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Did Microwaves Harm US Employees at Its Embassy in Havana?
Cost: No Charge. Registration is required.
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CEU: PDH certificates are free for IEEE members. For non-members, the cost is $9 per certificate. You may pay when registering. PDH certificate will be emailed 2-3 weeks after the meeting.
Speaker: Dr. Kenneth R. Foster
Since 2016 a controversy has developed about a possible attack on US personnel at the U.S. Embassy in Havana. The incidents occurred in the employees' residences or, in some cases, in hotel rooms. Similar events have been reported by US consulate staff in Tashkent Uzbekistan and Guangzhou, China, as well as by members of the Canadian embassy staff in Havana. The events were followed by a variety of reported symptoms, initially a "perceived loud sound, a sensation of intense pressure or vibration in the head, and pain in the ear or more diffusely in the head" followed a few days later by cognitive deficits and vestibular disturbances. No physical agent has been identified as a cause of the symptoms, which remain unexplained. This talk will review all publicly available information about the incident, including medical followups of embassy personnel reporting symptoms, a review of medical records by the CDC, a report issued by a panel of the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM), and a recently declassified report by the Accountability Review Board (ARB) of the Department of State. The NASEM panel considered that the most plausible mechanism to explain staff symptoms was directed, pulsed radio frequency (RF) energy. Other proposed explanations include an attack by an acoustic weapon, environmentally caused illness, and mass psychogenic illness. This talk will conclude with a critical assessment of the various theories for the problems and a summary of the critique in the ARB report of the handling of the issue by the Department of State.
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