Catherine Werner was serving as a foreign security officer in China when she jolted away one night in 2017 to a pulsing, humming sound in her apartment.
With the sound came intense pressure filling the 31-year-old’s head. The distressing sound came nightly, along with vomiting, severe headaches, and trouble balancing. Even her dogs began vomiting and shivering.
Her mother would later describe her as 'just a shell of what she was.’
For years, Ms Werner and hundreds of other US diplotmats living abroad have been hit by bizarre and terrifying symptoms known collective as 'Havana syndrome.’
But doctors and government authorities have claimed it’s all in their heads, driven by the stress of their jobs working abroad in countries like Cuba and Russia.
As recently as March of this year, a government-backed study found that there were no changes to these patients’ brains compared to healthy people.
But this week, a damning new government report said that the condition may have been caused by 'foreign adversaries’ infiltrating US intelligence operations.
Living in the same neighborhood as Ms Werner, Mark Lenzi noticed a similar noise, which he described as a 'marble’ circling down as 'metal funnel.’
He heard it four times, always in the same place: right above his son’s crib as he put him to sleep at night. After that, he and his wife suffered migraines, dizziness, and memory issues.
Mr Lenzi, a 45-year-old intelligence officer at the time who used top-secret electronic, called it a 'directed, standoff attack against my apartment.’
Catherine Werner, 31 at the time, developed symptoms of mysterious Havana syndrome in 2017 while she was working in foreign security in China. Werner is pictured above
Havana syndrome received its name after multiple government personnel stationed at the US embassy in Havana, Cuba, reported symptoms. The above photo shows the US Embassy in Havana, in January 2023
And one woman, who wished to remain anonymous, told DailyMail.com that after her diplomat husband went to Havana, Cuba, twice in 2016, he became 'miserable, impulsive, and reckless,’ demanding a divorce after 17 years of marriage.
He committed suicide in November 2023, leaving behind five children.
These are just some of the 1,500 suspected cases of Havana syndrome, which have hit Americans living in at least 10 other countries, including CHina, Germany, Russia, and Vietnam.
Despite 'profound’ and 'disabling’ symptoms like persistent dizziness, nausea, and balance issues, experts have failed to find an explanation.
Radiation, chemical agents, and electromagnetic energy have all been to blame, but government officials suspect a more sinister cause.
This week, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence released a declassified report on Havana syndrome, which claimed that 'it appears increasingly likely’ that a 'foreign adversary’ like Russia or China could have compromised US intelligence networks.
The new report also accused the FBI and CIA of failing to properly investigate US agents’ symptoms.
’Because of this lack of cooperation and the Subcommittee’s inability to access specific information, the Subcommittee concludes there must be something IC [intelligence community] leadership has sought to prevent Congress from discovering,’ the scathing report says.
The phenomenon was dubbed Havana syndrome after multiple government personnel stationed at the US embassy in Havana, Cuba, reported symptoms.
However, symptoms have also been reported in the US, Austria, China, Colombia, Georgia, Germany, India, Poland, Russia, and Vietnam.
Ms Werner’s mother, US Air Force veteran Laura Hughes, said that she became concerned about her daughter’s health during their frequent video calls in 2017.
She told NBC News: 'She’s just a shell of what she was. She was ashen. Her complexion was off. She looked very, very fatigued.’
Ms Werner assumed her symptoms were due to a broken air conditioner in her apartment or Guangzhou, China’s, poor air quality.
But as her health declined, Ms Hughes traveled to China to take care of her daughter and buy her a new filter for her air conditioner. She also brought imported food and water, but nothing alleviated the symptoms.
Ms Hughes even began hearing noises herself.
When Ms Werner adopted these two dogs, her mother said the pets soon began vomiting blood and shivering in the apartment
Mark Lenzi, pictured above, lived in the same neighborhood as Ms Werner and developed the same symptoms after hearing mysterious noises while he put his infant son to bed. Doctors said that while they couldn’t find an explanation, 'it would be hard not to conclude that there was serious damage to this gentleman’s brain’
She said: 'We heard a very high-pitched sound in Catherine’s bedroom. And we heard a very low, pulsing sound in the living room.
’Our heads would pulse. You would feel like you would want to regurgitate. You could become instantly paralyzed, instantaneously fatigued.”’
When Ms Werner adopted two dogs, they shortly began vomiting blood and shivering under the bed. On one occasion, Ms Hughes said she found the two dogs standing just outside the living room and staring at something in unison.
When Ms Werner returned to the US, doctors at the University of Pennsylvania administered a series of tests dubbed HABIT, short for Havana Acquired Brain Injury Tool.
The tests found that she had an 'organic brain injury,’ a general term for brain disorders that impair cognitive functioning but do not show any physical changes to the brain.
Mr Lenzi lived in the same neighborhood as Ms Werner and started experiencing the unexplained headaches, memory loss, and trouble sleeping around the same time.
Michael Rey, a producer at 60 Minutes, said in 2021: 'He suffered through migraines, dizziness, [and] memory issues. And his big concern was that nobody believed him.
’He had a very hard time convincing his superiors something was up and this needed to be addressed.’
Mr Lenzi told 60 Minutes that he thinks he was targeted for his work, as he used top-secret equipment to analyze electronic threats to diplomatic missions.
’This was a directed standoff attack against my apartment,’ he said.
Though a study of Mr Lenzi done by the concussion group reported that he had 'memory and attention problems; problems in executive functioning, organization, and reading; and increased irritability and poor sleep,’ they found no explanation.
Marc Polymeropoulos, pictured above in 2003, developed severe migraines and vision problems while working in Russia. He shared that it 'simply doesn’t make sense’
’There’s no environmental cause that causes the body damage that I saw,’ an anonymous PhD source told DailyMail.com last year. 'I don’t know how you create damage inside of a body, like what was seen, that comes on all of a sudden, and could be called „pre-existing conditions”’
Dr Edward Soll, medical director of The Concussion Group and a radiologist who was among those who evaluated Lenzi’s brain scans, told CNN: 'There’s no smoking gun.
’Still, looking at the compendium of evidence, it would be hard not to conclude that there was serious damage to this gentleman’s brain.’
In Russia, over 3,000 miles away from Ms Werner and Mr Lenzi in Russia, Marc Polymeropoulos was struck with severe migraines and vertigo in 2017.
He initially put the symptoms down to food poisoning, but more painful 'attacks’ came in the coming days.
Six years later, the pain has developed into a 'vice on [his] skull,’ and his vision became so bad at times that he couldn’t drive. His career with the CIA was cut short in 2019.
Mr Polymeropoulos told Der Spiegel about himself and other government employees suffering from Havana syndrome: 'We were portrayed as people who had fallen victim to mass hysteria.’
He shared with investigators that he thinks he and the others were targeted by Russian intelligence services, as it 'simply doesn’t make sense’ otherwise that people who worked in a Russia context were struck down with the mysterious illness.
And the impact of the illness has even destroyed families.
One woman told DailyMail.com that her husband worked for the US government and traveled to Havana twice in 2016.
But later, after 17 years of marriage, he suddenly demanded a divorce.
The woman said: 'After this, his behavior changed drastically for the worst.’
She said he 'went from happy, rational, healthy man to a miserable, impulsive, reckless, promiscuous, addicted man.’
And in November 2023, he took his own life.
Mr Polymeropoulos, pictured in Moscow in 2017, shared with investigators that he thinks he and the others were targeted by Russian intelligence services
The woman said: 'His work is providing benefits to his kids to 'make up’ for his death, but they never helped him.’
She claims her husband enrolled in a study funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 2019, which evaluated 81 intelligence workers who claimed to suffer from Havana syndrome.
Though the team could not rule out a temporary injury, they found 'a lack of evidence for an MRI-detectable difference between individuals with AHIs and controls.’
Despite a lack of evidence, the research team admitted that 'these individuals have real symptoms and are going through a very tough time.
’They can be quite profound, disabling and difficult to treat.’
The woman told this website: '[The NIH] stated he had a pre-existing condition. It is a flat-out lie. He had a brain trauma that appears out of nowhere.’
She now is left with a plea: 'What happened to him?’
Some experts have suggested that Havana syndrome is psychosomatic. In 2020, scientists in California and New Zealand argued that the symptoms were a psychological response to the stressful post-Cold War conditions in which diplomats were living as well as rumors of a ‘new and enigmatic sonic device.’
They said: ‘The symptoms of the American diplomats in Havana closely parallel those associated with war trauma – right down to the concussion-like symptoms that have often confounded physicians who have misdiagnosed it as brain trauma in the past.’
However, a scientific review in 2020 determined that radiofrequency energy, a type of radiation that includes microwaves, was the most likely cause of the injuries.
Now, the new report from the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence suggests that foreign interference is to blame.
The subcommittee also urged intelligence officials to revisit previous investigations into Havana syndrome and prioritize care for the patients left suffering.
The report states: 'While some of those impacted have succeeded in receiving federal support for ongoing medical care, including but not limited to workers’ compensation, significant gaps have been identified which have left some in need of care for injuries received while serving the country.’
