Did Putin Have a Secret Campaign to Cripple American Spies? (w/ Michael Rey)

Welcome everyone to the borrower cakes. I'm Mark Polymeropolis, 26-year veteran of the CIA. I'm joined as always by my colleague, Michael Weiss, a veteran and trepid journalist. What do we call you the yesterday? Husband of the year was last week. We're giving all sorts of crack. Pretty good husband. That was the lowest order. Nighted by the way, by the government of Estonia. I do. I got some comments from listeners saying that I should call you sir. They kind of like that. So I was a sir Michael. Take it. But we have an incredible episode today, something that's actually near and dear to my heart. We're joined by Michael Ray, 60 minutes journalist, national security expert as well. He's in the background right there. You can see he has an Emmy, no small shakes, from some of the incredible reporting that he has done on Havana Syndrome. And that's what we're here to talk about today. Both Michael and his colleague, Orianna Zill, have written a new book, Havana Syndrome, Secret Weapons and Government Coverup and the greatest spy mystery of our time, a copy right here. It is out on Amazon. It's on all sorts of bestseller notifications here and there. So it's getting a lot of buzz to be kind of a transparent with the audience. This is Havana Syndrome is something. And for those who know me who affected me in my career, it actually caused me to retire. From the CIA, I became quite ill. And ultimately, it's something that I think deserves a long explanation and a lot of solid national security journalism. And that's why Michael Ray is here. Also note that Michael Weiss, who's going to kind of jump in now with some of the questioning, has worked on this story with the 60 minutes crew and it's been integral in getting to the truth. I am not agnostic on this. Obviously, it's something that ended my career. I feel very strongly about it, but I think it's great today. Michael Ray and Michael Weiss is at both of you as journalists do start in kind of a neutral position. You are unbiased and then you get to certain conclusions. So Michael Weiss, want to jump in on some of the questions and I think this will be an amazing discussion. Yeah. So I just put my sort of cards on the table here. Michael Ray, our guest and I have been working together for three years now. I think we have the insider. Yeah. So Christo Groza of my colleague, Ramon Davidohoto, the editor in chief, the insider, we were privileged enough to be invited to participate or collaborate with 60 minutes, several years back on one of their many segments they've devoted to anomalous health incidents or a Havana Syndrome as it's colloquially known. And I think together we did some great work and sort of move in the middle. In the direction of proving a not only is this phenomenon real, be not only are the Russians behind it, but see, we know which Russians in some cases, at least two, that we reported on, were responsible certainly for doing the ISR, the surveillance and reconnaissance of victims, if not wielding the actual device. So Michael, I'll turn it over to you. I mean, I think for listeners who may not be familiar with this subject matter at all. In my experience, people, there's one of two responses when you mention Havana Syndrome. The first is, oh, that thing, isn't that crickets or HVAC devices malfunctioning? That's been debunked, right? Well, the other is, oh, yeah, I believe it's real. And I think I might have it because, you know, I've got a really bad headache and there are strange people following me on the streets. So it sort of occupies this space in the public consciousness between, you know, conspiracy theory, hoax, or something that is so fantastical, it must be true and the government is covering it up. And I think, you know, one of the great things your book does is explain, neither of those things is true necessarily, but there is a lot of there there. So why don't you just explain to our listeners, like, what is Havana Syndrome? Where did it start? And how do we know what we know at this point? And thank you for having me here, guys. It's a pleasure to be here. Kind of odd to be talking to you guys about this. We spent a lot of time talking about this issue. And I'll start by saying that that both myself and my colleague, Oriana Zill, were deeply skeptical in the beginning. We first heard about it in sort of late 2016, 2017 range when it got its first publicity. And really, it wasn't until we met folks like Mark Polymerapolis, who are incredibly impressive people when you talk to them about their careers and everything they do. And they start telling these stories and you meet several Mark Polymerapolises, many of whom won't go public on this, like Mark has. And there's just something sort of undeniable about the narrative that's kind of developed over time. This isn't coming from a single source, it's coming from multiple sources, telling very similar stories. So, when we first got onto it, it was when the reporting started coming out of Havana. As we know, there was a handful of cases of, I mean, anomalous incidents, I guess, is the best way to describe it. It was initially described as a sonic attack, as if it was some sound device that was hurting people. But there was reportedly diplomats in Havana, as we know, who were complaining of severe headaches, nausea, dizziness, loss of hearing, strange incidents that were happening to the mostly at home, a lot of pain, a lot of head pain associated with it as well. And a lot of confusion. There was really no singular answer that people could grab onto. For us, for Oriana and I and the editors at 60 minutes early on, it was really when we started hearing, you know, talking to folks like Mark, but also hearing about the cases that were coming out of China. And then the cases that were starting to emerge in Europe in 2018, 2019, and like, as we wrote in the book, Havana syndrome is almost a misnomer. It kind of has nothing, although Havana was a very important location for this cluster of cases, it kind of doesn't have much to do with the situation in general anymore, because it's so widespread that is really, for me, not necessarily a Cuba Havana story, as it's evolved over time. You have a chapter in the book called Frankfort syndrome, because one of the places we were able to determine together that somebody who was from working for the US government in a, shall we say, clandestine capacity was hit in 2014, and this was just a few weeks or a few months after the annexation of Crimea. This person had done things in their career to counterman the malign activities of a certain hostile adversary of the United States gets, guess which one. And I mean, I remember when we did this, we literally put a virtual lineup of known members of Russian military intelligence unit 29155. This is the black ops unit that did the Skripal poisoning, a series of bombings across Europe going back to 2011. They did cyber operations against Ukraine, the whole kitten caboodle, these guys are responsible for it. And without hesitation, they identified a member of this unit as having scoped around the parking lot of the consulate in Frankfort. And you know, one of the things, Michael, I think it would be helpful to understand for the layman is, you know, the cases that you and Orianna have investigated, these are people with medical records, a testing to the fact that some physiological harm had befallen them, right? It was not possible for them to manufacture complaints. This is not psychosomatic in these cases, right? Can you get a little bit into the science and the medical? Can I say there's three boxes on the screen and one of those boxes is filled with one of those cases, right? You know, Mark's story is is really, I think, one of the most important origin stories of this whole thing. I certainly don't want to speak for him, but without Mark coming forward and talking about this, I think we wouldn't be as far down the road as we are as we believe we are on this. One of the cases I would talk about and we we are best estimate looking back at our nose, probably 70 or so victims. We use the term victim and survivor interchangeably, depending on the circumstances in which we're talking about. One of the one of the victims last survivors who made the most impact on us and appeared in 60 minutes agreed to go on camera on 60 minutes. It was a woman that we called Joy, who Michael, I know you know. Her husband was stationed at the embassy in Tbilisi, Georgia. It was working for the Department of Justice and she was the trailing spouse of her husband posted overseas. She went home one day to meet her son to pick him up when he got off the school bus from the American school in a suburb of Tbilisi where all the diplomats lived. Walked up to the second floor to do the laundry and there's an open window out onto the street facing a house across the dirt road and describes the experience of getting knocked sideways to the point where she had to hold onto the machine to brace herself. The severe pain on the left side of her head decided facing the window out towards the house across the street describes all of the medical the maladies that appeared instantly. The world turning upside down, the vomiting, everything. She was able to stumble down the stairs because she was so concerned that her son would come home and arrive at the house with whatever was happening. So she got outside, she opened the door to her gate onto the street and there was a Mercedes SUV idling and a tall blonde guy who didn't look like any of the other George in her neighborhood that he'd ever she'd ever seen before. And with Michael's help and Crystal Groza's help, we identified who that individual was, and he was the son of the commander of unit 29155, a unit that we believe, given the confluence of intelligence and information that we've gathered, may have been involved in this incident. He was also standing right outside of her house when she had the experience. She has since now three years, well, we're five years on, had three brain surgeries, had steel plates put in her head to stop the basically crumbling of the skull bone around her ears. It's a known syndrome called minor syndrome, which is basically the dissolving of the bones around the ear. She's one of the most severe cases we've heard of. I'm sure Mark can share his symptoms if you want to, but these are ongoing maladies. And they're also ongoing in a direction where we don't know where they're going. There's been some questions about mysterious cancers that have shown up. Nobody really knows where this is taking the victims down the long road. You point out something, Michael, that in the book, in fact, and I think it's in the intro, intro to the book, as well as that, you know, you went out and you talked to people, and so you're actually talking and meeting with victims. And the one thing that I have found over the years, and because there's a big picture question here is that, you know, those in the CIA, those in Congress, those journalists who actually take the time and meet with someone like myself, a career intelligence officer, someone who worked on Russia, who clearly was hit by something because of that work, and you take a look at our medical records, the awful stories, the kind of the pain and suffering that I went through, and then you walk away with, okay, something happened. And, you know, and that's also why I think on the operational side of the house that CIA, there's so much more of a belief that this is actually something that that certainly is a huge problem that is still has not been addressed properly, because the CIA, the clandestine service, the director of operations is a very small, close knit unit, so you know everybody. People, everyone knows someone who's been affected by this. Why is the analytic community still kind of sticking its head in the sand? I can't explain it, but you, as a journalist, have a bigger picture of you. What's your thoughts? Well, I think Michael has done some great writing about that, about the culture within the agency. I was actually going to ask you, you were talking about the, the upside of the house and the analyst side of the house. I would really love to talk about the comms side of the house also. After our second or third piece, we've done four pieces since 2017, 2018 at 60 minutes, and after the second one, I believe, we got a phone call from a former very senior person at the agency. It was a, it was an off the record call, so I can't say who it was still. I'm holding to that. But the pushback we got was very personal, very illogical. There's no way this can happen. I'm 90, we talk about it in the book. I'm 99% sure that this isn't real. So it's 99% sure about proving a negative. And I can, maybe Mark, you can tell me or Michael in your experience, has there been anything that's ever been analyzed to 99% sure of this in the history of the agency? There's, there's one quick anecdote. I wouldn't, I'd like to share, Orianna, we've been doing some promotion for the book, and thank you for having us here. We did a little hit on CBS mornings the other day, just a quick form and a thing. But the producer doing, doing his work, had a couple of questions and he went to the comms office at the CIA at three or five questions, fairly in depth, multi-point questions about not sharing intelligence, about the question of whether there's a device in existence or not. The answer he got back was to the multiple questions was this claim is false. That's the full answer. All right. And we have so much information, and Michael knows as a journalist, when you have this so much information pointing in a direction, there's real questions that need to be asked. I would never claim to know what's in the classified silos at the agency or anywhere across the IC, and we don't in the book. But what we found with Crystal, the reporting that's floating out there in the open source, and available through commercial records and other records, ask really important questions that just aren't getting answered. And that leads to Mark's questions. Why? Why? I mean, what do you think? I'll go, what's your take? Well, I'll give two anecdotes that for me kind of illuminated a lot of the dysfunction and chaos and also miscommunication within CIA about this. Number one, you mentioned joy and to Blisi, Georgia. And you mentioned Albert Avrianoff is the Lanky blonde-haired son of Andrei Avrianoff, who's the founding commander of Unit 29155, and he was grooming Albert to basically take his place as the head of the unit. By the way, Andrei Avrianoff, the founding commander, is now Deputy Director of the GRU in charge of all of the Africa portfolio for-- Reward for his service. Rewarded for his service. When we reported that Albert had gone to Georgia, and truth be told, this was sort of an educated bit of speculation because I believe he'd gone to a Central Asian Republic, switched off his phone, and then the phone would switched back on after he presumably left Georgia. CIA stationed into Blisi basically did its own investigation, ratified our finding, sent it back to Langley, and we're told, don't look into this any further. So CIA proved us right after the fact, and this was information they did not possess until we reported. The second anecdote I wanted to give, we had reported there was a way of moving material and men across the world under the cover of basically a race car. It was called Silkway Rally, and the whole thing is a GRU Russian military intelligence front. And Silkway Rally had gone all across Europe into China, and we were hypothesizing that one of the ways they were able to move the device, and we're going to talk a little bit about the physics of the device in a minute, was through the cover of Silkway Rally. Somebody from the intelligence community went to Congress and said, well, they alleged Silkway Rally as a GRU front for moving men and material around the world. This is not true. Within five days, five days, the US Treasury Department sanctioned Silkway Rally as a GRU front for moving men and material around the world. So yet again, 60 minutes in the insider were head of the intelligence community. And I had it from somebody, a former CIA official, very senior 7th floor, who we talked to on background for the last investigation we did. And I asked, has anything that we reported in our written piece of the first collaboration in the insider? Has anything been debunked? He said, in no uncertain terms, no, it hasn't. The question is, is this circumstantial evidence, or is this good enough proof to confirm that Havana is real and the Russians are behind it? And so now I want to turn this a little bit around now, because since that investigation, there has been a welter of new evidence acquired to substantiate the legitimacy of this phenomenon. And Sasha, yes, it's not, Sachingberg National Security Reporter first broke the story that Department of Homeland Security had acquired off the black market. So they bought a weapon that does pulse microwave radiation. One of the things that has been suggested is responsible for causing AHI from some unknown vendor, and that this weapon has been in the custody of the US government on a US Army base for the last, at this point, it was a year. It was at the tail end of the Biden administration, and that scientists and technical experts were tinkering with it, experimenting on rats and sheep. And guess what? In rats and sheep and animals, it was causing the exact effects and symptoms of AHI, right? And can I say, we also just learned that they were testing it on human tissue as well? Testing it on human tissue as well. And so now we have a device that is consistent with everything that was, and we should say, one of the sources we've been using in our investigations is Dr. David Rellman, who was the co-chair of the expert panel, the intelligence communities expert panel on plausible theories as to what could cause AHI. And pulse microwave radiation was one of those theories. And Michael, I want to turn it back to you because I've been drowning on too long. Explain the science behind this, you know, because this is one of the things. Right. Well, I think you can because it's in your book. I mean, a lot of, some of the biggest pushback, the biggest skeptics of Havanaugh syndrome have said, this simply is not possible to do what is being theorized. It would require a battery. It would require a power mechanism, the size of a sanitation truck. So how is it? It begs belief that a bunch of covert operatives are running around the world with something that can fit in a backpack or something that is man portable and zapping people at a distance and then getting away with it, Scott free. So explain how, in fact, that skepticism is ill-founded. So, and again, I am not a scientist. I've failed AP chemistry and biology and physics and all that stuff in high school. So, but from our understanding, there's a base assumption that gets put out publicly. Whether it's believed or not, it's put out publicly that microwave energy that's non-thermal, meaning it doesn't heat stuff up, can't do this kind of damage. That in order to damage human physiology, biology, it's human meat, you got to heat it up. In most of these cases, there's no victim who's saying I was heated up to a degree that I was burned. That's not a part of the symptomology that we've heard. There's been occasional cases of it, but so this base assumption that that doesn't exist We've been told by people who know that that is not true and that this theory has been pushed mostly by the AFRL, the Air Force Research Lab, which is where a lot of the science that the intelligence community comes from on this issue. So therefore, if you can't damage human humans without heating them up, then this thing can't exist. And in order to damage them with heat, you have to have a big dish, you have to have a battery on a truck and all that stuff. So apparently that's the science that's getting sort of utilized to rationalize the fact that this technology can't exist. In the descriptions of whatever it is that's been obtained from folks who are aware of what's been obtained. The technology is rather small, it's described as man portable, meaning it can be fit in a gym bag or a backpack or carried by a guy is capable of running off a car battery as a power source. So it doesn't need a huge amount of energy and can use internal antennas. We all know the antenna systems these days are incredible. So it doesn't need a big dish to direct the energy. We describe the scene in the book where we're speaking to someone who has knowledge of the device. And I opened up a window in an office building where we were talking with this person. And there happened to be a van parked in the parking lot. It's just a regular non evil van. But there was a van down there and I pointed down to it a couple of stories. And I said, if for instance in that van someone had this device that you're aware of, could they hit us up here? And the person looked down and said, yes, in fact, you could leave it in the van, you could walk away, you could activate it remotely. And it could generate the energy, the pulses, the very fast pulses that don't heat things up directed at the room. He said, you could also take the waves that that device generates, put them in another device. Because what we learned is that the device isn't really what's important. It's not the gun. It's the bullets. It's what comes out of the device. It's the wave of energy of microwave pulsed energy. You could put it in another form and hide it in the room, hide it in the hotel ceiling. Mark, you could hide it in the chandelier of the Marriott and Moscow, or have it next door in the laundry shoot, activate it remotely. And it could generate the pulses of microwave energy that we believe in others believe this isn't something we made up at a whole cloth is what's behind others. So I hope that wasn't too long. No, because, because let me just put it for the listeners, just in perspective, what happened to me in December of 2017 is that I woke up in my hotel room in Moscow, where I was visiting US Embassy, visiting also for amazingly enough meetings with Russian intelligence. It's what we still do. And even to this day, we do have to have a communication channel. But I woke up in the middle of the night to a splitting headache. Incredible vertigo. It was physically sick. Tonight is ringing in my ears. And, and so, you know, after that happened in the really awful health journey, I went on after that, trying both to get an acknowledgement from CIA that something happened, then to get treatment, and then to get better. There always was a question of, well, how could this happen in a five-star hotel, two blocks from the US Embassy? And, and it's exactly right. A lot of the times in the beginning of this, and again, this was back in 2017, then we're going to 18. People would say, well, you know, whatever happened, couldn't have happened because the device had to be that big. Yet now, it turns out that science of that is wrong, and the CNN reporting in Sasha's and others. And which, by the way, is not debunked by anyone. There's no one in the US government who has denied that we don't have a device. Let's just be very clear. But this device is apparently, as you said, is small. And so, you know, I think that's so symptomatic of so many things where something has come out, you know, victims or national security journalists, you know, report something make a claim. The US government says, no, that's not possible. And then four or five months later, not only has it been proven to be possible, it's even acknowledged. And so they've moved the bar, the, the intelligence community to a place in which, in the past, by the way, it was like nothing, this technology doesn't exist. It's never existed. And then with all of your reporting, you said, well, actually, it has. There's a long history of the Soviets and, and, and, and others who have experimented on this. But, you know, the bar has now moved so much farther down the line. But, let's go back to that question on why? I mean, you know, listeners are going to say, okay, we get this. But why is that? Why is the US, first of all, you know, why is the US government not acknowledging this whatsoever? And then you have to go to the next question of if we do have attribution, what do we do? But again, why is the US government stuck its head in the sand on this? We have friends, I have colleagues at the agency now, to this day, both in and out, retired or still inside, who have said to us the proponents of evidence, by the way, that they have, and obviously, that you all in the National Security Journalism community have put forward. It's impossible to say, it can't, this is not happening. Yet, they're saying it's not happening. I mean, it's this, you know, it's Aristotle's law of non-contradiction. You can't have two things going on at the same time. You like that Greek reference, Michael, by the way. Yeah. Aristotle, I did that. You're hot Greek, Greek blood or whatever I said in the book yet. But also, I would add to this that they're actively pursuing people that they believe could be leaking information about Havana Center. So why is there a leak investigation into something that doesn't exist? Can I say, I mean, we've been seeing these contradictions since the beginning. And I'll be very quicker. There's an example. It's a little bit of a side step. But in Tbilisi, when we have the incidents with Joy, we talked about at the time, there was five or six incidents. It was a cluster. And the embassy community there was really concerned. Everybody knew what was going on. Everybody knew something. Nobody knew what it was. There was a lot of worry. The State Department put out a memo to the community that was basically a bunch of warnings about how you can talk to your children about their concerns about these incidents by age range. So for your teen, you can say this, for whatever, they got down to the two to five year old category for how you talk to your toddler about the Havana syndrome. And they basically were telling your kid if they feel something move away. So the diplomatic community is having their families tell their children to get off the X over something that they're also saying doesn't really exist. And we're not going to treat you for and all this stuff. And there's example after example of that, because it's so widespread in so many agencies that you see these contradictions coming up. Again, with the device, the agency now is basically saying, if there was a device, we know it wasn't in the hands of Igor and it wasn't smoking when we got it. The bar is moved. The bar is moved again. We should acknowledge that the device that we were discussing that's been on a US Army base has Russian software. There's signatures. There are paw prints of Igor all over this, right? And it was acquired on the black market. But I mean, realistically speaking, everybody I've talked to says the black market here is basically GRU guys making some quick money on the side. Like because the Russians are growing up. To save assumption. And again, it's the question we're asking, not that I expect a public answer from these guys who say that every claim we make is false. But you know, how many times do we have to keep asking the question before they do something? Let's go now to kind of the pushback that you get sometimes. And I do think there is there are still people and you all have reported it. And I think there probably will be more coming. It's certainly in the book. So not just on this 60 minutes program, but in your book that there are still individuals in senior positions at CIA who have been involved in what is a cover up, these are senior analytic figures who are still there. We saw, despite some extremely favorable reviews, New York Times had a great review of Havana Syndrome, your book. We saw in the cipher brief, a very strange book review by former senior analysts, which looked like it was out of kind of Cuban propaganda, basically saying this is all nuts. I mean, and this is a former senior analyst, presumably who at the behest of other analysts got this cipher brief sadly to publish this kind of a very questionable book review. And that's their choice. They can do that. That's fine. But what would you say to that? I mean, you know, this thing's happened. You write a book, but this one was so out of left field, they even quoted someone, a researcher who has been skeptical of Vanishinger who we know hangs out with the Cuban government all the time. I mean, it's that was kind of crazy that they even went to that lengths. It was a bit of an outlier. But again, it's a book review and I take all the critique and criticism and I look forward to to the conversation about that. You wonder, is that a market could you define this as a domestic influence operation? Yeah. And therefore illegal. If it's sort of a proxy argument made for friends, the one thing I didn't enjoy was the criticism that perpetuating this story, the story, the never ending story of the Havana syndrome is that it's impacting negatively the victims. If it is, I would have backed off years ago. Let me say you all are both of you on this screen. I'll say both of you are heroes to the victims. Because we all, that's all we got. You know, the US government has betrayed us. It's been in a massive betrayal. I mean, in the book, we talk about a meeting at the National Security Council when senior NSA officials, I'm sorry, senior national security official, White House officials basically apologized to us, said we believe you now. But the betrayal has been staggering and the only ones who have been in our corner are both Michaels here and Orianna and others who were correctly unbiased at first and then kind of pursued the truth. So, you know, the idea that somehow you're doing a disservice to the victims, I take offense to that as well to the contrary. I mean, so I've talked to victims who don't want to come forward. And the reason they don't want to come forward is they are gravely concerned that this is going to foreclose other professional opportunities they may have when they retire. the fear of retaliation with the building. I mean, we're being a little bit cute when we talk about domestic influence operations, but let's be quite clear. CIA has basically tried to spy on the cohort of victims. This is on the record mark. I mean, they did. I said it to 60. Right. They tried to break into one of your signal chats with you and other victims. I mean, there's been a real malicious campaign against those saying, I got hurt in the line of duty. And the people who are supposed to have a duty of care to protect me and to get to the bottom of who might have been responsible for hurting me are instead calling me insane and saying, this is psychosomatic, or that I'm trying to cash in and collect disability. I mean, I've heard some really horrific stuff coming from very senior, now former, some still inside CIA officials, casting aspersions on their own colleagues. But I will say this. I mean, from what I understand, the culture of that building and a lot of it's changed simply because of who's now in charge in the White House and the gutting of all the federal agencies. But the culture has shifted to such a degree and Mark you'll appreciate this that I heard from somebody. Even crazy Mark Polymeropolis has taken seriously now. Nobody denies. Nobody denies. Finally, finally, that this is true. And there's just sort of a shrugging resignation. And I'll tell you one thing else. So one victim who we know, or we know of, to granular levels of detail about the ordeal that he underwent, he was hit, his wife was hit, and his young child was hit at the same time in a foreign port of call. This person is now stationed abroad. He is still very active at CIA has a top level job. I can't get into the details of where and doesn't want to bring his head above the parapet because he's terrified that he would lose that job and be. There's a pariah effect. People look at you a little bit differently. I've heard credible stories of people not wanting to be assigned to stations where AHI victims are because they're afraid that it's going to taint their career or the opposite. People don't want to go to places where they fear that it's going to create a cast of Paul on the morale or that suddenly there's going to be a mass hysteria outbreak at that station that oh, we're all being hit by with AHI. So this is torn the building apart. That is the phrase that I've heard time and time again. We interviewed somebody together, Michael, who was part of the so-called G-hick, which was the cell put stood up at CIA to investigate Havana Syndrome. And this person said, you know, from almost the beginning, we were told to stand down on doing the kind of forensic spade work you would expect an organization or a cell like this to be doing. So we were told there's no there. This is basically just a rubber stamp exercise to treat Havana Syndrome as a case of mass hysteria. And this person resigned from CIA because he was so appalled at the institutional culture at the building. So there is something, yes, there was something deeply rotten in this organization. Let me also relay that individual and several others as well. I think we're integral in kind of bringing the light some of the, it's not just the poor analytic and operational trade craft. It's the story. And again, that both you know well of a happy hour one day that they were going to have amongst this unit. This is the unit that's designed to investigate Havana Syndrome. And an email went out from the head of counterintelligence of that unit, essentially saying, let's all kind of dress up and get drunk and stumble around like Havana Syndrome victims. I was told of this almost real time because it was so important. I called the White House and I called the Seven Floor of the Agency. And they were already annoyed with me because I was being so vocal on this. And I said, well, this is why. And they ever want to apologize for it. But that's the kind of, I mean, you know, they're talking about a betrayal. But I guess for Michael Ray, you know, when you heard of the stories like that, because there's the fact-based part of this, there's, okay, we have to try to get the device. We have to try to do these interviews and what exactly happened in different locations. But then there's kind of the humanity of it when you hear how people were treated. What was that like when you're kind of getting these? That's not a front page breaking news story in 60 minutes. It's more of like, this is gross. Like, this is really what's happening. What was it like learning about, you know, about that kind of attitude? You know, the first time I got a sense of that was there was this call I mentioned earlier after a second or third story from a former senior who's very much in the cohort of people who are still pushing the current narrative called us. Actually, we called him to get his take on our story and advice for where we should take it next. And he said, you know, to Oriana Zill and I, my colleague, he said, no, you guys have made a big mistake. And you're reporting on this and we said, geez, do we blow a factor or something? No, no, the biggest problem you have is you listen to the victims. Amazing. I, you know, my jaw was on the floor. And I try very, very hard objective journalists. All this is very hard to walk a middle path, which I'm sure we fail at a lot. And I know we do in the book. But that was gobsmacking as my British college was disgusting. And this was a senior person who's just be looking out for his people. And I think I know it is unfortunately as well to get to the question we asked earlier, which we we skittered away from. Why? I think ultimately it comes down to the protect the building attitude and the embarrassment. I think Oriana and I kind of disagree on this. I don't feel like there was some original backroom meeting with cigar smoke and brandy where they all decided whoever they has decided to come up with this scheme to cover it up and push it aside. I think it's just this confluence of the areas over a decade and mistakes made in Hothana and earlier in handling the victim court. I think it's mistakes on the intelligence. It's people covering up for their careers. It's got who knows what inside the bureaucracy that's just compounded. Everybody's got sort of their own reason for this not to move to the place where it should. One of which is if it is the Russians doing this to our people, we have to fight back and how do we do that if it's not going to be awards. The White House not wanting to hear it. So it's it's gotten up in this tangle in the bureaucracy, which ultimately makes it a very successful kind of intelligence operation by whoever's doing it. That the ultimate weapon is what it's done to the IC, the fact that we're still having this conversation ten years later. I think it's indicative of that. Michael Weiss, can you go over just the different administrations? I mean, because I think for listeners, this is evolved over multiple different presidential administrations, different congressional oversight, different CI directors. Yet we all seem to be coming down to the same spot of betrayal and cover-up. So start with the 2014 period and now under the Trump administration. Well, so when when I was describing that hit in Frankfurt, I mentioned that this had taken place several weeks or even a few months after the annexation of Crimea for a reason. So one of the questions I had from the very beginning is if you look at the cohort of victims. So the CI has this term of art called cornerstone cases, the most credible cases for which they cannot come up with an alternative explanation, right? And again, the medical records are there, the career history, the reputations are there. These are people such as Mark, who have been in hostile terrain before, could have easily suffered from PTSD or have any any any kind of of psychological manifestations and didn't. And yet somehow, AHI has become a thing and they have traumatic brain injuries and they've been medically retired. They cannot function in a day-to-day capacity. We know one person who was hit in Cuba, who has to walk around with a weighted vest because the vertigo is so severe, he will literally tip over if he doesn't have that counterbalance. But one of the questions I've had from the very beginning is if we assume for the sake of argument it's the Russians and they are targeting our people but targeting to name them or to debilitate them not to kill them, which is another form of escalation, why are they going after the ones that we all know? And one of the commonalities, I mean, Mark was literally in Moscow liaising with SVR officers in an official capacity, but was also, you were the deputy head of EMC, was it? Right, so you were in charge of deputations in Europe and your operations in Europe and in Eurasia, which encompassed at the time Russia, Ukraine and Russia. So many victims that we have questioned and interviewed and profiled, served in key of station, after Europe made down, right, in 2014, served in key of station at a time when CIA, and this is now open source reporting thanks to my friend Adam Entus at the New York Times, was putting in the plumbing with the Ukrainian services, particularly military intelligence, which has been responsible for recruiting Russian assets, doing deep strikes into Russian territory, and all other things we probably won't know about for till years down the line. CIA officers serving in key from 2015, 2016, 2017 on, they were hit, not in Kiev, but when they went somewhere else, or their spouses, who were also with them in Kiev, got hit somewhere else. So my hypothesis has been from the beginning, Russia was anticipating, or at least a select group of people inside the Russian government were anticipating another full, another conflict with Ukraine, a full scale conflict, which would draw the United States's response. They wanted to take chess pieces off the board in advance of that. So when Havana Syndrome starts kicking up, 2016, '17, '18, and so on, the biggest cluster we've exam and is when in the in 20 2021, right? Right before the full scale invasion. They were they were trying to eliminate those who would have the highest level of training, the highest level of experience in countermaning Russian malign activities. And when we did our first investigation, somebody from Kiev station known to all three of us called me on the phone and said, you know, great work, but I'm getting calls from people who were in station with me who say they undershot the number of victims who came out of that station. So again, I put it to you, maybe the Russians understand and they know who are people and that this is also raises another very uncomfortable and provocative question. How do they know the identities of all of these people? And at a certain point, we're going to have to ask very difficult questions of whether or not we have breaches in the U.S. national security community. And the Russians have moles. Right. I mean, that's always been how do they know where to track us? That's always been something. But Michael Ray, some of the most compelling interviews I've seen you do on 60 and I certainly you write about it in the book have to do with some senior figures such as former CI director Bill Burns or former national security adviser John Bolton. Can you go over some of those and there are two very different interviews as well with different views on both those. But talk about what it's like talking to seniors and and trying to fair it out exactly what they're thinking on this. In particular, someone like Bill Burns, who I think is pretty controversial amongst the I someone who you know, I thought was going to help us and ended up betraying us as well. Yeah, you're not alone on that. The Burns thing was interesting. We spoke to him for our second story, second or third story. We did an interview with him at the agency, brought all our gear in and he gave us the conference room. We sat down with him and he he'd actually just gotten back from his sort of more than rumored, but because he's kind of trip of legend going to wag his finger at his counterparts in Russia. And this was just a few months before Ukraine. It was December 2021. You know, it's difficult to watch that footage again because he was very earnest and very honest in his answers to our correspondence, Scott Pelley, about this issue that again, he supported all the people. They're putting their best people on it. They're doing again, noting that the team they were putting on it were led by the bin Laden, targetters and those folks, which was a line that we heard over and over and over to make us comfortable that the best people were on it. Looking back and having spoken to a lot of people who were inside at the time, my sense is that I think Bill Burns was earnest in his and you would know better because you interacted with him, but was earnest in his and honest with us in his answers as far as he knew. My feeling is that the folks under him were doing different things to get to different solutions, but Bill Burns was trying to give us his best appraisal of what he knew of the situation. And then of course, his deputy chief of staff ended up getting hit by this in New Delhi and he accompanies her back to medical treatment back to the states. I mean, he saw this firsthand. And yet, you know, following the results of the intelligence community assessments to a tee. I mean, he gave a press conference about it, made a press announcement about it, following what his seniors and what the folks in the G Hick, the unit that was set up by him to investigate this. We're telling him on the underside of that, we're having sources that Michael Weiss and I interacted with who were in the G Hick saying the work stopped in 2021. We were told pencils down. We were told there's going to be reviews of every operations request from the field related to Havana syndrome. And none of them were approved. There was no field activity done on this, no investigation. So, so we're hearing two things two times and it's, you know, Bill Burns is a story career. And it was a little bit heartbreaking to come to the conclusion that he is leadership was poor on this issue. I'm not going to speak to the breath of his career. I have a great deal of respect for him, but I think on this issue he was either misled or it was just mishandled. The people who were tasked with investigating Havana syndrome within CIA. There's an old term in Washington DC called failing upward. All of them came to the conclusion there is no evidence or whatever evidence exists is circumstantial at best. And we very unlikely this exists and very unlikely a foreign actor is behind it. All of them got promoted and all of them are now in executive leadership levels. Those who haven't retired who are still inside the building, who would still have their finger on the scale I would posit or are certainly influencing and whispering to the new executive leadership John Ratcliffe that this is all just a big misunderstanding. And these are people with sour grapes or grievances or, you know, crusades that to chase, you know, UFOs, I mean, and so on. But they're still inside the building, which is another problem. So we get to this point again of institutional culture at CIA. And I mean, Mark knows more about that than I do. I'm just getting it from from what I'm hearing from people who have retired. But yeah, it's it's it's really problematic. And the other side of it is even before the ICA intelligence community assessment was rescinded by ODNI. The last one put out kind of 2025, right? Right. Yeah. It sort of it mitigated some of its its surety from the one before right because two different agencies, one of which I don't think I'm I've been on record saying this before was the NSA. So signals intelligence collection agency changed its finding. And it went from, you know, very unlikely to what 50 50. And we don't know if it you know, maybe not for an adversary isn't doing this, but we're not sure as we were before. So what does that suggest to you if signals intelligence collection agency signals intelligence, right? That they're gathering communication from the hostile adversary talking about doing this, right? And you'll know that one of the consistent pushback lines is the fact that there's no known sigant between two Russian generals or whoever some leadership level Russian saying, hey, let's not you know, shoot them with our laser gun anymore or identifying this specifically. And because that's not there, that means therefore it's not real that that if the CIA and all of vast intelligence community can't find the second among the the Russian generals, then it doesn't exist. And that's that's that's that's that's not that's not the scientific method is it? I mean, this is that is exactly not how you were supposed to kind of go forward with really top level analysis. This is also a classic example in the Cold War that used to call mirror imaging, meaning the Americans assume that if the Russians will behave exactly as we do in the same set of circumstances and they don't. There are Russian units where commanding generals or officers in the unit are not necessarily aware of what their subordinates are doing in vice versa. And I'll give you an anecdote. So we have at the insider, as you may have guessed, methods of penetrating the communications of the adversary, including 29155. After our investigation broke, we found that the younger generation of 29155 operatives were discussing and debating our investigation. Half of them said, well, this can't be true. There's no way the other half said, no, this is exactly kind of the way we went to. And I'm sure that, you know, the older guys with the gray beards are the ones doing it, which is as we know, very likely to be true. So everything is compartmentalized. Everything is siloed within the Russian system. And this is a complete and I mentioned a senior directorate of analysis figure at CIA who told me we couldn't debunk any of your work. He also confirmed this very fact, which is the Russians don't necessarily spill the beans in a phone call. And by the way, sometimes they know they're being listened to by the Americans and they lie on purpose to feed disinformation into our system, right? For Mike Ray, as we come to a close here, I mean, so you wrote this book, I think it is the definitive account right now. There's been so much scorn in this, but there's no ending. There's no ending because we have what coming up another episode of 60 minutes. And so with the investigation, can you do you want to give a teaser on what's what's coming up? I will say that this is ongoing that we're aware. There's been a little bit of reporting, but we're aware of new cases. So this is not an old story. And some of the criticism in the New York Times review of the book was that it sort of doesn't there's the ending is not that satisfying. Well, right. Well, you know, for part two next year, I guess, but it's still very much ongoing. It's still very much needs to be litigated further. There's a lot of work that's poised to come out. I mean, we know in Hipsi and on the Senate side, there's material that could come out. We know Tulsi Gabbars rescission of the ICAs was based on a 20 or 30 page memo that details why it needed to be withdrawn. And that's floating around. So is that going to come out? Are we going to learn more about that? Maybe. So there's a lot more left to come on this most certainly. And I, you know, I hope with Michael with our coordination, we can we can help some of that happen. So I'm excited. And it takes a lot to get me excited these days. So knowing what's coming. Given how old you are, yeah. Yeah. This is the book. Once again, interesting for me to have read it because there's a chapter about me and a brief one, but something that that was it's very strange to not only see in print. One's name, but I also did come on 60 as well. And that was very odd when about 10 million people see you on on TV as a former clandestine officer for CIA. But let me just say again, once again, for both of you, you know, that this is the power of the the Fourth of State, the Power of Journalism. It does make a difference. I know for sure that the agency and people in the States still tell me when they hear that there is a 60 minutes insider investigation coming, they get very nervous. And they get very nervous because they know that you all have the goods. This is nervous. Just come on and talk to us. Yeah. It's not speculation. By the way, Chelsea at Public Affairs, I know it does not like me, it's just a complete misunderstanding. So Chelsea, if you're listening, you know, for a few of me, I promise. She's going to me for your reporting, right? Which featured you. So she didn't realize we were collaborating, even though your name was in the article, whatever, bygones, bygones, Chelsea, I love you. There's nothing personal. All right. Well, Michael Ray, you've been in the hell of a book, Kudos to your colleague. Thank you. Are you on the zil? Both of you are outstanding journalists. You're great people as well. I've been very fortunate to have met you. And thanks for coming on the boardwork. Takes today. The book is on Amazon. It's getting a lot of buzz. And I think that one of the things that we can do, Michael Weiss and I can do, is we can still follow this as our episode or podcast kicks off in November the reporter in the spy. We will stay on this. Obviously, there's interest on my part, but with Michael Weiss' great groundbreaking work along with you in 60 minutes. Hell of a book, Michael. Thank you so much for coming on. Thank you, sir. Can't wait to come back.