WEBVTT 00:00.000 --> 00:07.360 You're about to listen to Havana Helmet Club. 00:07.940 --> 00:11.100 New episodes will be released weekly, wherever you get your podcasts. 00:11.600 --> 00:16.200 But if you're in the UK, you can listen to the latest episodes a week early on BBC Sounds. 00:16.760 --> 00:22.360 Just to let you know, this episode contains strong language and may not be suitable for all audiences. 00:25.120 --> 00:27.060 June 7th, 2017. 00:27.060 --> 00:32.780 Beyond the walls of the U.S. Embassy, only a few people knew about the strange goings-on in Havana. 00:33.840 --> 00:40.040 Across the Florida Straits in Little Havana, Miami, a crowd of Cuban-Americans gathered for a political rally. 00:41.200 --> 00:43.680 They were angry that Obama had made peace with Cuba. 00:44.480 --> 00:50.300 And less than a year and a half ago, an American president landed in Havana, greeted by a regime. 00:50.300 --> 00:57.700 Senator Marco Rubio, arguably the most powerful figure in Trump's present cabinet. 00:58.580 --> 01:04.920 He's the son of Cuban immigrants and grew up in this part of Miami, which is filled with anti-Castro Cuban-Americans like him. 01:05.400 --> 01:08.920 His hardline views help bring about a rapid rise to power in Florida. 01:08.920 --> 01:15.100 A year and a half ago, a president, an American president, landed in Havana to outstretch his hand to a regime. 01:16.100 --> 01:20.100 Today, a new president lands in Miami to reach out his hand to the people of Cuba. 01:20.640 --> 01:29.560 A year earlier, the idea of Marco Rubio and Donald Trump working together on anything would have been faintly comical. 01:29.560 --> 01:36.380 Things had got really personal during the election campaign, with loose talk about big ears and small hands. 01:37.180 --> 01:41.800 And anyway, back then, Trump said he was fine with the concept of open relations with Cuba. 01:42.140 --> 01:44.200 He said the time had come to bury the hatchet. 01:44.880 --> 01:48.240 But he and Rubio had since found a way to scratch each other's backs. 01:48.240 --> 01:57.560 I am so thrilled to be back here with all of my friends in Little Havana. 01:59.600 --> 02:03.280 Rubio had helped deliver Trump the Cuban-American vote in 2016. 02:03.520 --> 02:04.160 I love it. 02:04.420 --> 02:08.120 Now he was helping deliver President Trump to this crowd in Little Havana. 02:08.120 --> 02:22.240 Trump was exaggerating. 02:22.760 --> 02:27.380 There was no way to instantly wipe out all of the new policy that Obama had agreed with the Cubans. 02:28.220 --> 02:32.840 But Rubio, who was helping to shape Trump's Cuba policy, wanted to make a statement. 02:34.020 --> 02:36.020 Regime change was back on the agenda. 02:36.020 --> 02:44.960 And history will say that perhaps the key moment in that transition began on this day, here in this theatre, with each of you, 02:45.120 --> 02:52.320 and with a president that was willing to do what needed to be done so that freedom and liberty returns to the enslaved island of Cuba. 02:53.140 --> 02:58.020 Outside this small pocket of Miami, America paid little mind to these speeches. 02:58.600 --> 03:03.020 Most either supported Obama's reconciliation or didn't care much about Cuba at all. 03:03.020 --> 03:06.160 No one really thought of Cuba as the bad guys anymore. 03:06.620 --> 03:08.260 Rubio wanted that to change. 03:09.000 --> 03:10.900 But he would need something to work with. 03:11.640 --> 03:14.700 Then two months after this rally, a gift fell into his lap, 03:15.180 --> 03:18.900 when a story took shape in the press that Cuba was up to no good. 03:19.280 --> 03:24.800 Has Cuba been bombarding U.S. diplomatic facilities on the communist island with a sonic weapon? 03:24.800 --> 03:31.040 From BBC Radio 4, this is Havana Helmet Club. 03:31.840 --> 03:32.920 I'm Jennifer Ford. 03:33.660 --> 03:37.340 I'm Sam Bungie, and this is Episode 4, Sound and Fury. 03:37.340 --> 03:53.420 This was, on the surface, a ridiculous story. 03:53.680 --> 03:53.840 Yeah. 03:53.980 --> 03:54.160 OK. 03:54.500 --> 03:58.180 I mean, there was talk of blacked-out vans in Havana, 03:58.420 --> 04:02.440 secretly targeting with sound waves U.S. diplomats. 04:02.500 --> 04:03.620 I mean, that's crazy. 04:04.520 --> 04:06.360 Steve Dorsey is a Washington journalist. 04:07.180 --> 04:11.860 Back in May 2017, Dorsey was contacted about a potentially explosive story. 04:12.340 --> 04:16.180 He was put in touch via a go-between with a source in the State Department. 04:17.160 --> 04:21.540 Like in all good Washington thrillers, they met on a park bench near the Capitol building. 04:23.140 --> 04:25.820 I remember it was a very foggy, kind of like misty evening, 04:26.220 --> 04:28.860 where we took a look at some documents that they had. 04:28.860 --> 04:33.940 The source gave Dorsey what appeared to be an official State Department briefing note 04:33.940 --> 04:39.640 for press aides, should they have to field any questions from journalists about sick diplomats in Cuba. 04:40.180 --> 04:41.380 Dorsey was confused. 04:41.380 --> 04:46.300 As far as he knew, there hadn't been any press briefing about sick diplomats in Cuba. 04:47.360 --> 04:49.060 It's one thing when you're given a document. 04:49.520 --> 04:51.060 It could even say White House on it. 04:51.320 --> 04:52.140 It could say classified. 04:52.280 --> 04:53.120 But how do you know? 04:53.460 --> 04:55.280 And how do you know when it's such an unusual story? 04:55.680 --> 04:58.960 I mean, you want to make sure whatever you're given is real. 04:58.960 --> 05:04.180 Dorsey was in his 20s at the time, just starting out in the competitive world of network news. 05:04.640 --> 05:06.780 And national security was a new area for him. 05:07.280 --> 05:14.300 So it felt unfamiliar to me and I think scary because there was so much of my own career on the line here. 05:14.960 --> 05:20.020 Dorsey learned that the source was one of a number of officials who'd recently come home injured from Havana. 05:20.700 --> 05:23.800 An extraordinary tale unfolded of life in the U.S. embassy there. 05:23.800 --> 05:32.760 I'm just looking at my old notes here and I'm seeing reports of vehicle vandalizations, constant surveillance, break-ins. 05:33.140 --> 05:38.180 Dorsey was learning about the long-standing practice of harassing U.S. officials posted to Cuba. 05:39.540 --> 05:44.040 And this person that I interviewed saying, quote, it's a horrendously miserable post. 05:44.680 --> 05:49.640 Even with, again, a quote, even with the warming of relations, nothing changed. 05:49.760 --> 05:50.480 It got worse. 05:50.480 --> 05:55.280 And now Dorsey's source told him about a new and far more disturbing level of harassment. 05:56.160 --> 06:01.540 Namely, that people were reporting getting sick after being attacked in their homes by a mysterious sound. 06:01.980 --> 06:06.040 They were going around the back of the State Department to bring this to you. 06:06.420 --> 06:09.160 What was your impression of why that was going on? Why was this happening? 06:09.400 --> 06:11.380 Because then they were frustrated that they didn't get answers. 06:11.780 --> 06:13.720 It was all kept so hush-hush. 06:14.940 --> 06:19.820 The source also told Dorsey that many of the victims in Cuba were actually American spies. 06:19.820 --> 06:24.180 And then when we started discussing national security issues, I think that kind of elevated it to another level. 06:24.620 --> 06:26.820 Because, yes, something weird happened. 06:27.260 --> 06:30.080 A, if it happened to a group of school kids, that's one story. 06:30.200 --> 06:37.220 If it happened to undercover CIA agents, which the reporting kind of got deeper and deeper into, that elevates it, right? 06:37.220 --> 06:40.500 But it also made it even more challenging to substantiate. 06:41.040 --> 06:46.680 The CIA don't typically admit to having a presence in foreign countries, let alone discuss what happens to them there. 06:47.020 --> 06:50.400 Right now, Dorsey only had the word of his State Department source. 06:50.860 --> 06:57.080 Did you spend any time thinking about whether or not they seemed like they had health issues? 06:57.240 --> 06:58.800 Absolutely. Absolutely. 06:58.800 --> 07:00.700 And whether or not they had mental health issues, right? 07:00.760 --> 07:04.520 Not just physical issues that they claimed, but mental health issues. 07:05.360 --> 07:06.660 What do you think? How did they come across? 07:07.120 --> 07:09.960 A little eccentric. Jittery. 07:10.640 --> 07:12.720 Yeah, I mean, the reliability was certainly in question. 07:13.780 --> 07:15.480 Dorsey didn't have enough to publish. 07:16.160 --> 07:21.720 So armed with the documents from his source, he decided to try to force an admission from the State Department. 07:21.720 --> 07:27.200 Hi, everybody. Welcome back. Hope you're all having a good week. 07:27.640 --> 07:29.420 A lot of stuff going on today, certainly. 07:30.220 --> 07:34.160 This is a State Department press briefing on August 9, 2017. 07:35.040 --> 07:38.380 So I had to go into that briefing, which was my very first one at the State Department. 07:39.020 --> 07:43.680 I wasn't aware that the tradition is to call on the AP reporter first. 07:44.140 --> 07:46.800 And the AP reporter had so many questions, and the clock was ticking. 07:47.060 --> 07:48.300 And, uh, sir, your name is? 07:48.320 --> 07:49.780 Yeah, Steve Dorsey from CBS News. 07:49.780 --> 07:49.980 Hi, Steve. 07:49.980 --> 07:52.080 Hi. Um, just a quick change in topic. 07:52.300 --> 07:56.840 Can you tell us about the incidents that have been going on in Havana affecting U.S. government workers there? 07:57.000 --> 08:03.900 Yes. Um, so we are certainly aware of what has happened there. Um, give me one second here. 08:04.180 --> 08:07.700 The press secretary, Heather Nowert, rifled through a binder full of topics. 08:08.000 --> 08:15.520 So some U.S. government personnel who were working at our embassy in Havana, Cuba, on official duty, so they were there working on... 08:15.520 --> 08:19.640 Dorsey realized she was looking at the same briefing note that his source had sent him 08:19.640 --> 08:21.320 almost two months earlier. 08:21.960 --> 08:24.920 She read word for word from that document. 08:25.260 --> 08:27.260 So that says to me that they were aware of it. 08:27.660 --> 08:29.780 They didn't address it because they weren't asked of that. 08:30.500 --> 08:34.340 You can hear other journalists in the room trying to figure out what they're talking about. 08:34.340 --> 08:36.940 citizens down there. We take this very seriously. 08:37.160 --> 08:44.340 Look, this incident, this incident, and that's what, that's what we're calling it. We don't know exactly, uh, what... 08:44.340 --> 08:47.340 So it's 2016 and you don't know what this incident is? 08:47.340 --> 09:01.660 What this requires is, uh, providing medical, uh, examinations to these people. Initially, when they started reporting what I will just call symptoms, it took time to figure out what it was. And this is still ongoing. 09:01.660 --> 09:08.860 So now it wanted to signal that the U.S. was remaining completely neutral on the situation in Havana. But Dorsey pushed back. 09:09.820 --> 09:19.260 On May 26th, after Adam and another officer had left Cuba, the State Department had told the Cubans to draw down two of their staff in D.C. 09:19.260 --> 09:26.460 which, depending on how you look at it, was either just a question of evening up the numbers, or it was retaliation. 09:27.420 --> 09:35.660 If the U.S. doesn't have a definitive answer on the cause or source of the incidents, why did it ask those two Cuban embassy officials to depart the U.S.? 09:35.660 --> 09:45.020 Look, uh, our, some of our people have had the option of leaving Cuba as a result, uh, for medical reasons. 09:45.020 --> 09:50.860 Uh, we had to bring some Americans home, or some Americans chose to go home, come home, uh, as a result of that. 09:50.860 --> 09:55.820 And as a result of that, we've asked two Cubans to, uh, leave the United States, and they have. 09:55.820 --> 10:01.500 After the briefing, the Cuban foreign ministry issued a press release denying any involvement. 10:01.500 --> 10:06.940 They had not, and would not, permit this kind of action against diplomats or their families, they said. 10:06.940 --> 10:13.500 We had to deny that we were involved in something that no one proved that it was happening. 10:13.500 --> 10:16.380 This is Ambassador Jose Cabanas in Washington. 10:16.380 --> 10:26.140 I mean, they talked allegedly about something that could have happened, but they never ever provided any evidence that something happened. 10:26.140 --> 10:30.780 Cabanas felt it was pointless for the Americans to try to play the issue down in public. 10:31.500 --> 10:35.100 They seemed to be taking care not to throw around accusations. 10:35.100 --> 10:38.540 But to him, expelling the Cuban diplomat spoke for itself. 10:38.540 --> 10:40.620 The cream was already in the coffee. 10:40.620 --> 10:43.980 We, Cubans, we are educated in visiting the future. 10:43.980 --> 10:48.060 I remember in one of my exchanges with the State Department, I told them, 10:48.060 --> 10:50.460 try to keep this under control. 10:51.340 --> 10:56.220 I told them, at some point, this whole subject will go out of your hands. 10:56.220 --> 10:59.900 You will have no possibility to control the narrative. 11:00.540 --> 11:02.380 I've never talked to any journalists. 11:02.380 --> 11:04.460 I'd wondered where Adam was in all of this. 11:05.420 --> 11:06.460 I used proxies. 11:06.460 --> 11:09.980 Or I'd find other State Department colleagues that were willing to talk to journalists, 11:09.980 --> 11:11.820 and we'd connect them to each other. 11:11.820 --> 11:15.180 So my fingerprints were never on any direct journalist contacts. 11:15.900 --> 11:16.540 Why is that? 11:16.540 --> 11:20.300 I didn't want to be accused of going to the press and leaking anything, which I wasn't. 11:21.340 --> 11:25.660 Adam says he and others at the agency were working behind the scenes. 11:25.660 --> 11:28.700 We were like, OK, now we've got to step into the press arena 11:28.700 --> 11:31.820 to help control the narrative a bit about what's coming out. 11:32.460 --> 11:37.260 Adam wanted to be sure the press captured the full scope of the threat as he saw it. 11:38.060 --> 11:41.660 Enemies of the US had got their hands on a state-of-the-art weapon, 11:41.660 --> 11:44.380 and they used it to attack agents like him. 11:44.380 --> 11:46.700 And the idea of an untraceable ray gun, 11:46.700 --> 11:49.900 well, that was a story the media could get their teeth into. 11:49.900 --> 11:55.420 United States employees in Cuba possibly subject to an acoustic attack. 11:56.060 --> 11:59.260 It seems to have been inside or outside the homes, 11:59.260 --> 12:04.540 or if it was some sort of sound weapon fired from outside into inside. 12:06.460 --> 12:09.260 It's unclear, at least to us at this point, what it was, 12:09.260 --> 12:11.740 and I think to the US investigators as well. 12:11.740 --> 12:14.780 Reporters who regularly covered US-Cuba policy 12:14.780 --> 12:19.020 seemed to be struggling to understand how this mystery fitted in with the thaw. 12:19.020 --> 12:21.740 It was as if two storylines were colliding. 12:21.740 --> 12:23.900 But it is like something out of the Cold War. 12:23.900 --> 12:26.700 I mean, we thought these sort of incidents had ended, 12:27.580 --> 12:30.940 but this is whoever did it very serious 12:30.940 --> 12:35.580 and something that we didn't expect to see in this new US-Cuba relationship. 12:35.580 --> 12:37.180 None of it really made sense to me. 12:37.180 --> 12:41.020 But, you know, what was troubling was that, despite all of that, 12:41.020 --> 12:44.620 people were rushing to judgment, blaming the Cubans. 12:44.620 --> 12:48.060 Tim Reeser, the policy aide who'd been a key player in the thaw, 12:48.060 --> 12:52.540 said that Washington hardliners were itching to publicly confront Cuba. 12:52.540 --> 12:56.860 You know, I was kind of like in these briefings in the distinct minority 12:56.860 --> 13:01.500 of those who were questioning how one could make such an accusation 13:02.300 --> 13:03.980 without something to point to. 13:04.540 --> 13:08.860 I just felt that if you're going to accuse someone of a crime, 13:08.860 --> 13:11.900 which is what this would be, you know, you must have some evidence. 13:11.900 --> 13:16.380 Well, actually, that summer, Havana was crawling with investigators 13:16.380 --> 13:17.980 searching for a smoking ray gun. 13:18.780 --> 13:20.860 The CIA had sent down more people. 13:21.500 --> 13:26.460 The US had taken Raúl Castro up and his offer to open this up and send down the FBI. 13:27.340 --> 13:29.500 The Cubans had an investigation unit, too. 13:30.300 --> 13:34.860 Those detectives were trying to run a case while themselves being under the glare of suspicion, 13:34.860 --> 13:35.820 even in the media. 13:36.460 --> 13:37.580 I'll bet they're right on it. 13:37.580 --> 13:40.540 I'll bet they got their best guys on it. 13:40.540 --> 13:43.180 But in fact, they did have their best guys on it. 13:43.180 --> 13:44.940 I'm Mitchell Valdez Sosa. 13:44.940 --> 13:49.820 I'm director of the Cuban Center for Neuroscience and member of the Cuban Academy of Sciences. 13:50.860 --> 13:55.500 In spite of its economic woes, Cuba has a strong international reputation for science. 13:56.380 --> 14:00.460 Professor Valdez Sosa was heading up the medical side of the Cuban investigation, 14:00.460 --> 14:03.660 and says that he first became aware of the incidents via the media. 14:04.220 --> 14:08.540 And they said, sonic weapons, people being attacked with sound. 14:08.540 --> 14:12.620 For sound to damage anything, it has to be a very loud sound. 14:12.620 --> 14:15.900 And this is something that immediately anybody would have heard. 14:15.900 --> 14:16.860 It would have been reported. 14:17.420 --> 14:19.900 He'd been traveling in Mexico at the time. 14:19.900 --> 14:24.620 When he got back to Cuba, he found that an investigation had been underway for several months. 14:24.620 --> 14:28.140 He asked to join the team and wanted to take a logical approach. 14:28.140 --> 14:33.980 Do sonic weapons exist? Well, yes, but the ones in use are typically designed for crowd control. 14:33.980 --> 14:37.500 If you're in their direct path, they make you feel nauseous and dizzy. 14:37.500 --> 14:39.820 From a certain range, they can damage your hearing. 14:40.380 --> 14:45.420 They're cannon-like devices, and they work by blasting huge sounds over wide areas. 14:48.220 --> 14:53.660 But it's a tremendously loud sound. It's impossible to deploy, you know, secretly. 14:53.660 --> 14:57.980 Cuban investigators went around the neighborhoods where they knew the American officials lived. 14:58.620 --> 15:02.220 They spoke to neighbors, people who'd been in the area at the time. 15:02.220 --> 15:05.260 There was nothing, no loud sounds anywhere. 15:05.260 --> 15:08.940 Perhaps, of course, there was something that Valdez Sosa hadn't been let in on. 15:08.940 --> 15:12.140 But he told us that Cuba is a hard place to keep a secret. 15:12.780 --> 15:17.980 I mean, Cuba, I've said it many times, is a very porous society. 15:17.980 --> 15:21.660 Information moves in all directions. Everybody knows what's happening. 15:21.660 --> 15:27.980 They talk a lot. They exchange information. And there was no inkling of this, no idea. 15:27.980 --> 15:33.180 And we're talking about the neighborhood and the houses. Nobody saw nothing. It's impossible to imagine. 15:33.820 --> 15:41.660 In Washington, Ambassador Cabanas was trying to press the State Department for information that he could pass on to the Cuban investigation in Havana. 15:42.380 --> 15:46.620 But the lack of trust from the American side was making things near to impossible. 15:47.180 --> 15:49.260 At one point, the State Department gave him a map. 15:49.260 --> 15:55.820 A small-scale map of Havana City with large red dots pretending to tell me that in those areas, 15:55.820 --> 15:59.260 these people reported to have noises or feedback. 15:59.260 --> 16:02.220 This map don't show me anything. 16:02.220 --> 16:07.740 I told them, you know, that this means nothing for our researchers and scientists. 16:07.740 --> 16:11.900 The Cubans were not given access to the patients. They weren't allowed to speak to them. 16:11.900 --> 16:15.900 None of them visited Cuban doctors, even though for years that had been the practice. 16:15.900 --> 16:21.500 And when the Cubans set up a hotline in the wake of the incidents, Ambassador Cabanas says no one called it. 16:21.500 --> 16:26.380 Every time they reported a so-called new case, we asked the same question. 16:26.380 --> 16:28.780 Why you didn't use the phone line? 16:28.780 --> 16:34.460 Well, I can hazard a guess. Even leaving aside the fact they suspected Cuba was responsible 16:34.460 --> 16:39.340 for the incidents, there's the fact that many of those affected were working as undercover agents 16:39.340 --> 16:44.860 in Cuba and would like to protect their identities. We know that US staff had been asked not to even 16:44.860 --> 16:50.380 tell their family members. Seems pretty naive to imagine they'd be running to the Cubans' hotline. 16:50.380 --> 16:52.220 And it sounds like the Americans said as much. 16:52.220 --> 16:58.220 The argument was that, well, you know what? Our people don't want to share information about 16:58.220 --> 17:04.220 what is happening because probably that information would be used. Nonsense. Nonsense. 17:06.140 --> 17:10.860 Back in Cuba, Valdez Sosa searched through what little medical information they did have to go on. 17:11.420 --> 17:16.380 The Miami doctor who screened the patients, Dr. Michael Hoffa, passed on a report to the Cubans. 17:16.940 --> 17:17.580 It was brief. 17:18.140 --> 17:22.060 And then there was a sense of frustration that this is all the information we get, 17:22.060 --> 17:24.220 a small piece of paper with some symptoms. 17:24.220 --> 17:28.140 But as Mitch read through those symptoms, he had a moment of realisation. 17:29.100 --> 17:34.940 Difficulty with concentration and memory, balance issues. These were concussion symptoms. 17:35.580 --> 17:39.980 Mitch couldn't say what was wrong with these patients. But if these symptoms were correct, 17:40.540 --> 17:44.140 Valdez Sosa was convinced that they did not point towards a sonic device. 17:44.140 --> 17:51.820 I've never seen, and I looked at the literature, I did searches, and never has sound been reported to damage the brain. 17:51.820 --> 17:56.060 Others in the scientific community were beginning to make this point back in the US. 17:57.500 --> 18:01.580 After all the early press coverage that sounded like the stuff of science fiction, 18:01.580 --> 18:03.340 this was a more sober assessment. 18:03.340 --> 18:11.740 Experts say it's looking less likely that a sonic attack is what's been causing health problems for 18:11.740 --> 18:18.300 some US diplomats in Cuba. Joseph Pompei is a psychoacoustics expert. He says the symptoms, 18:18.300 --> 18:23.500 including mild brain trauma and recall difficulties, are inconsistent with that line of attack. 18:23.500 --> 18:29.500 The scientific debate was one thing. But Adam says that the reality on the ground for CIA agents in 18:29.500 --> 18:33.660 Havana was quite another. He says they were dropping like flies. 18:33.660 --> 18:37.980 Well, here's the thing. So every person the CIA sent down got hurt. 18:37.980 --> 18:38.860 Is that right? 18:38.860 --> 18:40.540 Everyone except their chief of station. 18:41.500 --> 18:45.820 From the point in time that you arrived, everyone who came... 18:45.820 --> 18:52.220 After. For the most part. Anyone that had a significant role in what we were doing there. 18:53.580 --> 18:56.140 Yeah. Or people that would come to fill in, right? 18:56.140 --> 19:01.420 Um, just simple support people or whatever. They all got hurt. Every single one. 19:03.260 --> 19:08.380 We don't know precisely, but by now the number of affected CIA agents had reached about 15. 19:09.180 --> 19:12.220 More than half of all the officials affected in Havana. 19:12.220 --> 19:16.620 Over the summer, the CIA came to the view that they were the explicit targets 19:16.620 --> 19:19.180 and the State Department staff collateral damage. 19:19.980 --> 19:25.820 The fact that FBI agents were able to make multiple trips to the island without being affected themselves, 19:25.820 --> 19:31.420 only strengthened a growing conviction at the agency that whatever this was was out to get them in particular. 19:32.300 --> 19:36.700 And so that then asks the question, how tenable is this to keep going? 19:36.700 --> 19:38.940 Because we're just sending lambs to the slaughter at that point. 19:40.380 --> 19:42.300 Which we were. Lemmings off a cliff. 19:43.340 --> 19:48.700 On September 13th, the CIA made a decision that a lot of people would come to think of as rash. 19:49.580 --> 19:54.220 They sent a classified message to the State Department that in response to the incidents, 19:54.220 --> 19:57.900 they were withdrawing all staff from post for the foreseeable future. 19:58.780 --> 20:04.700 On September 29th, the State Department dropped the bombshell that the US Embassy in Havana would be 20:04.700 --> 20:10.060 effectively closed, a hundred staffers reduced to a smaller presence than even before the thaw. 20:10.060 --> 20:17.020 Just over two months since that first measured State Department briefing, everything seemed to have changed. 20:18.220 --> 20:24.620 We cannot continue to allow our personnel to serve in Cuba when they are very clearly in harm's way. 20:25.980 --> 20:30.860 Senator Marco Rubio saw his moment. With America no closer to solving this mystery, 20:31.420 --> 20:36.620 Rubio and other anti-Castro hardliners waded in with a letter to the State Department. 20:37.180 --> 20:41.660 For many pundits, it contained the kind of tough talk that had been needed from the start. 20:42.380 --> 20:47.100 This is no joke. Get on it now. Which I think is absolutely appropriate. 20:47.900 --> 20:56.220 Absolutely shocking. The Cubans or somebody who ought to be under their watch is torturing our diplomats, 20:56.220 --> 21:00.540 causing them permanent hearing loss, neurological damage, nervous disorders, etc. 21:00.540 --> 21:07.420 by piping in some sort of frequencies to torture them. Tell you what, God, there needs to be an 21:07.420 --> 21:14.380 ass-kicking. The media became Rubio's bully pulpit. Republican Senator Marco Rubio calls the US response 21:14.380 --> 21:20.060 weak. He tweeted today that it's quote, shameful that while the US is withdrawing most of its staff 21:20.060 --> 21:25.740 from Cuba, the Cubans can keep as many as they want here. Rubio spoke to reporters from the Capitol. 21:25.740 --> 21:30.060 Bottom line is, you cannot set the precedent that American personnel can be attacked and 21:30.060 --> 21:35.340 severely injured abroad, forcing us to draw down our presence in that country. Yet the country 21:35.340 --> 21:40.140 responsible for their safety and security gets to keep their full complement of presence in our country. 21:41.100 --> 21:43.820 Now Trump himself was directly accusing Cuba. 21:44.860 --> 21:51.180 Thank you, Mr. President. General Kelly said on just last week that you believe that Cuba could 21:51.180 --> 21:53.740 stop the attacks against Americans. Do you believe that? 21:53.740 --> 21:56.540 I do. I think Cuba do about it. Do you believe Cuba is responsible? 21:56.540 --> 22:01.740 I do believe Cuba is responsible. I do believe that. And it's a very unusual attack, as you know, 22:01.740 --> 22:03.900 but I do believe Cuba is responsible. Yes. 22:03.900 --> 22:09.980 They came with a list of Cuban officials they wanted to expel from Washington. They said that 22:09.980 --> 22:15.260 they felt sorry, that they expected the problem in the future, whatever. But the factual thing is 22:15.260 --> 22:19.580 that they were expelled, and that's it. Ambassador Cabana says that the State 22:19.580 --> 22:24.140 Department officials delivering this news were some of the same people he'd worked with on the Thor. 22:24.140 --> 22:30.460 They felt they were part of something that we accomplished at the time. They have to leave all of 22:30.460 --> 22:35.340 that behind because a group of guys are saying that they have dizziness and they are listening 22:35.340 --> 22:40.620 to sounds that usually they don't do. Most people, I don't believe, wanted to go. They wanted to stay 22:40.620 --> 22:46.460 and continue doing their jobs. Ambassador Jeff De Laurentiis says the diplomats left under his command 22:46.460 --> 22:51.340 at the embassy had chosen to stick with the mission. That was one reason it was necessary to move from 22:51.340 --> 22:57.580 voluntary to ordered departure. You know, on the one hand, I suppose it made sense. On the other, 22:57.580 --> 23:02.620 it kind of felt like a convenient excuse to do what they wanted to do all along in any case. 23:02.620 --> 23:07.020 De Laurentiis knew there would be personal repercussions. When he returned from his tour 23:07.020 --> 23:12.540 in Havana in the summer of 2017, he knew he wouldn't be getting the hero's welcome he'd received 23:12.540 --> 23:18.380 during Obama's term. I was stopped in the halls in the State Department. People I didn't know 23:18.380 --> 23:24.380 congratulating me, people wanting to come and work at the embassy. They all wanted to be a part of this 23:24.380 --> 23:32.380 enormous diplomatic change. I returned to the State Department early in the Trump administration. 23:33.500 --> 23:39.420 The vibes were all just completely different and people were averting their eyes. For someone who 23:39.420 --> 23:47.340 was so visibly connected to a policy that was being completely reversed, not only was it being reversed, 23:47.340 --> 23:56.460 it was being criticized, condemned and so forth. But I remember that sort of sense of not knowing 23:56.460 --> 24:04.940 quite what to do with me. You know, I guess I could certainly see that this was going to interfere with 24:04.940 --> 24:11.020 the direction we were going. I'm not sure I fully appreciated how it would be so exploited. 24:11.020 --> 24:16.620 Tim Reeser, the foreign policy advisor who helped re-establish U.S. relations with Cuba. 24:16.620 --> 24:21.420 The State Department insisted they were not cutting diplomatic ties. But Reeser's whole approach had 24:21.420 --> 24:26.300 been about improving dialogue. As far as he could see, there wasn't going to be a whole lot of diplomacy 24:26.300 --> 24:33.260 going on now. You know, both embassies basically were reduced to a very skeleton crew. 24:33.260 --> 24:42.540 And our ability to conduct diplomacy or consular affairs and all of that virtually dried up because 24:42.540 --> 24:48.540 we had no people there and they had almost no people here. So I didn't really anticipate that. 24:48.540 --> 24:55.100 That autumn, a devastating cyclone ripped through Havana and Lawrence Gumbana took up the post as the 24:55.100 --> 25:00.220 head of the American presence in Cuba. We're just trying to keep the lights on and trying to plug the 25:00.220 --> 25:06.460 holes from the hurricane and also just manage the staff. He was in charge of the few remaining staff 25:06.460 --> 25:12.940 in the crumbling U.S. building. He was also there to implement U.S. policy. But that now came down to 25:12.940 --> 25:18.940 a single issue. The State Department was just consumed with this issue. They didn't care what else was going 25:18.940 --> 25:25.020 on. It was all Ivana syndrome. And he had his instructions. In any dealings with the Cubans, 25:25.020 --> 25:29.180 Gumbana had to take the line that they were responsible and had a way of shutting this off. 25:29.180 --> 25:33.580 You know, they were furious. They were furious. They thought we were completely making this up 25:33.580 --> 25:38.780 out of whole cloth. Despite the official position, Gumbana admits to having his own doubts. 25:38.780 --> 25:44.140 You know, personally, it was still up in the air as to what it was and whether or not it was real. 25:44.860 --> 25:48.700 Of course, everyone left in Havana had read the stories about the health incidents. 25:49.260 --> 25:53.980 Intrusive thoughts could be hard to stave off rattling around the embassy and ambassador's residence. 25:53.980 --> 26:00.620 You know, psychologically, it's just human nature. Your senses are a little bit more heightened to 26:00.620 --> 26:06.060 strange noises or some of the other, you know, descriptions of what happened to people. 26:06.860 --> 26:11.340 I remember a couple of times, you know, waking up and hearing the air-conditioned 26:11.340 --> 26:15.100 rattle. And then you're just a little bit more on edge because of it. 26:15.100 --> 26:16.700 Yeah, you're like, is that the air-conditioning? 26:16.700 --> 26:19.180 Exactly right. Is that the air-conditioning or could that be something else? 26:20.220 --> 26:23.900 Maybe one of the reasons that other sounds could be mistaken for the thing 26:24.460 --> 26:30.380 was that so few people had heard this high-pitched, grinding, somehow pressurized sound. 26:31.180 --> 26:37.820 Then in early October, an Associated Press reporter got hold of a recording via a government source 26:37.820 --> 26:44.620 and published it. The recording fired people's imagination, like a grainy Bigfoot photo. People 26:44.620 --> 26:49.820 didn't know what to think. Was the recording itself dangerous? So little was known about the 26:49.820 --> 26:55.260 potential threat, the idea didn't seem totally out of the question. The media outlets who aired the 26:55.260 --> 26:59.740 sound seemed to be treating it as somewhere between a joke and a biohazard. 26:59.740 --> 27:04.620 I hope I have this loud enough so you can hear it, or at least not too loud. I don't want to... 27:05.580 --> 27:09.900 I'm not trying to attack anybody out there. Here we go. Take a listen to this. 27:17.180 --> 27:19.340 All right, and that is it. That's the sound 27:20.940 --> 27:26.460 that is associated with these sonic attacks. I hope everybody out there is okay. I will not be held 27:26.460 --> 27:31.100 responsible for any symptoms anybody out there experiences. I just wanted to illustrate. 27:31.100 --> 27:37.500 One online commenter declared this wasn't the work of Cuban spies, but an army of robot locusts. 27:38.060 --> 27:42.860 Actually, even those reaching earnestly for the right words to describe what they were hearing 27:42.860 --> 27:46.940 kept coming up with insect comparisons. High-pitched, cricket-like sound. 27:47.980 --> 27:52.780 It was impossible to tell from the recording just how loud the sound had been from those Americans who 27:52.780 --> 27:58.620 heard it in Havana. But we know they believed they were documenting something shocking and unnatural. 27:58.620 --> 28:02.860 That's the sort of thing the Cubans say they'd been going door to door in Havana for months asking 28:02.860 --> 28:08.780 locals about. Had they heard something out of the ordinary, overpoweringly strange? No one had. 28:09.420 --> 28:14.380 But maybe those were the wrong questions. Maybe the senses of someone recently arrived to this 28:14.380 --> 28:20.300 Caribbean island are differently attuned to those of Havana city dwellers used to the same sounds day in 28:20.300 --> 28:25.340 and out. Cuban investigators told us they heard something pretty ordinary in the recording. 28:26.540 --> 28:33.740 The press began to sound a little giddy. Sonic weapons, Cold War spy games are now deafening insects. 28:34.460 --> 28:38.780 Some Cuban scientists have looked into this and they've ruled out that it's anything to do with 28:38.780 --> 28:44.220 sonic booms, etc. And it was due to a cacophony of crickets. This is incredible. You couldn't make the 28:44.220 --> 28:48.700 news up at the minute, could you? No, you couldn't. So you could argue, well, it's Cuban experts and maybe 28:48.700 --> 28:52.700 they're just coming up with this, but it's been validated by some US scientists as well. Now, 28:52.700 --> 28:58.300 the FBI have refused to comment, but I just think it's amazing. Actually, it seems the FBI took this 28:58.300 --> 29:04.380 insect theory seriously too. Could a bug create a sound as grating and ear-piercingly loud as what 29:04.380 --> 29:12.380 the Americans have described in Cuba? They went to meet Professor Alan Sanborn, an American entomologist, 29:12.380 --> 29:18.860 who'd written a paper measuring insect sounds back in the 90s. It was out for 20 years before the FBI 29:18.860 --> 29:24.140 came knocking on my door. Sanborn had actually had a close encounter of the cicada kind, 29:24.140 --> 29:30.140 doing his own field recordings. To hold the sound pressure level meter at half a meter from the 29:30.140 --> 29:36.700 animal, I kind of had it next to my head. So it was less than an arm's length away from my ear. When it 29:36.700 --> 29:43.980 got up to the 106, 107 decibels of the full song, my ear was literally ringing. It was so loud, the 29:43.980 --> 29:50.620 vibrations in my ear. Sanborn said that up close, insects like the cicadas he measured could sound 29:50.620 --> 29:55.820 as loud as a jet engine. It's hard to imagine that something so small could make such a din. 29:56.620 --> 30:02.540 What's more, cicadas have their own inbuilt amplifier which can throw the sound, making it difficult to 30:02.540 --> 30:07.580 figure out where it's coming from? If you weren't used to them, sounds like this springing out as if 30:07.580 --> 30:14.460 from nowhere would surely be strange and alarming. Still, Sanborn was clear with the FBI that insect 30:14.460 --> 30:21.260 noises could not explain the medical symptoms these Americans had experienced. At the end of 2017, 30:21.260 --> 30:25.980 Lawrence Gumbana, the head diplomat left in Cuba, got a visit from those FBI agents. 30:25.980 --> 30:31.500 You know, they were professional. They knew what they were doing. They were there to see if what evidence 30:31.500 --> 30:37.180 they could find. Now, evidence gathering in that kind of environment, by nature, very difficult. 30:38.860 --> 30:43.820 They didn't conclude that there was no directed attack. They concluded there was no evidence of 30:43.820 --> 30:50.140 a directed attack. So it was not the popular result. A lot of people had already, you know, convicted 30:50.140 --> 30:59.580 the Cubans of doing this. Between the Cuban haters, you know, and the Obama haters and the victims, 30:59.580 --> 31:07.900 you know, who have suffered, there's a lot of interest validating that this was an actual series of 31:07.900 --> 31:14.220 attacks. What the FBI found did not support the accusation made even by the President of the United 31:14.220 --> 31:20.140 States that Cuba had attacked Americans. It was particularly concerning for the CIA, whose lead 31:20.140 --> 31:26.220 everyone had been following all along. According to the people we've spoken to, the CIA once downplayed the 31:26.220 --> 31:31.660 health concerns. But they had since swung all the way over to the other extreme, triggering a mass 31:31.660 --> 31:37.660 exodus from Havana. They closed down their shop in the embassy. They removed all their people and left. 31:38.460 --> 31:43.660 You know, they were there for a foreign policy reason. And now they're just kind of taking their 31:43.660 --> 31:49.500 toys and going home. Because other people said, you guys are being precipitous and completely departing. 31:49.500 --> 31:56.300 You know, you can reduce presence and you could lay low. And they just decided, no, we're getting out. 31:57.020 --> 32:03.500 So there's a lot of egg on their face for them having taken such drastic measures. 32:04.300 --> 32:10.780 Of course, no one was more all in than Adam. His view was that the FBI had taken the easy way out 32:10.780 --> 32:12.380 of a complex investigation. 32:12.380 --> 32:17.100 So because we can't figure it out, we're going to say it's not real and you're crazy. 32:17.100 --> 32:20.780 He was frustrated that the recordings had become so central to everything. 32:20.780 --> 32:27.500 So the phone was never meant to be this calculated, complete capture of anything. It was the only 32:27.500 --> 32:31.660 thing I had available to me to try and prove, hey, there's some weird shit happening. 32:32.860 --> 32:35.660 Why don't we do try this, look at it and see if there's anything there? 32:35.660 --> 32:38.540 Yeah. Adam says that earlier in 2017, 32:38.540 --> 32:43.100 an official analysis had picked up a man-made signal buried in the recordings he made. 32:43.740 --> 32:48.860 Another US official posted to Havana told us the US Coast Guard examined his recording 32:48.860 --> 32:55.500 and also found a man-made signal. But in the spring of 2019, American and Cuban scientists 32:55.500 --> 32:58.380 would actually prove a match between the AP recording 32:58.380 --> 33:02.380 and the mating song of a rare species of cricket found in Cuba. 33:03.180 --> 33:08.300 It's an interesting recording because, you know, I still don't know if that's crickets or not. 33:08.780 --> 33:13.260 It is quite possible that those are actually crickets. There's what you could hear and there's 33:13.260 --> 33:17.820 what you could feel. They were happening at the same time, but I don't know if they were connected. 33:18.700 --> 33:23.100 There's so many questions. I just don't, I don't think the sound, the sound is not the issue. 33:23.100 --> 33:27.660 The sound is not what's causing harm. The sound is a byproduct or it's a cricket. I don't know. 33:27.660 --> 33:32.780 But it's not the problem. The problem lies in the inaudible aspect of things. 33:33.820 --> 33:40.140 The stuff that was causing nosebleeds and all the other trauma, you know, that was all non-audible. 33:40.140 --> 33:51.500 So, again, I just, I wonder is, did we go down the wrong path because we're wrapped up in the audible aspect of everything 33:51.500 --> 33:58.940 versus the non-audible, the inaudible? And time will tell, you know. 33:58.940 --> 34:05.180 One thing he was sure about, just like the expert Alan Sanborn had made clear to the FBI and to us, 34:05.180 --> 34:11.180 it wasn't the mating call of some crickets that had given him his life-changing health problems. 34:11.180 --> 34:18.820 I read this headline a couple days ago. It said, FBI rules out sonic attacks and saw some other things out there about it. 34:19.120 --> 34:20.660 This is Senator Marco Rubio. 34:20.660 --> 34:29.700 In essence, you know, I saw at one point the Cuban government said that it could be crickets or some insect noise, cicadas, is that what they're, yeah. 34:30.160 --> 34:35.600 I didn't even know their word. Cicadias. Well, I don't know. We don't have that problem in Miami, but... 34:35.600 --> 34:44.240 As soon as the U.S. Senate resumed after the holidays, in January 2018, Rubio decided to put himself front and centre of the Havana syndrome issue. 34:44.580 --> 34:45.740 You have him? Yeah. 34:46.340 --> 34:48.220 A lot of concussive effects after? No? 34:48.900 --> 34:50.980 All right. Well, yeah. 34:52.260 --> 34:58.220 But my point is that you could read that headline and conclude that that means that nothing happened. 34:59.160 --> 35:05.300 Since that strange summer of 2017, no American in Cuba has reported an incident like Adams. 35:05.600 --> 35:10.120 But Rubio believed a foreign power had purposefully injured American officials. 35:10.940 --> 35:14.480 And an attack like this required a full-throated response. 35:15.580 --> 35:19.980 We can say that we don't know how it happened. We can even say we can't know for sure who did it. 35:20.560 --> 35:25.700 But two things we know for sure. People were hurt and the Cuban government knows who did it. 35:26.440 --> 35:29.000 They just won't say for some reason. 35:29.000 --> 35:38.720 Just maybe this whole drama in Havana could help Rubio convince the Trump administration once and for all that the Cuban regime had to be squashed like a bug. 35:38.720 --> 35:54.100 If you are a Florida politician, it's much better to be a Republican. 35:54.100 --> 35:59.260 And it's much better to be anti-Cuba, anti-Castro. 35:59.680 --> 36:04.460 Number one is keeping the pressure on Cuba and making it stronger. 36:04.880 --> 36:11.000 And if you can find a way to make it stronger, such as through the Havana syndrome, then you're going to do it. 36:11.000 --> 36:16.240 It's unfortunate that since the news of these bizarre and vicious attacks broke late last summer, 36:16.460 --> 36:24.620 we have not seen more public outcry against the Cuban government for whatever scope of ownership it has over these attacks. 36:25.320 --> 36:27.640 Our parents' life was destroyed. 36:27.880 --> 36:30.060 Our grandparents' life was destroyed. 36:30.300 --> 36:33.060 All our countrymen's life was destroyed. 36:33.060 --> 36:37.960 And that is a cause we carry inside that we will never leave behind. 36:37.960 --> 36:43.440 From BBC Radio 4, this is Havana Helmet Club. 36:44.020 --> 36:47.360 Listen to the latest episodes first on BBC Sounds. 36:48.160 --> 36:51.140 If you want to be notified when the latest episode drops, 36:51.580 --> 36:57.180 make sure you're subscribed to Havana Helmet Club on BBC Sounds and have push notifications turned on. 36:59.880 --> 37:05.580 Havana Helmet Club is written and presented by Sam Bunke and Jennifer Ford and edited by Guy Crossman. 37:05.580 --> 37:09.300 Our story editor is Mike Olive and our producer is Larry Ryan. 37:10.260 --> 37:12.180 Original music by Tom Pintons. 37:12.700 --> 37:14.520 Sound design by Meryn Royards. 37:15.080 --> 37:18.260 Additional sound design and mix by Peregrine Andrews. 37:19.220 --> 37:21.820 Commissioning editor for the BBC is Dylan Haskins. 37:22.120 --> 37:25.540 Assistant commissioning editors are Sarah Green and Natasha Johansson. 37:25.640 --> 37:30.680 Havana Helmet Club is a Yarn production for BBC Radio 4 and BBC Sounds. 37:35.580 --> 37:42.740 I'm Natalia Melman-Petrozzella and from the BBC, this is Extreme Peak Danger. 37:42.740 --> 37:45.260 The most beautiful mountain in the world. 37:45.900 --> 37:48.460 If you die on the mountain, you stay on the mountain. 37:50.340 --> 37:56.940 This is the story of what happened when 11 climbers died on one of the world's deadliest mountains, K2. 37:56.940 --> 38:00.280 And of the risks we'll take to feel truly alive. 38:00.540 --> 38:04.120 If I tell all the details, you won't believe it anymore. 38:04.920 --> 38:06.540 Extreme Peak Danger. 38:06.960 --> 38:08.620 Listen first on BBC Sounds.