The White House recently issued a new warning regarding Havana Syndrome to policy staff at the Pentagon- immediately flee the area and report any experience of pressure, sound or heat in the head.
The new message was delivered at the Pentagon over the past week and proves to diplomats, national security staff and intelligence officers that the Biden administration is taking the reported 'anomalous health incidents' seriously.
New workplace guidelines are just a part of the federal government's plan to respond faster to potential cases, after it was discovered that a quicker response benefits the health of the victim and the investigation.
'We need to believe our personnel who are coming forward,' a senior administration official said according to McClatchy DC. 'People are facing real symptoms. We are very conscious that people are experiencing something very real, and it is having a real negative effect on their health. And we're seeing better health outcomes the sooner we can respond to that.'
The official firmly denied the idea that the syndrome is a 'mass hysteria.' 'The physical effects we've seen in several cases are very, very real.'
Policy staff at the Pentagon were given new strict warnings surrounding Havana Syndrome as the White House works to prove that it is taking the potential threat seriously
The Biden administration has been criticized for its slow response to the growing cases of the 'anomalous health incidents'
A 2018 report to the Trump administration proposes that recordings from the US Embassy in Cuba (above) actually captured native crickets
Just last week a 2018 State Department report, which suggested that the recorded noises linked to the earliest cases of Havana Syndrome were caused by crickets, was declassified.
The report to the Trump administration does not propose that crickets caused the documented medical symptoms of the mysterious affliction, which more recent research blames on microwave weapons.
The White House's new guidelines come as the Biden administration has been condemned for the slow pace of the State Department's responses to reports of Havana Syndrome.
Just last month, Ambassador Pamela Spratlen, who was appointed by the Biden administration to oversee the State Department’s response to the incidents left her role after six months reportedly due to internal arguments with other appointees, The Hill reported.
This came weeks after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, was confronted by diplomats who had Havana Syndrome who claimed they were not being taken seriously, according to The Hill.
The 2018 report makes clear that recordings from the US Embassy in Cuba actually captured native crickets and are likely unrelated to whatever caused the symptoms, according to a copy of the report released to BuzzFeed News.
'We believe the recorded sounds are mechanical or biological in origin, rather than electronic. The most likely source is the Indies short-tailed cricket,' says the 2018 report written by the JASON advisory group, an elite scientific board that reviews US national security concerns.
However, it goes on to note: 'It cannot be ruled out that the perceived sounds, while not harmful, are introduced by an adversary as deception so as to mask an entirely unrelated mode of causing illness in diplomatic personnel.'
'The objective medical evidence that the suffering experienced by the affected individuals is real, as is the necessity for therapeutic interventions,' the report adds.
Employees at the embassy recorded the strange sounds (above) but the report argues that the noises are not directly related to whatever caused their symptoms
The 2018 report claims crickets are the most likely cause of the noises associated with the earliest cases of Havana Syndrome, but does not rule out that something else caused the documented medical symptoms associated with the affliction
Following the original cluster of cases in Cuba, US diplomats and spies around the world have been struck by the strange affliction, which is characterized by the sudden onset of headaches, nausea, and vertigo, sometimes followed by lingering symptoms and documented brain injury.
The chief suspects in the unsolved mystery are Russia and China, possibly employing microwave devices in an attempt to gather data from mobile devices remotely. Both countries deny involvement.
The earliest cases date to US diplomatic staff stationed in Havana in late 2016, who often reported hearing strange noises in conjunction with the onset of symptoms.
The 2018 report to the Trump administration was recently declassified but heavily redacted in relation to possible technological causes
Recordings of those noises circulated among embassy staff and eventually leaked to the public - but the new report suggests that the noises were not directly related to whatever caused the symptoms of Havana Syndrome.
Sections of the report that deal with hypotheses about potential microwave or other directed energy weapons are heavily redacted, including the entire conclusions section.
However the report does suggest that the noises recorded in Havana were not directly related to whatever caused the medical symptoms.
'No plausible single source of energy (neither radio/microwaves nor sonic) can produce both the recorded audio/video signals and the reported medical effects,' the report said.
The report finds that medical evidence supports that the symptoms of Havana Syndrome are real, but that no single source of energy could have caused both the noises and the symptoms
There have been 200 reported cases of the yet-unexplained illness, which has been colloquially named for its first reported case in 2016 at the US Embassy in Havana, Cuba, and affected American personnel on nearly every continent except Antarctica
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