U.S. officials in Vietnam were injured in a Havana syndrome-style attack before Vice President Kamala Harris arrived. 2021 trip to Hanoi. NOW, new evidence suggests that Russia may have been involved – and that it may have been the Vietnamese themselves who received the technology that could have caused the injuries.
At the time, the U.S. Embassy in Hanoi announced that a possible “abnormal health incident,” the federal government’s term for so-called Havana syndrome attacks, was slowing Harris’ arrival in Vietnam. 60 Minutes has learned that 11 people reported being beaten in separate incidents before Harris entered the country: two people who were U.S. embassy officials in Hanoi and nine people who were part of a team advance of the Department of Defense preparing for Harris’ visit.
While at least some injured American personnel were evacuated out of the country, Harris remained unharmed and continued her journey to Hanoi after a three-hour delay in Singapore.
Symptoms of Havana syndrome often include nausea, dizziness, migraines, and vision and hearing problems that may persist over a long period of time. Although U.S. officials cannot confirm the cause, experts 60 Minutes spoke with believe the incidents involve targeted sound or microwave attacks.
For more than five years, 60 Minutes has been investigating these attacks. For the latest report, which aired this week, producers Michael Rey and Oriana Zill de Granados teamed up with Christo Grozev, an investigative reporter who currently leads investigative work for The Insider. Grozev is well known for his investigation into the poisoning of the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
While 60 Minutes was investigating the Hanoi incident, a source suggested that the Vietnamese themselves had been given some sort of technology that could have caused the “Havana Syndrome” attack. According to the source, the Vietnamese may have been asked to use this technology to eavesdrop on Americans before Harris’ trip, but they may not have known that the technology could harm the people they used it on.
In his research, Grozev found a document that seems to indicate that this theory might be correct.
Five months before Harris’ visit to Hanoi, an email was sent to Russia’s Security Council, the body of senior Russian officials who run the country’s defense and security agencies.
According to Grozev, a document in the email shows that Russian intelligence services lobbied and obtained permission from President Vladimir Putin to provide proprietary technology to Vietnamese security services. Among the list of recommended technologies to share were “LRAD acoustic transmitters” and “shortwave equipment for scanning the human body.”
LRAD, which stands for “Long Range Acoustic Device,” is a military-grade sonic weapon that discharges a targeted beam of sound at an extremely high volume. An LRAD device was used to thwart a pirate attack on a cruise ship in 2005, and since then the US military has used these devices to send warnings to the field, such as warning people to stay away from the perimeter of a military base. But when turned on at the highest volume, some LRAD systems can produce a sound pressure level of 162 decibels. The human pain threshold is around 130 decibels.
Based on his research, Grozev said he suspects Russia is sending weapons technology like this to foreign governments that could be used in Havana Syndrome attacks.
“I believe that Russia helps other governments in certain operations that they might want to carry out themselves, and in this way it keeps those governments loyal for future operations that Russia might need on their territory,” said Grozev on 60 Minutes.
Retired Lt. Col. Greg Edgreen led an investigation for the Defense Intelligence Agency into abnormal health incidents, called Havana syndrome attacks because they were first reported by U.S. officials based at the U.S. Embassy in Cuba in 2016. He told 60 Minutes. he also believes the Russians were involved in the 2021 attack in Vietnam.
“They saw us getting closer and closer to Cuba and they wanted to stop that…,” Edgreen said. “Then they tried to follow up and do the same thing with Vietnam, another long-term strategic ally of Hanoi, by disrupting Vice President Kamala Harris’ trip to Vietnam.”
While leading the military investigation into abnormal health incidents, Edgreen said the Pentagon supports its investigation into whether Russia was behind the attacks. But the Trump and Biden administrations have set the evidentiary bar incredibly high, he said.
Grozev believes that the US government would need a very high threshold of certainty before it could acknowledge the Kremlin’s role – because of what would happen if it did.
“Once you admit that this happened, it’s a can of worms,” Grozev said. “It forces you to confront the fact that your archenemy is acting against your own people, your own intelligence services, on your territory, and that is nothing short of a declaration of war.”
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