A team of experts with a government mandate to attribute the cause of Havana Syndrome and to assist people with medical conditions has been experiencing obstacles in silence. A person with knowledge of the matter tells me that the Defense Department’s Cross-Functional Team (CFT) has been actively prevented from briefing Congress.
It is contingent on the Office of Legislative Affairs. Back in October, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth sent a memo to personnel which announced a new policy. He said they cannot interact with Congress without approval from the Pentagon’s Office of Legislative Affairs, to ensure coordination and alignment on DOW/DOD priorities.
Lawmakers have been requesting classified briefings, but the CFT did not know about these requests until they made headlines. And only after the CFT was moved from DOD’s Policy division to Research and Engineering did Legislative Affairs inform the team of the requests, I am told.
Back in December, a request from Rep. Rick Crawford, Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, came in through the Correspondence and Task Management System (CATMS). Legislative Affairs received multiple requests from the CFT on how to respond but never gave a proper process to follow.
Meanwhile, the CFT is supposed to brief Congress every 180 days until 2028, and I’m told the team has not been made available to provide a briefing since December of 2024.
Here is why it matters now more than ever: I am told that the CFT was getting more able to attribute to Russia, “freely and authoritatively.”
What could be said in a closed door briefing? Under the new leadership with R&E, it is unclear how much the CFT will be allowed to share of their important findings, whenever a briefing does come. With political appointees in leadership, there is a “collective cloud environment that ‘We are not going to say anything bad about Russia.’”
As I’ve previously reported, parts of the CFT have been looking back at cases and interacting with intelligence agencies. There is also information available in the open source space, to include Russian patents on directed energy research and its effects on the human body — specifically research done in 1970s, ‘80s, and ‘90s.
To be clear, I’m told that Russia accumulated more information on this than any other country.
Some open source information has been taken down, but not before American doctors, Russia experts, and intel officers came together to understand what they were looking at.
A new CFT director was hired in 2024, consolidated, and assembled what four people tell me was an all-star team. Their efforts were paying off in 2025, they told me.
But with the CFT’s move to Research and Engineering, the director lost her job. It also appears that she did not know, until she was packing up her possession, that lawmakers had requested a briefing from her specifically.
I’m told that about 50% of the CFT is being lost — some are currently being sent back to their home agencies, and others are seeing their contracts end without renewal.
The Defense Department did not respond to a request for comment on the Legislative Affairs office. I also reached out to Rep. Crawford, Senators Jean Shaheen (D-New Hampshire), Susan Collins (R-Maine), and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-New York).
Rep. Crawford told me in a written statement, “Over the last year, [Oversight and Investigations] Chairman [Ronny] Jackson and I have requested a briefing by DOW’s Cross Functional team (CFT) several times. This is mandated by law and long overdue.”
He said the House Intelligence Committee is continuing to investigate the intel community’s “mishandling” of Havana Syndrome/Anomalous Health Incidents. “As part of that investigation, we must hear from the CFT, as there are many questions that need to be answered. Congress and the Executive Branch must work together to address the AHI challenge and ensure the proper care of AHI victims.”
I also asked him what he plans to do, if he is aware that the CFT has been experiencing these challenges. “We plan to reach back out to Secretary Hegseth in the coming days to ensure he is aware of the situation, because it appears the bureaucracy in the bloated building isn’t providing him the entire story. We look forward to a prompt response and briefing by the CFT.”
Of the senators, I have only heard back from Sen. Gillibrand. She told me in a written statement, “The administration’s failure to engage with Congress on AHIs and the CFT is unacceptable and minimizes this persistent threat to the military and Intelligence Community. Care and compensation for AHI victims must remain a top DOD priority, and members of Congress deserve timely answers on those efforts and on DOD’s progress toward identifying the cause and culprit of these cowardly attacks. Secretary Hegseth must make the CFT available for briefings and restore the regular, statutory briefings to congressional members and staff immediately.”
More in the video.
