[CBS] This week on 60 Minutes, Scott Pelley and a team of producers continued their five-year investigation into Havana Syndrome, the phenomenon of mysterious brain injuries to U.S. national security officials and diplomats, and their families, both abroad and at home, that in some cases have led to major health conditions, like blindness, memory loss, and vestibular damage.
This fourth installment brought major developments to the story: a suspected link between attacks in Tbilisi, Georgia and a top-secret Russian intelligence unit, and evidence that a reliable source calls "a receipt" for acoustic weapons testing done by the same Russian intelligence unit.
A retired Army lieutenant colonel who led the Pentagon investigation into these incidents, Lt. Col. Greg Edgreen, told 60 Minutes he is confident that Russia is behind these attacks, and that they are part of a worldwide campaign to neutralize U.S. officials.
Statements of White House, FBI, Office of the Director of National Intelligence to 60 Minutes
"If my mother had seen what I saw, she would say, 'It's the Russians, stupid,'" Edgreen told 60 Minutes.
60 Minutes Overtime spoke to producers Oriana Zill de Granados and Michael Rey about the story's evolution over the course of their investigation, as they pulled back layers of government secrecy to speak with victims, identify a potential technology used to attack them, and examine a Russian intelligence unit that may have been behind some of the Havana Syndrome incidents.
"In the first story we said, 'Hmm. Is this Russia?' Second round of stories we felt, 'This is starting to look like Russia.' And in this story, our sources are telling us that it's Russia," producer Michael Rey told 60 Minutes Overtime.
The investigation begins
In 2014, producer Oriana Zill de Granados worked on a 60 Minutes story about the opening of the U.S. embassy in Cuba under then-President Obama. After the embassy had opened in 2015, media outlets began reporting on a series of strange medical symptoms exhibited by U.S. embassy personnel working in Cuba: dizziness, fatigue, problems with memory, and impaired vision.
"And we very early on started approaching people within the intelligence community and the Department of State, to find out what these incidents were. That led us to China, which really expanded the story beyond Havana, Cuba," Zill de Granados told 60 Minutes Overtime.
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