counter the narrative that is on the market…in case you say there is not any proof of a overseas adversary concerned, then what are we ?”
The video above was produced by Will Croxton. It was edited by Sarah Shafer.Â
This week on 60 Minutes, Scott Pelley and a staff of producers continued their five-year investigation into Havana Syndrome, the phenomenon of mysterious mind accidents to U.S. nationwide safety officers and diplomats, and their households, each overseas and at dwelling, that in some instances have led to main well being circumstances, like blindness, reminiscence loss, and vestibular harm.
This fourth installment introduced main developments to the story: a suspected hyperlink between assaults in Tbilisi, Georgia and a top-secret Russian intelligence unit, and new proof {that a} dependable supply calls “a receipt” for acoustic weapons testing carried out by the identical Russian intelligence unit.
A retired Military lieutenant colonel who led the Pentagon investigation into these incidents, Lt. Col. Greg Edgreen, informed 60 Minutes he’s assured that Russia is behind these assaults, and that they’re a part of a worldwide marketing campaign to neutralize U.S. officers.Â
“If my mom had seen what I noticed, she would say, ‘It is the Russians, silly,'” Edgreen informed 60 Minutes.
60 Minutes Additional time spoke to producers Oriana Zill de Granados and Michael Rey concerning the story’s evolution over the course of their investigation, as they pulled again layers of presidency secrecy to talk with victims, determine a possible know-how used to assault them, and study a Russian intelligence unit that will have been behind among the Havana Syndrome incidents.
“Within the first story we mentioned, ‘Hmm. Is that this Russia?’ Second spherical of tales we felt, ‘That is beginning to appear to be Russia.’ And on this story, our sources are telling us that it is Russia,” producer Michael Rey informed 60 Minutes Additional time.Â
The investigation begins
In 2014, producer Oriana Zill de Granados labored on a 60 Minutes story concerning the opening of the U.S. embassy in Cuba underneath then-President Obama. After the embassy had opened in 2015, media retailers started reporting on a sequence of unusual medical signs exhibited by U.S. embassy personnel working in Cuba: dizziness, fatigue, issues with reminiscence, and impaired imaginative and prescient.Â
“And we very early on began approaching folks throughout the intelligence neighborhood and the Division of State, to search out out what these incidents have been. That led us to China, which actually expanded the story past Havana, Cuba,” Zill de Granados informed 60 Minutes Additional time.Â
The primary installment of their sequence of investigative reviews, referred to as “Concentrating on Individuals,” targeted on Commerce and State Division officers who reported listening to unusual sounds of their houses whereas they have been stationed abroad in China. The officers, and relations who lived with them, suffered from mysterious accidents afterward, with signs like complications, nausea, reminiscence issues and problem balancing.
Producers Zill de Granados and Rey interviewed Mark Lenzi, a State Division safety officer who labored within the U.S. consulate in Guangzhou, China. He informed 60 Minutes that each he and his spouse started to undergo signs after listening to weird sounds of their house in 2017.Â
“He informed us quite a lot of issues once we first met him that we sort of could not consider. And now, years later, we consider the whole lot he informed us,” Rey informed 60 Minutes Additional time.
Lenzi described the sound as a “marble” circling down a “steel funnel.” He mentioned he heard the sound 4 instances, at all times in the identical spot and on the identical time of day: proper above his son’s crib when he put him to mattress at evening. He mentioned the sound was like nothing he’d ever heard earlier than and “pretty loud.” Shortly after listening to the sounds, he and his spouse started to really feel in poor health.
“He suffered via migraines, dizziness, [and] reminiscence points. And his large concern was that no one believed him. He had a really onerous time convincing his superiors one thing was up and this wanted to be addressed,” Rey defined.Â
Lenzi informed 60 Minutes he believed he was focused due to his work, utilizing top-secret tools to research digital threats to diplomatic missions.Â
“This was a directed standoff assault towards my house…it was a weapon,” he informed Scott Pelley. “I consider it is RF, radio frequency power, within the microwave vary.”
“Whether or not it was an intentional use of know-how that could possibly be adjusted to harm folks, or whether or not it was a tool that was particularly designed to harm folks…we nonetheless do not know,” Rey informed 60 Minutes Additional time.Â
“We discovered to sort of belief what he was saying, that, in his expertise, the capabilities exist on this planet.”
Home instances and microwave know-how
In 2022, the second and third installment of the investigative sequence took a more in-depth take a look at Havana Syndrome incidents that had occurred on U.S. soil and had not been beforehand reported. It additionally examined microwave know-how that would have been used as a possible weapon towards these officers and their households.
One in every of these home incidents concerned Olivia Troye, a former Homeland Safety and counterterrorism adviser to then-Vice President Mike Pence, who mentioned she was bodily struck whereas descending the steps of the Eisenhower constructing, only a brief distance away from the West Wing of the White Home in Washington, D.C.Â
“It was like this piercing feeling on the aspect of my head…and I obtained like, vertigo. I used to be unsteady. I felt nauseous. I used to be considerably disoriented,” she informed Scott Pelley.
“I keep in mind pondering like, ‘OK…do not fall down the steps. You have to discover your floor once more and regular your self,'” she informed Pelley.
One other U.S. authorities official, Miles Taylor, who was deputy chief of employees for the Division of Homeland Safety on the time, informed 60 Minutes he woke as much as a wierd sound in his house close to Capitol Hill in 2018.Â
“I went to the window, opened up my window, appeared down on the avenue… I see a white van, and the van’s brake lights turned on. And it pulled off and it sped away.”
Taylor mentioned he felt “off” and “sick” the following day. About 5 weeks later, it occurred once more. He mentioned he felt “concussion-like signs,” like he’d been “knocked fairly onerous in a sport.”Â
Whereas reporting the story, producers Rey and Zill de Granados started listening to about different instances of U.S. officers who mentioned they have been attacked whereas abroad after which later attacked once more after that they had returned to the USA.Â
Robyn Garfield, a Commerce Division official, and his spouse Britta Garfield informed 60 Minutes that that they had heard unusual sounds within the evening once they have been residing abroad in Shanghai, China. This was adopted by signs of reminiscence loss, impaired imaginative and prescient, and problem with stability, for each them and their two kids.Â
In 2020, they spoke to 60 Minutes once more, saying that they had been attacked once more, in the course of the evening, in Philadelphia, the place that they had been receiving therapy for the accidents they sustained in China.Â
Late one evening, Britta Garfield awoke instantly, saying she had heard a loud, painful sound. They gathered their youngsters and booked a room at a resort. However no matter had “hit” them of their house earlier than had adopted them to their resort.Â
“And we awakened, round, I consider, 2 a.m., with unusual vibrations in our our bodies, and a sound,” Garfield informed Pelley.Â
Involved, he ran to his kids’s bedside to examine on them and noticed an eerie scene.Â
“Each have been thrashing of their beds— asleep. However each kicking and transferring aggressively. And I went over to my daughter, and I put my head down subsequent to her head. And I heard a really distinct sound, excellent there, kind of like water speeding,” Garfield mentioned.Â
They reported the occasion to the FBI. The household continues to work on bettering their stability, eyesight, and reminiscence.
“That is essentially the most tough side of this complete difficulty for me are the youngsters who’ve been impacted, each mine in addition to many others. I personally know the dad and mom of, I consider, eight different kids. I can let you know I’ve personally seen stability points in kids which have by no means had that,” Garfield informed Pelley.
“One of many arguments that got here out from researchers across the Havana Syndrome difficulty was that that is psychosomatic, that persons are listening to of those signs, they’re careworn, they’re nervous. It is a regular response,” Rey informed 60 Minutes Additional time.Â
“One of many issues that dissuaded us of that was the truth that kids have been getting… bloody noses [and] bleeding from the ear. There have been seizures taking place in kids. After which pets reacting to noises or pressures that folks have been feeling on the identical time.”
60 Minutes Additional time examined the case of two Canadian diplomats, who have been additionally interviewed for “Concentrating on Individuals,” who mentioned they have been attacked of their houses whereas they have been stationed in Havana, Cuba. They mentioned their kids suffered from signs like nosebleeds, fainting, imaginative and prescient issues, and dizziness afterward.
The 2022 installment of “Concentrating on Individuals” additionally examined the opportunity of microwave know-how getting used as a possible weapon towards these officers and their households.Â
“We’ve not discovered the smoking gun, actually. However there’s quite a lot of scientific analysis on the market that’s concrete on the sort of know-how,” Zill de Granados informed 60 Minutes Additional time.
In 2022, 60 Minutes spoke with James Benford, a physicist and main authority on microwaves. In an interview with Scott Pelley, he mentioned the existence of transportable microwave transmitters that would harm the tissues of the mind. He mentioned these transmitters have been studied for over 50 years.Â
“There are lots of varieties, and so they can go anyplace in measurement, from a suitcase all the way in which as much as a big tractor trailer unit. And the larger the gadget, the longer the vary,” he defined.Â
He mentioned the units can transmit microwave power via partitions, glass, and brick. “Virtually the whole lot,” he informed Pelley.Â
“It has been developed extensively in, maybe, a dozen international locations. The first international locations are the USA, Russia, and China.”
Unit 29155
The newest installment of “Concentrating on Individuals” introduced a serious growth to the story with the assistance of a famend investigative journalist, Christo Grozev.
Grozev famously recognized the lads behind the August 2020 poisoning of the late Russian dissident Alexey Navalny. He additionally recognized different males who tried to poison Sergei Skripal, a Russian army intelligence officer, who later grew to become a double agent for the UK, and his daughter Yulia.
In 2018, Grozev was the primary to determine the existence of a top-secret Russian intelligence unit, Unit 29155. He informed 60 Minutes that this elite unit consists of assassins and saboteurs who use countersurveillance, explosives, poison, and technologically superior tools on their targets.Â
Grozev believes he has discovered a doc that may hyperlink the 29155 intelligence unit to an acoustic power weapon.
Grozev labored with investigative companions, who collaborated with 60 Minutes on this report: {a magazine} referred to as The Insider and German information publication Der Spiegel.
He tracked down an electronic mail that he says is for providers offered to the Russian authorities by a member of Unit 29155 for “potential capabilities of non-lethal acoustic weapons.”
“Which informed us that this specific unit had been engaged with someplace, in some way, empirical assessments of a directed power unit,” he informed Scott Pelley.Â
60 Minutes sources mentioned {that a} suspected member of Russia’s 29155-unit, Albert Averyanov, who can also be the son of the commander of the 29155 unit, is the topic of an investigation into Havana Syndrome incidents reported by Individuals residing in Tbilisi, Georgia.
Grozev discovered Albert Averyanov’s cellphone was turned off throughout the Tbilisi incidents. However 60 Minutes sources say there’s proof somebody in Tbilisi logged in to Averyanov’s private electronic mail throughout the time these incidents occurred. Grozev believes it was Averyanov himself— inserting him within the metropolis at the moment.
“We consider members of Unit 29155 have been there in an effort to facilitate, supervise, or possibly even personally implement assaults on American diplomats, on American authorities officers, utilizing an acoustic weapon,” Grozev informed Pelley.Â
Questions stay
Producers Rey and Zill de Granados informed 60 Minutes Additional time that a lot stays unknown. Regardless of their latest findings, there isn’t any clear reply as to who, or what nation, was behind these incidents. There’s additionally no “smoking gun” that confirms the victims’ suspicions that the Havana Syndrome signs they skilled have been the results of a deliberate assault.
In 2022, a few month earlier than the second installment of their investigation aired on 60 Minutes, the CIA gave an interim evaluation that mentioned, “We assess it unlikely {that a} overseas actor, together with Russia, is conducting a sustained, worldwide marketing campaign harming U.S. personnel with a weapon or a mechanism.”
Final 12 months, in 2023, the Director of Nationwide Intelligence mentioned that it is “not possible a overseas adversary is accountable,” however some intelligence companies had solely “low” or “reasonable” confidence in that evaluation.Â
“This has by no means, for us, been an adversarial course of. As a result of who’re we to inform the intelligence neighborhood of the USA, ‘We’re proper and also you’re flawed’? That is not our job,” Rey defined.
“Our job is to ask questions and share data that we have discovered that will counter the narrative that is on the market…in case you say there is not any proof of a overseas adversary concerned, then what are we ?”
The video above was produced by Will Croxton. It was edited by Sarah Shafer.Â
This week on 60 Minutes, Scott Pelley and a staff of producers continued their five-year investigation into Havana Syndrome, the phenomenon of mysterious mind accidents to U.S. nationwide safety officers and diplomats, and their households, each overseas and at dwelling, that in some instances have led to main well being circumstances, like blindness, reminiscence loss, and vestibular harm.
This fourth installment introduced main developments to the story: a suspected hyperlink between assaults in Tbilisi, Georgia and a top-secret Russian intelligence unit, and new proof {that a} dependable supply calls “a receipt” for acoustic weapons testing carried out by the identical Russian intelligence unit.
A retired Military lieutenant colonel who led the Pentagon investigation into these incidents, Lt. Col. Greg Edgreen, informed 60 Minutes he’s assured that Russia is behind these assaults, and that they’re a part of a worldwide marketing campaign to neutralize U.S. officers.Â
“If my mom had seen what I noticed, she would say, ‘It is the Russians, silly,'” Edgreen informed 60 Minutes.
60 Minutes Additional time spoke to producers Oriana Zill de Granados and Michael Rey concerning the story’s evolution over the course of their investigation, as they pulled again layers of presidency secrecy to talk with victims, determine a possible know-how used to assault them, and study a Russian intelligence unit that will have been behind among the Havana Syndrome incidents.
“Within the first story we mentioned, ‘Hmm. Is that this Russia?’ Second spherical of tales we felt, ‘That is beginning to appear to be Russia.’ And on this story, our sources are telling us that it is Russia,” producer Michael Rey informed 60 Minutes Additional time.Â
The investigation begins
In 2014, producer Oriana Zill de Granados labored on a 60 Minutes story concerning the opening of the U.S. embassy in Cuba underneath then-President Obama. After the embassy had opened in 2015, media retailers started reporting on a sequence of unusual medical signs exhibited by U.S. embassy personnel working in Cuba: dizziness, fatigue, issues with reminiscence, and impaired imaginative and prescient.Â
“And we very early on began approaching folks throughout the intelligence neighborhood and the Division of State, to search out out what these incidents have been. That led us to China, which actually expanded the story past Havana, Cuba,” Zill de Granados informed 60 Minutes Additional time.Â
The primary installment of their sequence of investigative reviews, referred to as “Concentrating on Individuals,” targeted on Commerce and State Division officers who reported listening to unusual sounds of their houses whereas they have been stationed abroad in China. The officers, and relations who lived with them, suffered from mysterious accidents afterward, with signs like complications, nausea, reminiscence issues and problem balancing.
Producers Zill de Granados and Rey interviewed Mark Lenzi, a State Division safety officer who labored within the U.S. consulate in Guangzhou, China. He informed 60 Minutes that each he and his spouse started to undergo signs after listening to weird sounds of their house in 2017.Â
“He informed us quite a lot of issues once we first met him that we sort of could not consider. And now, years later, we consider the whole lot he informed us,” Rey informed 60 Minutes Additional time.
Lenzi described the sound as a “marble” circling down a “steel funnel.” He mentioned he heard the sound 4 instances, at all times in the identical spot and on the identical time of day: proper above his son’s crib when he put him to mattress at evening. He mentioned the sound was like nothing he’d ever heard earlier than and “pretty loud.” Shortly after listening to the sounds, he and his spouse started to really feel in poor health.
“He suffered via migraines, dizziness, [and] reminiscence points. And his large concern was that no one believed him. He had a really onerous time convincing his superiors one thing was up and this wanted to be addressed,” Rey defined.Â
Lenzi informed 60 Minutes he believed he was focused due to his work, utilizing top-secret tools to research digital threats to diplomatic missions.Â
“This was a directed standoff assault towards my house…it was a weapon,” he informed Scott Pelley. “I consider it is RF, radio frequency power, within the microwave vary.”
“Whether or not it was an intentional use of know-how that could possibly be adjusted to harm folks, or whether or not it was a tool that was particularly designed to harm folks…we nonetheless do not know,” Rey informed 60 Minutes Additional time.Â
“We discovered to sort of belief what he was saying, that, in his expertise, the capabilities exist on this planet.”
Home instances and microwave know-how
In 2022, the second and third installment of the investigative sequence took a more in-depth take a look at Havana Syndrome incidents that had occurred on U.S. soil and had not been beforehand reported. It additionally examined microwave know-how that would have been used as a possible weapon towards these officers and their households.
One in every of these home incidents concerned Olivia Troye, a former Homeland Safety and counterterrorism adviser to then-Vice President Mike Pence, who mentioned she was bodily struck whereas descending the steps of the Eisenhower constructing, only a brief distance away from the West Wing of the White Home in Washington, D.C.Â
“It was like this piercing feeling on the aspect of my head…and I obtained like, vertigo. I used to be unsteady. I felt nauseous. I used to be considerably disoriented,” she informed Scott Pelley.
“I keep in mind pondering like, ‘OK…do not fall down the steps. You have to discover your floor once more and regular your self,'” she informed Pelley.
One other U.S. authorities official, Miles Taylor, who was deputy chief of employees for the Division of Homeland Safety on the time, informed 60 Minutes he woke as much as a wierd sound in his house close to Capitol Hill in 2018.Â
“I went to the window, opened up my window, appeared down on the avenue… I see a white van, and the van’s brake lights turned on. And it pulled off and it sped away.”
Taylor mentioned he felt “off” and “sick” the following day. About 5 weeks later, it occurred once more. He mentioned he felt “concussion-like signs,” like he’d been “knocked fairly onerous in a sport.”Â
Whereas reporting the story, producers Rey and Zill de Granados started listening to about different instances of U.S. officers who mentioned they have been attacked whereas abroad after which later attacked once more after that they had returned to the USA.Â
Robyn Garfield, a Commerce Division official, and his spouse Britta Garfield informed 60 Minutes that that they had heard unusual sounds within the evening once they have been residing abroad in Shanghai, China. This was adopted by signs of reminiscence loss, impaired imaginative and prescient, and problem with stability, for each them and their two kids.Â
In 2020, they spoke to 60 Minutes once more, saying that they had been attacked once more, in the course of the evening, in Philadelphia, the place that they had been receiving therapy for the accidents they sustained in China.Â
Late one evening, Britta Garfield awoke instantly, saying she had heard a loud, painful sound. They gathered their youngsters and booked a room at a resort. However no matter had “hit” them of their house earlier than had adopted them to their resort.Â
“And we awakened, round, I consider, 2 a.m., with unusual vibrations in our our bodies, and a sound,” Garfield informed Pelley.Â
Involved, he ran to his kids’s bedside to examine on them and noticed an eerie scene.Â
“Each have been thrashing of their beds— asleep. However each kicking and transferring aggressively. And I went over to my daughter, and I put my head down subsequent to her head. And I heard a really distinct sound, excellent there, kind of like water speeding,” Garfield mentioned.Â
They reported the occasion to the FBI. The household continues to work on bettering their stability, eyesight, and reminiscence.
“That is essentially the most tough side of this complete difficulty for me are the youngsters who’ve been impacted, each mine in addition to many others. I personally know the dad and mom of, I consider, eight different kids. I can let you know I’ve personally seen stability points in kids which have by no means had that,” Garfield informed Pelley.
“One of many arguments that got here out from researchers across the Havana Syndrome difficulty was that that is psychosomatic, that persons are listening to of those signs, they’re careworn, they’re nervous. It is a regular response,” Rey informed 60 Minutes Additional time.Â
“One of many issues that dissuaded us of that was the truth that kids have been getting… bloody noses [and] bleeding from the ear. There have been seizures taking place in kids. After which pets reacting to noises or pressures that folks have been feeling on the identical time.”
60 Minutes Additional time examined the case of two Canadian diplomats, who have been additionally interviewed for “Concentrating on Individuals,” who mentioned they have been attacked of their houses whereas they have been stationed in Havana, Cuba. They mentioned their kids suffered from signs like nosebleeds, fainting, imaginative and prescient issues, and dizziness afterward.
The 2022 installment of “Concentrating on Individuals” additionally examined the opportunity of microwave know-how getting used as a possible weapon towards these officers and their households.Â
“We’ve not discovered the smoking gun, actually. However there’s quite a lot of scientific analysis on the market that’s concrete on the sort of know-how,” Zill de Granados informed 60 Minutes Additional time.
In 2022, 60 Minutes spoke with James Benford, a physicist and main authority on microwaves. In an interview with Scott Pelley, he mentioned the existence of transportable microwave transmitters that would harm the tissues of the mind. He mentioned these transmitters have been studied for over 50 years.Â
“There are lots of varieties, and so they can go anyplace in measurement, from a suitcase all the way in which as much as a big tractor trailer unit. And the larger the gadget, the longer the vary,” he defined.Â
He mentioned the units can transmit microwave power via partitions, glass, and brick. “Virtually the whole lot,” he informed Pelley.Â
“It has been developed extensively in, maybe, a dozen international locations. The first international locations are the USA, Russia, and China.”
Unit 29155
The newest installment of “Concentrating on Individuals” introduced a serious growth to the story with the assistance of a famend investigative journalist, Christo Grozev.
Grozev famously recognized the lads behind the August 2020 poisoning of the late Russian dissident Alexey Navalny. He additionally recognized different males who tried to poison Sergei Skripal, a Russian army intelligence officer, who later grew to become a double agent for the UK, and his daughter Yulia.
In 2018, Grozev was the primary to determine the existence of a top-secret Russian intelligence unit, Unit 29155. He informed 60 Minutes that this elite unit consists of assassins and saboteurs who use countersurveillance, explosives, poison, and technologically superior tools on their targets.Â
Grozev believes he has discovered a doc that may hyperlink the 29155 intelligence unit to an acoustic power weapon.
Grozev labored with investigative companions, who collaborated with 60 Minutes on this report: {a magazine} referred to as The Insider and German information publication Der Spiegel.
He tracked down an electronic mail that he says is for providers offered to the Russian authorities by a member of Unit 29155 for “potential capabilities of non-lethal acoustic weapons.”
“Which informed us that this specific unit had been engaged with someplace, in some way, empirical assessments of a directed power unit,” he informed Scott Pelley.Â
60 Minutes sources mentioned {that a} suspected member of Russia’s 29155-unit, Albert Averyanov, who can also be the son of the commander of the 29155 unit, is the topic of an investigation into Havana Syndrome incidents reported by Individuals residing in Tbilisi, Georgia.
Grozev discovered Albert Averyanov’s cellphone was turned off throughout the Tbilisi incidents. However 60 Minutes sources say there’s proof somebody in Tbilisi logged in to Averyanov’s private electronic mail throughout the time these incidents occurred. Grozev believes it was Averyanov himself— inserting him within the metropolis at the moment.
“We consider members of Unit 29155 have been there in an effort to facilitate, supervise, or possibly even personally implement assaults on American diplomats, on American authorities officers, utilizing an acoustic weapon,” Grozev informed Pelley.Â
Questions stay
Producers Rey and Zill de Granados informed 60 Minutes Additional time that a lot stays unknown. Regardless of their latest findings, there isn’t any clear reply as to who, or what nation, was behind these incidents. There’s additionally no “smoking gun” that confirms the victims’ suspicions that the Havana Syndrome signs they skilled have been the results of a deliberate assault.
In 2022, a few month earlier than the second installment of their investigation aired on 60 Minutes, the CIA gave an interim evaluation that mentioned, “We assess it unlikely {that a} overseas actor, together with Russia, is conducting a sustained, worldwide marketing campaign harming U.S. personnel with a weapon or a mechanism.”
Final 12 months, in 2023, the Director of Nationwide Intelligence mentioned that it is “not possible a overseas adversary is accountable,” however some intelligence companies had solely “low” or “reasonable” confidence in that evaluation.Â
“This has by no means, for us, been an adversarial course of. As a result of who’re we to inform the intelligence neighborhood of the USA, ‘We’re proper and also you’re flawed’? That is not our job,” Rey defined.
“Our job is to ask questions and share data that we have discovered that will counter the narrative that is on the market…in case you say there is not any proof of a overseas adversary concerned, then what are we ?”
The video above was produced by Will Croxton. It was edited by Sarah Shafer.Â