To promote a nonviolent transition to a Cuba that respects human rights, political and economic freedoms, and the rule of law.
Havana Syndrome whitewashed and the Castro regime's pattern of attacking diplomats
U.S. Embassy in Havana, Cuba
Nora Gámez Torres of the Miami Herald in her April 26, 2023 article “‘Knife in the back’: Havana Syndrome victims dispute report dismissing their cases” reported that she “spoke to three former CIA officials and two Canadian diplomats affected by the strange incidents who said they are convinced they were targeted while serving their countries abroad. And all said that a recent U.S. intelligence report blaming their ailments on pre-existing medical conditions or environmental factors is an attempt to whitewash the Havana Syndrome affair, likely due to political considerations.”
She also interviewed Michael E. Hoffer, M.D, who early on ( March through mid-June 2017 ) examined 35 U.S. employees and their family members effected by this phenomenon at the U.S. Embassy in Havana, Cuba. Dr. Hoffer says at the end of the interview that “evideece suggests they were targeted, but we can’t prove that.”
In this CubaBrief we share video from the University of Miami’s School of Medicine who gave a December 2018 briefing on their findings.
Michael E. Hoffer, M.D. at the University of Miami's Miller School of Medicine, and his team talk about their research on the acute symptoms and clinical findings from the health incidents that affected U.S. diplomats in Havana.
While more attention has been focused on the U.S. Embassy in Havana, Canadian diplomats at their embassy in Cuba were also targeted. A study of 16 adult Canadians who reported “health incidents in Havana found changes in areas of their brains that were similar to those found in the Americans affected.
Whereas the Havana Syndrome is a phenomenon that was first observed in late 2016, the Cuban government has a long history of attacking and harassing U.S. and Canadian diplomats that stretches back over decades.
Jim Bartleman, Canada’s ambassador to Cuba from 1981 to 1983 in the 2018 Toronto Star article “Dog poisonings, sex propositions: Canada’s man in Havana remembers the Cold War weirdness” described the poisoning of his dog, and his deputies dog on the same day.
Bartleman’s enchantment with Castro soured in a sudden shock one night. It was a year into his posting, and he woke to find that his dog, a German shepherd named Zaka, was deadly sick. They rushed her to a veterinarian in Havana to have her stomach pumped. He soon learned that his deputy’s dog was also sick that morning, and had died. He later learned that the dogs were poisoned. Zaka died six months later.
José R. Cárdenas, who served in several foreign policy positions during the George W. Bush administration (2004-2009), including on the National Security Council staff on August 16, 2017 had an article published in Foreign Policy Magazine, titled “Targeting American Diplomats, Cuba Is Up to its Dirty Old Tricks” that provided an overview of the Castro regime’s behavior towards U.S. diplomats that fell short of international standards.
The fact is that the Cuban government has been abusing U.S. personnel posted to Havana for decades. In 2003, the State Department provided a declassified cable to Congress detailing the ongoing physical and psychological harassment of U.S. personnel “to frustrate routine business, occupy resources, demoralize personnel, and generally hinder efforts to advance U.S. policy goals.” According to the cable, “The harassment begins from the moment USINT personnel and their belongings enter Cuba. Cuban agents routinely enter U.S. employee residences to search belongings and papers, enter computers and gather other information thought to be useful from an intelligence point of view. Vehicles are also targeted. In many instances, no effort is made to hide the intrusions.” Not only are vehicles vandalized — tires slashed, parts removed, windshields smashed — but in some instances human excrement is left behind in the diplomats’ homes.
The cable continues, “Electronic surveillance is pervasive, including monitoring of home phone and computer lines. U.S. personnel have had living-room conversations repeated or played back to them by strangers and unknown callers.” In one case, after one family privately discussed their daughter’s susceptibility to mosquito bites, “they returned home to find all of their windows open and the house full of mosquitoes.”
News reports on these practices pre-date the Havana Syndrome. Journalist Nikki Waller's article "Diplomats in Cuba wary of snoops and snubs" was published in the Miami Herald on July 1, 2006 in which diplomats expressed concerns that " Cuban government harassment that intrudes on their personal and professional lives." The practices described echo and exceed those described above by their Canadian counterpart.
U.S. diplomats tell of endlessly ringing phones and dog feces strewn inside their homes, urine-soaked towels left on a kitchen table and even poisoned family dogs. A high-ranking member of the mission once found his mouthwash replaced with urine.
More ominous was The Washington Post article, “SURVIVING A NIGHTMARE INSIDE CASTRO'S CUBA,” by Thomas W. Lippman published on November 1, 1996 that described how regime agents tried to ram a U.S. diplomat's car. Rpbin Meyer, then 39 and a U.S. diplomat in Havana described the attack.
They had a car without license plates but it was the same security agents who had been following me all week, it wasn't as if I didn't recognize them."She said the agents' car tried repeatedly to ram the passenger side of her vehicle, its occupants yelling at her -- using her name -- to demand that she hang up her cellular telephone. She finally retreated to the U.S. mission, she said, and left again only when she was able to obtain an escort.
The harm done to U.S. and Canadian diplomats beginning in late 2016 in Havana, Cuba was something new, but targeting and attacking diplomats was not.
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