I’m reporting today from Philadelphia, where the Foreign Policy Research Institute is hosting a small but serious conference on Havana Syndrome. The gathering was led by Philip Wasielewski, director of the think tank’s Center for Intelligence and Nontraditional Warfare and a former paramilitary officer with the CIA.
In a small room lined with blue chairs, he asked the speakers and the crowd — victims, journalists, medical doctors — if the U.S. was prepared for future incidents.
And David Relman, a Stanford University doctor who worked with the intel community and led the National Academies of Science 2020 report on Havana Syndrome, had this to say:
“Regardless of what happened to this large number of individuals, in the future, if we don’t understand this better, we are simply going to become the unwitting victims of others who now see that there’s an opportunity to cause harm in a way that causes great dissension and confusion,” Relman said by video conference.
You’ll recall that in January, I broke the news that the U.S. government has a device that it is now testing. Relman said his team gave the intel community eight recommendations. “Some of these I can’t say more than simply show you the topic,” he said, referring to his slides. “But I will draw your attention to some of these, which you will note to be of particular interest, perhaps the last one.”
The last recommendation in the list was, “Devices to aid research.”
Relman also described interactions with intelligence agencies. The IC study was asked to examine devices, he clarified to me after this report published, but “we were asked not to look at potential adversaries,” he said at the conference. And as cases increased, it became a real problem for the intel community. There was “a deliberate effort to try to tamp this down.”
Three people gave disturbing accounts of attacks — including ret. Lt. Col. Chris Schlagheck, who served in U.S. Space Force and said he was sharing his story publicly for the very first time.
He said he was attacked five times in his home in Northern Virginia, and that a Russian family had moved across the street and then suddenly vanished. He said he was ultimately diagnosed with 40 medical conditions, including Traumatic Brain Injury, PTSD, and sensorial and neural hearing loss — as many others have reported. Others described a lack of will to test their sick children, incompetence and delay, and persistent skepticism.
Another victim told me before the conference that he would not be attending. It’s a “counterintelligence nightmare,” he said. Russian spies will be nearby, and they had already hunted him down in Philadelphia while he was receiving medical treatment with the University of Pennsylvania. “You have all the people that care and have helped us all in one place,” he said.
Much more in the video that I cannot write here, as I’m still listening to the conference and then have to catch a train back to Washington.
