U.S. military tested device that may be tied to Havana Syndrome on rats, sheep, confidential sources say

Tonight, we have details of a classified U.S. intelligence mission that has obtained a previously unknown weapon that may finally unlock a mystery. Since at least 2016, U.S. diplomats, spies and military officers have suffered crippling brain injuries. They've told of being hit by an overwhelming force, damaging their vision, hearing, sense of balance and cognition. but the government has doubted their stories. They've been called delusional. Well now, 60 Minutes has learned that a weapon that can inflict these injuries was obtained overseas and secretly tested on animals on a U.S. military base. We've investigated this mystery for nine years. This is our fourth story called, "Targeting Americans." Despite official government doubt, we never stopped reporting because of the haunting stories we heard, like this:

Chris: Very first incident occurred in August of 2020. And what it felt like was that-- someone punched me in the throat, and my left ear was clogged. And I started to get sharp shooting pains going down my left arm.

Chris and Heidi asked us not to use their last name. They met in the Air Force academy. Chris retired as a lieutenant colonel working on highly classified spy satellites. He told us, near Washington, D.C., he was struck by an unseen force five times in five months. 

Chris: The second attack, I was standing in my kitchen looking out at the back woods and it felt like an immediate vice on my head. Immediately disoriented, confused and dizzy. The third attack--um towards the end of September, I was sitting in our living room, and instantaneously all of the muscles within my spine immediately cramped much like a Charley horse, and my spine felt like it was on fire. So very hot and sharp. The fifth one was by far the worst, and that was early December. And I woke up with a full-body convulsion, the worst pain I have ever felt. It felt like a vice gripping my brainstem was there. 

Scott Pelley: All in your own home?

Chris: All in my home in Northern Virginia. And Heidi was within my proximity for the last two attacks.

Scott Pelley: Heidi, what happened to you?

Heidi: Right at the beginning of January, I woke up with immense joint pain everywhere. With shoulder pain in my left shoulder out of the blue, no trauma.

Bones in her shoulder were dissolving, something called osteolysis. She had to have surgery.

Scott Pelley: Has there been any lasting effect?

Chris: Significant. So I'm on-- two neurological drugs every day. And-- without them, I have very severe symptoms. I had sustained significant damage to multiple organ systems. 

Scott Pelley: You believe you were attacked.

Chris: Yes.

Scott Pelley: By a foreign adversary?

Chris: Yes.

Scott Pelley: In the line of duty?

Chris: Yes.

It's a belief shared by officials and their families that we've met over the years. See if you notice what we heard...there was this FBI agent…

Carrie: And bam, inside my right ear, it was like a dentist drilling on steroids. 

…this Commerce Department official in China…

Catherine Werne: And I could feel this sound in my head.um, It was intense pressure on both of my temples.

This early victim was among cases from Cuba, which gave the mystery the name "Havana Syndrome."

Anonymous 1: Severe ear pain started. So I liken it to if you put a Q-tip too far and you bounce it off your eardrum. Well, imagine takin' a sharp pencil and just kinda pokin' that.

...and this wife of a Justice Department official posted in Europe.

Anonymous 2: And it just pierced my ears, came in my left side, felt like it came through the window, into my left ear. I immediately felt fullness in my head, and just a piercing headache.

Multiple surgeries have tried to repair bones in her inner ear and her skull. Many victims have life-long disabilities. 

What struck us about their stories is this: people who never met, tell it the same way. The government acknowledges the injuries and often pays for health care but, for years, it has doubted the cause. Victims have been told it may be atmospheric or environmental, a virus, a preexisting condition or as the FBI put it in an early investigation, mass hysteria.

The official word, published in 2023, and still standing, says it's "very unlikely" these are attacks by a foreign adversary.

Scott Pelley: Do you believe the victims?

Dr. David Relman: Absolutely.

Dr. David Relman is a Stanford University professor of medicine asked by the government to lead two investigations. His panels included doctors, physicists, engineers and others. Their reports in 2020 and 2022 proposed a theory. 

Dr. David Relman: The two panels, the investigations that I know well, both concluded much the same, which was that the most plausible explanation for a subset of these cases was a form of radiofrequency or microwave energy. 

Microwaves are a range of frequences in the electromagnetic spectrum. Various microwave frequencies are generated by your oven, radar systems, TV transmitters. Even your phone, WiFi and Bluetooth use microwaves. Dr. David Relman told us his investigations found that one country had done a great deal of research on creating something different: a unique pattern of microwaves that can damage the brain. 

Dr. David Relman: In both of our investigations we found the large majority of work to have been conducted in the former Soviet Union. And what they found was that effects could range from loss of consciousness to seizures to memory lapses, inability to concentrate, headaches, intense pressure, pain, disorientation, difficulty with balance, many of the things that we heard about from victims of Havana Syndrome.

Scott Pelley: The Russians had been doing experiments in this area decades ago?

Dr. David Relman: Decades ago, yes, of a wide variety of sorts.

In a previous story on this mystery, we found a 2014 reference to a weapon. Compelled by a lawsuit, the National Security Agency confirmed intelligence of "a high-powered microwave system weapon" associated with a "hostile country." But the CIA believed such a weapon would need enormous power and be as big as a truck — so not likely. Years later, when Dr. Relman's expert panels suggested these could be microwave injuries, the idea was shelved by federal officials. 

Dr. David Relman: And what really unnerves me is the confidence with which others have dismissed or ignored this work, only to say, "That's not possible. That's not plausible. I don't believe it." That's fine but show me new evidence. Nobody has.

Scott Pelley: Do you believe that your studies were downplayed by the U.S. government?

Dr. David Relman: By parts of the U.S. government, absolutely. And not only downplayed but dismissed, in some cases, buried.

Former CIA officer: I started in March of 2015.

Why buried? This man may know. He's a former CIA officer who asked us not to use his name. He is speaking, tonight, for the first time. In 2021, he volunteered to work on the CIA's investigation because of the suffering he'd seen among CIA officers and their families overseas. 

Former CIA officer: I mean, these were my colleagues. These were my friends. These were people I had worked with. And I saw lives that were destroyed. Careers were ruined. People's kids were affected. They have lifelong developmental issues. People now are even still having cognitive issues and having all types of-- secondary effects years and years later. It became an emotional topic for me because I saw this happening, and I volunteered to work in the AHI Unit. And I wanted to make a difference.

He joined the so-called "AHI" investigation at CIA headquarters. "AHI," because the government calls the cases, not attacks, but "anomalous health incidents." He expected to dig in to whether a foreign adversary — a so-called "state actor" was behind this — but it didn't go that way. 

Former CIA officer: So one of the very first things that I heard when I arrived at the AHI Unit was, "Our job is to bring down the temperature on AHI at headquarters." And that was a surprise to me. So bringing down the temperature is not, "Hey, let's go after the issue and find out what's going on." It became very much a emotional and almost kind of like a propaganda type thing.

Scott Pelley: And by "bring down the temperature," they meant what?

Former CIA officer: It basically was saying, "Hey, we're gonna work towards this being an atmospheric and environmental issue, verses it being a state actor." And so they did not want people talking about it being a state actor.

bBecause, he says, fear of the mysterious "AHIs" was creating havoc. 

Scott Pelley: That fear and paranoia you describe, how did that affect CIA officers and their families?

Former CIA officer: Yeah. So personally, my own family left early from my tour by multiple months-- because we were worried that, you know, my-- family would be affected by AHI whether we were at home when we were serving overseas, or-- in the field just walking around. I saw multiple other officers short their tours, their families leave early-- pick different locations where AHIs were not happening. And this was U.S. government-wide. This was not just relegated to CIA.

Scott Pelley: What would you say was the attitude of your bosses toward the victims who had reported in?

Former CIA officer: So this was one of the more disgusting things that I came across, to be honest, working in the AHI Unit. I'll never forget-- in one instance a senior member of the AHI Unit came into my office. And that officer came in and said, "Yeah, we're gonna have a happy hour. We're all gonna have simulated AHIs and-- drink together." And she basically emulated that she was having a stroke. And it-- making fun of the victims. And to me, that was deplorable. It was disgusting.

Scott Pelley: There was no sense of, "We're gonna get to the bottom of this"?

Former CIA officer: No. The "bottom of it" was "we're gonna prove that this is psychosomatic, atmospheric, and environmental." 

All of this, he says, led him to resign. 

Former CIA officer: I left because I saw the personal impact of this issue. And for me, it became a moral issue because they kept saying, "Our people are our highest priority." But when it came down to it, that wasn't the case from what I saw. And it was something that tore me up emotionally. I knew people who were affected by AHI, who were victims of AHI. I saw it destroy their families, their kids, their careers. It wasn't somewhere I could keep working after that.

The investigation at the CIA essentially ended in 2022. But about the same time, a different classified mission was underway. 60 Minutes has learned U.S. agents who investigate illicit arms dealers heard that a Russian criminal network was selling a microwave weapon. Our sources tell us, undercover agents of the Department of Homeland Security bought the weapon in 2024. The mission cost about $15 million, funded by the Pentagon. 

60 Minutes has learned details of a classified microwave weapon that may explain mysterious brain injuries suffered by U.S. officials. We've been investigating these injuries for nine years. And now, our sources tell us this microwave weapon is portable, concealable and uses relatively little power. Hundreds of possible attacks have been reported including, we've learned, at CIA headquarters in Virginia and at least two incidents on the grounds of the White House. For years, the government doubted the stories of the injured. But now the victims, including former CIA officer Marc Polymeropoulos, hope that word of a newly discovered weapon will finally vindicate them.

Marc Polymeropoulos: There's a part of this, Scott, that has to do with moral injury. And that's the idea of-- betrayal. You know, I worked for 26 years for the CIA. I think I was involved in every covert action program in the Middle East. I did some very interesting things for the U.S. government, always with the idea that they would have my back if I got jammed up. I just needed to get medical care when I came back, and they wouldn't even do that. So this moral injury, this sense of betrayal is so acute with me. That's something that I can never forgive them for.

Marc Polymeropoulos rose to an executive level at the CIA — about the equivalent of a three star general. He was awarded a top decoration for service. In 2017, he says he was overwhelmed in a hotel room in Moscow.

Marc Polymeropoulos: I woke up in the middle of the night. It was a no-- I didn't hear any sound. But I woke up with incredible vertigo. The room was spinning. I had a blinding headache. I had tinnitus ringing in my ears, and I felt like I was gonna be physically sick. It was a terrifying feeling where I'd lost control. You know, something had seriously happened to me. And I remember feeling, you know, that this is so unusual. I'd been shot at in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. I'd been in physical danger. But this was terrifying. 

He was treated for vertigo, migraines, loss of vision and trouble with memory and concentration. Disabled, he retired. Later, in 2023, his own agency was among those that concluded it is "very unlikely" that he and the others were attacked by an adversary.

Marc Polymeropoulos: Which of course to me is a betrayal. Because CIA is supposed to be about putting people first, and they did not.

Scott Pelley: Are you saying this is a cover-up?

Marc Polymeropoulos: This is a massive CIA cover-up, and I'll-- and I'll say-- I say this with great regret. It's an organization that I loved. I believe in the mission. I was really good at this job. To this day I want to see the CIA operate in a strong and effective manner.

Polymeropoulos and other victims have been doubted for years. Some in the CIA believe that a microwave weapon must be the size of a truck and, so, not plausible.

But that changed, dramatically, in 2024. Three independent sources from different agencies tell us that undercover homeland security agents purchased a miniaturized microwave weapon from a complex Russian criminal network. It's classified. We didn't see it. But it has been described to us. We are told it doesn't look anything like a gun. It is designed to be concealed and small enough to be carried by a person. It is silent and doesn't create heat like a microwave oven. Our sources say the device is programmable for different scenarios and can be operated by remote control. The range of the beam is several hundred feet. It can penetrate windows and drywall. The vital components were made in Russia. Our sources say the key is not the hardware but the software. The programming shapes a unique, electromagnetic wave that rises and falls abruptly and pulses rapidly.

Dr. David Relman: Pulsed microwave radiation--

Just what Dr. David Relman's investigations predicted. he wouldn't talk about classified information in our interview but his research found that Russian scientists had been perfecting the concept for decades.

Dr. David Relman: And what the Russians spoke about was the importance of the energy being pulsed in order to have biological effects on humans. When you produce pulses like this, you can actually stimulate electrically active tissue like brain tissue and the heart, for that matter, mimicking what the brain normally does, but now you're driving it with your pulses from the outside.

Scott Pelley: An ideal stealth weapon.

Dr. David Relman: Ideal. Ideal, because literally the person feels as if this is in my head.

Our confidential sources tell us the still classified weapon has been tested in a U.S. military lab for more than a year. Tests on rats and sheep show injuries consistent with those seen in humans. Also, as a separate part of the investigation, security camera videos have been collected that show Americans being hit. The videos are classified but they were described to us. In one, a camera in a restaurant in Istanbul captured two FBI agents on vacation sitting at a table with their families. A man with a backpack walks in and suddenly everyone at the table grabs their head as if in pain. Our sources say another video comes from a stairwell in the U.S. embassy in Vienna. The stairs lead to a secure facility. In the video, two people on the stairs suddenly collapse.

Those videos and the weapon were among the reasons the Biden administration summoned about half a dozen victims to the White House with about two months left in the president's term.

Dr. David Relman: I remember the day well, because I helped to organize the meeting.

By that time, Dr. Relman was a White House adviser.

Dr. David Relman: These folks in the Biden White House believed these people. And believed that their injuries were not caused by known medical or environmental conditions the way the CIA was asserting, which again, to me was just egregious. Some of the specific explanations the CIA had used were just crazy.

Scott Pelley: A high-level CIA source has told us, and this is a direct quote, "This is the biggest cover-up I've seen in my adult life," end quote. Do you believe it was a cover-up?

Dr. David Relman: Yes, I do. Through a variety of purposes and means, not necessarily as a preplanned, strategic operation, but in essence, it arrives at the same result.

Scott Pelley: Help me understand what you think the motive could have been.

Dr. David Relman: We want this to go away so that we can resume normal operations. They had dug in opinions going back years about the plausibility of a non-thermal microwave mechanism. In fact, when we began our work, we were briefed by their experts and told, "Nothing in the scientific literature will support the idea that microwave energy can do things like this. 

Scott Pelley: They had made up their minds.

Dr. David Relman: It seems they had. and it almost seems as though consistency was more important than objectivity.

Retired CIA officer Marc Polymeropoulos was in that White House meeting.

Marc Polymeropoulos: And so what the Biden Administration was telling us was something had changed. New intelligence had come in, now, I don't have a security clearance, and this was an unclassified meeting so they could not put forth that this was based on new intelligence, but it was clear to me that that was what they were insinuating.

Dr. Paul Friedrichs brought a message to the meeting. He's a retired major general, formerly one of the Pentagon's top doctors.  

Marc Polymeropoulos: He said very clearly, "I'm sorry. I want to apologize to you. I've never seen in 30-plus years of practicing military medicine victims treated in such a terrible manner. And I just wanna offer my apologies to you."

Scott Pelley: What did that mean to you?

Marc Polymeropoulos: I have chills now thinking about it. I had chills then. It was an indication that at least some people in the Biden Administration in the Biden White House believed us.

Dr. David Relman: Any American would be embarrassed if you were to see how these people have been treated, and then to be dismissed this way as malingerers or people who are manufacturing things for some other purpose. It's insulting.

Our sources tell us that the Biden White House wrote a public statement backing the victims, but never released it. So far, the Trump administration has not changed the words in the 2023 intelligence assessment that it is "very unlikely" the victims were attacked. But our sources also tell us the Trump administration has briefed top intelligence officials in congress and shown them a classified picture of the weapon. We're told, at the Pentagon, people who had investigated the attacks for the Department of Defense have been moved to a unit that develops new weapons.

Former CIA officer: It was apparent to me that they did not take this issue seriously.

Looking back, the CIA officer who quit the investigation in disgust told us, in his view, the CIA was careless against a ruthless adversary.

Scott Pelley: If there was a foreign adversary, Russia in particular, would you think of this operation as a success?

Former CIA officer: Absolutely. From an intelligence perspective, this would be a resounding success. Let's say one of these cases was real and it created all this fear, paranoia, anxiety here in the United States and overseas. The impact of that is astronomical. And it's something you can't almost even calculate. And I don't think if it was a state actor, if it was the Russians, which I believe it is, I don't think that is something they would've put into their calculus, that it would've gotten this big. And I think they saw the fear, the paranoia that it created. And I think that's why it continued to happen for that period of time over a span of a year.

Scott Pelley: Across the previous stories that we've done on this subject, I have had the same question. I think you are the first person who could plausibly answer the question. And that is: Why? Why would the government want to bury this?

Former CIA officer: I think it comes down to a political question. I mean, if we acknowledge that this was a state actor that was doing this, it is essentially a declaration of war against the United States, which has to have a response from the United States government. In my opinion, I don't know that the appetite was there to respond to the Russians at that time.

In our 2024 story, a collaboration with Russian dissident magazine "The Insider.ru." We found evidence of Russian involvement. When this wife of a Justice Department official was seriously wounded overseas, an agent of Russian intelligence was in her vicinity.

For this report, the Department of Defense declined to comment. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which oversees 18 agencies including the CIA, told us that a new review of AHI will be "…comprehensive and complete..." and "we remain committed to delivering the truth…" The victims are waiting, including Chris and Heidi, who told us, at the beginning of our story of being attacked five times in their home.

Chris: I think it's time we as a country-- come to grips with the fact that the game has changed. Our adversaries are now able to reach out and touch us here in the United States, specifically at our homes.

Scott Pelley: What do you believe the government owes you?

Chris: I would say that for me and my military brothers and sisters who are hurt-- being issued a Purple Heart-- is acknowledgment of our sacrifice to the country. And the sacrifice we made, that affects not only us, but also our families.

The sources who informed our reporting told us the classified mission to obtain the microwave weapon points to a troubling reality. They say there are likely many of these devices. and if undercover agents could purchase one from gangsters, then the Russians have lost control of a stealth weapon that could be used by anyone, anywhere.

ODNI's full statement:

• The team conducting the review of AHI intelligence has been and continues to be relentless in its work and pursuit of the truth to complete the assessment.
• ODNI's review of this issue will be comprehensive and complete before it is released. DNI Gabbard has provided the time, resources, and support needed to ensure the review is fulsome and accurate.
• We remain committed to delivering the truth that the American people deserve.

Produced by Michael Rey, Oriana Zill de Granados, Adam Ciralsky (Part 2.) Associate producers, Mirella Brussani, Jaime Woods, Emily Gordon, Michelle Karim. Edited by Joe Schanzer