IT SOUNDED like something out of Spy vs. Spy, the satirical Cold War comic strip featuring two black- and white-clad slapstick characters trying to destroy each other with bombs and booby traps. Last year, secret agents in Havana began bombarding American diplomats with a mysterious weapon that used sound waves to damage their hearing, among “other symptoms.” Or so the Trump administration indicated in August, months after it announced the expulsion of two low-ranking Cuban officials in retaliation for the alleged attack.
As critics began to ask why U.S. officials have yet to identify the victims or a motive, the State Department backed away from blaming Cuba for the assault. Meanwhile, scientists and intelligence analysts continue to question whether undetected sound waves could cause a sudden onset of hearing loss. “[Audiologists] are all scratching our heads about what the cause could be,” says Colleen Le Prell, a professor of hearing science and head of the doctoral audiology program at the University of Texas at Dallas. “None of us have a good explanation.”
On August 9, the Associated Press broke the news about the attacks, and the State Department acknowledged there had been a series of “incidents which have caused a variety of physical symptoms,” effectively confirming the story without mentioning hearing loss. U.S. officials contacted doctors at the University of Miami Health System after the incidents were first reported. Weeks later, CBS quoted an unnamed medical source at the University of Miami, who said an American doctor had diagnosed American and Canadian diplomats working in Havana with “mild traumatic brain injury” and “likely damage to the central nervous system.”