The Soviet Union was bombarding the U.S. Embassy in Moscow with microwaves, in what some officials feared was an attempt to harm American diplomats.
The discovery led to years of highly classified research by the Pentagon to assess the impact on the body and mind of what the Russians were doing. Did the Russians implant sounds or words into the heads of American diplomats in order to disrupt their work and cause health problems?
Sharon Weinberger said in today's episode of the Conspiracyland that the questions triggered a brain weapons arms race. The second episode of the "Conspiracyland" series is called "The Strange Story of Havana Syndrome"
Weinberger said that one of the theories was that the soviets knew something they didn't know. They discovered a secret of weaponizing microwaves. We had to catch up with them.
One of the most puzzling issues that has confronted U.S. officials in recent years is the epidemic of strange health ailments, ranging from dizziness to brain injuries, reported by U Havana Syndrome is a phenomenon.
Some in the U.S. intelligence community believed that the "Havana syndrome" symptoms were caused by Russian microwave attacks.
The Pentagon was never able to establish a connection between microwave exposure and injuries to the body and brain undercutting the U.S. interest in developing a brain weapon.
This finding is supported by documents released this week that show how the Pentagon bombarded rhesus monkeys with microwaves in the 1960s to see if they were affected by the microwaves. The documents were obtained by a non profit. "Henry Kissinger's Radiation Treatment" is a bonus episode of "Conspiracyland" and will be released today.
The documents show that there was no evidence that the monkeys were harmed by the microwave bombardment. In a September 1967 memo, a CIA analyst said that people exposed to monkey experiments are not at risk of injury.
James McIlwain, a neuroscientist who had reviewed the monkey tests for the Pentagon and concluded there was no evidence of the effect of microwaves on their performance, was interviewed by "Conspiracyland".
In the 1970s, the U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union demanded that Secretary of State Henry Kissinger confront the Soviets over microwave bombardments. While serving as ambassador, he was diagnosed with leukemia and thought it could have been the result of the soviet bombardment.
Some of the conversations that Kissinger had with the Soviet Ambassador over the issue are included in the documents.
Kissinger wanted to speak to you about the signal. Dobrynin pretended to be unaware of what Kissinger was saying.
Kissinger said that the beam was being beamed into the embassy. He told the Soviets to turn it off until he arrived in Moscow, at which point he could get a radiation treatment.
Dobrynin said that you would become radioactive.
Kissinger made it clear that the State Department was under pressure to call out the Russians publicly and pressure them to stop using microwaves. Kissinger said that too many people knew about it. Unless something is happening, we will catch hell.
The soviets did not bombard the embassy with microwaves, but they did turn it off under U.S. pressure. They are believed to have used microwaves to eavesdrop on the conversations of U.S. diplomats.
The Pentagon still wants to develop its own microwave weapon. In "Conspiracyland," Weinberger explains that after the Sept. 11 attacks, researchers stepped up their efforts to develop a microwave weapon that could implant sounds and words into the heads of terrorists. It became known as a voice of God weapon.
She said that if you could send words into people's heads, they would think they were crazy. They could be made to believe that God is talking to them, and that they should lay down their weapons.
She said that would be the ultimate gas lighting. Exotic theories never panned out in microwave weapons research.
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The photo illustration is from Yahoo News and the photos are from the Bettmann Archive.
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