![]() ![]() One of the most convincing early cases involved a senior C.I.A. The experiences have varied to such an extent that government doctors have struggled to form a coherent diagnosis, and many of the patients have been met with skepticism both inside and outside the government. For some, the symptoms went away quickly for others, they have persisted. The aftereffects ranged: debilitating headaches tinnitus loss of vision and hearing vertigo brain fog loss of balance and muscle control. A few reported feeling as if they were standing in an invisible beam of energy. Some said they heard sounds resembling an immense swarm of cicadas, following them from room to room-but when they opened a door to the outside the sounds abruptly stopped. Beginning in December, 2016, officials described being bombarded by waves of pressure in their heads. Three years ago, my colleague Jon Lee Anderson and I published a piece in The New Yorker about the first Havana Syndrome incidents among C.I.A. “Look, this is probably nothing,” he told his colleague, “but what you described sounds kind of like what happened to me.” But, as his colleague described some of the more severe cases that had been reported, it occurred to the official that this might be his problem. official didn’t think that he was suffering from the Havana Syndrome it seemed outlandish that someone would be struck while on the grounds of the White House. officials in Cuba, and which now appeared to be spreading. Several days later, a colleague called him to discuss suspected cases of the Havana Syndrome, a mysterious ailment that had first affected dozens of U.S. When he checked out of the hospital, the next day, he still had a pounding headache, but was soon able to go back to work. It took about two hours for his speech to begin to return. ![]() The doctors were at a loss, but told him they suspected that he had suffered a “massive migraine with aura.” The official, who was in his mid-thirties, had no preëxisting conditions. Blood tests also turned up nothing unusual. They thought he might be having a stroke, but an MRI ruled it out. Hospital staff found his White House identification card in his pocket, and three cell phones, one of which they used to call his wife. When he arrived at the emergency room, the official thought, I’m probably not walking out of here. He managed to open the Lyft app on his phone, and ordered a driver, who took him to the hospital. Instead, he made his way to Constitution Avenue, where he hoped to hail a taxi. He fell to the ground before he reached his car, and realized that he was in no condition to drive. “In a matter of about seven minutes, I went from feeling completely fine to thinking, Oh, something’s not right, to being very, very worried and actually thinking I was going to die.” “It came on very suddenly,” the official recalled later, while describing the experience to a colleague. Trying to speak to a passerby, he had difficulty forming words. His body went numb, and he had trouble controlling the movement of his legs and his fingers. As he walked, he began to hear a ringing in his ears. At the end of the day, he left the building and headed toward his car, which was parked a few hundred yards away, along the Ellipse, between the White House and the Washington Monument. It was mid-November, and he had recently returned from a work trip abroad. During the final weeks of the Trump Administration, a senior official on the National Security Council sat at his desk in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, across from the West Wing, on the White House grounds. ![]()
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