On Sunday, CBS News investigated the case of “Carrie,” an FBI agent claiming to suffer from Havana syndrome.
“Bam, inside my right ear, it was like a dentist drilling on steroids,” Carrie said, referring to the onset of her symptoms. “That feeling when it gets too close to your eardrum? It’s like that, you know, times ten. It was like a high pitched, metallic drilling noise, and it knocked me forward at, like, a 45 degree angle this way.”
After interviewing Carrie, CBS News may have identified a culpable actor: Vitalii Kovalev, a Russian engineer-turned-chef.
Carrie withheld both her last name and the scope of her responsibilities at the FBI.
However, CBS News reported that Carrie had been investigating Kovalev during the time in question.
Russian exile Christo Grozev went on CBS News to describe Kovalev’s career trajectory. In 2020, Grozev discovered the names of Russian officials responsible for poisoning the dissident Alexei Navalny, and he now works as a reporter for The Insider magazine.
“It is not an easy job to just leave that behind. Once you’re in the military, and you’ve been trained, and the Ministry of Defense has invested in you, you remain at their beck and call for the rest of your life,” Grozev said, referring to Kovalev’s efforts to become a chef.
“We believe members of Unit 29155 were there in order to facilitate, supervise, or maybe even personally implement attacks on American diplomats, on American government officials, using an acoustic weapon.”
Grozev now believes Kovalev to have died in Ukraine.
“One theory is that he was sent there in order for him to be disposed of,” Grozev said. “I do believe at this point that he was dead.”
Take a look —
For the first time, there’s evidence of who might be behind the mysterious neurological symptoms known as Havana Syndrome, which has been reported by many American officials. https://t.co/5gpaz2Toy7 pic.twitter.com/vWAc8cv0ef
— 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) March 31, 2024
Last month, the NIH found no evidence of brain injuries after a five-year investigation, but it still acknowledged the symptoms of these patients.
“These individuals have real symptoms and are going through a very tough time,” Dr. Leighton Chan, NIH’s chief of rehabilitation medicine helped lead the research, told the Associated Press. “They can be quite profound, disabling and difficult to treat.”
CBS News spoke to one anonymous woman claiming to suffer from Havana syndrome. Her doctors told CBS News she had holes in her inner-ear canals. “Two surgeries put metal plates in her skull. Another surgery is likely,” CBS News said.
She and Carrie are among the hundreds of U.S. officials describing symptoms like ear pain and brain fog.
Last year, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, with some confidence, described the involvement of a foreign adversary as “very unlikely.”
“Those symptoms reported by U.S. personnel probably were the result of factors that did not involve a foreign adversary,” the Office of the Director of National Intelligence told CBS News in a statement.
Still, Pentagon official Greg Erdgreen managed the military’s investigation of this phenomenon, and he accused the past two administrations of setting the bar impossibly high.
“I think it was set so high because we did not, as a country, and a government, want to face some very hard truths,” Erdgreen theorized during his 60 Minutes segment. “Can we secure America? Are these massive counterintelligence failures? Can we protect American soil and our people on American soil? Are we being attacked? And if we’re being attacked, is that an act of war?”
Grozev agreed. “If this is what we’ve seen with the hundreds of cases of Anomalous Health Incidents, I can assure that this has become probably Putin’s biggest victory. In his own mind this has been Russia’s biggest victory against the West,” he concluded.
On Sunday, the White House defended its high standards as part of a push to investigate the case “thoroughly.”
The Horn editorial team and the Associated Press contributed to this article.