WEBVTT

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hey adam hey john lee how are you good just yeah good in the summer of 2021 i got on a call with

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adam excuse my tired voice i've been out reporting all week where are you i'm back in tegucigalpa

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choppering around with a wealthy guy whose plantations and wilderness reserve is in a

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kind of narco area so did you buy any good drugs or you know the last guys were making going all

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through the motions that they had nothing to do with it so no what can i say adam called me because

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he said he had big news about havana syndrome that no one else was reporting yeah so i i wanted to

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let you know that i i had a meeting the other day with a source um who told me that 25 roughly 24 25

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were hit in vienna jesus all of it um you know basically starting two months after the

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inauguration of joseph biden christ almighty this year wow

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you know i don't know enough yet to know what it means and i can tell that the americans aren't sure

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either you know what what it means what's so interesting here too is they they managed to

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keep it secret even though there's a large number of victims so you know i i kind of feel like we should

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maybe go i'm john lee anderson and i'm adam entis from vice world news this is havana syndrome

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episode seven vienna rules

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by the end of the trump presidency in january of 2021 the number of suspected havana syndrome cases

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is skyrocketing and that's because after years of the government turning a blind eye to possible

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cases it's starting to actually look for them towards the end of trump's time in office the

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pentagon is getting involved and the cia sends out a memo to thousands of its employees around the world

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asking them to report any unexplained illnesses several other agencies send similar notes to

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their staff the government is basically casting a wide net trying to catch anything that could turn

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out to be connected to havana syndrome

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in the months that follow hundreds of reports of unexplained illnesses pour in it seems like every

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day there's a new case being reported somewhere in germany german police are investigating cases of the

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mysterious havana syndrome at the u.s embassy in berlin in colombia

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and in india

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a visit by vice president kamala harris to vietnam in august was delayed when several u.s personnel there

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reported symptoms and at least two had to be medevaced and the stands kyrgyzstan and uzbekistan

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then early last year i was meeting a high-level source for drinks and he told me that the white

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house was freaking out about the biggest possible outbreak outside of havana apparently in the first

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few months of 2021 there was a huge cluster of cases in austria i broke the story in the new yorker

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and pretty quickly it was all over the news we are vigorously investigating reports of possible

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unexplained health incidents among u.s embassy vienna so the symptoms are sounding very much like the

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havana syndrome symptoms that there is a history of course going back to the cold war of spies and

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counter spies in the city because it was so close to the former soviet union but this is a different time

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in place

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it's like i want to have that moment as often as i can yeah right okay where are we guys i have no idea

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we're in the old hapsburgian you know the kind of patrician tranche of vienna we are here because uh

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this is the largest cluster of havana syndrome cases outside of havana itself and we have come

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to vienna to get a sense of the environment where this took place i've got to be honest i've always

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hated vienna it all started for me when a sadistic dentist gave me a root canal here once you ever

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seen marathon man it was like one of those scenes i was dustin hoffman but i let myself get talked into

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coming back here to see if we might learn anything new about havana syndrome by focusing in on these

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austria incidents this is the american embassy it's a hapsburg palace look at that to be clear the u.s

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embassy is not literally a hapsburg palace it just looks like one this is a secure building i mean

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what do you mean secure what makes you say that well there's a big security gate uh a 10-foot uh metal

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security gate around this building anyway we visited the embassy and checked out its strange looking windows

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they've really screwed over the windows it looks like a elementary school house you know what that

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may be remember we when we when we talked to the ambassador in moscow and he said one way to deal

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with microwave is a metal mesh uh-huh yes and if you look up it looks like all the windows are covered

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with metal mesh why would the blinds be closed here they're not but over here they are oh yeah so they

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are but i but i have no idea if there's any connection between between we asked the state

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department what that metal mesh was for but they declined to tell us we're here looking for clues as

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to what happened but we didn't have a lot to go on the thing is it's taken me years to slowly piece

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together the story of havana syndrome most of the people who've had incidents don't want to talk

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and to this day i haven't been able to talk to anyone who got sick in vienna but there are other

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reasons to be here because when we heard about the cases here it actually kind of made sense to me

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that of all the cities in the world vienna would be a prime location for a rash of unexplained illnesses

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and we thought maybe we'd find evidence here that would help us figure out what is causing the

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spread of havana syndrome

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the city has a long history of being a hotbed of espionage vienna has always been this kind of

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oasis where you know people don't really do anything to each other and everybody's here

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you know you have the un you have pretty much every embassy on earth is here i think even the north

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koreans are here aren't they i mean years ago i was here to meet saddam's ambassador which is why i

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ended up here that was actually the the first time i came to to vienna so that was that was 20 years ago

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among spies vienna is considered a sort of sacred neutral ground which actually dates back to the

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end of world war ii for a while after the war the americans and the soviets occupied different parts of

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the city but they also decided to make it part of a neutral zone and within that zone something really

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crazy started to happen american and russian spies started meeting up in cafes and talking to one

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another something that really didn't happen anywhere else this is the environment that inspired the

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likes of graham green and john le carré a spy's playground a place of intrigue and deceit famously

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green's third man evoked the era when the allied powers shared vienna and what it took to survive it all

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the hijackers had help from inside our station here in vienna we need to find out if we had a mole

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even today hollywood loves to situate spy thrillers in vienna welcome to vienna betty miss me

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hard not to think about it when you're here

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the history is everywhere because when austria once again became a sovereign nation

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their government decided to make the whole country a neutral ground as far as espionage was

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concerned the rules were simple within austria any country could spy on any other country as long

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as they didn't hurt each other or spy on the austrian government these rules became known as the vienna rules

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because of the vienna rules austria is the only country on earth where many spy activities are legal

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throughout the cold war vienna was a place where spies often crossed paths and tried to recruit

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each other and even after the war things continued to happen in austria that basically couldn't happen

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anywhere else in the world like in 2010 there was this story coming out of vienna that felt like it was of

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another era two planes one russian one american parked side by side on the tarmac at vienna airport for

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about an hour and a half as vehicles shuttled between them those people boarding that russian

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plane they're all suspected russian spies it's been a quarter of a century since the world has seen a

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spy swap like this they were all flying home to russia after spending months or even years imprisoned in

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the united states and the other plane was flying back to the u.s carrying four suspected american

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spies who'd been in russian prisons after pleading guilty to acting as illegal agents in the u.s

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it's believed the russian spies are on their way to moscow some or perhaps all were on this jet that

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landed in vienna it parked on the tarmac next to a russian airline

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the austrian government for decades has tried to remain neutral and maintain good relations with both

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east and west but over the last few years as russia and the u.s have become more confrontational

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they've been trying to force austria to pick sides and that competition for austria's allegiance may

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in fact be the most important clue in figuring out why so many american spies may have gotten sick in vienna

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i'm good how are you ambassador good thanks hi trevor trena has a lot of experience wrangling u.s austrian

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relations i am trevor trena and i was until january of this year the united states ambassador to the

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republic of austria his familiarity with the country goes pretty far back my grandfather was ambassador

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to austria from 1975 to 1977 even though i was a very young boy i remembered vividly the tales of

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soviet espionage and i remember that my grandfather had to take a different route to the embassy every

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single day and one day the route led to a dead end alley and my grandfather was furious that his life

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had been endangered by someone who had not read a map correctly so i understood that where east met west

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a lot of chicanery happened in february 2018 when trump picked trevor to become ambassador to austria

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the administration's priority was to pull austria closer to the united states and further away from

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russia my goal was to remind austria hey you're a western democracy just like america and and you

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belong in in this club i think the competition for the hearts and minds both of austrians and all europeans

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is a decades-long game and i think my contribution was just to take it to the next level and say i'm not

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here to just you know compete i'm here to win when trevor arrives he hits the ground running he gets

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austria's head of state invitations to the white house and in the early days of the coveted pandemic

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trevor arranges for the donation of half a million u.s made masks which are given to children and the

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elderly all over the country according to trevor stuff like this in diplomatic terms at least is a

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big deal but in this battle for austria's heart trevor's not the only competitor i had a very nice

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if formal relationship with the russian ambassador to austria and we sort of approached each other like

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two sumo in the ring i was clear-eyed about the game he was trying to play and i'm sure he

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was aware of the game i was trying to play austria is like right at the top of the pantheon of

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countries that the russians respect and focus on and want the respect of in fact there are rumors

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that putin himself owns a house somewhere in austria on a lake in mid-2018 the austrian foreign minister

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sees president vladimir putin at an event in vienna there was an event early in my tenure and a

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seemingly minor exchange has international repercussions in sort of a plucky move handed

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him a printed invitation to her wedding and he sensing opportunity immediately accepted

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and this created a huge conundrum diplomatic meetings at that level with someone like putin

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they're usually so formal and heavily choreographed and so in this case the wedding created a tricky

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situation for everyone including american officials like trevor who hate the thought that

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this makes it seem as though the russians have an advantage over them with the austrians so i just

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started to think about okay what can i do to take advantage of this situation and so when putin

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actually shows up at the wedding putin actually gives her like a gift right when he when he arrives

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or hands her a bouquet of flowers or something like this right so he what is what is putin's goal

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by being there i think from a chess point of view it was a masterful move by him you know he saw an

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opportunity he took it and i respect that i think it was very clever

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the wedding ceremony proceeds afterwards there's music dancing and then putin takes the foreign

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minister by the hand and starts dancing with her

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and in the course of that dance there was a very public moment where she kind of curtsied to him

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from a diplomatic point of view of the optics looked really terrible like austria bowing to

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russia but for trevor there's a silver lining so i instantly sensed that this was a fabulous

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opportunity for me to kind of come in really more like the aggrieved victim here a week later he goes

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on austrian tv and gets asked about the curtsy his answer if one fancies oneself a bridge builder

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then you better be sure you're building the bridge to both sides and i think that comment reverberated

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all over the country

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reverberated might sound over the top to american ears but trevor's right austria wants to be on

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very good terms with the u.s so if the american ambassador criticizes a top austrian official

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that's a big deal people lose their jobs over shit like that it was also a pivotal moment in the

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relationship this is not long after the russians blatantly attempted to assassinate the double agent

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sergey skripal in england by poisoning him and his daughter the americans the brits and other allies had

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coordinated a response they wanted to expel russian diplomats and suspected spies from postings around the

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world and they wanted austria to join the campaign they thought russia's actions were such a heinous

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and flagrant violation of norms that the famously cautious austrians would get off the fence but they

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didn't so literally dancing with putin just added insult to injury soon though trevor says that the

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situation starts to turn in his favor i think that one thing that really benefited me is that putin made a

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a couple big missteps while i was there there were a couple very high profile data hacks that affected

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the coalition government that seemed to have the fingerprints of the russians on them also there

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was a very high profile case where a senior austrian military official was caught spying for the russians and

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put on trial the senior military official was a retired colonel in the austrian military who'd been

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passing secrets to the russians for at least 25 years in exchange the russians paid him the equivalent of

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three hundred thousand dollars and then at the start of 2020 the straw that breaks the camel's back

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austria discovers that a russian diplomat has been spying on and stealing technology from an austrian company

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in a short time span the russians are caught twice violating one of the vienna rules in vienna you can

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spy on anyone except for the locals trevor says he pushes the austrians to respond forcefully and they

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do we actually were able to get one russian official png'd or persona non grata which that never happens

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ever ever austria kicks out the russian who's been posing as a diplomat to spy on the tech firm

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which is a huge deal this is the first time that vienna has been so confrontational with the russian

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government and russia's pissed they retaliate by expelling a couple of austrian diplomats

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suddenly austrian russian relations are at their worst point since world war ii

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which trevor of course loves the russians ended up with kind of dirty hands publicly and we took

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advantage of that and this is how it comes back to havana syndrome

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when trevor left vienna at the end of trump's presidency he felt good about the work he'd done

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there but after his departure as far as i can tell things went downhill quickly more possible

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cases of so-called havana syndrome are now popping up in austria's capital vienna i'm told by people

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close to the situation that they started happening in the early months of the biden administration so

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this recent spate involves more than 20 officers it was a mix of intelligence officers diplomats and

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other u.s officials who were stationed in vienna the suspected havana syndrome incidents in vienna all

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happened after trevor was gone it's unclear if the outbreak is connected to the tug of war that

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trevor was a part of but if russia is behind the havana syndrome then maybe making a bunch of cia

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officers sick in vienna could be retaliation for the u.s driving a wedge between russia and austria

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i think as a diplomat you hate to think of anything that could go on that could harm the lives or the

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well-being of other diplomats i don't know who or what could be responsible for these attacks but

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if let's just use the argument if it were the russians it would really be quite a foolish thing

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because they're already a tiny bit in the punch bowl with the austrians and if it came out that they

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were involved in this it's a very high risk thing because the austrians would think so unkindly about

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this that it could forever change the relationship so if it is a world power doing this and if they

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do run the risk of being caught they're they're playing a very dangerous game

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in our last episode we briefly mentioned the case of a cia officer who believes he got hit in moscow but

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what we haven't told you is that that is one of the first cases of the illness to hit outside of

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cuba i traveled to moscow in december of 2017 it was a 10-day trip um i was at that time i was the

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deputy chief of operations and what we call the europe and eurasia mission center so that's you know

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an area which encompasses everything from you know from dublin all the way to the you know the most eastern

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time zones of of of russia so huge expanse for most of his career mark polymeropoulos was an

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undercover cia operations officer i think of him as the real life jason born mark had served in

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conflict zones around the world syria iraq afghanistan places where you can easily be killed

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but by 2017 he'd been in the agency for decades and was in a more senior role and he wasn't

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undercover anymore in fact during his trip to moscow he was actually meeting with russian intelligence

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so and so but how do those meetings work i mean they're friendly enough i mean it's business like

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that's not you know you're but what do you sit down and say hi there boris i'm here to spy on you

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no i mean it's a it's an you know it's an open liaison channel so that you know this is not a

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secret operation it's called it seems counterintuitive but senior american and russian intelligence

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officers do communicate with each other they have periodic meetings to discuss possible ways to work

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together mainly when it comes to counterterrorism but a few days after he arrives mark wakes up in

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the middle of the night in his hotel room the room was spitting so i had a splitting headache i had

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tinnitus which is ringing in your ears he has some of the same symptoms as other patients with havana

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syndrome vertigo ringing in the ears nausea joke there i joke around and say you're like the jason born

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with tbi like you know i've certainly been under some high pressure situations uh you know i've been in

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embassies that were attacked you know al-qaeda you know car bombs have hit the back gate um but

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ultimately this was the most terrifying experience uh of my life because i lost control mark had

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believed that the trip to russia was low risk remember he was not undercover there he was

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there openly meeting with russian intelligence he thought he was safe but since this happened to him

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his perspective has changed i got much smarter on this of course in the last you know a couple years

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so there has been an incredible kind of progression of of uh you know of attacks on our diplomatic

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personnel for decades you know when we talk about you know the things called like moscow rules or a

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gentleman's agreement not to hurt each other i mean you can also make an argument that the russians

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really never respected that gentleman's agreement refers to the idea that the u.s and russia have a

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tacit understanding that basically says you can around as much as you want but you don't physically hurt

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each other spies obviously mark doesn't place much faith in that you know if they are behind

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this now certainly they've taken it to a to a new level so here we have a very experienced cia officer

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who is suggesting that russia might be behind the havana syndrome and then when the dozens of cases

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in vienna pop up i can't help but think that what happened in vienna and what happened in havana

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were really similar these are the two biggest outbreaks of havana syndrome that we know about

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they both happened during u.s presidential transitions havana cases started in 2016 obama to

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trump and then vienna at the end of 2020 trump to biden which is a very unstable time in the u.s

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both outbreaks also happened in countries that are diplomatic battlefields for the americans and russians

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so to me these havana syndrome incidents are of a kind they bear a signature on them and it seems to

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me that the signature is russian well john lee i think you know my stance the only evidence i see

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linking russia to havana syndrome is circumstantial and of course russia has denied any involvement in any

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incidents maybe so but follow me for a minute so let's just say that havana syndrome is real

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and that whoever attacked u.s spies in vienna is playing a very dangerous game to use trevor train

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his words which country has shown time and time again the audacity to interfere in other countries

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politics and physically hurt people on foreign territory the united states yeah okay fair the u.s but so

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has russia take for instance the american presidential election in 2016 whether or not you believe russia

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colluded with donald trump they certainly tried to influence the election the white house punishing

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russia in part for interfering in the u.s election president obama taking executive action expelling 35

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russian diplomats giving them and their families just 72 hours to get out and where i live in the uk the

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russians have tried to assassinate people or actually killed them a number of times in the last few

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decades in 2006 russia was linked to the poisoning of former kgb officer alexander litvinenko in london

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and then just a few years ago the former russian spy poisoned by a nerve agent in britain has been

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discharged from the hospital sergey skrippel was found collapsed on a bench as we've mentioned it was

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sergey skirpal one of the spies who'd been part of that big swap in vienna who was later poisoned in

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salisbury britain accused russia of being behind that nerve agent attack but russia has denied any

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involvement in the poisoning the havana syndrome incidents in vienna aren't the first time that

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russia has been suspected of attacking its opponents on austrian soil in 2020 there was a high profile

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murder case directly linked to russia chechens in exile take to the streets near the russian embassy in vienna

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protests have been growing since the killing of a strident critic of kremlin-backed chechnya leader

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ramzan kadyrov saturday's attack was the latest in a string of killings of chechens who have a

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background in the anti-russian insurgency it was the fourth violent attack on chechens living inside

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the european union within the past year and after all that early this morning if anyone wondered how

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far putin would go the russian assault on ukraine began with missile attacks on key targets russia

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invaded ukraine and the dangerous game got a lot more dangerous

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i mean this is obviously a lot of circumstantial evidence that doesn't prove russia is connected to

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the havana syndrome incidents not in cuba or in vienna and the u.s does plenty of targeted killings

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around the world we're not exactly innocents the united states can certainly be the aggressor

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the bottom line for me is that we don't know for sure what happened in austria

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uh hey guys uh adam here uh john lee i hope you're doing well throughout the course of our reporting

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we've had a whatsapp group with a production team where adam and i have been sending each other voice

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memos to share reporting and leads we also send each other random messages gracias el arroz esta

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muy rica like when adam shows off his spanish rico this was ahead of our cuba trip adam was showing

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why he could easily be taken for a hapless american tourist we also send each other funny stickers make

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dumb jokes mostly about our producer jesse being a vegetarian very dumb joke

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but sometimes adam sends a voice memo in which he's actually breaking some news like in february

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listen i just got off the phone uh with senior u.s intelligence officials um regarding the intelligence

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community's expert panel findings super interesting before we get to exactly what he said you need to

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know the context just two weeks before the cia had done something quite extraordinary it made a public

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announcement a new interim report from the cia says most cases of havana syndrome are the result of

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other illnesses or environmental factors and are not the work of a foreign adversary

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that was pretty stunning the cia not famous for making preemptive statements about anything had

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come out to say that most of the cases said to be havana syndrome are nothing more than environmental

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factors or psychogenic remember that the cia had asked its staff to report any odd health symptoms that

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they had experienced they couldn't be explained other government agencies had done the same and that huge

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dragnet brought in around 1700 cases and a lot of those reported cases barely qualified

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things like runny noses mild headaches food poisoning etc in other words most of those cases

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that were reported could not plausibly have been havana syndrome unfortunately the cia announcement

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wasn't very specific it didn't say whether or not the cia believed the havana syndrome outbreak in

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vienna was real but to add another head-spinning detail to all of this we do know that the cia actually

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fired the head of its station in vienna because he wasn't taking the havana syndrome outbreak seriously

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enough we asked the cia about the removal of the station chief but they wouldn't comment on it

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a lot of people thought the cia announcement disqualifying hundreds of cases was big news

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and it gave the skeptics something to crow about from their point of view the cia was effectively

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saying there's nothing to see here but i personally thought it didn't solve the mystery it didn't address

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the cases that we've been focusing on like what happened to tony and tina

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but then things got even more confusing because two weeks after that cia report comes out i'm in

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south america and i get this voice memo from adam he'd just gotten off the phone with a group of

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senior u.s intelligence officials they were telling me about a separate report written by a panel of

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outside experts brought in by the intelligence community to examine what could have caused these

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symptoms effectively what they have decided is that they don't believe that psychogenic factors

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explain these core cases the ones that we've been talking to the people that we've been talking to

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so the ones in havana and other places that describe a directional uh nature of the

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pressure that they feel and the sound they're basically saying that they don't think psychogenic

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factors play a role in in those injuries they found that pulsed electromagnetic energy plausibly

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explains the core characteristics of havana syndrome in these cases and specifically what they found was

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that it is possible to generate the required energy in a concealable way with moderate power requirements

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this is critical because in our previous episode we talked to a weapons expert who told us that there

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wasn't a way to generate enough power for a weapon that could cause havana syndrome adam's news made it seem like

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the u.s intelligence community disagreed and after getting this voicemail i didn't know what to think

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and i still don't adam that's uh that's amazing thanks for the call i uh this feels like groundhog day

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to me it's it's back to the beginning

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on the final episode of havana syndrome we do just that we go back to the beginning one of the sayings

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in the intelligence community is admit nothing deny everything and and make counter accusations so the

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facts were against them everything was against them so they had to make ad hominem attacks to discredit the

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doctors the patients and everyone

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haveana syndrome is hosted and reported by adam entus and me john lee anderson it's produced and

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reported by julia nutter jesse alejandra cottrell and ramon campos iriarte and edited and executive produced by

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annie aviles and kate osborne with original composition and sound design by steve bone

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so

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can help zero

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the

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the

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the

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do

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the

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the