A Cuban-American journalist, Maria Elvira Salazar, declared in Fox News this morning that according to sources in Cuba, Castro’s government was involved in the covert attack of several U.S. diplomats and at least one Canadian diplomat using sonic bazookas. While serving at the embassy in Havana, the diplomats experienced hearing damage after receiving a sustained attack from a sonic weapon that operates outside the range of human hearing, infrasonic, but caused hearing loss and brain damage. The sonic weapon was reported to have been implanted in their living quarters. Maria Elvira as a journalist has been in the forefront of debates on U.S. Cuban politics and Latin American affairs over the past 25 years.
U.S. officials who spoke to the Washington Post on the condition of anonymity revealed that in the fall of 2016, at least five U.S. diplomats began experiencing unexplainable hearing loss and other physical symptoms while serving at the embassy in Havana—so severe, they returned home to the U.S. for medical treatment.
What is an infrasonic weapon?
As explained in Discover Magazine, sound is simply a vibration that propagates as a pressure wave passing through a medium like air or water. Just as the human eye can only detect a narrow range of the electromagnetic spectrum, we only hear sound waves in the 20Hz to 20kHz range. Infrasound waves travel at a frequency below 20Hz, and although we can’t hear them, those pressure waves still rattle the rest of the body—sometimes with bizarre side effects. Different parts of the body resonate at different frequencies, and infrasound waves can penetrate the body, stretching and shrinking liquid- and gas-filled organs and tissues at resonance. At roughly 130 dB, pressure distortions in the inner ear can affect hearing by causing the cochlear fluid to slosh around. Turn up the intensity, and the waves can cause nausea and physical discomfort, but this would require a powerful instrument to achieve.
The U.S. Defense Department has developed Long Range Acoustic Devices (LRADs) that blast a tight beam of deafening noise at a target. In 2005, pirates off the coast of Somalia tried to attack the U.S. cruise ship “Seaborn Spirit.” When Captain Sven Erik Pedersen pulled out the device, the pirates retreated empty-handed. U.S. police have also used LRADs at the 2009 G20 Summit meeting in Pittsburgh, and during the 2014 protests in Ferguson, Missouri.
The FBI needs to investigate the use of this type of covert weapon by Cuba on American citizens and U.S. and Cuban relations should be re-evaluated since the health of American tourists and diplomats could be in danger.
