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An FBI agent was victim of a Havana Syndrome 'attack' in Key West, lawyer tells Congress

Nora Gámez Torres, Miami Herald on

Published in Political News

An FBI agent was the victim of a Havana Syndrome “attack” in Key West, the agent’s lawyer told members of Congress in during a hearing Wednesday expanding on new information recently published by three media outlets suggesting Russia might be attacking U.S. officials at home and abroad.

An active FBI special agent, identified only as Carrie, who appeared in disguise in a CBS 60 Minutes show on March 31 about Havana Syndrome, told the network she was “hit” in an undisclosed place in Florida in what she believed was one of the mysterious incidents linked to the so-called Havana Syndrome.

At the time, she was investigating a suspected Russian spy who had been arrested in the Florida Keys in 2020. She said she was “hit” again in California a year later.

During the Wednesday hearing organized by the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Counterterrorism, Law Enforcement, and Intelligence, her lawyer, Mark Zaid, referred to her “incident” in Key West. In his full written testimony, Zaid, who was was also interviewed by 60 Minutes, wrote that the FBI agent appeared in the show to discuss “her attacks that occurred in Key West, Florida.”

Asked about domestic incidents of Havana Syndrome, he referred to “a number of FBI personnel down in Florida” and CIA intelligence agents who have been targets in D.C. and northern Virginia.

U.S. intelligence officials and diplomats around the world reporting “anomalous health incidents” — the U.S. government term for Havana Syndrome — have described experiencing pressure, noises or being suddenly hit with an array of symptoms like hearing and vision problems, migraines and cognitive deficits. Some were diagnosed with traumatic brain injuries.

 

Some have already died, Zaid said, saying he was declining to share more details to protect their families’ privacy.

The incidents first became public in Havana in 2016, leading to the name for the battery of symptoms, but a case in Frankfurt in 2014, first reported by the Miami Herald, pushed back the timeline.

U.S. government agencies are compensating some of the people affected after Congress passed the Havana ACT in 2021. But last year, some intelligence agencies, led by the CIA, issued an assessment concluding that it was unlikely that a foreign adversary was attacking U.S. officials, though some of those agencies expressed low confidence in that judgment.

Scientific studies have published contradictory information, frustrating the victims. A study by the National Institutes of Health with Havana Syndrome victims has been suspended while an independent board reviews it after complaints by participants, first made public by the Miami Herald.

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