Declassified Documents on 'Havana Syndrome'

H-Diplo ANN: Declassified Documents on 'Havana Syndrome’ Response

Discussion published by Malcolm Byrne on Friday, February 12, 2021 Declassified State Department internal review faults “lack of senior leadership,” “systemic disorganization” in response to unsolved health episodes

Report of Accountability Review Board confirms CIA closure of its Havana Station in September 2017

Tillerson State Department failed to conduct standard risk/benefit assessment before Havana Embassy staff withdrawal

Edited by Peter Kornbluh

Washington D.C., February 10, 2021 – The Trump administration’s response to the mysterious health episodes experienced by intelligence and diplomatic personnel in Havana, Cuba, in late 2016 and 2017 was plagued by mismanagement, poor leadership, lack of coordination and a failure to follow established procedures, according to a formerly secret internal State Department review posted today by the National Security Archive. “The Department of State’s response to these incidents was characterized by a lack of senior leadership, ineffective communications, and systemic disorganization,” states the executive summary of the report, compiled by an internal Accountability Review Board (ARB) after a four-month investigation in 2018 that included interviews with CIA officers.

The SECRET/NOFORN report, which focused on events during the tenure of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, was provided to his successor, Mike Pompeo, on June 7, 2018. A full eighteen months after the unexplained afflictions were first reported, the ARB conceded that what happened in Havana remained shrouded in mystery. “The mechanism for the cause of the injuries is currently unknown. We do not know the motive behind these incidents, when they actually commenced, or who did it,” the report states. “We do know that USG, and Canadian diplomatic community members, were injured, but we do not know how. We do not know what happened, when it happened, who did it, or why.”

The National Security Archive obtained the heavily redacted ARB report, titled

Citation: Malcolm Byrne. ANN: Declassified Documents on 'Havana Syndrome’ Response. H-Diplo. 02-12-2021. https://networks.h-net.org/node/28443/discussions/7258327/us-cuba-secrets-%E2%80%98havana-syndrome%E2%80%99 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. 1 H-Diplo

“Havana, Cuba,” via a Freedom of Information Act request. “The ARB report sheds considerable light on the ‘Havana Syndrome’ history,” said Peter Kornbluh who directs the Archive’s Cuba Documentation Project. “But it does not solve the enduring mystery of what happened in Cuba.” The clues to resolving that mystery, he noted, are likely to be found in still secret State Department, CIA, FBI and Pentagon records, which remain immediately relevant as the Biden administration considers restoring the Embassy staffing to full operations. “As the Biden administration assumes responsibility for the continuing investigations into the ‘Havana Syndrome,’” he said, “complete transparency is needed to clarify what actually happened.”