The agency hasn’t ruled out that a smaller subset of incidents could be attacks, and the intelligence community continues to investigate “whether any device or mechanism plausibly could cause the symptoms reported,” a senior CIA official said.
But in the interim findings delivered to President Joe Biden and briefed to Congress in recent weeks, the CIA has yet to find any evidence that a nation-state is behind any of roughly 1,000 reported episodes around the globe.
The assessment is based in part on the fact that the task force has found that the majority of reported cases can be attributed to other, known causes — something that is to be expected after the CIA and other federal agencies urged their workforces to report any unusual symptoms, current and former officials familiar with the probe said. Those sources say officials anticipated a rise in reported incidents, not all of which would turn out to be suspected Havana syndrome.
“This finding does not — it does not — call into question the fact that our officers are reporting real experiences and are suffering real symptoms, nor does it explain every report,” the senior official said.
In most instances, reported symptoms have been attributed to “medical conditions or environmental and technical factors, including previously undiagnosed illnesses, and many more reports made out of an abundance of caution,” the official said.
But there are cases that have defied explanation. Officials declined to say exactly how many reports haven’t been attributed to other causes, but out of that unknown number, the task force has zeroed in on a core set of roughly two dozen to focus its investigation on. CIA analysts believe those two dozen cases offer the agency its best chance of uncovering clues about who or what is behind the episodes.
They are also the “toughest” cases, said another CIA official. So far, analysts have been unable to figure out who caused those injuries and how — or even if those cases can all be…
Source : cnn
