Fake News Reports Blamed Cuba, Russia And China Of 'Sonic Attack' On U.S. Diplomats - The Culprits Were Crickets

moon of alabama

In the autumn of 2016 U.S. diplomats stationed in Cuba started to complain about being affected by some mysterious noise. Twenty four embassy staff and family claimed a bizarre list of symptoms - from headaches, dizziness and sleeping difficulties to problems with balance, vision and hearing. Doctors were not sure what affected these people. There were all kinds of speculations about a mysterious 'sonic weapons' with which the diplomats were 'attacked', but no convincing evidence was found.

Cuba fully cooperated with an FBI investigation into the mystery. Scientist dispelled the idea of a 'sonic weapon' attack. The medical evidence turned out to be dubious. Nevertheless anti-Cuban politicians in the U.S. successfully used the issue to pressure the White House to penalize the country. The Trump administration recalled 60% of its embassy personal in Havana and expelled Cuban diplomats from the embassy in Washington. It issued a travel warning for its citizens going to Cuba and stopped issuing visas for Cubans in Havana.

The investigation continued. Some recordings of the mysterious noise were made and doctors played various of these to the affected persons. 

The patients confirmed that the sound was like the noise that had bothered them. On October 17 2017 those sound files were given to the Associated Press and published (vid). In its report on the files the APnoted that:

It sounds sort of like a mass of crickets.

The Cuban government and its scientist analyzed those sound files and compared them with known sound sources in Cuba. On October 27 2017 they published their conclusions. The results were also handed to U.S. investigators. The AP reported the Cuban finding:

Cuba on Thursday presented its most detailed defense to date against U.S. accusations that American diplomats in Havana were subjected to mysterious sonic attacks that left them with a variety of ailments including headaches, hearing problems and concussions.In a half-hour, prime-time special titled “Alleged Sonic Attacks,” Cuban officials attempted to undermine the Trump administration’s assertion that 24 U.S. officials or their relatives had been subjected to deliberate attacks by a still-undetermined culprit. 

...
Officials with Cuba’s Interior Ministry said that U.S. investigators had presented them with three recordings made by presumed victims of sonic attacks and that analysis of the sounds showed them to be extremely similar to those of crickets and cicadas that live along the northern coast of Cuba.
“It’s the same bandwidth and it’s audibly very similar,” said Lt. Col. Juan Carlos Molina, a telecommunications specialist with the Interior Ministry. “We compared the spectrums of the sounds and evidently this common sound is very similar to the sound of a cicada.”

Base on the AP report this site mocked the U.S. diplomats over their retreat from cricket noise.

The Havana incident was probably based on some innocent fear of some weapon. Or it may have been a ploy by anti-Cuban forces to sabotage the recovering relations with Cuba. Most likely though the whole issue was a mass psychosis over an unfamiliar natural noise - crickets.

The AP wire story ran on many news sites but only few looked further into it. The report should have closed the issue, but it was soon forgotten.

Even after the Cuban scientist delivered their very plausible explanation, U.S. government fear mongering over the 'sonic attack' did not die down. Only the target changed.

In May 2018 the U.S. suddenly accused China of a similar 'attack' as the ones that allegedly happened in Cuba:

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Wednesday that an incident involving a US government employee stationed in China who reported "abnormal sensations of sound and pressure" suggesting a mild brain injury has medical indications that are "very similar" and "entirely consistent" to those experienced by American diplomats posted in Havana.

But by mid 2018 a special task force set up by the State Department was still clueless of what caused the sickness of the diplomats affected in Cuba and later also in China. There are serious questions if the 'brain damage' that the sound allegedly caused even exists. None of the diplomats was examined before the incidents happened. The minor 'damage' some doctors saw in the brain scan pictures of some of their patients may well have been there way before they joined the State Department.

The China track went nowhere. But in September 2018 Russia was suddenly accused as being the cause of the menacing noise. NBC Newsreported:

Intelligence agencies investigating mysterious "attacks" that led to brain injuries in U.S. personnel in Cuba and China consider Russia to be the main suspect, three U.S. officials and two others briefed on the investigation tell NBC News.The suspicion that Russia is likely behind the alleged attacks is backed up by evidence from communications intercepts, known in the spy world as signals intelligence, amassed during a lengthy and ongoing investigation involving the FBI, the CIA and other U.S. agencies. The officials declined to elaborate on the nature of the intelligence.
The evidence is not yet conclusive enough, however, for the U.S. to formally assign blame to Moscow for incidents that started in late 2016 and have continued in 2018, causing a major rupture in U.S.-Cuba relations.

The NBC story came with a red flag. One of its authors was the CIA's mop-up man Ken Dilanian who lets the CIA rewrite his stories before they get published. Whenever one sees that author's name one must presume to read disinformation.

But it did not matter. Based on the vague NBC report the Daily Beastheadlined: Russia Is No. 1 Suspect in Mystery Brain Attacks in Cuba and China: Report. The Guardian joined in with: Russia main suspect behind illnesses of US staff in Cuba and China – report. The Russophobe MSNBC aired a whole segment about the issue.

None of the reports mention the year old Cuban finding of cicada noise the AP had previously published.

Last Friday the New York Times reported that U.S. scientists found that the mysterious noise identified by the diplomats was indeed from crickets:

Alexander Stubbs of the University of California, Berkeley, and Fernando Montealegre-Z of the University of Lincoln in England studied a recording of the sounds made by diplomats and published by The Associated Press.“There’s plenty of debate in the medical community over what, if any, physical damage there is to these individuals,” said Mr. Stubbs in a phone interview. “All I can say fairly definitively is that the A.P.-released recording is of a cricket, and we think we know what species it is.”
...
The song of the Indies short-tailed cricket “matches, in nuanced detail, the A.P. recording in duration, pulse repetition rate, power spectrum, pulse rate stability, and oscillations per pulse,” the scientists wrote in their analysis.

The published noise is indeed extremely similar to the noise of the (west-)Indies short-tailed cricket recorded in this scientific database.

The New York Times does not even mention that Cuban scientists had come to the same result as the U.S. scientists. Nor does it dispel the "Russia did it" nonsense NBC News and other were spewing.

The issue is now probably buried, but the damage it did will not be rectified.

Diplomatic relations with Cuba are still reduced. The State Department still has a travel warning for Cuba "due to attacks targeting U.S. Embassy Havana employees". In the public record Russia is still accused of causing this non-issue in which it was never involved.

Not one of the 'journalists' involved in the fear campaign will be punished for ignoring the earlier AP report of the Cuban finding. None of the media that smeared Russia over the issue will retract those reports or expose the officials who initiated them.

Cricket noise can be as loud as 100 decibel. It is extremely irritating to anyone not used to it. Some diplomats new to Cuba felt affected by it. Other joined them in their fear of being attacked by some mysterious weapon. But the medical effects were very minor. Some doctors claimed to have found minor brain damage, others refuted those results as too vague.

Anti-Cuban politicians used the issue to press for penalties and the White House delivered to them. Those deep-state forces who want to portrait China and Russia as enemies hooked onto the issue. The media willingly followed them while ignoring the science that refuted the 'sonic weapon' thesis and the very plausible explanation the Cuban scientists had found.

The whole story reminds us again to be wary of all news that accuses this or that person, group or country of doing something bad to perceived 'U.S. interests'. Most of such stories are fake news, based on false claims and assertions.

Then again - maybe Putin indeed weaponized those Indie short tail crickets. His aim, sources say, was to create doubt over the truthfulness of the news in 'western' media. Officials say that his ploy was very effective. 

They ask for more money to counter it.

Posted by b on January 7, 2019 at 01:41 PM | Permalink

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2019/01/fake-news-reports-blamed-cuba-russia-and-china-of-sonic-attack-on-us-diplomats-the-culprits-were-cri.html#more