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The Attacks
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A car drives past the walls of the U.S. Embassy building in Havana. (Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
Is Havana Syndrome a secret super weapon? Or a social contagion?
By Peter Savodnik
12.08.21 — U.S. Politics
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The first person to report strange symptoms was a CIA officer posing as a diplomat at the U.S. embassy in Cuba.

It was December 2016. He was at home, in Havana, when he was overcome by a severe headache and dizziness. He heard a loud, persistent whirring sound. And then it felt like a wave, or a beam of energy, was pressing in on him.

He thought it was a …

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Peter Savodnik
Peter Savodnik is senior editor at The Free Press. Previously, he wrote for Vanity Fair, as well as GQ, Harper’s Magazine, The Atlantic, The Guardian, Wired, and other venues—reporting from the former Soviet Union, the Middle East, South Asia, and across the United States. His book, The Interloper: Lee Harvey Oswald Inside the Soviet Union, was published in 2013.
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