By Rosa Miriam Elizalde on November 21, 2024
the US Embassy in Havana. photo: Bill Hackwell
Lying is not Complicated, but Enduring a Lie over Time is..
Seven years have passed since the great hoax known as the “Havana syndrome”, according to which U.S. diplomats suffered alleged acoustic attacks in Cuba that compromised their health. One of the speculations in vogue was that the “painful sounds” selectively perceived by the officials were due to attacks with microwave weapons. Over time, the hoax faded for lack of scientific evidence – there was no way to explain how a sound attacks some individuals and not others in the same room – but now we learn that the U.S. government has been experimenting with high-power microwave (HPM) systems to stop vehicles or ships by jamming their electronic systems.
According to an investigation published in the U.S. magazine Wired
(https://acortar.link/s0CXpG), the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency has at least one mysterious system capable of “covertly (and nonviolently)” disabling ships, including large ones. The device was considered for use against oil-laden ships sailing between Venezuela and Cuba during Donald Trump’s presidency.
“The Trump administration thought that if the US intercepted or otherwise sabotaged oil tankers sailing from Venezuela to Cuba, it could strike a blow to both regimes,” a CIA source told Wired, which published this revelation on October 31 as part of a broader investigation into Washington’s failed efforts to overthrow Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro between 2018 and 2020.
The system in question not only has the capability to employ techniques to stop or slow a vessel without causing damage to the ship’s structure, but is complemented by electronic attacks that jam key communications on the vessel. According to Wired, the CIA assessed the use of microwaves that require discreetly approaching the target, that involved the use of unmanned or disguised platforms to reduce the risk of detection.
“At least one option involved the CIA, which has a mobile system that can covertly (and nonviolently) disable ships. Trump administration officials wanted the agency to move the system near Venezuela, to target some of its fuel ships,” Wired continues. “The agency refused. CIA officials explained that they only had one such system, which at the time was in another hemisphere, and that they didn’t want to move it to the northern tip of South America.”
The detail that the CIA only had one of these systems in another hemisphere is very significant, according to The War Zone (TWZ), a military analysis platform: “This would seem to indicate that the system in question is already being deployed outside the Western Hemisphere, and possibly with a very specific target in mind. This could also indicate a reluctance to potentially expose what this system can do, unless there is a particularly serious crisis or very high priority clandestine operations.”
TWZ claims that U.S. defense contractors have been working for years on specially developed microwave emitter systems to shoot down swarms of drones quickly and at very low cost. There are at least two programs for the use of these weapons, such as the High Power Joint Electromagnetic Non-Kinetic Strike (Hijenks) and the Counter-electronics High Power Microwave Missile Project (Champ), apparently used against Iranian ships in the Red Sea and under the protection of the alliance between Washington and Tel Aviv.
Having eliminated the esoteric clue of the “Havana Syndrome” that fooled even respectable US academics, what remains is what the US government and some of its satellites can do. We now know that the uproar of the first Trump administration over the alleged attacks on its diplomats was nothing more than the projection of what was cooking in Washington and what the U.S. government refused to see of itself: its violence, its injustice, its disregard for the truth, its indifference to the fate of others, its fierce individualism.
Let us not forget that under the pretext of the “Havana syndrome” more than 240 additional blockade sanctions were imposed on Cuba, which has led the Caribbean country to the current crisis. And if this was the first season of Trump and his hawks, what other secret weapons are awaiting us? With what lies will they try to politicize their new outrages?
Source: La Jornada, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English