Julia Ioffe (GQ, 10/20/20) reported that “dozens of American diplomats, spies and government employees” were “targets of what some experts and doctors now believe were attacks perpetrated by unknown assailants wielding novel directed energy weapons.”
A 9,000-word story for GQ (10/20/20) about the mystery ailment of a CIA officer in Moscow has become the unlikely subject of a weeks-long media storm.
Marc Polymeropoulos told the magazine’s correspondent Julia Ioffe that in December 2017, while staying at a Moscow hotel (or “enemy territory,” as she described it), he was suddenly struck with strong feelings of head pain, nausea and dizziness. All the symptoms Ioffe lists are common to many types of migraine, a condition an estimated 1 billion people have suffered from. Yet Polymeropoulos—and Russiagate proponent Ioffe—suspected something else: some sort of hitherto unheard-of Kremlin microwave gun.
Ioffe is completely credulous of her professional spy interviewee—presenting him as a heroic figure who “hunted terrorists” in Pakistan and Yemen for a living—despite the fact that his story is riddled with inconsistencies. Just hours after apparently being savagely attacked by Vladimir Putin’s thugs, Polymeropoulos felt well enough to not only travel to St. Petersburg (over 400 miles away), but also to walk for several miles through a Russian winter, go sightseeing and boozing in a number of “dive bars,” and do his Christmas shopping as well.
Once back in the US, he was diagnosed with occipital neuralgia, an inflaming of the nerves in the neck, a condition which leads to frequent migraines. As the website of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons notes, “Many cases can be attributed to chronic neck tension or unknown origins.”
The GQ article includes official denials of the existence of a mystery weapon from both Russia and the CIA, who made clear that many of Ioffe’s claims were “simply not true”; Polymeropoulos claims that the agency flatly told him he was “making it up.”
“If there was credible intelligence that showed an adversary purposefully harmed a CIA officer, you can bet Director [Gina] Haspel would act swiftly and decisively,” said an agency spokesperson. For Ioffe, this was not a reason to spike the story, but more evidence of the government’s “obstinate lack of willingness to condemn Vladimir Putin or Russian attacks in any way.”
Ioffe, who was fired from Politico in 2016 for a tweet suggesting an incestuous relationship between Trump and his daughter Ivanka, has been among the most strident proponents of the theory that Russia hacked the 2016 election and controls the Trump administration, going so far as to suggest that the official Twitter account of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (the oldest US newspaper west of the Appalachians) was a Russian bot, because of its use of “Russian quotation marks.” (The “»” sign she referenced is actually commonly used as an arrow on Twitter.)
When she is not agreeing to selfies with Neo-Nazi leader Richard Spencer, Ioffe writes some bizarrely Russophobic articles. Imagining exiled NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden’s life in Russia, she wrote (New Republic, 7/24/13):
Maybe he will marry a Russian woman, who will quickly shed her supple, feminine skin and become a tyrant, and every dark winter morning, Snowden will sit in his tiny Moscow kitchen, drinking Nescafe while Svetlana cooks something greasy and tasteless, and he will sit staring into his black instant coffee, hating her.
The Washington Post (10/25/20) on “invisible attacks”: “No one knows for sure who is responsible, but some evidence points to Russia.”
Despite all this, her story about the CIA agent’s headache was picked up and repeated across the US media (e.g., New York Post, 10/22/20; NPR, 10/27/20; Mother Jones, 10/20/20) and in the international press (e.g., London Independent, 10/21/20; Sydney Morning Herald, 10/22/20; New Zealand Herald, 10/22/20). The Washington Post (10/25/20) even felt it was an important enough story to merit an editorial.
The Moscow story is reminiscent of a similar recent occurrence in Cuba, where a number of US diplomats reported similar headaches and nausea after hearing a piercing sound. Corporate media immediately suggested that some sort of “sonic weapon” was likely to blame (e.g., Vox, 8/28/17; CBS News, 8/23/17; USA Today, 8/10/17). It was only when the Associated Press (10/17/17) published recordings that US officials in Havana had made of the noise that a more mundane culprit was identified: crickets. The dastardly sonic weapon was actually, unmistakably, the high-pitched mating call of the short-tailed cricket, as any Cuban would likely have known. Ioffe references the Cuban conundrum, plus a similar case of American diplomats in Guangzhou, China, hearing piercing noises, but does not mention the cricket explanation at all.
Incidents like these are surprisingly common in Cold War history. Going further back in time, during the 1980s, the US government formally accused the Soviet Union of supplying chemical weapons—so-called “Yellow Rain”—to Communist states in Southeast Asia to use on American troops fighting there. While media took it deadly seriously at the time, it is now commonly accepted that the “chemical weapon” was actually just honeybee feces (Scientific American, 9/85; New York Times, 9/3/87).
Completely disregarding the cricket explanation, a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine released earlier this month about the 2017 Havana incident suggested that the symptoms displayed by US government workers there were consistent with those of exposure to microwave energy, although it very prominently warned that “evidence has been lacking, no hypothesis has been proven and the circumstances remain unclear.” Russia is mentioned in only one paragraph of the 77-page document, which does not make any accusations against any country. Experts immediately challenged the report as completely incoherent “science fiction.”
Despite this, a host of big media outlets (e.g., Slate, 12/5/20; Mother Jones, 12/5/20; Reuters, 12/6/20; Vox, 12/6/20) immediately took the idea of a Russian attack on the embassy in Cuba as highly likely. There is “strong evidence that the incidents were the result of a malicious attack,” the New York Times (12/5/20) informed its readers. Other explanations, it said, were “unlikely.” “CIA analysts who are Russia experts, diplomats and scientists contend that evidence points to Moscow,” it added. NBC News (12/7/20), meanwhile, festooned its broadcast with pictures of the Kremlin (despite the event happening in Cuba), telling viewers that “Russia has a long history of working on these weapons.”
“Is Russia Microwaving American Spies?” read the headline of Ben MacIntyre’s London Times column (10/30/20). “Dozens of US officials have been hit by ‘Havana Syndrome’ but no one seems to want the truth to come out,” he added, also claimng that US officials in Guangzhou had suffered a similar fate to Polymeropoulos in Moscow.
The Washington Post editorial board (12/9/20) took the news to its logical endpoint, combining the Moscow, Havana and Guangzhou cases, together with other discredited Russiagate theories, to demand that President-elect Joe Biden must “call out” Russian President Vladimir Putin. Given that the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved their famous doomsday clock—symbolizing the risk of the destruction of the planet through nuclear weapons—to the closest it has ever been to midnight, upping tensions with Russia would be reckless in the extreme. For the single-minded Post, however, Putin’s denials are actually further proof of devious, “asymmetric warfare” being waged against America.
The problem with this whole narrative, journalistically, is that with tremendously high stakes it relies largely on the testimonies of US officials, many of them anonymous, who have a clear incentive to lie and defame three countries with whom the United States is currently ramping up tensions. Overreliance on official sources has led to a number of terrible media blunders of late (FAIR.org, 12/3/18, 7/3/20). As we wrote (2/28/20):
It is the job of the covert security services to lie and manipulate. They are among the least trustworthy groups in the world, journalistically speaking, as part of their profession involves planting fake information. The only group less deserving of blind faith than spies would be anonymous spies.
Perhaps even more troubling is the close relationship many of the outlets promoting the story have with the intelligence services. One author of an NBC News article (12/5/20) on the subject, Ken Dilanian, is known to have had a long term “collaborative” partnership with the CIA, explicitly promising the agency positive news coverage, even sending them copies of his stories for them to edit and rewrite (Intercept, 9/4/14). Meanwhile, the London Times’ MacIntyre was named as part of a cluster of journalists who worked with a British government-funded disinformation think tank, the ironically named Integrity Initiative, whose sole purpose appears to be pushing out anti-Moscow propaganda into the media.
Why is there so little skepticism of fanciful official claims in corporate media? If the US truly believed that its agents and diplomats were being attacked, it would surely treat it as an act of war. The US bombed Nicaragua because it insulted an American business magnate. Thus, it is hardly likely to overlook a direct attack on its representatives. Surely more plausible explanations for these maladies include headaches, crickets, paranoia, mass hysteria or simply lying, rather than a vast global conspiracy using heretofore unknown science fiction weapons in order to mildly inconvenience a few American operatives.
The next time a CIA officer gets a headache, we should give him an aspirin, not risk starting World War III.
An unrelenting Russia to judgement
MacLeod’s snide article was completely biased. I have been following the reports on the issue of the attacks on US staff at embassies in Cuba, China, and Russia since the reports about injuries in Havana were first reported. His shallow take on the situation does not credit in any way the actual injuries reported in the 60 Minutes report a couple of Sundays ago.
Marc Polymeropoulos and other agents have suffered permanent brain damage such that they have had to retire early as disabled. None of those people will be cured by MacLeod’s heartless quip about taking an aspirin.
I have been a FAIR subscriber for decades, and never before have I been disgusted by an article. It is far below FAIR’s standards of truthtelling and reasonable discourse. MacLeod’s obvious goal for the article was just to show off his own cleverness.
Margalo, when you are surrounded by mischievous and clever voices, from birth, it will rub off. In getting through “Epidemics and Society,” by Frank Snowden, I came upon the story of the polio campaign in Arizona, which became a model for the whole of the United States. I was heartened to discover that Arizona was following the example of Cuba, the first country to “eradicate” the disease. The Cubans had put together an easy administer oral vaccine, developed by the American-Polish scientist Alfred Sabin, with a mass outreach campaign. This then became the model for a pretty successful worldwide effort. (The Arizonans probably didn’t advertise the Cuban effort.) Another thing that Snowden points out is that epidemics and pandemics always come along with endless wars, global trade, and its inequalities. When you focus solely on the virus, bacteria, or plasmodia, you can overlook the conditions that have been allowed to come into being worldwide. The book has some helpful stories in it.
While I don’t buy into Cuban sonic attacks, this reply is a non-sequitur and answers nothing germane to the orignal comment or the article.
I AM A FAIR SUBSCRIBER AND I am aways impressed with how FAIR truly looks into news stories. Yes, I remember the stories from Cuba—wasn’t there an Israeli guy suspected of weirdness there? What happened to him anyway?
Secondly, what is this deluge of “Russia did it” stories in the American press? I guess you forgot about Russia coming to Obama’s aid in the Syrian debacle of Obama’s.
I also remember weirdness from San Francisco Bay where the people who live on boats in the bay were having horrible sounds, headaches, awfulness—–oh my—–it was a peculiar type of fish—– and mating season!
Finally—-why are so many Americans returning to the Joe McCarthy era when everything wrong was always the RUSSIANS? Calm down, relax—Trump is almost gone—and WITH HIM the insanity of accusations of EVERYONE and EVERYTHING——Peace will return to the LAND —-Happy Jan. 20th in advance!
I wholeheartedly endorse your sentiment, but I’m afraid “Russia did it” has been far too successful for them to give it up now. We already know propaganda works, it is just shocking who it has caused to lose their minds in this instance.
I sure wish you’d stop referencing the “Doomsday Clock” in your various writings. It has no scientific basis and is often used in a biased, subjective, and political manner. It’s as absurd to cite it as it was to cite the “terror alert level” and other made up nonsense. Doing this detracts from your work, imo.
I’m with Margalo on this. I, too, have followed the news regarding permanent injuries to State department employees, and find Macleod’s tone deaf screed offensive in a high degree (and I certainly don’t understand how Mr. Maclean’s comments are a reply, BTW). It’s interesting to note that State has spent a great deal of energy trying to undercut the diplomats’ claims– just as Macleod does. This article really makes me wonder what FAIR thought when they published this. To say I’m disappointed is an understatement.
Good article! There’s much to be skeptical about in the subjective reports by individuals who often have an axe to grind and/or a buck to make. And as JM indicates, if the CIA (NEVER known to be Russian or Chinese or Cuban sympathizers, since they are often trying to overthrow those governments) can find no plausible evidence for any of this, in my book that’s very strong evidence for its non-existence!
No evidence, but it must be true if 60 Minutes said it. No need for evidence when the target audience is gullible idiots who get their world view from television.
Thank you for this.
I might propose another explanation, that you touched on: microwaves (of all sorts).
I live in Switzerland, and here, the legislation necessary to authorize the additional antenna output for G5 was refused by the Swiss parliament following a major, vehement campaign by led by a group of Swiss doctors focused on environmental pollution and backed wholeheartedly by the Swiss Medical Association (Fédération médicale helvétique or FMH in French). There are now three major people’s initiatives to prevent G5 from every being activated.
The safety norms for cells phones are called thermal norms, set by the United States mlitary in the early 1950s for exposure to radar. These norms claim that as long as the radiation does not heat the skin, it is safe. (This used to be the norm for ionizing/atomic radiation, too.) However, the waves act on the cell, and the damage occurs at the cell level.
The World Health Organization codified the various norms in use, work done by Dr Michael Repacholi, whose job description included raising the funds to carry out this elaborate process. Shortly before he was finished, it was revealed that all the money came from Australian telecoms (he is Australian) via a hospital foundation in Queensland. There was a huge outcry and an international petition for his removal, something never before seen in the United Nations system. He was quietly pushed toward the door.
As a journalist based in Geneva, I asked his supervisor, Maria Neira if she intended to have his work redone. She answered that the only entities willing to fund such a project are the telecoms… Go figure.
There is an ongoing scandal over bogus safety norms for electromagnetic radiation in France, where a good 10% of the population is reckoned to be electro-sensitive (e.g. cannot tolerate being in the presence of wifi), which was revealed by Dr Marc Arazi and which Le Monde dubbed “phonegate”. He had to sue the French government to obtain the results of the testing of cells phones for safety by the government public health authorities, information that is, under law, required to be in the public domain. Some 95% of the models tested had flunked.
Worse, they are tested at roughly one centimeter from the skin (where everybody holds her/his phone, of course), in conformity with the required usage by the cell phone manufacturers. In contact with the skin, the radiation is downright dangerous, regardless of the lack of heat.
Dr Lennart Hardell in Sweden has investigated the Swedish cancer registries (set up long ago throughout the world by the WHO to ensure uniform statistics on cancer) and found that glioma, a particularly horrible brain cancer, was not being entered in the registries. Since Sweden has the oldest and most dense cell phone network in the world, the absence of any glioma in Sweden is cited by the WHO as proof positive that cell phones are safe.
Behind this is the military and a multi-trillion-dollar industry, yet there is a significant and ever greater body of peer-reviewed literature attesting to the inherent danger of microwave radiation in all its forms. Thus, it is logical that United States government entities would come up with all sorts of explanations (were the crickets as recorded really what the embassy employees were hearing? what sort of electromagnetic radiation were the employees subjected to?) and denials. The fast recovery of the employee discussed in the article is typical of many electro-sensitive people’s recovery once they are no long exposed.
Thank you for your thoughtful and informational reply. The phone radiation leading to brain cancer issue and the denial thereof by governments and telcom businesses is an excellent parallel to the sound-caused injuries to our diplomats/CIA agents in 3 countries. It strikes me as odd, given the bad behavior of Russia and China, and the bad behavior of our own government in sacrificing military members and civilians, i.e., in 1945-60s near nuke testing sites in NM, NV and UT and the cover up, would not generate more skepticism by MacLeod of the current sonar cover up, but then he is a Scot and may not be aware of the history in the US of such bad behavior.
My full comment can be found at https://killer-beam.blogspot.com.