ProPublica recently published an article that seems to be the most comprehensive and up-to-date assessment of the strange incidents in Cuba that have stressed American relations with that country and resulted in the removal of much of the U.S. diplomatic presence there. We've previously professed our fascination with the mystery of what seemed to be sonic attacks on American diplomats in Havana. Since then, the mystery only seems to have deepened, in that further investigations have still not settled on either a cause or a perpetrator. This despite the fact that the U.S. government has made sophisticated and extensive efforts to get to the bottom of the affair, which at this point has set back Cuban-American relations, emboldened hardliners, and resulted in injuries to almost two dozen Americans.
The single strangest element is the fact that no one can authoritatively say what actually happened. Some 22 Americans and 8 Canadians have been diagnosed with symptoms reminiscent of concussions, including headaches, nausea, and hearing loss. These injuries occurred over several months in various places; victims often reported hearing a high-pitched sounds or noises akin to the chirping of cicadas. Yet no one can definitively say there's a relation between those reports and what actually caused their injuries.
The incidents have brought the FBI and CIA into conflict: the FBI has ruled out the possibility that the Americans were deliberately targeted, while the CIA sees significance in the fact that the first four Americans affected were agency officers. And the U.S. foreign service has experienced disgruntlement in its ranks, with criticism leveled at the embassy leadership for not fully appraising diplomats of the extent and severity of the incidents early on.
The occurrences began right after the election of Donald Trump, which would seem to suggest a political motivation to influence the new administration. And with the Cubans vociferously denying involvement, there’s been suspicion that this was a Russian operation — yet investigations have apparently not found any evidence of suspicious Russian activity or personnel in the vicinity of the incidents (for what it's worth, the fact that the Russians had just successfully meddled in the 2016 presidential election would seem to me to increase the likelihood of their involvement). And on the other end of the spectrum, there has apparently been speculation that some of the incidents may have a psychosomatic angle, although such an interpretation seems not to have been pressed out of concern for angering and insulting State Department staff.
The fact that U.S.-Cuban relations have been seriously harmed by these occurrences means that behind the strangeness lies real menace: that they will be used as an excuse to further downgrade relations with Cuba, and that an actor or actors as yet unknown have managed to subvert American foreign affairs via physical harm to American diplomats. It’s long past time to solve this mystery.
