|
 CIA director William Burns named a career undercover spy, who was
part of the search for the al Qaeda leader that ended with him being
killed by U.S. forces in Pakistan in 2011, the source said. The Wall
Street Journal first reported the appointment.
Dozens of U.S. diplomats and other officials, including CIA
officers, have been afflicted by "Havana Syndrome," so named because
it first was reported by officials assigned to the U.S. embassy in
Cuba.
The Journal said that a panel organized by the National Academy of
Sciences, Engineering and Medicine reported last December that some
type of "directed energy" beams were strongly suspected as causing
the ailment, which includes dizziness, headaches and nausea.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in June that a
government-wide review was underway into who or what caused
suspected radio frequency attacks "directed" at diplomats.
Austria has been working with U.S. authorities to investigate a
spate of suspected cases among U.S. diplomats in Vienna, the
Austrian Foreign Ministry said on Saturday.
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 Since U.S. President Joe Biden
took office in January, roughly two dozen
intelligence officers, diplomats and other
officials in Vienna have reported symptoms
similar to those of Havana syndrome, making it
the second-biggest hotspot after Havana, the New
Yorker magazine reported on Friday.
The National Security Agency (NSA) said in a
2014 memo to one intelligence officer who said
he had suffered possible symptoms that an
unnamed "hostile country" to which the official
traveled in the late 1990s had a "high powered
microwave system weapon that may have the
ability to weaken, intimidate or kill an enemy
over time and without leaving evidence."
The memo, which was read by Reuters, said
intelligence indicated that such a weapon was
"designed to bathe a target's living quarters in
microwaves, causing numerous physical effects,
including a damaged nervous system."
(Reporting By Mark Hosenball; Editing by Heather
Timmons and Grant McCool)
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