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Havana Syndrome in Vietnam: Possible Russian role in attack on Americans, according to new evidence
U.S. officials in Vietnam were injured in a Havana Syndrome style attack ahead of Vice President Kamala Harris’s 2021 trip to Hanoi. Now, new evidence suggests Russia may have been involved — and that it may have been the Vietnamese themselves who were given technology that could have caused the injuries.
At the time, the U.S. embassy in Hanoi announced that a possible “anomalous health incident,” the federal government’s term for so-called Havana Syndrome attacks, was slowing Harris’s arrival in Vietnam. 60 Minutes has learned that 11 people reported being struck in separate incidents before Harris entered the country: two people who were officials at the American embassy in Hanoi, and nine people who were part of a Defense Department advance team preparing for Harris’s visit.
While at least some of the injured U.S. personnel were medevaced out of the country, Harris was unharmed and continued her trip to Hanoi after a three-hour delay in Singapore.
Symptoms of Havana Syndrome often include nausea, dizziness, migraines, and problems with vision and hearing that can persist over a long period of time. While U.S. officials cannot confirm what causes it, experts 60 Minutes has spoken with believe the incidents involve targeted sonic or microwave attacks.
60 Minutes has been investigating these attacks for more than five years. For the latest report, which aired on the broadcast this week, producers Michael Rey and Oriana Zill de Granados teamed up with Christo Grozev, an investigative journalist who currently leads investigative work for The Insider. Grozev is well-known for his investigation into the poisoning of the late Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny.
As 60 Minutes investigated the Hanoi incident, a source suggested that the Vietnamese themselves had been given some kind of technology that may have caused the “Havana Syndrome” attack. According to the source, the Vietnamese may have been told to use the technology to listen in on the Americans ahead of Harris’s trip — but they may not have known this the technology could harm the people they were using it on.
In his research, Grozev found a document that seems to indicate this theory may be correct.
Five months before Harris’s visit to Hanoi, an email was sent to the Security Council of Russia, the body of top Russian officials who head the country’s defense and security agencies.
According to Grozev, a document within the email shows that Russian intelligence lobbied for and received permission from President Vladimir Putin to provide exclusive technology to Vietnamese security services. Among the list of recommended technologies to be shared were “LRAD acoustic emitters” and “short-wave 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 extremely high volume. An LRAD device was used to thwart a pirate attack on a cruise ship in 2005, and since then, the U.S. military has used the devices to send warnings in the field, such as cautioning people away from an Army base perimeter. But when left on at its highest volume, some LRAD systems can produce a sound pressure level of 162 decibels. The human pain threshold is about 130 decibels.
Based on his research, Grozev said he suspects Russia is sending weapons technology like this, which may be used in Havana Syndrome attacks, to foreign governments.
“I believe that Russia is assisting other governments with some operations that those governments may want to do on their own, and in this way establishing loyalty from these governments for future operations that Russia might need on their territory,” Grozev told 60 Minutes.
Retired Army Lieutenant Colonel Greg Edgreen ran an investigation for the Defense Intelligence Agency into anomalous health incidents, which have been referred to as Havana Syndrome attacks because they were first reported by American officials based in the U.S. embassy in Cuba in 2016. He told 60 Minutes he also believes Russians were involved in the 2021 attack in Vietnam.
“They saw us getting closer and closer to Cuba, and they wanted to stop it…” Edgreen said. “Then they tried to follow up and do the same thing with Vietnam, another long-term strategic ally to Hanoi, by disrupting Vice President Kamala Harris’ trip to Vietnam.”
While running the military investigation into anomalous health incidents, Edgreen said the Pentagon supported his investigation into whether Russia was behind the attacks. But the Trump and Biden administrations set the bar for proof impossibly high, he said.
Grozev believes the U.S. government would require a very high threshold of certainty before they could acknowledge the Kremlin’s role — because of what will happen if they do.
“Once you admit that this happened, it is a Pandora[‘s] box,” Grozev said. “It requires you to confront the fact that you have your arch enemy acting against your own people, your own intelligence workers, on your territory, and this is nothing other than a declaration of war.”
Havana Syndrome in Vietnam: Possible Russian role in attack on Americans, according to new evidence
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Trump’s exaggerates claim that many Americans are ‘hostages’ in Afghanistan
WASHINGTON — When former President Donald Trump argues that President Joe Biden botched the 2021 American withdrawal from Afghanistan — a broad point that even some of Biden’s fellow Democrats will concede — he often laments what his campaign says are hundreds or thousands of U.S. citizens trapped in a country ruled by the Taliban.
“For 18 months, we lost nobody in Afghanistan. And then we had that horrible, horrible withdrawal where we lost 13 soldiers, 38 horribly wounded, left Americans behind,” Trump said in remarks after his Super Tuesday victories earlier this month.
“You have Americans right now still behind,” he continued. “Call them hostages, if you like.”
In a video his campaign released last week, Trump repeated the charge.
“We have many American people still living in Afghanistan, probably as hostages,” he said.
But two senior Biden administration national security officials told NBC News that the Taliban is holding two Americans that the U.S. government would like to see released. Other Americans in Afghanistan are there of their own volition, they said.
“Every American who wanted to leave has left,” the first official said. “In fact, we didn’t leave a single person behind. And we are also getting Afghan allies out every month.”
State Department officials said they could not provide an exact figure for how many U.S. citizens are in Afghanistan and have requested assistance in getting out of the country.
“It is impossible to say with certainty how many U.S. citizens are in Afghanistan today,” a State Department spokesperson said. “In the 30 months since our embassy closed, many U.S. citizens departed, returned, and departed again.”
One of the Americans being jailed by the Taliban, Ryan Corbett, started a microfinance company in the country during the war, fled with assistance from the U.S. government in 2021, and then returned in 2022. The harsh conditions he faces, and his deteriorating physical condition, have been detailed by onetime fellow prisoners who were released. He has not been charged with a crime.
The national security officials declined to name the other person whose release they are seeking but noted that person entered Afghanistan on a tourist visa after the 2021 evacuation.
“Both went to Afghanistan AFTER we left,” the first official said in a text message.
At least 67,000 Afghans have applied for what are known as special immigrant visas created for local nationals who supported the U.S. mission in the country, according to State Department officials. At least 20,000 Afghans have been found eligible for those visas and are moving forward in the process.
Since regaining power, the Taliban have reportedly killed at least 200 members of the Afghan security forces, which fought alongside U.S forces. The Taliban have also banned girls over the age of 11 from attending school, the only government in the world to do so.
The ban is enforced unevenly across Afghanistan, but an unknown number of Afghan women are believed to also want to leave the country.
Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for Trump, defended the former president’s argument.
“President Trump is absolutely right to call out Joe Biden for his betrayal of Americans in Afghanistan,” Leavitt said in a statement. “Biden’s calamitous withdrawal left hundreds, if not thousands, of citizens behind and led to the tragic deaths of 13 U.S. Service Members at Abbey Gate.”
Abbey Gate is the location outside the Kabul Airport where 13 American service members were killed in a terrorist attack as the U.S. evacuated Afghanistan in August 2021.
“Now the Taliban has regained control of the country using billions of dollars of our military equipment, and radical terrorists are emboldened across the entire region,” Leavitt said.
Abigail Williams contributed.
Targeting Americans | Sunday on 60 Minutes
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State Department official resigns; most Americans oppose Israel’s Gaza war, new poll finds
‘Moving the needle’
But despite this growing clash between the two governments, some feel the United States has done too little to press its ally to change course in Gaza.
Sheline, who first shared her account with The Washington Post, was recruited to join the State Department as a foreign affairs officer in the bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor as part of an Arabic language fellowship connected to her PhD program — and she quit last week just halfway into her two-year contract.
Sheline said that U.S. policy toward Israel had made her job “almost impossible,” whether it was members of civil society simply not wanting to engage with U.S. officials over the country’s backing of Israel or fearing that engagement with the U.S. government would put them at greater risk.
Sheline said she tried to raise her concerns internally, signing onto dissent cables and speaking with her supervisors, as well as in open forums, but to no avail.
“I personally was not expecting to shape policy but it became clear that even moving the needle in a tiny way from the inside just wasn’t going to work,” she said.
State Department Spokesperson Matt Miller has acknowledged a diversity of internal views on the war in Gaza, but he said that while Blinken welcomes employees to “speak up and challenge his thinking,” that doesn’t mean it will lead to a shift in U.S. policy.
Miller told reporters Wednesday that was ultimately up to Biden and senior leaders in his administration.
Sheline is the second State Department official to public resign citing U.S. policy toward Israel since the war began nearly six months ago after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks, in which Israeli officials say 1,200 people were killed and around 260 others were taken hostage, with more than 100 still held captive in Gaza.
In October, veteran State Department official Josh Paul left his post with the agency’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs after more than a decade, citing the “blind support” of the U.S. for Israel.
Sheline’s decision to follow suit came as a Gallup poll released Wednesday found that growing numbers of Americans now oppose Israel’s military action in Gaza, an apparent shift in U.S. views.
The poll, conducted between March 1 and 20, found that 55% of respondents said they disapprove of Israel’s actions in Gaza, compared with 45% who expressed disapproval in November.
The share of those in favor of Israel’s actions fell from 50% in November to 36% in March, while the percentage of those who said they had no stance rose from 4% to 9%.
The poll, which surveyed 1,016 adults living across all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia, had a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.
It was carried out before the U.N. Security Council on Monday passed its resolution calling for a cease-fire for the rest of the month of Ramadan, which ends April 9.
The U.S. allowed the resolution to pass, in a change of approach.
Sheline said she was concerned that upholding the rule of law had become a political consideration for the administration, which was elected in part on a promise to reestablish U.S. leadership on everything from human rights to international institutions to climate change.
“I continue to be horrified at the largely unconditional support and providing a steady stream of weapons to Israel is considered more important than all of these other extremely significant issues,” Sheline said.
Chantal Da Silva reported from Tel Aviv, and Abigail Williams from Washington.
Jay Marques and Ammar Cheikh Omar contributed.
A solution to the retirement crisis? Americans should work for more years, BlackRock CEO says
With Americans living longer and spending more years in retirement, the nation’s changing demographics are “putting the U.S. retirement system under immense strain,” according to BlackRock CEO Larry Fink in his annual shareholder letter.
One way to fix it, he suggests, is for Americans to work longer before they head into retirement.
“No one should have to work longer than they want to. But I do think it’s a bit crazy that our anchor idea for the right retirement age — 65 years old — originates from the time of the Ottoman Empire,” Fink wrote in his 2024 letter, which largely focuses on the retirement crisis facing the U.S. and other nations as their populations age.
Fink’s suggestions about addressing the nation’s retirement crisis come amid a debate about the future of Social Security, which will face a funding shortfall in less than a decade. Some Republican lawmakers have proposed raising the retirement age for claiming Social Security benefits, arguing, like Fink, that because Americans are living longer, they should work longer, too.
But that ignores the reality of aging in the workplace, with the AARP finding in a 2022 survey that the majority of workers over 50 say they face ageism at work. And because of ill health or an unexpected job loss, many older Americans stop working before they planned to. In fact, the median age of retirement in the U.S. is 62 — even lower than the “traditional” retirement age of 65.
Fink is right in saying that the retirement system isn’t working for most households, noted retirement expert and New School of Research professor Teresa Ghilarducci told CBS MoneyWatch. But his assessment that people should work longer misses the mark, she added.
“After a 40-year-old experiment of a voluntary, do-it-yourself-based pension system, half of workers have no easy way to save for retirement,” she said. “And in rich nations, why isn’t age 65 a good target for most workers to stop working for someone else?”
She added, “Working longer won’t get us out of this. Most people don’t retire when they want to, anyway.”
Vested interest?
To be sure, America’s retirement gap, or the gulf between what people need to fund their golden years versus what they’ve actually saved, isn’t new, nor is Social Security’s looming funding emergency. Yet Fink’s comments are noteworthy because of his status as the head of the world’s largest asset manager, with more than $10 trillion in assets, including many retirement accounts.
Of course, Fink has a vested interest in Americans boosting their retirement assets, given that his firm collects fees from those accounts. And in his letter, he also promotes a new target-date fund from BlackRock called LifePath Paycheck, which will roll out in April.
“He’s steering the conversation toward BlackRock — and a lot of people who talk about Social Security reform on Wall Street want to privatize it in some manner and make money,” Boston University economist Laurence Kotlikoff, an expert on Social Security, told CBS MoneyWatch.
To be sure, Fink also praises public policy success stories for addressing retirement savings, such as Australia’s system, which began in the early 1990s and requires employers to put a portion of a worker’s income into a fund. Today, Australia has the world’s 54th largest population but the 4th largest retirement system, he noted.
“As a nation, we should do everything we can to make retirement investing more automatic for workers,” he noted.
Can boomers fix the problem?
Fink, who was born in 1952, said that his generation has an obligation to help fix the nation’s retirement problems. The financial insecurity facing younger Americans, such as millennials and Gen Z, are creating generations of disillusioned, anxious workers, he noted.
“They believe my generation — the baby boomers — have focused on their own financial well-being to the detriment of who comes next. And in the case of retirement, they’re right,” Fink wrote.
He added, “And before my generation fully disappears from positions of corporate and political leadership, we have an obligation to change that.”
Boomer (and older) lawmakers and politicians often don’t see eye-to-eye on how to fix the retirement crisis. But failing to fix the issue damages not only the retirements of individual Americans, but the country’s collective belief in the future of the U.S., Fink noted.
“We risk becoming a country where people keep their money under the mattress and their dreams bottled up in their bedroom,” he noted.
Americans think they need $1.8 million to retire comfortably, survey finds
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California county repeals water regulations that Asian Americans say targeted their community
Many Asian American activists and community members in Siskiyou County, California, are celebrating a win in their fight against local water regulations that they say have led to discrimination and restrictions on human rights.
The Siskiyou County Board of Supervisors repealed a pair of water ordinances last week that barred water trucks — defined as vehicles that can carry about 100 gallons of water — from transporting water without permits as part of a settlement of a 2021 case that accused the county of having cut off the Asian American community members’ access to water. Many Hmong and other Asian Americans, who previously argued that the policies were disproportionately enforced in their communities and led to racial profiling by local authorities, spoke out in support of reversing the ordinances.
“My neighbors and I have been forced to make impossible choices between bathing every week and providing water to our pets, livestock, and gardens,” Siskiyou County resident Russell Mathis said in a news release about the repeal. “Today, we celebrate an important victory affirming our human right to water and our rights to live without oppressive fear and trauma, simply because of where we were born or what we look like.”
County Board of Supervisors member Nancy Ogren declined to comment, and the four other members of the board did not respond to requests for comment.
The Board of Supervisors also revised a third ordinance, establishing due process and a $2,500 limit on fines. The ordinances were repealed after years of clashes between the Asian American community and local authorities.
The ordinances, first passed as an emergency measure in May 2021, were in part an effort to curb illegal cannabis farming. While growing cannabis is legal in the state, the county heavily limits the number of plants permitted on a property and forbids outdoor growing altogether. However, many Hmong and Chinese community members, who are part of the county’s farming population, said the measures were largely enforced in Asian American areas, lawsuits allege.
Kao Ye Thao, the director of policy and partnerships at Hmong Innovating Politics, a grassroots civic engagement organization based in California, said in 2021 that multiple Asian community members reported having been harassed or stopped by law enforcement while they were driving.
“The ordinance itself was an emergency ordinance passed without really consulting with the community that it was actually going to be targeting. … Now they’re associating being Asian with being an illegal cannabis grower,” Thao said.
In June 2021, tensions rose between the Asian American community and local authorities when four officers from different agencies, including the sheriff’s department, shot and killed Soobleej Kaub Hawj, a local farmer, during a fire evacuation. The sheriff’s department said Hawj pointed a semi-automatic handgun as the officers entered an evacuation zone after he “ignored numerous directions by officers and attempted to drive around the roadblock,” but activists and community members have questioned the sheriff’s account, particularly after a witness said more than 60 shots were fired at Hawj. The district attorney announced last year that the officers will not face charges, writing in a letter to law enforcement agencies explaining his decision that Hawj pulled a handgun and pointed it at a law enforcement officer, prompting other officers to open fire.
In addition to acting in the 2021 case, Asian American residents filed a class-action lawsuit in August 2022 accusing the county of large-scale harassment of Hmong residents. They accused county officials, in part, of restricting their right to water, executing unlawful traffic stops and engaging in unlawful search and seizure practices to drive people of Asian descent from the area.
According to the class-action suit, while Asians are only 2.4% of the county’s adult population, they accounted for over 28% of sheriff’s department traffic stops in 2021.
“This targeting is designed to drive a disfavored racial minority from the County and has its roots in anti-Asian racism in Siskiyou dating back to the 1800s,” said the lawsuit, filed by the ACLU Foundation of Northern California and the activist group Advancing Justice-Asian Law Caucus.
Sheriff Jeremiah LaRue did not respond to a request for comment. He told The Guardian last year that “we don’t target any people. We target crime. It’s unfortunate that is sort of the card that’s being played.”
The lawsuit also described everyday discriminatory behavior toward the Hmong population.
“In one striking example, the Board singled out Hmong attendees at a 2015 public meeting, calling first for a show of hands from ‘the Hmong residents’ on the issues presented, and then calling for a vote of ‘those County residents present,’ as if the Hmong people were outsiders,” it said.
Those pursuing the class-action lawsuit are in settlement negotiations, according to the Advancing Justice-Asian Law Caucus.
For now, the repeals represent a victory for the Asian American residents in the community, advocates say.
“As the Asian American community in Siskiyou has grown, including more parents enrolling their kids in school, grandparents retiring to more rural areas that remind them of Laos, and families trying to be closer together, Siskiyou County and the Sheriff’s Department have gone to troubling lengths to push out the Asian American community,” said John Do, a senior staff attorney for the Racial & Economic Justice Program at the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, in a press release. “And community members are taking action to create a safe, inclusive place to live.”
More than 120 million Americans at risk from powerful storms
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