Cuban mystery grows: What befell diplomats?

WASHINGTON — The blaring, grinding noise jolted the American diplomat from his bed in a Havana hotel. He moved just a few feet, and there was silence. He climbed back into bed. Inexplicably, the agonizing sound hit him again. It was as if he’d walked through some invisible wall cutting straight through his room.

Soon came the hearing loss, and the speech problems, symptoms both similar and altogether different from others among at least 21 U.S. victims in an international mystery still unfolding in Cuba. The top U.S. diplomat has called them “health attacks.”

New details learned by the Associated Press indicate at least some of the incidents were confined to specific rooms or even parts of rooms with laserlike specificity.

“None of this has a reasonable explanation,” said Fulton Armstrong, a former CIA official who served in Havana long before America reopened an embassy there. “It’s just mystery after mystery after mystery.”

Suspicion initially focused on a sonic weapon, and on the Cubans. Yet the diagnosis of mild brain injury, considered unlikely to result from sound, has confounded the FBI, the State Department and U.S. intelligence agencies involved in the investigation.

Some victims now have problems concentrating or recalling specific words, several officials said, the latest signs of more serious damage than the U.S. government initially realized. The United States first acknowledged the attacks in August — nine months after symptoms were first reported.

The motive is unclear. Investigators are at a loss to explain why Canadians were harmed, too, including some who reported nosebleeds. Fewer than 10 Canadian diplomatic households in Cuba were affected, a Canadian official said. Unlike the U.S., Canada has maintained warm ties to Cuba for decades.

After the U.S. complained to Cuba’s government this year and Canada detected its own cases, the FBI and the RCMP travelled to Havana to investigate.

In May, Washington expelled two Cuban diplomats to protest the failure to protect Americans serving there. But the U.S. has taken pains not to accuse Havana of perpetrating the attacks.