“One is reminded of Montaigne’s acerbic comment: ‘Men under stress are fools, and fool themselves.’ ”

Michael Crichton
The Andromeda Strain

June 2 2022 — Matsuo Bashō was the most famous poet of the Edo period in Japan. After centuries of commentary, he is recognized as the greatest master of haiku. The CIA could learn a few things from his poetry. Follow us on Twitter: @INTEL_TODAY

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“Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity, but don’t rule out malice.”

Albert Einstein

UPDATE (January 25 2023) — On October 3 2017, I coined the expression “Havana Syndrome” which is now universally used, both by mainstream media and the research community.

In the same piece, I suggested for the very first time that microwave attacks, conducted for espionage, were the most likely explanation.

RELATED POST : Five Years Ago — And thus a new syndrome was born… [Havana Syndrome – October 3 2017]

Here is what I wrote:

“If the facts are confirmed and if the effects are indeed caused by a physical device, I find the microwave explanation far more likely than a sonic attack.”

In December 2020, the US National Academy of Sciences came to the same conclusion. In February 2022, the US ODNI released a short declassified Executive Summary which also agrees with my initial analysis.

Five years later, I came to the conclusion that these alleged attacks in Cuba never occurred.

In a new series of podcasts from VICE World News, journalists Jon Lee Anderson and Adam Entous take listeners to the heart of this saga. [Here is the link: Havana Syndrome — VICE]

The second episode — The Diplomat and The Spy — is particularly revealing for it contains much information coming directly for patient zero, a CIA officer working in Havana under cover from the State Department.

His testimony makes it very clear that he never was the victim of a microwave attack. It is also abundantly obvious that the “Russian Directorate” of the CIA wanted everyone to believe that Russia was behind these (non existing) attacks.

“If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.” And, for a while at least, they got away with that lie… Once again.

PS — In the interview, you will hear the good CIA officer explain that he was puzzled by the fact that the Cubans had immediately identified him as a spy. Ask yourself a simple question. Why exactly would the State Department recruit a former wedding photographer with no formal education whatsoever to conduct diplomacy in Cuba?

END of UPDATE

“In October 2017, the Havana Syndrome term first appeared on the Intel Today blog. The expression was coined by Dr. Ludwig De Braeckeleer. He was the first person to suggest that these events were related to microwave attacks.”

Dr. Leonid Ber
Havana Syndrome
(December 2022)

Perhaps, one of his most famous haiku is the following which he wrote during a summer retreat in a mountain temple:

閑かさや

岩にしみ入る

蝉の声

Allow me to first provide the most accurate translation I can think of.

The feeling of being free from noise!

The sound of the cicadas

penetrates deep inside the big rock.

Now, the beauty of poetry is that each of us is allowed to interpret it the way he likes. Here is my own understanding of this masterpiece.

The noise of the cicadas is powerful enough to penetrate deep inside a big rock, but it can not reach inside the mind of a wise man.

In times of stress and chaos, it is only natural to be confused and distracted by the noise around us. Yet, one must be disciplined and stay focused.

In these most trying moments, we have a duty to think clearly and precisely.

Despite a $85 billion annual budget, it took the US Intelligence Community and the CIA task force more than 5 years to realize that the primary cause of the Havana Syndrome was just the chirping of Cicadas.

And yet, from the very beginning, the CIA had all the information needed to rule out microwave attacks.

PS — For the record — The expression “Havana Syndrome” was coined by Dr. Ludwig De Braeckeleer and appeared for the first time in a story published by the Intel Today blog on October 3 2017. [Here is the tweet] Why would Wikipedia dispute such a simple fact?

“Men are tormented by the opinions they have of things, and not the things themselves.”

Michel de Montaigne

REFERENCES

US Intelligence Agencies Are Trying To Solve Scientific Mysteries And Failing Badly — BuzzFeed News

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Poetry — The Haiku Master, the Cicadas and the CIA

Poetry — The Haiku Master, the Cicadas and the CIA [Havana Syndrome : Was the CIA incompetent or malicious?]

“It is the role of intelligence to identify and characterize threats to the nation and to sift what is likely true from what is probably false. But the public has gotten very little useful or meaningful information from our intelligence agencies. They could do better.”

Steven Aftergood
Federation of American Scientists