It’s enough to wake
you from a long nap.
Two dozen U.S.
diplomats and a handful of Canadians in Havana suffered a disparate set of symptoms
centering on hearing and cognitive problems. Unnamed U.S. officials were soon speculating
in the press about attacks by unseen, sophisticated
devices beaming sound waves. Within weeks Senator Rubio was urging the Secretary
of State to expel all of Cuba’s diplomats and to close its Washington embassy.
Eventually the State Department pulled most U.S. diplomats out of Cuba and forced
Cuba to do the same from Washington.
This is a doozy
even in the context of U.S.-Cuba relations.
The single
common characteristic of all the U.S. persons affected is that they all worked
in the U.S. Embassy. Presumably the embassy building has been investigated for
its environmental factors, acoustic and otherwise – but the parts of the U.S.
investigation that have been most discussed in public have involved their homes
and hotels where some were living temporarily, and where they are said to have
experienced “unusual sounds or auditory sensations,” according to a State
Department doctor.
The shorthand
for what happened in Havana quickly became “sonic attacks,” even though there
is no evidence of attacks, sonic or otherwise.
What we really
have is a health mystery that has confounded U.S., Canadian, and Cuban
investigators.
The FBI, after sending
agents and their equipment four times to Havana, has concluded that there is no
evidence of a sonic attack, according to AP. And experts
in acoustics scratch
their heads at the idea that there could exist a device that can direct sound
waves of any kind – within, above, or below the audible spectrum – with the
strength required to injure a targeted person without affecting anyone else
nearby.
But you have to
hand it to Senator Rubio and his allies: “Sonic attacks” is quite a branding
triumph. Without having to argue the merits of having diplomatic relations with
Cuba, they scored a substantial policy victory that has hobbled diplomatic
relations. When he called for expulsion of all Cuba’s diplomats in a letter
last September, Rubio alleged that U.S. diplomats had suffered “’acoustic’
attacks;” today he has retreated from that position and instead argues that
whatever happened, Cuba surely knows and won’t say.
Secretary Tillerson
agrees. He
doesn’t argue that this is some kind of Operation Mongoose in reverse, but
rather that “someone within the Cuban government can bring this to an end.”
The State
Department also uses the term “attacks” consistently, such as in this testimony
last week – which seems a little foolish when in the same breath the same officials
testify that they don’t know what happened, how it happened, or who did it. (No
Senator pressed the point.) A friend speculates that the repeated use of the
term is a way to link the issue to the Vienna Convention’s requirement that governments
“take all appropriate steps to prevent any attack” on the “person, freedom
or dignity” of diplomats in their territory.
I don’t doubt
that harms occurred, but it’s hard to put stock in any of the theories put
forward so far. The sonic theory seems debunked. The idea that a third country
carried out attacks on Cuban territory is hard to believe, not least because no
one who advances it shows evidence or explains why a state would venture such a
deeply hostile act against Cuba. Maybe there’s a rogue element of Cuban
intelligence, but those who break with the system in Cuba tend to leave rather
than risk their necks causing trouble at home. In his hearing, Senator Rubio was
quite sure that no one from Miami could be involved. A CIA hand, recalling acts
against our Moscow embassy years ago, guesses
that it could have been a surveillance effort gone wrong. In last week’s
hearing, the State Department mentioned the possibility of a virus.
We may never
know.
This being a
Cuba issue, politics has entered the picture, in some cases in ways that may
make the investigation less effective.
· Senator Rubio and the
State Department claim that Cuba absolutely must know what happened. That’s a
politically convenient thing to say, but it’s cheap and not credible. Cuban
intelligence services are quite good, but neither they nor any foreign service
bats 1,000. In recent history there have been terrorist attacks and drug
operations carried out in Cuba without prior detection.
· The removal of U.S.
diplomats was for safety reasons and the Cubans were sent home for reasons of
reciprocity. But the State Department calls it an expulsion and gave the Cuban Embassy
a list of names of those ordered to leave. That sounds like a punitive action
more fitting in a case where the Administration is assigning blame, something
it has not done. It sounds even more like acquiescence to Senator Rubio, who from
the first wanted Cuba’s diplomats expelled and its embassy closed.
· The use of the word
“attacks” in the absence of evidence sounds quite political too.
· When it comes to the
investigation, it is to be expected that U.S. agencies would not share every
shred of evidence, every source and method. But Cuba is clearly investigating
and its ability to do so is limited by an arm’s-length U.S. posture. For
example, why is it not possible to give detailed medical information to Cuban
investigators, with identities stripped to protect privacy? Why not assent to
Cuba’s request for a meeting between its medical team and ours?
· In the months that have
passed, it is not clear that the two sides have worked out a system for
immediate response in the event that a new incident is reported.
Meanwhile, there
are costs.
Cuba’s consulate
in Washington is barely staffed, slowing the processing of passports, visas,
and legal documents. In Havana, the U.S. consulate is handling U.S. citizen
emergencies and issuing visas only for diplomats and persons needing to travel
due to acute health emergencies. Cuban applicants for immigrant visas have to
travel to the U.S. consulate in Bogota, Colombia, where they are told to plan
to spend two weeks. Applicants for non-immigrant visas may travel to any U.S.
consulate to apply. (In each case, for 99 percent of Cuban applicants, these
options are impossible.) The result is that travel in both directions is
hampered, especially for Cubans wishing to travel to the United States.
Academic and cultural exchanges are stopping. The United States will not meet
its pledge, undertaken in the 1994 immigration accord, to issue 20,000
immigrant visas annually. In the face of a State Department travel warning (now
slightly softened),
Americans are continuing to travel to Cuba, but apparently in reduced numbers. Cuban
private restaurants, bed-and-breakfasts, and other businesses that serve
American travelers are suffering, as are entrepreneurs who supply them with
goods and services.
As for the
non-consular side of the U.S. Embassy, there are no staff in the political and
economic sections, so there is extremely limited reporting capacity at a time
when Cuba is about to go through a leadership transition and the uncertainty
that will come with a government that, for the first time in 60 years, is not
led by a Castro.
There is no
clear way out.
In March,
Secretary Tillerson will have to decide what to do with the Havana-based
diplomats who were withdrawn, still formerly assigned to Havana but left to
cool their heels in Washington.
He has said that
he wants “assurances” from Cuba, but given that Cuba insists that it did not cause
this problem and hasn’t discovered its cause, the only assurances it is likely
to offer are that it will continue to investigate and to beef up protection. (Cuba’s
foreign minister discusses the topic here,
and this program
describes Cuba’s investigation.)
The Secretary could
send our diplomats back to Havana, but in the AP story cited above he said: “I’d
be intentionally putting them back in harm’s way. Why in the world would I do
that when I have no means whatsoever to protect them? I will push back on
anybody who wants to force me to do that.”
Our diplomats’
labor union is less risk-averse. Contrary to what you would expect from a
union, its president, Barbara Stephenson, said
last September that danger is “our reality…We’ve got a mission to do…The answer
can’t be we just pull the flag down and move American presence from the field.”
In sum, three
factors have brought us to where we are: an unsolved health mystery, a
Secretary of State who is admirably extremist about employee safety, and some
actors leveraging all this to shut down diplomacy, consular services, and
contacts. Formally speaking, U.S. policy may not have changed, but the
diplomatic apparatus that allows it to work is partially mothballed. And the
United States’ reduced presence in Havana has us flying blind, worse than when
we had just an Interests Section. It is not clear that this last factor matters
to Secretary Tillerson.
With the passage
of time, is it too much to hope that our diplomatic presence could be restored
and then altered only if evidence provides a reason to do so?
