Key points

• New claims by a CIA whistleblower about a "Havana syndrome" coverup likely have mundane origins.
• Even seasoned journalists are not immune from the human tendency to cherry-pick information.
• The most likely explanation for Havana syndrome remains a relabeling of medical conditions.

A former CIA officer has made explosive claims that the U.S. government is keeping the truth about "Havana syndrome" hidden from the public. The condition was so named as it was first reported in Havana in 2015. It involved a laundry list of health complaints that appeared in American intelligence officers, then spread to diplomats at the American Embassy and later around the world. The new claims were made in an interview conducted by former CBS News investigative journalist Catherine Herridge. Her post on the social media platform X has more than 6 million views in just one week.

Her report is a classic example of cherry-picking information to breathe new life into a story that the U.S. intelligence community put to rest in March 2023, when it concluded that evidence of a foreign adversary zapping Americans with an energy weapon was “highly unlikely.” Instead, it blamed the scare on an array of factors including pre-existing medical conditions and anxiety-related ailments that had been redefined under a new label—"Havana syndrome."

Herridge dramatically asserts that a new Congressional report from December 2024 found that “it appears increasingly likely that a foreign adversary is...

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