Despite clashes over reality of Havana Syndrome, CIA agents have been paid for injuries

Tricare, a health care program managed by the Defense Health Agency for U.S. military personnel, regards anomalous health incidents as “counterintelligence incidents.”

“Your supporting counterintelligence office will contact you for a debrief on the incident,” its website advises those seeking care.

Although they appreciate their compensation, victims of the Havana Syndrome have told the Herald they can’t understand why the government seems to be holding two opposing positions at once.

“I point to Aristotle’s principle of non-contradiction, which suggests that opposites cannot be true at the same time,” said Marc Polymeropoulos, a retired senior CIA official who was deputy chief for operations in Europe and Eurasia when he was injured in Moscow in one the incidents. He received compensation under the Havana Act for an injury in the line of duty.

“This compensation was based specifically on a formal traumatic brain injury diagnosis from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, which included the statement from my doctors that I did not have a preexisting condition,” he said. “Yet the U.S. government continues to insist, from the various reports including from the Director of National Intelligence and now the National Institutes of Health, that, in effect, nothing whatsoever happened to me. This simply makes no sense.”

Participants in the NIH study that found no traces of brain injuries in Havana Syndrome patients raised several complaints, including allegations of bias and mishandling of their medical data on the part of the NIH researchers. Dr. David Relman, a prominent Stanford University professor who led two other government-commissioned studies on Havana Syndrome, pointed out several limitations in the NIH research, including that some imaging and blood tests were after too much time had passed to show or measure the injuries.

A scientist involved in previous imaging studies of Havana Syndrome patients said the main problem with the NIH study is that it mixed groups of people who were injured in different countries at different times, and some even had already gone through rehabilitation.

“The NIH group mixes people from everywhere and finds nothing,” the scientist said. “It’s not scientific to do something like this.”

The NIH study, the scientist said, misrepresents itself as a study trying to replicate the results from the one conducted at Penn with victims injured in Cuba, but only 28% of the sample of people they used correspond to the patients studied by the Penn team, “and most of that 28% had received extensive therapy.”

“This one study doesn’t change anything,” Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio said of the NIH study. “We must continue to fully understand what these Havana Syndrome victims experienced. I remain committed to ensuring these individuals have full access to the healthcare and compensation they deserve.”

The House Intelligence Committee recently launched a formal investigation into how U.S. spy agencies handled the investigation of the Havana Syndrome. The Senate Intelligence Committee has also been gathering testimonies in recent months.

“We need to determine why, how, who, or what is responsible for these possible directed energy attacks,” Rubio said.

On Sunday, CBS News’ 60 Minutes will air a segment on the Havana Syndrome. According to a news release, “For the first time, sources tell 60 Minutes they have evidence that a U.S. adversary may be involved.”