Speaker 1: The interesting thing about conspiracy theories is they explain everything.
Speaker 1: They're self licking ice cream cones. And this one, we
Speaker 1: have a mystery about a conspiracy and a conspiracy theory,
Speaker 1: and we don't have the answers to it, and we're
Speaker 1: still looking for it, and it has real victims.
Speaker 2: I'm John Cipher and I'm Jerry o'she I.
Speaker 3: Served in the CIA's Clandestine Service for twenty eight years,
Speaker 3: living undercover all around the world.
Speaker 1: And in my thirty three years with the CIA, I
Speaker 1: served in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East.
Speaker 3: Although we don't usually look at it this way, we
Speaker 3: created conspiracies.
Speaker 1: In our operations. We got people to believe things that
Speaker 1: weren't true.
Speaker 3: Now we're investigating the conspiracy theories we see in the
Speaker 3: news almost every day.
Speaker 1: Will break them down for you to determine whether they
Speaker 1: could be real or whether we're being manipulated.
Speaker 3: Welcome to Mission Implausible. This week's podcast, episode two on
Speaker 3: Havana Syndrome, a series of a parent attacks on American
Speaker 3: diplomats and intelligence officers that left many national security professionals
Speaker 3: with serious brain injuries, was recorded prior to new details
Speaker 3: that surfaced on Sunday March thirty, first, the news magazine
Speaker 3: sixty Minutes, along with investigators at The Insider, published new
Speaker 3: information highly suggestive that Russian military intelligence operatives are behind
Speaker 3: these attacks which have been occurring since twenty fourteen. We
Speaker 3: would encourage you to watch and read the articles. The
Speaker 3: Insider piece, entitled Unraveling Havana Syndrome was written by Michael Weiss,
Speaker 3: who we interviewed for an episode coming out shortly. Also,
Speaker 3: our guest today who was a victim of these attacks,
Speaker 3: Mark Palmeropolis, has a powerful and personal story in the Insider.
Speaker 3: The new information surfaces really serious questions. So far, the
Speaker 3: government denies that any foreign entity is behind the attacks,
Speaker 3: as we posited, and the new information seems to confirm
Speaker 3: there is clearly strong, circumstantial evidence that our public servants
Speaker 3: are victims of a Russian attack. Why is the administration
Speaker 3: so adamant that the brain injuries were not the result
Speaker 3: of an attack. Does the CIA have information surfaced in
Speaker 3: the recent articles, but is keeping it secret? And if so,
Speaker 3: why are they afraid to'll deter US diplomats and intelligence
Speaker 3: officers from serving overseas. Do they not want to face
Speaker 3: the implications of a foreign attack which would pressure the
Speaker 3: administration to respond forcefully in any event. All of this
Speaker 3: is consistent with Russian activities over the past decade. Their
Speaker 3: actions are just deniable enough to force inaction and take
Speaker 3: advantage of our doubt and hesitancy. While we fight over
Speaker 3: what is true, Vladimir Putin acts. We will discuss these
Speaker 3: issues and many more on today's episode of Mission Implausible. Adam,
Speaker 3: I understand you have moved away from the big city
Speaker 3: and you now live somewhere in the rural parts of
Speaker 3: New England. Is that true?
Speaker 4: That is very true. I gotta say, I am really
Speaker 4: learning that a kind of New York way of living
Speaker 4: in the world, a sort of directness, an abrasiveness, doesn't
Speaker 4: go over well. I guess what I'm saying is, don't
Speaker 4: move here, whatever you do, John.
Speaker 1: So, Adam, I grew up in the country, and I
Speaker 1: give you a bit of wisdom that when it's not
Speaker 1: actually dangerous to roll your windows down and feed the bears,
Speaker 1: it's actually quite safe. What's unsafe is stop feeding the bears.
Speaker 4: All right, guys, Well, we're getting back to I mean,
Speaker 4: I think, on a very special episode of Mission Implausible.
Speaker 4: Let's get into part two of Havana syndrome.
Speaker 1: I'm really pleased to have Fay Flam with us today,
Speaker 1: who is a genuinely cool person. So, Fay, you're a
Speaker 1: columnist for Bloomberg, but in your past you're a science person, right,
Speaker 1: You've got a degree of geophysics and science writing.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I'm still a science writer. I do science columns
Speaker 5: for Bloomberg for their opinion section.
Speaker 3: Let's talk a little bit about this thing that's been
Speaker 3: called Havana syndrome in the intelligence comunity. Now they call
Speaker 3: it traumatic brain injuries or TBIs. So can you give
Speaker 3: us a little bit of a sense of some of
Speaker 3: your thoughts on that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, it started out as a small group of
Speaker 5: people and then it grew and grew and grew on.
Speaker 5: There were news stories recently that said that about fifteen
Speaker 5: hundred people have actually claimed to have Havana syndrome. And
Speaker 5: at first there was a theory flow to that it
Speaker 5: might be a sonic weapon, because one of the very
Speaker 5: first people to develop part problems was a young guy
Speaker 5: who heard a loud sound and then developed hearing loss
Speaker 5: and ten itis. But then other people didn't hear a
Speaker 5: noise or they heard different kinds of noises. And then
Speaker 5: somewhere along the line, somebody floated the idea of a
Speaker 5: microwave weapon, that somehow, some enemy faction was actually beaming
Speaker 5: microwaves into people's heads. And this actually was something that
Speaker 5: a certain number of doctors kind of latched onto early on.
Speaker 5: There was even a National Academy of Sciences panel where
Speaker 5: they deemed this the most likely cause, but physicists who
Speaker 5: know something about microwaves dismissed it pretty quickly, because, as
Speaker 5: one person pointed out, it's actually a myth that microwaves
Speaker 5: cook things from the inside out, and that's part of
Speaker 5: what makes people think, oh, yeah, I could like get
Speaker 5: to your brain, you know, without causing any external damage.
Speaker 5: And then another group called the Jason's That Jason is
Speaker 5: a group of physicists that's been advised the government on
Speaker 5: nuclear weapons and all kinds of different science related issues.
Speaker 5: They've looked at this too, and they concluded that it
Speaker 5: was most likely to have a psychosomatic origin. And I
Speaker 5: have written a couple columns about this, and in one
Speaker 5: I talked to a neurologist who's an expert on psychosomatic conditions,
Speaker 5: and I learned something really important about this, which is.
Speaker 5: We tend to sort of dismiss psychosomatic as meaning fake
Speaker 5: or all in your head, imagined in some way, that
Speaker 5: it's not real and not really a problem. But the
Speaker 5: way she described it, I realized it has to do
Speaker 5: with the you know, the connection between the mind and
Speaker 5: the body, which is not well understood, and that people
Speaker 5: are really suffering and can't just get over it when
Speaker 5: they have psychosomatic conditions. And so I left thinking Havana
Speaker 5: syndrome is real, it probably has a big psychosomatic component,
Speaker 5: and that people are suffering from that.
Speaker 1: So I want to explore what you say by when
Speaker 1: we talk about this, and I want to be clear
Speaker 1: that we don't have any certainty what this is is right,
Speaker 1: so piss big prologue. We know, because John is a
Speaker 1: victim of it, that the Russians do do things like
Speaker 1: be microwaves at the embassy, and we know that it
Speaker 1: goes back to the nineteen seventies. We know that Kissinger
Speaker 1: was talking with then Soviet foreign Minister Dobreenan about the
Speaker 1: issue of bombing.
Speaker 2: The embassy with microwaves.
Speaker 1: And when I say microwaves, I want to sort of
Speaker 1: work back as we use the termine we all think
Speaker 1: of like the microwave oven, but microwaves are not actually
Speaker 1: that they are.
Speaker 2: It's a form of help me out here, FAE.
Speaker 5: Elect electromagnetic radio electromannet radiation exactly right, Yes, And it's
Speaker 5: a long wavelength so we can go through things. It's
Speaker 5: not like l you know, it's it's a big spectrum.
Speaker 5: And this is on the long wavelength end.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: So we know that the Russians have bathed our embassy
Speaker 1: in microwaves. We know they be electromegletic energy, whether it's
Speaker 1: microwaves or other sorts at the embassy for all sorts
Speaker 1: of reasons. We know they put carcinogenic spy dust on
Speaker 1: our officers. And I'll just throw this in that my
Speaker 1: understanding is that the Russians did experiment with this sort
Speaker 1: of thing, as has the US military. There was there
Speaker 1: was the MEDUSA project, and I'm just going to bring
Speaker 1: it up because I love what MEDUSA stands for. It's
Speaker 1: the mob Excess to turrent using silent audio, a weapon
Speaker 1: crowd control device that was worked on in the year
Speaker 1: two thousands, and that the US military was looking at
Speaker 1: this in the late sixties and early seventies, where they
Speaker 1: determined that as far as they could tell with what
Speaker 1: they were using, it was having no impact on Reese's monkeys.
Speaker 1: And then lastly on the demographic fifteen hundred, I would say,
Speaker 1: if it's that large, knowing how things operate, that's too
Speaker 1: large a number, too large a demographic.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, let me address that. One of the problems
Speaker 3: we have here is that this happened largely to people
Speaker 3: who live inside a closed secret system right in the CIA,
Speaker 3: and so therefore we're responding to what media account, let's say,
Speaker 3: of this. So what happened was there were several people
Speaker 3: in several places after the original Havana victims that reported
Speaker 3: that they thought they suffered from this I got brain
Speaker 3: injuries from what they believed was some sort of targeted attack.
Speaker 3: And for a long time, the agency and the agency
Speaker 3: leadership didn't want to deal with it. They'd pushed back
Speaker 3: against these people. They're worried about if they agree that
Speaker 3: these people got hit, then other people are going to
Speaker 3: say they did it. So once the new director came in,
Speaker 3: he said, Okay, we have to deal with this. We
Speaker 3: have to try to help these people who believe they
Speaker 3: were hurt, and they sent out a message to everybody
Speaker 3: in the organization saying, if you think there's anything that
Speaker 3: you're having, some sort of brain injury or anything that
Speaker 3: might have happened to you, please stand up and report it.
Speaker 3: And yes, fifteen hundred or more people said, yeah, maybe me.
Speaker 3: And of course, now we've had people in Afghanistan and
Speaker 3: in Iraq and they've been around bombings and all these
Speaker 3: other kind of things. And my understanding is they've come
Speaker 3: down to the fact that maybe twenty or thirty of
Speaker 3: these people are ones that they believe are the ones
Speaker 3: that could be legitimate victims of this thing. The other
Speaker 3: people may have something, they may have problems, but it
Speaker 3: doesn't fit into this pattern of a potential attack.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and that's why, I mean, there can be more
Speaker 5: than one thing going on. And I know there were
Speaker 5: a lot of reports about different kinds of really bad harassment,
Speaker 5: especially in Havana, that people were reporting, you know, that
Speaker 5: dog excrement was in their cars and people were breaking
Speaker 5: into their homes. And when it comes to science and technology,
Speaker 5: the things that are really unlikely are things that would
Speaker 5: violate the laws of science as we know them. But
Speaker 5: if something is sort of not scientifically impossible, but just
Speaker 5: a technology that we don't quite understand, well, then it
Speaker 5: may be possible. I think the research there is actually
Speaker 5: quite a bit of research, and I think that's why
Speaker 5: the Jason group was skeptical.
Speaker 3: One thing I want to say about the Jason's because
Speaker 3: we in the Agency would use the Jacon's to bring
Speaker 3: them in to look at things that we saw. For example,
Speaker 3: when I was in Moscow, we had reporting about some
Speaker 3: of the things that the Russians were doing scientifically, like
Speaker 3: Jerry talked about in cmbassy and these type of things,
Speaker 3: and we would actually bring the Jasons in to study
Speaker 3: these things, and frankly, I've seen times when they were wrong.
Speaker 3: So they we would present them things that we were
Speaker 3: getting reporting that the Russians were doing, and we would
Speaker 3: get reports back from them saying, oh, this is impossible,
Speaker 3: this is not something doesn't make any sense, it doesn't
Speaker 3: make scientific sense. And over time we would actually then
Speaker 3: find out more specifics about this and they'd be like, oh, yeah, well,
Speaker 3: actually we never thought about it that way. The Russians
Speaker 3: are approaching things in a completely different way than they
Speaker 3: should or we would or other things. So and in
Speaker 3: my case, these adjacents, in this case that was an
Speaker 3: early report, and none of them had any access to
Speaker 3: any of these victims. So yeah, I trust them as scientists.
Speaker 3: But we in the government, when we get involved somewhere,
Speaker 3: if we're going to be successful, say you know, in
Speaker 3: Afghanistan or whatever, we weren't successful, we often talk about
Speaker 3: an all of government approach and you could say, ohause,
Speaker 3: this could be sort of mass hysteria or something. But
Speaker 3: then from people on the ground, how do you explain,
Speaker 3: for example, then that some of the patterns that we've seen,
Speaker 3: we've seen patterns of these twenty or thirty people who
Speaker 3: believe that they've been hit by this, they are overwhelmingly
Speaker 3: people in the CIA who worked on Russia issues that
Speaker 3: are in specific countries where the Russians and others have
Speaker 3: freedom of movement. And so how does mass hysteria happen
Speaker 3: to one person here, one person there, one person there,
Speaker 3: and that now it's possible.
Speaker 5: I mean, obviously the first case can't be mass hysteria.
Speaker 5: It starts with something, and so something happened to a
Speaker 5: few people. When it starts to blow up to fifteen
Speaker 5: hundred people, then there's something psychological going on. In the
Speaker 5: power of suggestion, I guess the question is you know,
Speaker 5: why settle on a microwave weapon?
Speaker 3: You know exactly, Let's put that away.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think using the word attack we also may
Speaker 1: be going down a wrong path. So what the Russians
Speaker 1: again from an intelligence offers perspective, and John is the
Speaker 1: Russia exper.
Speaker 3: We're also assuming Russia here too, which is what we're
Speaker 3: also going in a certain direction.
Speaker 1: We're making an assumption that it would have to be
Speaker 1: a nation state with significant resources.
Speaker 2: We don't know.
Speaker 1: It could be that the attacks are not actually at
Speaker 1: tacks against people, but it takes against devices. And it
Speaker 1: could be that the Russians, the adversaries, you may not
Speaker 1: even know themselves. Why the impact is going to be
Speaker 1: on human beings when you're trying to shut off a
Speaker 1: cell phone or go after a cell phone or a
Speaker 1: piece of specialized electronic equipment and you use some sort
Speaker 1: of electroathletic energy.
Speaker 3: But is there anything existing, any sort of scientific thing
Speaker 3: that could be weaponized that could have this kind of effect?
Speaker 5: Well, you know, I have interviewed a couple of different
Speaker 5: people on this that I think were helpful. One was
Speaker 5: a scientists who had worked at Los Alamos for years
Speaker 5: and was familiar with our own US research on microwave weapons,
Speaker 5: and was very skeptical that such a thing exists. You know,
Speaker 5: people have looked at a few things, you know, since
Speaker 5: people were breaking into their homes, people have looked at
Speaker 5: whether it could be some sort of a virus, even
Speaker 5: you know, some sort of a microbe, some sort of
Speaker 5: a chemical or poison that their homes had been tampered with,
Speaker 5: their furniture had been rearranged. But maybe they had experimented
Speaker 5: with ways to poison people in a low level way
Speaker 5: so that it wasn't obvious exactly when and where it started,
Speaker 5: but where they did start to feel sick.
Speaker 3: When I lived overseas and places where that it didn't
Speaker 3: like us, people did break into our houses routinely, in
Speaker 3: things and nervous. The thing I was maybe most nervous
Speaker 3: is when I would go to get a haircut. I'd
Speaker 3: be sitting there and I think, like this guy could
Speaker 3: just slip my throat.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, let's take a break. We'll be right back,
Speaker 2: and boom, we're back.
Speaker 1: When you get a dog whistle and you blow into it,
Speaker 1: we don't hear anything, and yet this high pitched auditory
Speaker 1: stimulus will hurt a dog's ear because it impacts on
Speaker 1: the bone and it's in their ear.
Speaker 2: Is it possible.
Speaker 1: Also sort of audio waves or just on the noise
Speaker 1: spectrum that could.
Speaker 5: Impact a lot of people reported hearing noises.
Speaker 1: So if I was wanted to build a machine, they
Speaker 1: had vibrations like in the audio, you know, noise vibrations,
Speaker 1: but we can't hear it like dogs hand some sounding
Speaker 1: that might shake a person's brain.
Speaker 5: That was actually part of the theory behind the microwaves.
Speaker 5: Is there something called the Fray effect? I don't know
Speaker 5: if you cloked at the guy that was studying the
Speaker 5: physiological effects of microwaves. I think he was originally commissioned
Speaker 5: by the Navy to look at whether naval officers on
Speaker 5: ships who were being exposed to radar were being damaged
Speaker 5: by it. And I guess he actually put himself in
Speaker 5: the path the microwaves and heard this clicking sound.
Speaker 2: When this was taking place.
Speaker 1: Initially, my understanding is that senior agency officials did not.
Speaker 2: Want to take this to the White House.
Speaker 1: It was precarious to tell the White House that Vladimir
Speaker 1: Putin is a bad guy, right and to go after
Speaker 1: this aggressively. To do this, because if you found out
Speaker 1: that the Russians were doing something or if it was
Speaker 1: likely that is either a causes belly attacking us inside
Speaker 1: of our own embassy, right that has serious consequences for this,
Speaker 1: and that White House didn't want to know, and so
Speaker 1: there was a huge bureaucratic, but very real disincentive to
Speaker 1: follow this up aggressively.
Speaker 3: I think even this White House would not want to
Speaker 3: do that because you're forced to then respond. In other words,
Speaker 3: you know, you've made their life more difficult, only if
Speaker 3: you have.
Speaker 1: One hundred percent certainty. Right what you're doing is, let's
Speaker 1: go back to Russia. You're accusing Russia, so you have
Speaker 1: to be one hundred thousand friggin percent certain, not ninety
Speaker 1: nine percent.
Speaker 3: So you're talking to a science person and you're calling
Speaker 3: one hundred thousand percent, like, well, it's like, yeah.
Speaker 1: One hundred thousand percent, it's more than nine hundred and
Speaker 1: ninety nine thousand percent. The fact that it walks like
Speaker 1: a duck and clacks like a duck doesn't always mean
Speaker 1: it's a duck. So I think we're I think we're
Speaker 1: in agreement that we simply don't have enough data to
Speaker 1: determine whether or not some sort of device was used
Speaker 1: to impact on an officer rights.
Speaker 2: This is still an open question, right.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I agree with that. Yeah, that was fun.
Speaker 3: Thank you Faith for putting up with Jerry. Our next
Speaker 3: guest is Mark Palmeropolis. Mark is a friend of ours
Speaker 3: and a career CIA Clandestine Service officer like we were.
Speaker 3: He spent most of his career in the Middle East
Speaker 3: and in war zones before working in senior leadership back
Speaker 3: at CIA headquarters, and his career sadly was cut short
Speaker 3: when he suffered an attack by what was then called
Speaker 3: the Havana syndrome. Since he was sort of forced out
Speaker 3: of the government and it needed to get medical help,
Speaker 3: he's become a senior Nonresident Fellow at the Atlantic Council.
Speaker 3: He's a regular on MSNBC and The Joe Scarborough Show,
Speaker 3: among other places, has written a variety of opinion pieces
Speaker 3: and a well respected management leadership book. And so Mark,
Speaker 3: it's really great to have you here today. I was
Speaker 3: wondering if you could provide our listeners maybe just sort
Speaker 3: of a short overview of what happened to you both
Speaker 3: in the field physically and then sort of the follow up.
Speaker 6: Sure. Sure, and it's good to be here. With old friends,
Speaker 6: and I will say, as you know, as I tell
Speaker 6: my story, I have to give some credit to people
Speaker 6: like John and Jerry who actually stood by me. There
Speaker 6: are some really hard times when you go through the
Speaker 6: kind of what I went through and battle the government
Speaker 6: frankly in public. Ultimately win, but you make some enemies
Speaker 6: from inside our old outfit and you end up knowing
Speaker 6: who your true friends are. So both of you have
Speaker 6: been that, and trust me, it's noticed by me and
Speaker 6: my family, and you know, my life really changed in
Speaker 6: December of twenty seventeen. I had been a long time
Speaker 6: CIA officer, a case officer. I'd spent a lot of
Speaker 6: time in the Middle East. As you noted, the last
Speaker 6: job I actually had when I was promoted at the
Speaker 6: Senior Intelligence Service, I was made first the deputy and
Speaker 6: then the chief of operations over it's called the Europe
Speaker 6: and Eurasian Mission Center, which was the entity responsible for
Speaker 6: our work from everywhere from Ireland to the farthest time
Speaker 6: zones of Russia. And with that, because I was a
Speaker 6: career Middle East officer, I wanted to take a trip
Speaker 6: to Russia. I wanted to meet the ambassador John Huntsman,
Speaker 6: and then I wanted to just see for myself because
Speaker 6: I was overseeing this part of the world. So in
Speaker 6: December of twenty seventeen, I made a faithful trip to
Speaker 6: Moscow again to meet the ambassador, and of course I
Speaker 6: actually was meeting with counterparts and the Russian security services,
Speaker 6: and a lot of folks ask you know why is that. Well,
Speaker 6: even the darkest days of the Cold War, John, we
Speaker 6: had not a productive but a relationship with the KGB
Speaker 6: where the CIA and a KGB would have open channels,
Speaker 6: and so we still have that with Russia, and that, frankly,
Speaker 6: is important. So I was going to meet my counterparts,
Speaker 6: both in the external service, the SPR and the internal
Speaker 6: service the FSB. The Russians did not want me to
Speaker 6: take the trip. As we applied for the visa, received
Speaker 6: the visa, they called back they wanted to rescind it.
Speaker 6: They thought I was going to be doing something to
Speaker 6: Farius there, which is ridiculous. I was a member of
Speaker 6: the Senior Intelligence Service. I was going there very overtly
Speaker 6: telling them I was going. But for some reason they
Speaker 6: were spooked by this, and so we insisted on myself
Speaker 6: and one other officer going and about two or three
Speaker 6: nights into the trip, as I'm staying at a five
Speaker 6: star hotel within what John you probably know, there's two
Speaker 6: blocks of the US Embassy, that's the Marriott. I woke
Speaker 6: up in the middle of the night with an incredible
Speaker 6: case of vertigo, a splitting headache. I felt physically sick.
Speaker 6: I had tonight is ringing in my ears. And this
Speaker 6: started really this terrible medical journey which caused me to
Speaker 6: retire from the CIA, ultimately to go public begging for
Speaker 6: medical care and ending up at Walter Reid with the
Speaker 6: traumatic brain injury diagnosis. But something seriously, it did happen
Speaker 6: to me that night in Moscow. I was at the
Speaker 6: kind of the top of my game and physical and
Speaker 6: mental health, and I turned into someone that you could
Speaker 6: almost not recognize. So quite a story, and I hope
Speaker 6: it doesn't define my career, but something that I always
Speaker 6: have to live with.
Speaker 3: So, Mark, when this happened, you had to retire. I
Speaker 3: think you still say that even to this day you
Speaker 3: have daily splitting headaches. Had to go to Walter Reed
Speaker 3: as you mentioned, and get help. And so I want
Speaker 3: to ask, sort of probably a tough question, who are
Speaker 3: the people that handled it well inside and outside the
Speaker 3: US government, and who are the people who you think
Speaker 3: handled it poorly.
Speaker 6: It's a very fair question and answers to that question,
Speaker 6: I've provided directly not only to senior CIA leadership over heres,
Speaker 6: but also to the oversight committees both in the House
Speaker 6: and the Senate who have investigated this, because I was
Speaker 6: very upset on how this was handled. So I came
Speaker 6: back from ten days in Moscow and Saint Petersburg and
Speaker 6: I was in agony. I had terrible splitting headaches. Things
Speaker 6: got worse when I got back. I developed brain fag
Speaker 6: my long distance vision, I couldn't drive, I had some
Speaker 6: cognitive issues. And I went to our office medical services
Speaker 6: and I said, look, something happened to me there. And
Speaker 6: in the back of my mind I thought of what
Speaker 6: had occurred back in twenty sixteen to our diplomats at
Speaker 6: the US Embassy in Havana, Cuba, and I said, you know,
Speaker 6: could this be that? And they put me through some
Speaker 6: very rudimentary tests. I literally walking down, touching my finger
Speaker 6: to my nose or something, and they said, no, you
Speaker 6: don't have those same kind of symptoms, even though I
Speaker 6: did have kind of vertigo and occipital neualogia, which is
Speaker 6: a splitting headache in the back, and some of the
Speaker 6: things that actually the other Havana victims did have. But
Speaker 6: originally the Offico Medical Services said no, and this started
Speaker 6: a long standing back and forth. There was a young
Speaker 6: doctor there who was a champion. The senior elements of
Speaker 6: the Office of Medical Services kind of said no. And
Speaker 6: basically what I was asking to do was go to
Speaker 6: the University of Pennsylvania where they were treating some of
Speaker 6: the Havana victims. And I said, look, something is wrong
Speaker 6: with me. I can't even go to work for more
Speaker 6: than two or three hours.
Speaker 4: I just was a mess.
Speaker 6: And the Office of Medical Services senior leadership rejected this.
Speaker 6: Then I finally had to retire because of it, which
Speaker 6: was pretty tragic. Just as I was retiring, the then
Speaker 6: deputy Director of Operations, actually she called me and she said,
Speaker 6: would you come be one of my deputies one of
Speaker 6: the addo's associate deputy director of operations, John and Jerry.
Speaker 6: You both know, that's a tremendous honor. That's getting to
Speaker 6: the seventh floor of CI. But I had to say no,
Speaker 6: I couldn't do it, and so I retired. And just
Speaker 6: as I was retiring. Some other officers were coming in
Speaker 6: from the field afflicted by this, and they did get
Speaker 6: treated at Walter Reed's Traumatic Brain Injury Center. It's called
Speaker 6: the National Intrepid Center of Excellence called NICO. And so,
Speaker 6: while the Offesome Medical Services at first kind of rejected me,
Speaker 6: as I now retire and I have dialogue in with CIA,
Speaker 6: OFFESO Medical Services is saying no as well, but this
Speaker 6: time senior leadership CIA also is kind of denigrating my request.
Speaker 6: All I wanted was a frickin' doctor's appointment. I'm not
Speaker 6: asking for anything else. But for whatever reason, CIA just
Speaker 6: kept saying no. And so finally I went public a
Speaker 6: good friend now I think a journalist John that you
Speaker 6: know as well, Julia Yaffi, who's a Russian specialist. I
Speaker 6: contacted her and I said, I have a story to tell.
Speaker 6: I went to the agency and I told them I
Speaker 6: was going to do this so they wouldn't be surprised,
Speaker 6: even though they were very angry. And so the story
Speaker 6: finally came out and embarrassed the agency to such an
Speaker 6: extent three former CIA directors actually called our seventh floor
Speaker 6: and asked, what the hell are they doing? Please? Send
Speaker 6: Mark to the doctor, and then they did at that
Speaker 6: point approved me going to Walter Reed and So, which
Speaker 6: was a one month intensive program for traumatic brain injury
Speaker 6: where I was diagnosed with the TBI. But you talk
Speaker 6: about who are the good guys in this good guys
Speaker 6: are my friends or the good gals my friends? You
Speaker 6: stuck with me? It's the junior doctor at CIA. And
Speaker 6: those that really did me a lot of harm were
Speaker 6: the senior medical staff at the Office of Medical Services
Speaker 6: and senior officials. But those that again rejected a simple
Speaker 6: request for me to get medical treatment. And finally, when
Speaker 6: this all kind of became much more in public, both
Speaker 6: Jake Sullivan, the National Security Advisor, and Bill Burns, the
Speaker 6: CI director, actually visited with Walter Reid and met with
Speaker 6: my doctors and the deputy director at NIKO at Walter
Speaker 6: Reed told them. They said, the delay in Mark's care
Speaker 6: was really detrimental. You caused him an immense amount of suffering.
Speaker 1: But do you think it was because it was either
Speaker 1: something to do with you or something to do with
Speaker 1: the Havanna syndrome in general, or is it something that
Speaker 1: they didn't want to confront the possibility of Russia causing
Speaker 1: harm to one of our officers because that demands a response,
Speaker 1: right and with that administration, that's a tall order without
Speaker 1: to be clear and playing devil's without having like specific evidence.
Speaker 2: And maybe not even wanting to have that evidence. So
Speaker 2: what are you your.
Speaker 6: Thoughts, No, Jerry, that's a great question. I've gone through
Speaker 6: this in my mind so many different times. I will
Speaker 6: say there was an Inspectral General's report that was done
Speaker 6: on this that detailed the agency's response, and I can't
Speaker 6: talk about the details of it, but I was allowed
Speaker 6: to read it, and it's not very flattering towards senior
Speaker 6: officials in terms of denying care. And these are you know,
Speaker 6: other kind of tip of the spirit case officers who
Speaker 6: served around the world who I've seen them go out
Speaker 6: to the field and I've seen them come back after
Speaker 6: something like this had happened, and they are in fact vegetables,
Speaker 6: and it's a terrible thing to even say. They're medically retired,
Speaker 6: they've gone blind, they some have had cancers, they have
Speaker 6: lost the total ability to work. So let me just
Speaker 6: start that with something indeed happened. And so I think
Speaker 6: that the organization just by default doesn't want to have
Speaker 6: this kind of unknown cold case hanging out there, because
Speaker 6: then it caused into question and your ability to keep
Speaker 6: yourself and your family safe overseas. And frankly, and both
Speaker 6: of you know this, both of you have been on
Speaker 6: unaccompanied assignments, will go in harm's way, and the drop
Speaker 6: of a hat taking your families is a different story.
Speaker 6: And I'm sure you're going to have others on say
Speaker 6: this is all psychosomatic or there's you know, there's some
Speaker 6: kind of mass hysteria. Well that doesn't apply to someone
Speaker 6: like myself, who was in top physical condition when this
Speaker 6: happened to me. But if it is a hostile foreign actor,
Speaker 6: it's an act of war against our personnel, it's probably
Speaker 6: a brilliant COVID action plan. It's caused enormous dissension within
Speaker 6: our ranks. It's still in essence non attributable. But if
Speaker 6: we ever found out who did it, what do we
Speaker 6: do in response? What I equate with the most? And again,
Speaker 6: and it's another issue that I think that a previous
Speaker 6: administration kind of fouled up is the bounties that the
Speaker 6: Russians put on our soldiers in Afghanistan. Everyone I've talked
Speaker 6: to in our old service there's one hundred percent convinced
Speaker 6: by this. They've seen all the intelligence. There's no doubt
Speaker 6: the Russians were behind this, and we never held them
Speaker 6: accountable because how do you hold the Russians accountable?
Speaker 1: There?
Speaker 3: We got to take a break now and we'll be
Speaker 3: back in just a minute.
Speaker 2: And we're back, So.
Speaker 3: Mark, tell me about the medical side of this. What
Speaker 3: have you learned about what happened to your head and
Speaker 3: to others? And what do the doctors say.
Speaker 6: I've seen every doctor under the sun. I mean, I've
Speaker 6: done everything. I've been through traditional medicine. I've been through
Speaker 6: alternative medicine. I've been poked and prodded and acupuncture, and
Speaker 6: I was willing to do just about anything because I
Speaker 6: was in so much pain. So the doctors at Walter
Speaker 6: read you know again, this is the most advanced traumatic
Speaker 6: brain injury clinic on the planet. I've had seven MRIs.
Speaker 6: If things come up on imaging for me, I've had
Speaker 6: so many blood tests under the sun. We yet some
Speaker 6: of us have received compensation for this, and under what's
Speaker 6: called the Havana Act. And under the Havana Act, compensation
Speaker 6: this was to provide some remuneration for those of us
Speaker 6: and it's not wasn't a lot of money, but my
Speaker 6: doctors had to actually write and sign and provide to
Speaker 6: CIA that YEP, mark as a traumatic brain injury is
Speaker 6: from an external event and it's not based on a
Speaker 6: pre existing condition.
Speaker 2: So where exactly do we stand on this? Is it?
Speaker 1: The agency just doesn't know if something happened, or they
Speaker 1: accept something happened, but they don't know how or when
Speaker 1: or has that shifted at all?
Speaker 6: Well if everything shifted wildly. So let me just say
Speaker 6: that there are a couple dozen cases that they can't solve,
Speaker 6: and that's always buried in the headlines, and I'm one
Speaker 6: of those cases. These are also the cases that they're
Speaker 6: providing compensation to. The agency trying to do the right
Speaker 6: thing really screwed up by basically sending a worldwide message
Speaker 6: out saying everyone who's got a headache, right in, And
Speaker 6: they got a thousand cases. Then they solved the ninety
Speaker 6: nine point one percent of the cases, and then they
Speaker 6: patted themselves in the because they saw them all. But
Speaker 6: these were never real to begin with, so ultimately you're
Speaker 6: left with several dozen. When they're briefing journalists. My friends
Speaker 6: were in the National Scurity Media went down there and
Speaker 6: they said, none of that's true, even the two dozen cases.
Speaker 6: And some of my friends were journalists, said what about
Speaker 6: Mark and they said no pre existing condition? Well's I know,
Speaker 6: that's bullshit. So I got pissed off and I called
Speaker 6: into the agency and I went and they admitted to me, no,
Speaker 6: you know, you were actually one of the two dozen
Speaker 6: who were not sure about and we have no intelligence
Speaker 6: whatsoever that suggests that anything happened or that nothing happened.
Speaker 6: So basically, you know, so they're making conclusions on everybody
Speaker 6: based on an absence of evidence.
Speaker 3: For outsiders, they don't understand that the agency has made
Speaker 3: up of very different tribes or groups. The analytic cadre
Speaker 3: are the people who make assessments by getting all the
Speaker 3: information from all the various collectors, technical and human and
Speaker 3: and everything else, and they have to put together assessment
Speaker 3: for sort of all sorts of things that administrations would
Speaker 3: be interested in on their security issues. And frankly just
Speaker 3: the recent history as they've been burned several times by
Speaker 3: making false assessments or bias, and they take that very
Speaker 3: and they've trained their new analysts and they're very careful
Speaker 3: not to go too far anymore, because essentially there's a
Speaker 3: lot of things around WMD in the Iraq War that
Speaker 3: in some ways analysts got blamed for things, maybe more
Speaker 3: than they needed to be. But in this case, I
Speaker 3: think they're so nervous about providing an analytic judgment because
Speaker 3: they know that if they say something happened and administration
Speaker 3: is going to be forced to act. If you're going
Speaker 3: to put something down on the desk of the present
Speaker 3: United States and say a foreign country attacked and harmed
Speaker 3: American intelligence officers and diplomats, the administration has to do
Speaker 3: something as an active war.
Speaker 6: One of the theories that I always had was that
Speaker 6: some kind of device, originally probably used for signals intelligence collection,
Speaker 6: they actually realize harmed people and they start deploying.
Speaker 1: This mark for people listening in, I want to make
Speaker 1: a quick comment and get your take on it. So,
Speaker 1: like you, I've served in difficult places and brought my
Speaker 1: family unhealthy places. You know, Cobra's malaria, Dangyo, were medical care, right,
Speaker 1: no blood transfusions, you know, nothing, and yet we brought
Speaker 1: our families there knowing it was unsafe, right, brought our
Speaker 1: young kids there.
Speaker 2: And I have to say I was pretty satisfied with.
Speaker 1: The agency's willingness to engage on those traditional things, to
Speaker 1: include things like mental health care right for families. I
Speaker 1: thought they were very engaging as a coos in some
Speaker 1: of these places they've seen family struggle with mental health.
Speaker 1: The agency was always very good about that. So what
Speaker 1: you're saying here, and I completely accept it, it's sort
Speaker 1: of an anomaly at least to what I personally have
Speaker 1: experienced with the agency.
Speaker 2: They've been pretty darn good.
Speaker 3: There's one outstanding thing here that may have suggested why
Speaker 3: senior management would be hesitant, and that was Donald Trump. So,
Speaker 3: as we know, Donald Trump in his administration was very
Speaker 3: close to Vladimir Putin, and to this day he says
Speaker 3: wonderful things about Vladimir Putin, even after the invasion and
Speaker 3: the murders and rapes in Ukraine, and it was well
Speaker 3: known to the outside world that anyone who came to
Speaker 3: him with something bad about Russia, he would sort of
Speaker 3: snap at them in the back in their face, like it,
Speaker 3: what doesn't do your career well to come continue to
Speaker 3: come into the White House saying bad things about Latim
Speaker 3: Reputin and Russia.
Speaker 6: And we know that from our former senior colleagues saying that,
Speaker 6: hell no, we're not going to go you know, with
Speaker 6: the former briefers, so like we're not briefing stuff on
Speaker 6: Russia to Trump today, he'll go crazy. Let's just keep
Speaker 6: it out. To me, it's much more a case of
Speaker 6: just kind of gross incompetence. And of course the analytic
Speaker 6: assessments on this did occur in the next administration that
Speaker 6: they occurred under President Biden, who my understanding did take
Speaker 6: this very seriously.
Speaker 1: During the Trump administration abroad, we were told many times,
Speaker 1: don't write this down, like what senior officials were saying
Speaker 1: about the adminision. Don't write this down, don't tell us
Speaker 1: this officially, don't make this happen because we'll have to
Speaker 1: deal with it. And eventually you do that once or
Speaker 1: twice and you just don't anymore. You just kind of know. Mark,
Speaker 1: thank you very much for coming in today. As always,
Speaker 1: it's really enjoyable talking to you. If this time not
Speaker 1: over a beer, certainly next time. So yeah, thank you very.
Speaker 6: Much, Thank you all very much, appreciate all your support.
Speaker 3: Now our friend and producer Adam Davidson is joining us. Well,
Speaker 3: welcome Adam.
Speaker 4: Hey guys, it feels like this episode around a Vanas
Speaker 4: syndrome is tempted to call it a very special episode,
Speaker 4: because this one really touches you, right, This affects your friends.
Speaker 4: This one isn't some theory. This is your life.
Speaker 3: Well, I think you know from the interview with Mark
Speaker 3: he was a colleague and friend, and so it's important
Speaker 3: to us in that way, but in a bigger sense
Speaker 3: for the work we did living around the world. It's
Speaker 3: a big deal because it's a mystery that still hasn't
Speaker 3: been solved, but it's impacting our diplomats and our intelligence
Speaker 3: officers and our military officers around the world every day.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: The interesting thing about conspiracy theories is they explain everything right.
Speaker 1: They're self licking ice cream cones. And this one. We
Speaker 1: have a mystery about a conspiracy and a conspiracy theory,
Speaker 1: and we don't have the answers to it, and we're
Speaker 1: still looking for it, and it has real victims.
Speaker 3: I put it in the same bucket a lot with
Speaker 3: the Russian efforts against our election in twenty sixteen. And
Speaker 3: it is not a mystery necessarily that we're going to
Speaker 3: get an answer to, because if in fact, foreign intelligence
Speaker 3: agencies are involved in these kind of things. It's their job,
Speaker 3: their professional obligation, to keep secrets. When sometimes we are
Speaker 3: lucky and we find spies that give us the answer
Speaker 3: to these questions, maybe years after the fact. But it
Speaker 3: isn't as if this is just out there in the
Speaker 3: ether and all of a sudden it's going to come
Speaker 3: to us. It may be something that we never learned
Speaker 3: the true story behind.
Speaker 1: There's an impact too that we don't talk about so much.
Speaker 1: If people are worried about exposing their families. If like
Speaker 1: if you go to Moscow and you're worried that your kids,
Speaker 1: so your spouse is going to be exposed to this
Speaker 1: and damage, you may not go. Just like in the
Speaker 1: case where going to places where journalists are routinely murdered Somalia, Afghanistan,
Speaker 1: Northern Iraq, there's no good journalism on that because it's
Speaker 1: simply too dangerous.
Speaker 3: I worked in Pakistan and there would be stories about
Speaker 3: from the tribal areas in Pakistan where and others were living,
Speaker 3: and you'd see these stories in the Western press about
Speaker 3: what American drone strikes might be doing. And you knew
Speaker 3: that there was no Western press that went in there,
Speaker 3: none because it was too dangerous for them. So these
Speaker 3: stories are coming second and third hand and also oftentimes
Speaker 3: manipulated by the local government to get their point of
Speaker 3: view across because people can't go in there. And so
Speaker 3: think about those just personal things that are happening to
Speaker 3: all these people as they try to get out and
Speaker 3: do the work for the American public well, whether they
Speaker 3: be journalists, diplomats, or spies.
Speaker 4: Do you think the chaos is the goal, like the
Speaker 4: lack of us knowing the kind of invisible menace is
Speaker 4: that serving the interests of whoever's doing this.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, menace is a really good word. I think in
Speaker 1: Russia there's a saying John would know it better you
Speaker 1: kill a chicken to scare the monkey.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I mean actually the field of like FIGN correspondence, there's
Speaker 4: fewer of them, and part of that is there's less money.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: But I have a bunch of friends who died, and
Speaker 4: there are few who died in Libya. There are a
Speaker 4: few who died in Syria. There used to be more
Speaker 4: rules that journalists were sort of seen generally as noncombatants
Speaker 4: and both sides had an interest, So that has gone away.
Speaker 2: That's an interesting point.
Speaker 1: Adam in that really truly, and no shit, CIA does
Speaker 1: not use journalism cover because we don't want to taint them.
Speaker 2: And the Russians know that.
Speaker 1: Even Al Kaida knew that they didn't go after journalists
Speaker 1: because they knew CIA didn't use them. And then you
Speaker 1: get into the current Russian government and isis and it
Speaker 1: simply doesn't matter anymore. It's about terror, intimidation and the
Speaker 1: word you use menace.
Speaker 4: So this is a real conspiracy.
Speaker 3: Probably, I think something's happening, whether it's directed to do
Speaker 3: harm specifically, or it's some sort of surveillance device that
Speaker 3: creates this type of damage.
Speaker 1: Perhaps, Yeah, Adam, I think it's important for people to
Speaker 1: understand that when looking at conspiracy theories and conspiracies, it's
Speaker 1: not always a binary answer. It's not always yes it's
Speaker 1: true or no it's false. But there's a sliding scale.
Speaker 1: And on this one, and I'd say it's credible to likely,
Speaker 1: even if there's no specific proof that we can point to.
Speaker 3: Oftentimes it takes years and years and we have to
Speaker 3: get a lucky break before we figure out what's happening.
Speaker 1: For this, if I had to make a prediction, it
Speaker 1: would be that one fine day a disgruntled Russian guy
Speaker 1: is going to walk in and say, for five million bucks,
Speaker 1: I'll tell you whether it's a duck or not.
Speaker 4: Do you think most things do eventually come out? My
Speaker 4: view is a lot of things never come out. We
Speaker 4: just won't know.
Speaker 3: I think there's a chance with this one that it
Speaker 3: may come out. But in the intelligence world, like we
Speaker 3: may get a source who tells us exactly what's happening,
Speaker 3: but we want to keep that source secret because that
Speaker 3: source probably knows other things that are important to us.
Speaker 3: But we're not going to publicize that or put it
Speaker 3: out into the public because we want to protect that
Speaker 3: source for the information that person has on other things.
Speaker 1: And for anybody out there listening in from say Moscow,
Speaker 1: write us.
Speaker 2: We'll make it worth your while.
Speaker 4: Of all the promises you've given agents is you'll get
Speaker 4: to be on a podcast. Where would that be?
Speaker 3: Thought? Is? So?
Speaker 4: One thing I keep thinking about with all of this
Speaker 4: is what is this a solution for? Assuming there is
Speaker 4: something happening and someone's doing it, why what are like,
Speaker 4: if it's a threatening thing, wouldn't they want it known?
Speaker 3: Interesting that you bring that up, because we call it
Speaker 3: we just call it implausible deniability, Right, So the Russians
Speaker 3: would do things that were they were done by their
Speaker 3: secret services, but they wanted people to know. So when
Speaker 3: they murdered someone in England with some form of chemical
Speaker 3: attack colonium, they didn't admit it, but everybody knew what
Speaker 3: was happening, and it sent a signal to people. And
Speaker 3: when they killed navalny, it sent a signal even though
Speaker 3: they didn't admit what they did. And so it's not clear, like,
Speaker 3: why are they hurting people? When this first happened, I
Speaker 3: wrote an article saying it could be some sort of
Speaker 3: surveillance technology or something they're using that has the effect
Speaker 3: of hurting people. And so at this point it's still
Speaker 3: not clear whether this is meant to send a signal
Speaker 3: that the gloves are off. Is this meant to send
Speaker 3: a signal that American Intelligence Office should never feel safe
Speaker 3: around the world?
Speaker 4: All Right, the two of you know as much much
Speaker 4: as anyone does about this. What's your theory? What do
Speaker 4: you think is happening here?
Speaker 1: Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. The fact
Speaker 1: that apparently we can't pin it on a particular actor
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that it can't be pinned on one someday
Speaker 1: for me. Evaluating all the evaluable evidence, I think the
Speaker 1: most likely story is that some of these people were
Speaker 1: the victims of some sort of hostile intervention or attack.
Speaker 2: I agree with that.
Speaker 3: So I see enough patterns here that are consistent with
Speaker 3: what Russian special units have been seen to be doing
Speaker 3: in recent years. I think Vladimir Putin has decided that
Speaker 3: he's going to get serious, and he's willing to take
Speaker 3: steps that aren't normally taken in this world. And we've
Speaker 3: seen special units travel in Europe and get involved in assassinations.
Speaker 3: We've seen special units get involved in explosions in Eastern
Speaker 3: Europe and the Central Europe. We've seen them go after
Speaker 3: their enemies. And so I tend to think we're going
Speaker 3: to find that this is a Russian operation to go
Speaker 3: after people that they believe are involved in Russian operation,
Speaker 3: because Laimir Putin has sort of changed the rules of
Speaker 3: the game.
Speaker 1: And I'll go out on a limb here and I'm
Speaker 1: going to say that this guy Alexander Khu's mienof who
Speaker 1: was the defector to the Ukrainian side when in Spain
Speaker 1: he was found with twelve bullets in the back of
Speaker 1: his head and a parking garage. I'm going to say
Speaker 1: that that wasn't an accident, right, I mean, I can't
Speaker 1: prove it, but I'm just thinking.
Speaker 4: I thought it was suicide.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, the first seven maybe the bullets were a problem,
Speaker 3: but then when they ran over his body back and forth.
Speaker 2: That's right. This is a light look at And I
Speaker 2: really had a serious subject though.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, people have been really heard, and
Speaker 1: you know that's underlines that conspiracy theories.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm glad we had Mark on because I mean,
Speaker 3: I've seen what's happened to me. He was an aggressive
Speaker 3: and talented officer who suffers every day with you know,
Speaker 3: brain injury.
Speaker 4: You know, there used to be typically not always, but
Speaker 4: there was something of the rules of the road. If
Speaker 4: you covered a war, you were taken on risk. Both
Speaker 4: sides tended to respect journalists right to exist. Saw some
Speaker 4: benefit and that's gone, and it's scary in a different
Speaker 4: way to cover more. All Right, I'm looking forward to
Speaker 4: going back to shows about Goofy's conspiracy theories that are
Speaker 4: clearly not true. So join us next time on Mission Implausible.
Speaker 1: Mission Implausible is produced by Adam Davidson, Jerry o'sha John
Speaker 1: Cipher and Jonathan Stern.
Speaker 2: The associate producers are Rachel Harner and David Sollinger.
Speaker 1: This has been a production of honorable, mention and abominable
Speaker 1: pictures for iHeartMedia.