Reader’s Digest
54 july 2019
Some insisted that the noise more
closely resembled marbles rolling
along the floor.
The illnesses confounded medical
experts. Doctors at the University of
Pennsylvania who examined some of
the victims diagnosed concussion-like
symptoms but found no signs they’d
suffered any.
We know what you must be think-
ing: The Cuban government is up to
something, right? The Cubans vehe-
mently deny they’re responsible, and
many American investigators believe
them. That’s because they still don’t
know who or what made the victims
sick. Was it a new type of weapon?
The CIA claims it doesn’t know of
any weaponry that could cause these
symptoms. What about ultrasound?
One theory holds that a pair of co-
vert eavesdropping devices placed
too close to each other by Cuban
agents may have inadvertently pro-
duced such a reaction, like the kind
of feedback you hear when someone
stands too close to a microphone.
But the FBI has found no evidence to
substantiate that argument. In fact,
ultrasound is above the range of hu-
man hearing.
Recordings of the sounds from
some of the victims only added to
the confusion. Two scientists who
studied the recordings believe they
captured the sound of lovelorn male
crickets. One of the scientists, Alex-
ander Stubbs of the University of
California, Berkeley, says the insectsare incredibly loud. “You can hear
them from inside a diesel truck going
64 kilometres an hour on the high-
way.” Still, the scientists had no idea
why the sounds might lead to illness
in humans.
Maybe it was just nerves. “Cuba is a
high-threat, high-stress post,” a former
embassy official told propublica.org.
Diplomats are warned that “there will
be surveillance. There will be listen-
ing devices in your house, probably in
your car. For some people, that puts
them in a high-stress mentality, in a
threat-anticipation mode.”
True—but then how to explain what
happened in China? In May 2018, an
American posted in the consulate in
Guangzhou was diagnosed with the
very same mystery illness. Ultimately,
15 Americans were evacuated.
While the seemingly airborne cause
of these brain injuries is still a mys-
tery, the fallout is clear. The Ameri-
cans removed 60 per cent of their
diplomats from Cuba and expelled
15 Cuban diplomats from Washing-
ton, DC. The mysterious sounds may
well be the opening shots in a new
kind of cold war.History rewritten
Roaming Ruins
It’s not unusual to find junk in Bra-
zil’s Guanabara Bay, but what Robert
Marx unearthed there in 1982 was
an unusual kind of foreign matter. In
an underwater field the size of three previous spread: alejandro ernesto/epa/shutterstock (embassy). brandon woo (cricket). jose luis magana/ap/shutterstock (ambassador)