Feds list compensation rules for Havana syndrome victims

The State Department on Friday released its rules and guidelines for providing financial support to victims of Havana syndrome, the mysterious ailments that have affected American diplomats, CIA officers and others since 2016.

The payout for a confirmed brain injury will be $140,475, according to the State Department regulations. Officials and family members with severe injuries that prevent them from working or maintaining relationships will qualify for $187,300.

CIA guidelines for paying its injured officers will be kept secret. But U.S. officials said the agency’s rules are broadly similar, using the same definitions for brain injuries and the same payment scale.

The cause of the Havana syndrome, a set of symptoms first observed in CIA officers and diplomats serving in Cuba, remains a mystery, and even the number of people injured in possible “anomalous health events,” the bureaucratic term favored by the government, is contested.

While dozens of reported cases have been attributed to other medical conditions, some have defied any explanation, and experts have dismissed the possibility that they could be forms of “functional illness,” or psychosomatic symptoms.

The CIA and other agencies continue to investigate, focusing on a handful of incidents in Havana; Vienna; Belgrade, Serbia; and Hanoi, Vietnam. Officials, lawmakers and victims groups have grown frustrated that an explanation remains illusive.

An interim CIA report found no evidence that the injuries were caused by a hostile foreign actor, like Russia. A panel of experts working for the director of national intelligence released an executive summary of another report that said pulsed energy could be responsible for the injuries.

While the two reports were not contradictory, some lawmakers and victims said the implications were quite different.

The CIA deputy director, David S. Cohen, updated lawmakers from various committees on the investigation during a closed Senate briefing Thursday.

Some senators asked about the differences between the two reports. Cohen told lawmakers that the CIA was aware of the panel’s findings when its interim report was written and argued the efforts were not contradictory. The panel of experts was looking at plausible means of injury, and the CIA was looking for evidence of what, and who, was responsible.

Mark Lenzi, a State Department official injured in China, said the investigation continued to be inadequate.

“State and CIA will continue to give Congress an incomplete and misleading picture of what the U.S. government knows about the pulsed microwave attacks that injured me, my family and my American Foreign Service neighbor and her family members in China ,” he said.

In a rare bipartisan action, Congress approved the Havana Act last year, legislation originally drafted by Sen. Susan Collins to provide compensation for government officials debilitated by Havana syndrome.

Under the State Department’s rules, victims must show they have a brain injury in connection with “war, insurgency, hostile act, terrorist activity, or other incidents designated by the Secretary of State” to qualify for the aid. The injury must have occurred after Jan. 1, 2016. Victims must also show that they have had active treatment for injuries for at least 12 months.