The Team House - How the CIA Failed its Officers in Cuba & the FBI Failed them at Home | EYES ON

Episode Date: March 12, 2025

Today we're joined by Jack Murphy & Sean Naylor the creators of The High Side. We talk about their recently released article about the first victims of Havana Syndrome and how the CIA didn't take them seriously and how the FBI failed to help as they were being harassed here at home.Find The High Side here:⬇️https://thehighside.substack.com/https://x.com/TheHighSideNewsNew merch, patches, and stickers! ⬇️https://theteamhouse-shop.fourthwall.comSupport the show on Patreon:⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouseJack Murphy:⬇️https://x.com/JackMurphyRGR?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5EauthorWe Defyhttps://www.amazon.com/We-Defy-Chapters-Special-History-ebook/dp/B0DCGC1N1NThe High Sidehttps://thehighside.substack.com/Sean Naylor :⬇️https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B001IO9NTQhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/sean-naylor-825a439/https://x.com/SeanDNaylorFind Andy Milburn here: ⬇️https://twitter.com/i/flow/login?redirect_after_login=%2Fandymilburn8https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewmilburn2023https://amilburn.substack.com/https://www.amazon.com/When-Tempest-Gathers-Mogadishu-Operationshttps://bsky.app/profile/andy-milburn.bsky.socialhttps://open.substack.com/pub/amilburn/p/journal-of-a-plague-year?utm_source=app-post-stats-page&r=emo6q&utm_medium=iosFind Mick Mulroy here: ⬇️https://fogbow.com/https://www.loboinstitute.org/https://x.com/MickMulroy?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthorhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-patrick-mulroy-31198b52/https://bsky.app/profile/mickmulroy.bsky.socialFind Jason Lyons here: ⬇️https://www.linkedin.com/in/jason-lyons-666873316?utm_source=share&utm_campaign=share_via&utm_content=profile&utm_medium=ios_apphttps://bsky.app/profile/bgsilverback73.bsky.sociBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

What we were told by multiple intelligence officers was state actor level, in other words, nation state intelligence agency level phone hacking. Oh, yes. They were, whoever was doing this to the Havana syndrome victims was able to remotely access their phones and task their phones to do things and in fact disable their phones so that they became, as one of the victims put it, a brick in his hand, and then heat those phones up so they became too hot to handle. And, you know, the U.S. government looked into that and found out that, you know,

there was in what in signals intelligence terms is called, you know, and phone hacking in terms is called an exploit. Hey, everybody, welcome to another episode of Aizan, very special. And today we have Jack Murphy and Shepard. Sean Naler, the creators and producers of the high side substack. The link is into the description. If you don't know what the high side is, it is a pretty, pretty in-depth media outlet where these two guys go pretty, I'm going to say it again, pretty in-depth in terms

of stories they produce and write. The most recent one was about the original Havana syndrome victims that got hit in Havana, and their story, which is wild. I mean, I was reading this yesterday, and it was kind of like shocking me a little bit, like how, like the level of harassment they've been getting, we'll go into it deep. And just like the ineptitude, I think,

of like counterintelligence by the FBI. Yeah, guys, welcome. And again, the eyesight substack, the link is in the description. Go check it out. They do great stuff. They've done a great, and they're continuing to do a great profile on Willie Merkerson, who was a legend. A deep dive on the Omega teams.

And I know there's something cooking. I'm not going to talk about it, but there's more stuff cooking. And it's stuff you won't find anywhere else. You won't find it really on the New York Times. I mean, or Washington Post or Wall Street Journal, like in their investigative stuff, it's really in-depth reporting that you can't get anywhere else. So the link is in the description. Check that out, the high side. Hey, boys.

Hey, great to be here. So where the hell do we even start? I mean, well, I mean, I would start from the perspective of this story, at least. The story for the subject of it starts in 2016, really. But for us, it starts just a couple years ago. When Sean and I were put in touch with the person who's known as Patient Zero of Pavana syndrome, a guy that goes by the name Adam. The CIA won't let him release his actual real name for Byzantine reasons that are beyond our understanding. They won't let him say his actual

name. But I drove out into the middle of nowhere to see this guy, an undisclosed location because of what we'll talk about in this interview. I think it'll become clear why he is protective about his security. So I drove out there and spent like a day, a day and a half with him to try to see, and remember this was like two years ago. So a lot had been written about Havana syndrome. And I was really trying to gauge like, is there more here? Like is there still, you know, it's still so many mysteries around it, but is there another story that I can latch on to and write? And my conversation with Adam definitely led me to believe that there was. And then from there, it just sort of became a question of how like how do you go about writing it um because this could be like

a three volume book series easily so it's like how do you how do you like parse it down and so my my tool i guess to try to do that was to just focus on the initial cohort of people that were struck in havana cuba 2016 2017 and you know somewhere way down the line if we if i were to do a sequel to this story or sequels. I would do one about the people in China. I would do one about the people in Austria. But for this article, which is substantially long, it's like 16,000 words. It really just homes in on the original Havana victims. Yeah. I mean, and their story is kind of incredible, what they've kind of gone through. Roadblocks both on our own side, like CIA, kind of like blocking them from getting medical treatment and trying to steer them into a different,

you know, different diagnosis. There's a point where like they try and diagnose them with a concussion rather than TBI because a concussion is a lot more. You could just explain it away a little bit more. There are there are also some legalities involved there as it turns out that when you have injured federal employees, the government is not supposed to be directing their care. In other words, they can't tell them you have to go see this doctor. You can go and see your own doctor. Sure. They were playing that game like, oh, this classified information. You can't just go and tell any neurologist about this. And as I understand it, I've been told that, like, that's illegal under federal labor laws. And I mean, I think, do you sort of mentioned in the intro that what we have on the high side generally, and this is sort of almost like a requirement for our stories, is it has to be something that you cannot read anywhere else. because we're asking people to pay for subscriptions and so I and Jack and I want to deliver to them in every story material that they will not find elsewhere and in this story that in this story that sort of falls into two overarching categories one as sort of Jack has implied it's the most detailed look

at what actually happened in Havana and and the sort of what happened to that cohort of patients when they came back to the states. But the second sort of new, the block of new information, if you like, is

this extraordinary campaign of harassment and intimidation to which those individuals were subjected in the United States by persons unknown, certainly to them and to us, although there are a few clues littered about. And this, I mean, when we heard this, I was just astounded because there's been an awful lot written about Havana syndrome over the years, and I certainly can't claim to have read every last word of it. And, you know, there have been multiple sort of multi-episode podcasts about it and so forth.

And I had never heard of this before. I mean, essentially, someone or someone's targeted the members of the cohort, of that Havana cohort who came back to the United States and were for the most part all receiving treatment at different locations with the sort of spy

versus spy tactics that you would expect to see that U.S. intelligence officers expect to be on the receiving end of in hard target locations like Russia, like China, like Havana, like Cuba, and oddly enough, like Israel as well.

But it is unprecedented for U.S. intelligence officers to be targeted with those tactics in the United States, in their own homes. And, you know, we're talking about folks who had their homes broken into repeatedly burglarized and all well not all the time but almost all the time with subtle messages

being left for them for instance you know in an interview that that Jack did with a one of the victims

who we call Frank he had his home in northern Virginia broke into and he had a collection basically of firearms that included three long guns, two AR-15s and an AK-47 and five handguns all in Pelican cases and all hidden upstairs in his attic.

Whoever broke into his home somehow knew where those guns were going to be, got them, brought them downstairs, laid them out on the bed. Edson in his master bedroom and his spare bedroom, didn't steal them, but stole the Pelican cases, which are pretty pricey in and of themselves. I mean, people who know more about these things, and I do tell me that they're worth, you know, for a long gun, a pelican case is easily worth more than the thousand dollars. And don't forget that they also help themselves to the have you been rum and cigars that he brought back with him. Yes, and I think that's the, you know, that's, that's a telling detail right, right there.

I mean, this particular individual, you know, another sort of fairly creepy thing that happened to him was when he was in Philadelphia, receiving treatment, as many of the subject of our article were at the University of Pennsylvania for their Havana syndrome, somebody broke into his apartment there and stole two cases of Pete's coffee cakeups, which apparently he was very fond of. Yeah, yeah, I remember that part. And then two years later, in one of the multiple break-ins to his home in Northern Virginia, those two cases were left behind, you know, as just a signal to him, hey, we're still watching you, you know, we're still on your case.

Another time they broke into his home and they found some of his medical records related to Havana syndrome, and they copied them on his copy machine and left with the copies. And he and his partner only discovered that when there was some button on their copy machine that told them all the documents that had been copied over the last so many days or weeks. And they realized that the burglars had actually copied those documents. As he put it to us, it was almost like they were trying to check the damage that they're done to him, you know, by checking his medical records. So just, I mean, there are stories and stories and stories like that in our article about just incredibly,

incredibly crazy stuff that happened to these folks, dead deer being left on their porch. in one case that was a Havana syndrome victim, but not one of the victims who was struck in Havana themselves. Hey guys, it's Jack. I just want to talk to you for a moment about how you can support the show if you've been watching it, enjoying it, but you'd like to get a little bit more involved and help us continue to do this.

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Thank you. Yeah, I think the one where they stole the Pelican cases for the rifles and stuff like that. They also left a nice little present for them in their bathroom too, right? Yep. And that's a typical thing that the Cubans would do in Havana. That's a sort of like a little calling card. So it's interesting that the same things that happened to U.S. intelligence officers in Havana were happening to them in the United States.

Yeah. And I think it's important to let people know, like, when they're in hard places and serving in like Russia, China, Havana, and anywhere else where it's more of a hardship tour, this is to be expected, right? Like they train for this. They understand this is going to happen when you're abroad. But yeah, you're going back to your apartment in Virginia or Philadelphia, and you're finding the same tact that's going on in the United States where you're

supposed to kind of, it was relatively off-lit, you're relatively off-limits. And then you hit up the FBI, like what you're supposed to do. and FBI is supposed to be the premier counterintelligence agency that we have, right? They're supposed to go after the spies that are in America. And it seems like the FBI was just like kind of out to lunch with this. Yeah. So was CIA. Yeah.

Well, CIA, I feel like CIA just didn't want to deal with the, well, you would think that too. The alarm bells would ring too. But I can understand the CIA's point because they're trying to like muzzle these guys. It seems like, right? It seems like that's what they've been trying to do for the last 10 years, almost 10 years, eight, nine years. So it's just, yeah, go ahead. I mean, I think, it's hard to know.

I mean, we quote another Havana syndrome victim, someone who was struck in in Moscow, Mark Polymeropoulos, you know, a sort of friend of the team house, if you like, saying that. Why the FBI behaved as it did in this context is one of the big unanswered questions of the whole Havana syndrome story. And you know, you can look at it from several angles. There are several possible explanations. One is sheer incompetence. A lot of these incidents happened in Philadelphia.

The CIA officers with whom we spoke were particularly cutting in their remarks about the abilities of the counterintelligence team, the very small counterintelligence team in the Bureau's Philadelphia office. So it could be that they just weren't very good then, but I mean, enough of this stuff happened elsewhere that you would think that other folks would get involved who were probably better. But there seemed to be a marked disinterest in really finding out who was behind this.

And to me, that's not a hundred miles away from other similar disinterest we've seen in the last 10 years over incidents that have occurred in the United States, that common sense might lead you to suspect the Russians might have been responsible for. I mean, there have been various associates of Vladimir Putin and so forth, died in very unusual circumstances. I mean, one, you know, in a hotel beside DuPont Circle in Washington, D.C., that there's been a strange eagerness to sort of adopt a nothing to see here attitude from on the part of the U.S. government.

Doesn't matter which administration is in power. Those counterintelligence investigations are very odd to the way they get. They're so close hold and they go on for decades oftentimes. times. So it's not totally uncommon for like, docked up to into a CI investigation and just disappear. But I felt the same thing. I mean, that there's a,

you can't help but feel that there's a political component of it, meaning that, but like for years and years, the federal government didn't go after Chinese espionage because they were seen as our favorite trading partner in any sort of CI investigation involving the Chinese was just sort of seen as like an annoyance. why do we have to do this? And I mean, this is purely speculative on my part, but I couldn't help but think that when it comes to this case with the Havana syndrome victims, that the reason why

they don't want to look too hard is because the answers just bring more questions. The biggest one being, how does the opposition even know how to target covered CIA personnel within the United States. How do they have their personnel information? How do they know where they live? How do they know their real names? Those are all very, very concerning questions that I haven't heard anyone ask at all. Yeah. Yep. I mean, I think that's, I mean, Jack's hit the nail on the head there. There's, you know, it not only raises a lot of awkward questions for the U.S. government, but it also forces tough decisions on them. If you find out that a nation-state is targeting your intelligence officers inside the United States, what are you going to do about that? Are you going to target their

officers in their home countries? Do you even have the ability to do that? Are you going to shut down their embassy? Are you going to bring more sanctions on them? I mean, one of the sort of one of the many sort of interesting facets that we uncovered in our investigation, we spoke with a lawyer called Mark Zaid, a Washington lawyer who's been in the news recently because he's fallen afoul of Donald Trump by representing the wrong Americans and therefore being stripped of his security clearance by Trump. But he represents a couple of dozen Havana syndrome victims. And he told us that some of these victims who were not the ones who were struck in Cuba,

but were struck elsewhere, whether that's Russia or other parts of the world or even in the United States. Some of them were Russian experts. and they have been on the receiving end of similarly sort of creepy episodes, beg your pardon, with people tailing them, photographing them and so forth, just as we describe has happened to some members of the Havana cohort. But on those cases, when they were able to trace back who was doing this to them, it turned out to be Russian speakers, whereas a lot of the hints and clues about who was targeting the actual Havana cohort members in the United States

pointed not conclusively, but indirectly to links to Havana. So, you know, it's quite possible that Cuba and Russia, Russia were coordinating on this. We have, you know, we're a long way from being able to say we have conclusive proof, but those are the two obvious, obvious suspects. There was an incredible part in the story where Adam and Mike are sitting, having breakfast, I guess just before they're going to get treatment at the University of Pennsylvania. And they catch a guy just straight up taking pictures of them.

And they reported to the FBI. I guess the FBI went over the security tapes, followed it, tracked him where he was going that day. And like he literally like jumped on a plane and left. And they figured he was a foreign national. Like it. And it wasn't even, it wasn't even covert. It was obviously overt.

Yeah. So like you need to see. We're in, well, I'm in the window of the restaurant snapping pictures at you guys. You're the only people in there. Yeah. That's called harassing surveillance.

Yeah. It's intended to be seen. Yeah. And I'm assuming that there's still a counterintelligence investigation going on and stuff like that. And Jack, just to go back to what you mentioned where like there, you know, the more you dig in, the more questions you have. And there's questions that like no one really wants to ask or answer. Like, this is me speculating, but could there be a penetration at CIA or anywhere else? How else would they have that targeting data?

It could only come from inside the building. Right. That's the scary part, you know? Either that or, I mean, there's a few, I mean, I'm thinking, I'm sort of speaking off the top of my head here. I mean, but clearly they knew who the Havana, the D.I., the Cuban intelligence service in Cuba, knew who they were targeting in Havana. So tracking those guys in the United States, if you already know their identities,

is probably you've gotten past one of the hurdles there. But it's still challenging to track them all the way up to Philadelphia and what apartments are they staying in and so forth. I mean, that's in, you know, very, that has to be very troubling from a counterintelligence point of view. In addition, something we haven't talked about yet is the, what we were told by multiple intelligence officers was state actor level. In other words, nation state intelligence agency level phone hacking. Oh, yes. They were, whoever was doing this to the,

to the Havana syndrome victims was able to remotely access their phones and task their phones to do things and in fact disable their phones so that they became as one of the victims put it a brick in his hand and then heat those phones up so they became too hot to handle and you know the US government looked into that and found out that you know there was in what what in signals intelligence terms is called you know and phone hacking terms is called an exploit um and i'm at about the edge of my knowledge of uh of that sort of of technology uh here but but they were able to shut that down but they also discovered that

there was a a network of burner phones that were sort of involved in in this operation that as the authorities closed in in Philadelphia, that network of burnophones just went silent and they couldn't grab them. I just wanted to mention in case, you know, we have viewers or listeners who, you know, haven't yet read the story that the case of the photographer in the window in Philadelphia, which we lead the story with because it was such an extraordinary event. And we had photographs that the two CIA officers who were having breakfast in the window of this cafe when the guy shows up on the sidewalk outside the window and starts pointing his camera at them and taking photographs.

And we're talking about a real camera here. We're not talking about a cell phone camera. We're talking about a professional level camera with a long lens. that we have those photographs and we reproduce some of those photographs in the article that the intelligence officers took of whoever this was on the sidewalk.

It's also important to mention that unlike breaking into somebody's home and stealing something from their home, I don't think it's illegal to take photographs of people on a public sidewalk. I'm not a lawyer, and so I'm welcome being corrected on that. So it's not as if that individual was doing anything illegal,

and we certainly don't say in the article that that person was a Cuban spy or a Russian spy or agent or, you know, witting or unwitting. We don't know who he was. Just that he's a foreign national according to the FBI. That's what they were told. We quote us, one of our sources saying that. But it was very curious and suspicious behavior. A little bit back on like the CIA basically running a defense on their own officers that got injured.

It was wild what was going on. Like when they wanted to go see the doctor in Miami, who's a highly regarded doctor, a neuros neurologist or whatever and they ended up starting to like no we're not going to actually pay for your flights to Miami to go get treatment and stuff like that. It's just I don't know.

I mean the way they handled this was pretty unbelievable where it's now blown up and it's a big news story and it has been for years. It's like the opposite of what you should do. Like take care of your guys and figure out what the fuck's going on and maybe hit back. It's probably the biggest scandal the CIA has had since WMDs in Iraq. I mean, it's sizable.

And I mean, what we uncover is that a lot of it, especially initially, first there's some disbelief that this was actually happening. But also there were people who remember the whole Moscow microwaves thing in the 1970s and 80s. And that it was just sort of a morass, right? You're like, you'd never really know like, yeah, the embassy was being bombarded with microwaves. What affected that have on people? What did it not have? You know, what were the, what were the microwaves intended to do? What weren't they intended to?

It turned into this like morass. And there still are unanswered questions about that to this day. And I think they just did not want to go down that rabbit hole and start it over again. Yeah, I think that's right. and you know but it goes back to what we were saying earlier it also they didn't really want to lift up that rock and look under it and I suspect without without any proof that that reluctance went higher than just the seventh floor of the you know old the original headquarters building at CIA headquarters in Langley I suspect that

that reluctance probably went higher than that because what administration wants to face into all of those tough questions and all of those tough decisions that actual proof of

A, your intelligence officers being targeted and zapped with some weapon abroad forces you into and and and as we discussed earlier you know then those those self-same intelligence officers being targeted in northern Virginia or downtown Philadelphia as if they were in Moscow or you know Beijing or you know or Havana and you know and and there's

you know there's there's there's a real you know I think you know reluctance to to face into to face into some of that and and there's another potential

you know reason which we'll probably get to well we'll definitely get to in part two of the series so we don't want to talk too much about it but you know there may be there may be self-serving reasons why the United States

government doesn't want to delve too deeply or speak too publicly about what sort of devices are being used to target its intelligence officers. We also, it's important to understand and remember that the Obama administration was trying to normalize relations with Cuba during this time. And there's, I think that like one of the most interesting things that, you know, some historian 75 years from now will have to piece together is like the whole tit for and geopolitical chess match that got played between CIA and Cuban and Russian intelligence services. You know, because we were normalizing relations and there was this opening, the CIA people

who are going down there were told that we're taking more of a gloves off approach, just meaning that they're going to be more aggressive about recruitments trying to recruit Cuban citizens on the island. did that lead to some sort of retaliation or greater retaliation? And then, of course, the normalization itself between the United States and Cuba is something that would be a bad thing for who, for what country? Russia. And you saw after everything got rolled back, Russia has one of their submarines parked in Cuba and all kinds of other stuff going on. And as you pull the camera back from just Cuba, and this isn't really the focus of our article, but you look at the other locations where folks have come down with Havana syndrome,

a lot of them are in these countries where there's a renewed contest between Russia and the United States for influence. Austria being one, Vietnam being another. Cuba, obviously,

being won the Central Asian countries. And, you know, so it's, you know, there's no way for us to prove it right now, but, you know, that's a factor that might be playing into this as well.

Yeah, there was another interesting part during the article. You guys actually have a recording that Adam, I believe, took of the sound that he heard and what made him, you know, get vertigo, puke and essentially the onset of all his symptoms. And there was a part in the article and clarify it for me where the CIA has their analysts look at it. And they're like, oh, no, it's crickets. No, I was that the CIA? Was that somebody else? I think you've got that.

Jason groups. Yeah, that's right. That's right. And it was the CIA who, when they first analyzed it, the Department of Science and Technology, DS&T, as it's known at the agency, they analyzed that very quickly when Adam sent it up to them shortly after he was struck. and they came to a very sort of chilling conclusion. They ran it through all their sort of machines, and they sent a message back down, you know, within hours, saying, you were exposed to something a man-made that can cause serious injury and or death.

So, you know, that was their first take. It's interesting that despite that being, having that immediate knowledge at CIA headquarters, how much shade they threw at the Havana victim, Hamanah syndrome victims, you know, over the next months and years. So when it came to the crickets that... Yeah, and explain what the Johnson Group is and stuff like that just for folks. Jason Group, sorry.

Jack, you want to take that? I mean, as I understand it, it's just a group of scientists that consult with the United States government. I asked one of my professors, actually, he was a nuclear seismologist about Jason. And he said, yeah, it's interesting that they're kind of like groomed, I guess, very early on in their careers for those positions, which I imagine there's not very many of them. But yeah, they produced this report early on with as far as I know, they didn't look at any actual evidence. They didn't look at any of the evidence even we have to come to this conclusion while they were probably just hearing crickets. And well, when these guys start going to see the doctor, when they go start to see Dr. Hoffer in Miami, I mean, he points out the symptoms and the physical effects, physical injuries that these guys have in their inner ear and the brain that cannot be imagined or faked. it cannot be psychosomatic.

It cannot be mass hysteria. Like, it's impossible to fake those injuries. Yeah, I mean, it's, and you have to apply some common sense to this, okay? If crickets or cicadas or any insects in Cuba could damage the brains of dozens of U.S. embassy staffers. And remember, the embassy was captured like, I think, 55 staff. So although there were people coming down on temporary duty to replace the folks who had already been hurt and gone back to the United States,

you're talking about a very high percentage of staff at the United States Embassy. Well, if the crickets were able to inflict that level of damage on the staff of one embassy, Cuba would be uninhabitable for huge. human beings, right? I mean, it just worked. And so, you know, like I said, that, and then look at, look at the stuff that we report on this, you know, in this article on the high side about the sort of all of the aggressive harassment and intimidation of the victims

in the United States. If the crickets had done that, or if the, if this was a sort of psychosomatic you know, it's all in their head sort of, sort of phenomenon. Who would care enough to go after these guys and gals in the United States? I mean, that just doesn't make any sense. Going back to like when the Obama administration was normalizing relations with Cuba and we restaffed the embassy down there and stuff like that, wouldn't it behoove Cuba if they're trying to like make nice with the U.S. to not, you do the harassment stuff take a shit in the toilet and stuff like that fuck around but like to actually injure these people i feel like it's a step above normal like um spycraft right and normal yeah um so my question i guess and where i'm leaning to is like

do you think that like russia probably i mean russia's running around cuba right they have to have a gru and svr guys running around there um could russian guys have done this to the U.S. Yeah. Personnel. Yeah, it's certainly possible, but they, it would be highly unlikely that the Cubans would not be read into it on some level, that that DGI would not know about it. Now, there's an interesting moment where the ambassador to Cuba, Ambassador Delarentis, meets with Raul Castro in his office over this very issue. and rule Castro looks them right in the eye and says, we are not behind this. We did not do this.

I run this island. I would never authorize that. And, you know, I mean, I think that it's possible they were working together, but it's also possible that the Cubans, maybe they knew something. Maybe they knew the Russians were there setting up, quote unquote, surveillance gear and did not know the full extent of what was being established on the island. But again, there are still some unanswered questions there. Yeah.

No, there are many unanswered questions. Although we, you know, as I was mentioning earlier, in terms of the campaign against the U.S. intelligence officers in the United States, you know, the ones that were linked to Cuba, the clues led back to Cuba for who was who was targeting them. And the ones that were linked to Russia, the clues, you know, seemed to point towards Russia. But we asked one of the Cuba cohort CIA officers, you know, do you think those two nations or their spy services are working together? And he sort of chuckled and said, yeah, only on days that end in why. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. And I think also you need to point out that the rules of espionage had been changing for a while. You had the Russian security services poisoning dissidents in the United Kingdom with radioactive material. I mean, that's done to send a message. Like they want you to know that we can reach you. We can touch you anywhere. So, you know, in the past, they'd say that, you know, this was sort of a gentleman's game that operated on Moscow rule. that's kind of out the window now. Everything that's happened in 2016 and then Ukraine, I mean, those rules and the conversations we have about like rules-based international order and everything. Like that's the past. That's over now. Yeah. Yeah, it's kind of gnarly because it's like what you would do probably if you're just trying to intimidate.

Like it's kind of like what like a kingpin or drug lord would do. You know what I mean? It's more criminal. We do if the two countries were at war with each other. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And you do see the up, you know, the uptick in Russian sabotage across Europe and stuff like that.

I mean, the gloves do kind of seem to be off more and more, at least in the espionage world. Absolutely. When is part two coming out? And why can't I read it beforehand? For God's sakes. Because it's in draft form. Okay. Yeah.

And we have, I mean, there's only two of us at the high side. And, you know, we do our very best to make sure that the stories that come out, you know, adhere to all the professional standards that you would expect from much better financed, news organizations and we have other stories we have just in terms of short term news stories probably three that we're trying to nail

that I can just think of off the top of my head between us over the next week or two and long-term projects as you mentioned we have the Willie Merkerson story and the next the next you know that's been on a sort of a slight hiatus since the fall but but we're coming back with a with a really big juicy story on that about a covert action in in Africa that you have to read about to to believe and that's never been written about before to my knowledge and so but

I'm always, I mean, Jack can speak for himself. I'm always reluctant ahead of time to say, we're going to bring this story out on this date because, you know, it can set you up for either letting people down or rushing something into print before it's quite ready and doesn't quite have the professional sheen that we wanted to have. But, I mean, we're probably talking for part two sort of weeks, not months.

I mean, Jack, you let me know your thoughts. I mean, it's been so long. I mean, I have to go back and look at what we have, Sean, because I don't even know where we're at at the moment. And I think off the top of my head, I need to go and talk to some sources to get that out the door. And yeah, there's a few other things we're working on at the same time. And again, just to remind that the readers,

every single story we're talking about now is something you would not have read before. Every single one. Legitimate, fairly significant, potentially news stories that haven't been covered anywhere else. And I'm not trying to throw shade at other news organizations. You could do it. Go ahead. They're choosing not to cover them. I'm just saying that there's a lot of stuff going on in the world.

And, you know, every national security reporter in the United States is spread thin right now. Yeah. Yeah. I'm trying to remember from the article, CIA, when you guys go for comment, like, they were just like, boilerplate kind of comment. They gave us one paragraph, you know, you know, we're trying to do, we're trying to do better by our offices. I mean, I'm paraphrasing there. Yeah. And the FBI didn't even respond. Yep, nothing from the FBI. Wow. I mean, and listen, I understand, like probably Philadelphia is not exactly a spy. capital compared to New York or DC and stuff is what I'm trying to say. But so like, but okay, you get to call and you have a couple CIA guys that are going,

or more that are going to the University of Pennsylvania for treatment. It's like, how about we shoot some, a couple people up from D.C. And bolster these ranks a little bit and do what we need to do. The northern Virginia stuff is nuts to me as well, like where they're not all, their counterintelligence department is not you know intent is up what's going on here let's let's figure it out um it's kind of shocking to me and i get like probably the fbi spread thin and stuff like that like anybody else but you would assume that counterintelligence especially like russian or chinese or cuban is priority one yeah yeah and it's also interesting to note the difference this really isn't

in the article but there's a difference between how the department of defense and how the CIA responded to Havana syndrome. And my impression is that DOD, including Socom and J-Soc, took this much more seriously, much quicker. And they saw it as like a problem we need to solve. Like what's the fix? Let's do the Army thing and figure out how to defeat this. So they were, I don't want to say perfect or anything like that, but they were much more aggressive, I think, in confronting this than the intelligence community was.

But then even then there are caveats, right? I've been told that the NSA actually is pretty aggressive on this. Okay. Why do you think the DOD stepped up faster and harder compared to CIA? I think it's a cultural issue. I think it's just like Army can do attitude. Like let's jump into this and get it done. Whereas the CIA was like, this is a big headache.

We don't want to have to deal with. Is it fair to assume we have weapons like this too And we don't want to like say that we do Or admit that we do or confirm we do Yeah, gotta wait for part two Shit, okay Now I just tease the shit I mean I gotta get this early release

This is unacceptable I have a little bit of a end Into the high side so I'm expecting the article Before it goes to print so I won't say anything But because I literally the first thing I said is like Jack, send me part two What are you doing? And he's like, it's not done yet.

I'm like, God. It's an incredible. I mean, it reads like a movie. It's like a thriller. It's insane. You can't believe that it's real life. What do people say? I mean, I'm not particularly religious, but your words to God's ears, right?

Feel free, feel free, D, to let all your Hollywood contacts know. I will. I mean, I do have whatever. I mean, I have some, so I will because it's, it's fucking nuts. It's if I watch this in a movie, I would be like, this is bullshit. There's no way this is going on in America and Virginia and Philly. Harassing surveillance. Like on, I get it happens in Vienna.

It happens everywhere else like we mentioned. And they understand that that's going to happen. It's going to be a hardship tour. It's what it is. Adam and Mike, how are they, and Frank, how are they doing today in terms of symptoms? You know. they're doing better um you know part of this story is charting like their medical journey as well and interviewing the doctors and scientists that studied this and um they went through some

pretty extensive rehabilitation uh like to re what happens is the inner ear damage uh it hits the vestibular system which is what induces what's commonly known as vertigo um and then there's the actual brain damage. And there are treatments, there are therapies to go through. What the guys told me was that they don't so much cure the problem, but they teach them how to live with the symptoms, like how to adapt to them and adapt their lives around them. And so they're doing better now than they were.

but the amount of bitterness and anger towards the United States government for how they were treated the psychological damage, you know, sometimes called moral injury, is very real and my sense is that it exists with all of them.

Yeah. It was a good part in the article where I think it was Mike, whoever, the, somebody who got hit and who was used to like, performing at a high level who could barely write cables and barely do their job, right? Like you live your whole life being a top performer and being able to handle these things and have a photographic memory and stuff like that.

And then you go to not being able to concentrate, not be able to drive to work. Yeah, I can understand the emotional and mental like fallout from doing so, from that, right? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, that's that's, and that's a common theme. that you hear from, I don't want to say every last victim, but certainly. Mark Polymeropoulos mentioned the same thing. Yeah, because these are high-speed individuals, you know, they, you know, it's not easy to get into CIA.

It's not easy to get through some of the courses that you have to go through. and you know when you emerge from that you're a you're a high speed individual who's now very highly trained and to go from that to not being able to write properly you know um to have to put stickies on uh you know on on you know on on walls or on laptops to remind you what you know what to do and so forth um that that's very psychologically troubling. And, you know, at least one of our sources who we, you know, we quote extensively in the article, you know, struggled with suicidal ideation as a result of that. Yeah.

It really is an incredible story. I'm not just saying it because I know you guys. I mean, I was on the edge of my seat reading it. I couldn't fucking believe it because you've heard a lot of stories about the Havana syndrome. and it's it really it really focuses more on like um CIA kind of you know running defense on these people uh trying you know censoring that that report that came out things like that which i think should be told as well but like you really get into the nitty gritty of like the got the first people that got hit with this right patient zero who the name is havana syndrome

for a reason right it happened to a guy in havana um it's really incredible CIA was really working overtime too to craft the public narrative about this issue. I've been told that they brought reporters from major newspapers into CIA for briefings before various IG reports came out. And that's why the day that it's internally released, the classified version is internally released, that very day Washington Post has a story. Right. The CIA's story. It's the story they were given. I mean, I'm sure there's some great reporters at those outlets, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal on New York Times. But more and more, it seems like they are just basically glorified press secretaries.

I wouldn't go that far. All right, I'm being a little hyperbolic. It's okay. But you're telling me they're not exchanging positive stories for a little bit more access and for like the deputy director to answer their text when they text them. and things like that? I don't know that, so I'm unwilling to make that. I'm completely speculating and making that accurate.

Let me be fair, okay. The articles, Lance Slaughter, part one, I cannot wait for part two. How the CIA failed its officers in Cuba and the FBI failed them at home. It's on the high side substack. The link is in the description. Work, you're not going to read anywhere else. and if you're not a reader, they have an audio version.

You can listen to it on the audio. If you, you know, you got hit by Havana's Intermen, can't read, I guess. Honestly, one of the better investigative articles I've read in a very long time. And it's,

I mean, no doc. I mean, Sean Nailer and Jack Murphy, you guys know what you're doing. Anything else? Tell me, what do we got? Talk to me. Back. On Havana?

or like in general. Up to you. Pulparee, bro. Yeah, so I mean, part two of the Havana syndrome story. I can't. And look, I've been on this topic, honestly, for so long. My head has been in it for so long. They're like, I can't really tell you like,

like does this story we published, like, how important is it? Is it going to be important to people? Is it not going to be? It's hard for me to judge because I've been inside it for so long. Yeah. And with part two, it's going to be kind of like starting over again in some ways. But that's going to get more into some of the technical specifications of the device that would be used to do this and how it works.

And I interviewed some people who worked at quite high levels on this. So that should be interesting. There's other pieces that we're working on. I'm working on other stories about the special operations community, about the intelligence community that hopefully we'll see out there in the next. couple months. Yeah. Great. Yeah.

And look out for the Willie Mercoson continuation. Yeah. We are also working on for the team house, for team house folks, having Mark P and possibly Adam on the show from the article, which I'm looking forward to, I'm really looking forward to that. So I'll keep a lookout on that. Yeah, this is great. Guys, check out the article.

It's the high side substack. just Google the high side substack. The link will be in the description in the show notes. It's easy to find right there. All the other links for everybody will be down in the description as well. The high side Twitter, Sean's Twitter, Jack's Twitter, but he's not on Twitter. So if you think you're talking to Jack, you're talking to me.

Everything else down in the description for all the boys to Mick, Andy, and Jason. And the best possible way you could, what you could do to support the show, first and foremost, is Patreon.com slash the team. house completely free ad ad free audio video for both eyes on and team house if you're a ten dollar member you get a patch sent from me it's right here that right next to me i sent out like 30 yesterday right there for ten dollar members i got to send you a patch on thank you um patreon dot com slash the team house the high side substack google it or the link is in the description

thanks guys this is great thank you thank you thank you