The mission of the CIA is to acquire protected information from abroad from which CIA analysts can then extrapolate assessments for policymakers. The CIA often successfully performs this work via means of sacrifice and skill.
Unfortunately for America but fortunately for Russia, the CIA’s handling of the so-called Havana syndrome issue remains highly problematic.
That’s the only logical conclusion we can make from the short internal memo CIA Director Bill Burns sent to his workforce on Monday. In that memo, Burns affirmed the agency’s support for its prior assessment on Havana syndrome, or what the intelligence community refers to as “Anomalous Health Incidents.” Namely, that Havana syndrome is highly unlikely to be the result of a foreign actor. This matters because Havana syndrome has seen hundreds of U.S. military and government officials complain of strange,…
