[AMBI… packing into car…]
Havana feels like a time capsule. I know, I know, that’s what everyone says… but it’s my first time here.
Driving in, we’re passing all these Detroit classics – massive Oldsmobile Super 88s, Plymouth Furies and Pontiac Bonnevilles.
All gleaming, brightly-coloured and meticulously maintained.
Cue, Nicky: Yeah.
I love it immediately.
Cue, Nicky: Can’t believe we’re finally here …
We’re staying in the quiet, central neighbourhood where art deco houses and apartment buildings line wide avenues. Some of them are restored and brightly painted. Others so tumbledown it seems miraculous they’re still standing.
The roots of ancient trees crack and lift the paving stones. Beyond them, the skyline is dominated by massive brutalist housing blocks.
[Cue, door opening]
It’s dusk by the time we drop off our luggage and relax for a bit.
[Cue, Bottle opening.
Cue, Nicky: Now, we’ve arrived.
Once we’re settled, we head out to explore.
[wind tape rises, ominous music]
It’s a short walk down towards the Malecon – the broad esplanade that runs along the seafront. It’s windy. And out at sea, storm clouds are boiling on the horizon.
And then, suddenly, as we round a corner…
There it is.
Cue, Max: That’s the embassy?
Cue, Boris: That’s the embassy…
Cue, Max: There it is. Yeah.
Cue, Nicky: Where it all began.
My producer Max and I have spent so long obsessing over this building. Looking at pictures of it. Thinking about it. Talking to the people who worked here.
Seeing it in person, we find ourselves getting… weirdly giddy.
Cue, Max: Would you call it a… seven-story edifice that squats like a tombstone on the edge of Havana Bay? [laughs]
Cue, Nicky: For the backdrop fora spy thriller…
Cue, Both: …it certainly looks the part [laughs]
We ask Boris, our fixer on the ground, if we can take a closer look.
Cue, Max: Do you mind if we walk around the embassy a little bit?
Cue, Boris: Go, walk, walk, walk…
We wander closer, until we’re directly across the street…
Cue, Max: I was gonna say it really is quite ominous.
Nicky: Yeah.
And we are standing, we realize, exactly where Kevin Coats told us about getting hit…
REWIND
Cue, Kevin from E1: We were actually just outside the embassy … and we, and we started hearing the sound again.
Cue, Kevin from E1: We started walking across the street and
…
… the sound stopped …
Cue, Nicky: Oh, yeah.
Cue, Max: So that means they were…
Cue, Nicky: Here.
Cue, Nicky and Max: Where we’re standing.
Cue, Nicky: Yeah.
[mini-BEAT]
Distracted, it takes us both a while to clock that we’ve attracted… some attention. Two guards by the gates are staring at us. Another is quietly approaching from a side street.
Cue, Nicky: Yeah, we’re about to get a talking to.
Our giddiness fades considerably. We actually don’t have our press passes yet.
Cue, Max: Yeah, we can bounce…
Cue, Nicky: Yeah, let’s not, um, antagonize them while we’re still trying to persuade them for shit.
And we’re suddenly uncomfortably aware that we’re holding… some quite complicated-looking electronic equipment. One of our mics has a handgrip which makes it look, it now occurs to me, quite… weapon-ish.
We start backing away, but more guards – or maybe police, we don’t know – have turned up behind us now too. Some are in uniform, some… not.
Several of them are now arguing with Boris. Occasionally, they gesture at us.
Cue, Boris: *speaking Spanish
Others stand around watching with stony-eyed caution.
They don’t seem particularly angry. But it’s also clear we aren’t free to go.
They ask for our passports. Then one of the plain-clothes guys – who seems to be at least vaguely in charge – gestures for us to accompany him into a low concrete building across the street.
He points at Max and the recorder… and tells him to turn it off
Cue, Boris: Hey, turn, turn it off.
[CLICKS OFF]
From Project Brazen and PRX, this is… THE SOUND.
I’m Nicky Woolf.
Chapter Seven.
The Two Exits.
[THEME FADES]
For two, mildly-tense hours, we wait inside a sort of ad hoc police station. Around us, officials pore over our passports and equipment, make phone calls, and occasionally ask us the odd question.
[CUE, MUSIC]
They’re polite. Friendly, even.
That said, some of them are acting… nervous. One asks to see our recorder …
Max passes it to him, and he prods it a little bit. Then asks him to switch it on.
[AUDIO of POLICE MESSING WITH RECORDER]
The sound you’re hearing… is a Cuban official snapping his fingers over the microphone. He’s satisfied.
Then, abruptly, we’re released. The official who seems to be in charge even apologises to us as we leave.
[Cue, bar sounds]
Afterwards, Boris debriefs us over mojitos.
Cue, Boris: So, the policeman approach us … what we were doing in front of the building.
Cue, Boris: And then the second he was wondering is your recording device, and the microphone.
It was our equipment that raised red flags.
Cue, Boris: … they were wondering if there was some kind of interference between our recording device and their walkie talkies.
Cue, Max: So they literally thought we may have been there to sabotage…
Cue, Boris: Something like that.
Cue Max: …the embassy.
The guys without uniforms?
Cue, Boris: …people that belongs to the Cuban Secret Police. They’re not policemen.
Cue, Max: Those are the plainclothes?
Cue, Boris: The plainclothes, the civilians, they belong to the, eh, the Cuban equivalent to likeHomeland Security.
So tensions around the US embassy clearly remain sky-high.
This is not exactly surprising, of course, given the circumstances.
Cue, Nicky: … like you’ve got this kind of nervousness, like you’ve got these different layers, you’ve got the secret police, you’ve got the ordinary police, you’ve got the private security, you’ve got US Marines, and then suddenly people start throwing around this thing of, you know, there is an attack… You can see how that’s, you know, makes an already quite tense situation fucking nuts, right?
Cue, Max: Yeah, yeah.
We’re a few blocks from the embassy at the Hotel Nacional de Cuba. The most famous hotel in the city.
The walls of the bar are plastered with pictures of the celebrities who’ve stayed here. Winston Churchill. Paris Hilton. Mahmoud Ahmedinejad. Kevin Costner.
But we’re here because this is one of the crime scenes in our story.
All our reporting ties back to places like this. The various pockets of Havana where Americans got sick. Coming to these places should help us sort the impossible from the possible.
[CUE, MUSIC]
At this point I think one of two things happened here. Either these victims were hit… likely as part of some intelligence activity. A surveillance or harassment operation involving directed energy like microwaves.
The second is that this can all be explained away as a psychogenic panic.
In that scenario… Havana Syndrome is part of an American political agenda. The Trump administration wanted to brutalize Cuba… and this gave them a pretext to do it.
During our stay in Havana… we’ll try to sort this all out…
[Hotel ambi fades w/ music]
Alright… remember Doug Ferguson from the State Department? He first heard the sound in his backyard…
Cue, Doug: …well, we started hearing this sound at our house…
Cue, Doug: …we were out on that back patio and it was so loud that we couldn’t talk…
That’s where Doug makes that recording of what he heard. Here’s a bit…
CUE, THE SOUND FROM NBC NEWS
Cue, Doug: And I said, ‘ah, that’s just a crazy loud cicada, isn’t it?’ And they’re like, no way is that a cicada cuz it is too loud and like mechanical sounding, it’s like a steady tone that just didn’t let up…
Ah. The cricket/cicada thing. I did say it was awkward, didn’t I? It’s frustrating. A detail that’s gotten stuck between the teeth of this story. Resisting all efforts to dislodge it.
Still. When we ask Boris to take us “cricket-hunting…”
…We’re mostly joking.
[BEAT]
TAPE OF US DRIVING, GETTING OUT OF THE CAR
Now… we’re in Miramar… a cushy neighborhood of Havana where many of the diplomats and expats live.
It’s early evening. And Boris is giving us a tour of the American residences.
Cue, Nicky: This gorgeous house. Wait, is it, is it this?”
Cue, Max: There’s a security staff in the driveway.
I’ve been trying to work out the angles. Which buildings could you get to from other buildings? How secret, round here, could you really keep something?
Cue, Max: … I mean, you, you have to think, uh, this would be one of the most heavily-watched and surveilled parts of the city…
Cue, Nicky: Hmm. Yeah, it’s like you sort of brings it clear that it’s like, you know, a house on the street with like people coming and going…
Just like it’s helpful to put a face to a name, it’s good to see the actual places where it happened. When I imagined Doug Ferguson’s house, I’ve been thinking of American suburbia. White picket fence sort of thing.
The reality is different. These houses are large, low, and widely-spaced, some sat in their own walled compounds. The first we visit has security guards out front just like the embassy does. The second is huge, and takes up nearly an entire block.
The last home we see is right by the water. There’s a rundown vacant building next door.
The sun has set – but before we’re done for the day –- we want to get some Havana B-roll. The ambient sound of the city.
Cue, Nicky: I just, I just wanna get like a, yeah, like a minuteslong sort of soundscape.
So we’re already recording when we hear it.
[THE SOUND, SOFTLY IN THE BACKGROUND]
It’s quiet, but… unmistakable.
We creep across the street to where it seems to be coming from.
[FOOTSTEPS, SOUND GETTING LOUDER]
Now we’re in the grass just a few yards from the diplomatic house. The sound gets louder.
THE SOUND
Max and I haven’t said a word, but our eyes are wide.
It gets louder and louder with each step.
Through the headphones, it feels like we’re standing right on top of the noise.
And then … it stops
THE SOUND STOPS
Max: What the…
Nicky: That was fucking, I mean…
We’re looking at each other in amazement.
Max turns to the others – we’ve got Boris with us, and also producers Javier and Nick.
It starts again.
Cue, Max: You guys just heard —
Max snaps the headphones off.
Cue, Nicky: That is fucking loud.
Cue, Max: That is, like, jarringly similar to the recordings that…
Cue, Nicky: Yes.
THE SOUND
Cue, newsreader [echoey, distant]: …We’re now getting our first listen to what’s believed to be a sonic attack against US diplomats working in Cuba…
Cue, Doug: I’ll just play it for you so you can hear…
Cue, newsreader: …shrieking crickets with an electronic twang…
[THE SOUND RESUMES]
Cue, Nicky: That is… that’s the sound.…
We look at Javier, who grew up in Havana.
Cue, Max: I don’t… Does that, does that sound like a normal cricket to you guys?
Cue, Javier: I’ve, I’ve heard …
Cue, Max: This is normal?
Cue, Javier: Yeah.
This isn’t a new piece of information, right? But hearing it for ourselves… It is… I mean, it’s really loud… it’s mechanical sounding and directional. And… it’s right here. Outside this diplomat’s home.
If nothing else, it’s shaken me enough to want to go back and check my reasoning.
[CUE, MUSIC]
So, alright. Let’s do the cricket thing. If nothing else, because it’s been bothering me since the start of the show.
Early on, we ruled out cricket noise itself as a cause of the symptoms. And I still feel good about that. Insect noises just can’t cause brain damage.
But here’s where the cricket thing was always awkward. When Doug and Kate heard the sound together, first with a bunch of their neighbours and later when they recorded it – that’s not the Frey Effect, right? It couldn’t be.
The Frey Effect amounts to sound reverberating inside the skull… not a sound from outside it. So you wouldn’t be able to record it.
There is no getting around it, this bit fits with the psychogenic hypothesis. You can argue the cricket sound didn’t cause the symptoms… the headaches… the nausea. But – according to this logic – the worried Americans heard it… which triggered psychogenic effects.
But – let’s be as meticulous as possible here – the psychogenic theory still has holes. It can’t explain some of the symptoms – like Doug and Kate’s jerky eye-tracking… or Karen Coats’ bleeding retina.
Cue, Nicky: Do I think that’s what Doug recorded? Yes. Do I think that’s what’s caused what Karen’s going through now? [Scoffs]
You know what I mean, like? Does this change … the balance of evidence? I don’t know…
Cue, Max: I mean, it changes something, I just don’t know…
And it’s not just Doug’s recording. Several victims recorded a similar sound at the onset of their symptoms. Here’s one from Patient Zero… the first American official to get sick.
Cue, ANOTHER SOUND RECORDING.
Stunned, Max and I pack up our gear and get back in the car. We make a point to get back in touch with Doug once we’re back in the States to sort this out.
But for now – whichever way you slice it, the cricket thing seems like a hugely unfortunate coincidence. And I really, really hate coincidences.
TAPE OF US BEING CONFUSED
Cue, Nicky: This is such an unbelievably frustrating story.
Cue, Max: We have, okay, we’ve heard this sound. It only makes this more confusing.
Cue, Nicky: Yeah, I don’t fucking know.
Cue, Max: It feelslike every time we learn something new, we actually know less.
We’ll be back… after the break.
[BEAT]
[AD BREAK]
[BEAT]
We’re back.
[BEAT]
Cue, Johana: Who’s gonna make the questions? You? You?
Cue, Nicky: I will.
Cue, Johana: What’s your name?
Cue, Nicky: Nicky.
Cue, Johana: Nicky. Well, welcome to the Foreign Affair Ministry.
We’re sitting in a meeting room with Johana (YO-han-uh) Tablada. You’ve heard from her before – she’s a deputy director-general at the Cuban foreign ministry.
In person, she has a forthright energy that makes her difficult to dislike… and impossible to interrupt.
So the second we ask her about Havana Syndrome… she’s off to the races.
Cue, Johana: …because the one that suffer the most have been the Cubans. We’ve been the one that have been blamed for something we didn’t do…
Johana says Cuban investigators pored over these cases when they were first reported. They didn’t have access to any of the victims. Nowshe says the investigation was still thorough.
Cue, Johana: …common denominators of the Cuban reaction has been, one: to take serious the symptoms …
…And the other thing that characterized our response was the willingness and transparency to collaborate. They reject that from day one.
In 2018, Johana went to Washington to plead Cuba’s case.
Cue, Johana: You’ve been blaming Cuba, something that you cannot demonstrate, and you’ve been taking decisions that are having a tremendous repercussion on US relation and also in the standard of livings of Cuba for no reason.
[CUE, MUSIC]
Their message was ironclad – no attack took place here.
Cue, Johana: The Cuban hypothesis … that there was, eh, no evidence whatsoever of no attacks. Not just sonic, but also no microwave.
Max goes straight to the point.
Cue, Max: Do you think the American officials who reported the health incidents are lying?
Cue, Johana: I wouldn’t say that. I, I, I don’t have any reason to doubt that a person that had a headache, has a headache. What I put into question is that that headache was provoked by a deliberate action taken in Cuba…
So I have no reason to question the integrity of the American officials.
That’s when she stops being diplomatic.
Cue, Johana: I have all the reasons in the world to question the integrity of Pompeo … And I have all the reason to suspect of Marco Rubio because he has, as a politician, no integrity. And I have all the reason to suspect of Tillerson because he lied. And I have all reason to suspect of Trump and, and Bolton because they have been caught lying… more than one time.
The real villains, for Johana, are the Trump administration officials – those who used “Havana Syndrome” as a pretext to do what they wanted all along.
To crush the government of Cuba.
[MUSIC FADES]
Cue, Tillerson: … What we’ve said to the Cubans is: small island, you got a sophisticated security apparatus … You can stop it.
Cue, Trump: … I do believe Cuba’s responsible. I do believe that. And it’s a very unusual attack, as you know, but I do believe Cuba is responsible, yes.
So to find out the actual impact of all this… we go to one of the foremost experts in US-Cuba relations.
Raul Rodriguez is the director of the Center for US and Hemispheric Studies. We meet him in his office at the University of Havana…
Raul used to come to the States often for lectures and conferences…
Cue, Raul: … I haven’t been able to go though since 2017…
Cue, Max: Really? Right.
Cue, Raul: Yeah, Trump cut me off. I mean, cut us off, everybody here…
Before the Havana Syndrome, Raul had high hopes for the US-Cuba relationship.
Cue, Raul: “There was a, a boom in Havana … everybody wanted to come to Cuba, even the Kardashians came to Cuba … Havana was a, a new place to discover that had been shut out for, for so many years.
The Obama administration removed Cuba from the list of ‘State Sponsors of Terror.’ That opened the path for all these diplomatic agreements between the two countries…
It’s all these changes that brought American diplomats like Doug, Kate, Karen and Kevin – to Cuba.
But Raul says the celebrations… didn’t last long.
Cue, Raul: … a lot of people here felt that Hillary Clinton was gonna win … And the feeling here was if Clinton wins, things are going to stay on that path … Trump won, and immediately after winning started granting the, uh, right-wing politicians in Florida, the wishes they wanted…
Cue, Trump: … We do not want US dollars to prop up a military monopoly that exploits and abuses the citizens of Cuba…
We know what happened next. At the end of 20-16… American spies and diplomats start getting sick.
Cue, Raul: … My first thought that: how was it possible? I mean if anybody’s not interested in doing things like that, it would be the Cuban government.
…
Having an attack on US diplomats in Havana during the time when you’re negotiating with the United States … I mean, it makes no sense to me.
…
And I started to think, well, like, who would benefit from this?
That’s when… Raul says… the members of the Trump administration get an idea.
Cue, Raul: “… they found it more difficult to stop it unless they created or recreated this national security problem of Cuba as an adversary of the United States, which is an easy sell for many politicians in the United States.
The minute you say, ‘ah, our diplomats were attacked in Cuba.’ That’s it.
So think back for a moment to what happens after Havana Syndrome goes public. The fallout in Washington. The embassy closure. Cuban diplomats expelled from D.C. Cuba going back on the State Sponsor of Terror list. That all leads to more economic sanctions.
Then there was Covid… and the Cuban currency tanked …
Inflation is off the charts. During our stay we were paying tabs with bricks of Cuban pesos.
Cue, Raul: … But I think the worst problem in, in Cuba is the demographic situation. A lot of young people are leaving, and they are leaving because they feel that they don’t have better opportunities here.
…
So they leavewith their talent and their knowledge somewhere else, and they’re going to have children somewhere else …
[TRANSITION TO EMBASSY SFX]
To see this firsthand, we go back to the embassy the next morning… press badges in hand. By the crack of dawn, hundreds of Cubans have already gathered outside.
The week we arrived in Cuba, the State Department announced the embassy would be resuming visa processing for the first time since 2017.
So the line stretches blocks from the embassy, all the way to a small park nearby.
Producer Javier sets the scene for us.
Cue, Javier: The ironic thing is that in front of here, there’s a funeral home too.
Cue, Javier: So this, this park is called, like, ‘The Park of the Two Exits.’ You go out that way or you go out the opposite direction.
It’s quietly a dark sort of nickname. What it’s implying is … there’s two ways of getting off this island. One is with a visa; the other is in a coffin.
The park itself is a very small patch of grass, less than a square block, with a few benches and trees. At least 100 or 150 people are anxiously milling around.
Elderly couples… families with children… young men and women. They all woke up well before sunrise to put on their best clothes, gather all of their documents… and come right here.
… to wait for their chance to leave.
[CUE, WALKING UP TO THE PARK SFX, SPANISH SPRINKLED IN BACKGROUND]
The chatter dies down when staffers from the embassy turn up. It’s three Cuban women holding clipboards. One has a megaphone. The crowd moves forward to meet them.
Cue, embassy official: [Speaking Spanish…]
The woman welcomes the crowd then gives directions. She tells them to have all their documents ready.
They’ll be calling out the names to start to form the line.
Cue, Embassy official: [Calling out names…]
We approach one woman in the queue holding a big folder of paperwork.
Cue, Woman: [Speaking Spanish]
She wants to get a visa to go to the US and reunite with her husband… who’s already left Cuba.
She’s spent the past year-and-a-half going through the consular process. It’s been slow… because the embassy was shut down.
Cue, Javier: [Speaking Spanish]
Cue, Woman: [Speaking Spanish]
She’s heard the government was investigating some weird noises. But she doesn’t know much about it.
Javier asks her why she wants to leave.
Cue, Woman: [Speaking Spanish]
“To be part of the world, to be part of the system, to work,” she says.
“America has a thousand opportunities for everyone. What someone sets their mind to, they achieve,”
She adds… that she’s really excited to be with her husband again.
Cue, Javier: [Speaking Spanish] Thank you, thank you very much.
Cue, Woman: [Speaking Spanish] “It was a pleasure.”
We meet a man named Eduardo. He’s a bit older… in his 60s.
Cue, Eduardo: [Speaking inSpanish]
Eduardo’s son left Cuba for the US 15 years ago when getting out of the country was much easier.
Now he’s here to petition for his visa. He wants to join his son in the States.
Cue, Eduardo: [Speaking in Spanish]
Cue, Javier: [Speaking in Spanish]
Eduardo tells us he’s heard that the embassy was closed because of some “sonic attacks.” Javier asks what he thinks about them.
Eduardo takes a long pause before he answers.
Cue, Eduardo: [Speaking in Spanish]
“They sent scientists, they sent the police, the FBI came, the CIA came, they went everywhere,” Eduardo says.
“And they traced it back to crickets.”
Javier translates.
Cue, Javier: So he’s, he’s from the, from the countryside, so he, he have heard some … the little crickets then he said that they’re very annoying, but not to make a, a conflict between two countries. [Laughs]
Cue, Eduardo: [Speaking in Spanish]
“I don’t think it was the main reason, but maybe it was some kind of pretext,” Eduardo says.
Javier asks what he thinks happened to the Americans. Eduardo has heard of the sonic weapons. But he says you’d never find something like that here.
Cue, Eduardo: [Speaking in Spanish]
“We don’t have the technology,” he says… then he points to an old building across the street. Its foundation is falling apart… there’s paint peeling off the walls.
“We can’t support that, … we don’t have the resources.
“You think we have the money for this technology when we don’t have it for emergencies?
“No. In the first world? Maybe. But in Cuba?,” Eduardo says “No.”
Cue, Javier: [Wishes Eduardo good luck in Spanish]
[CUE, MUSIC]
In the first episode we talked about the power of a name. And now this phenomenon called “Havana Syndrome” is forever linked with this place.
A place where… for a brief moment … there was hope..
Cue, Patrick: … you know, for me it was kind of whiplash, you know, when did things, uh, turn so badly, so quickly.
That’s the voice of Patrick Oppman… CNN’s Havana Bureau Chief – we heard from him earlier in the show. Patrick’s office has a roof with an amazing view, and he takes us outside to show us what almost happened here.
Cue, Patrick: … so many Cubans that invested their life savings into opening up another Airbnb or opening up a restaurant thinking that, you know, it would continue as it had been…
We look out at the waterfront… where the vast husk of an unfinished cruise ship dock dominates the pier. Across the skyline unmoving cranes mark the skeletons of half-built hotels.
Cue, Patrick: …it was American tourists who were going to, uh, these hotels that, that they were building, they were going to the Airbnbs that had been opened up, were filling the restaurants
…
And then overnight it all, it all ended.
And between all these monuments to an abandoned future are the human stories. Those of the Cubans waiting in the Park of the Two Exits.
All these lives that were upended because of this story.
Cue, Patrick: And I don’t know if many people will cry, uh, for that in the US but it was sad for me to see … for those people to have sort of wasted their life savings on, uh, a dream that essentially, you know, died very, very quickly.
[BEAT]
Next time on The Sound…
Conclusions…
CREDITS
THE SOUND is a production of Project Brazen in partnership with PRX. You can follow the show on Apple, Spotify… wherever you get your podcasts… to stay up to date on new episodes.
Do leave us a rating and review, it really does help people find the show.
Unlock bonus content and immersive, ad-free listening by subscribing to Brazen+ on Apple Podcasts. Subscribing will get you access to premium audio quality and exclusive reporting, including extended interviews from the show.
THE SOUND was produced by Goat Rodeo.
The lead producer is Max Johnston.
The show was reported and written by me – Nicky Woolf – and Max Johnston.
Executive producers for Project Brazen are Bradley Hope, Tom Wright and Nicholas Brennan.
Senior Producers for Goat Rodeo are Ian Enright & Megan Nadolski.
Mixing and engineering by Rebecca Seidel.
Spanish translation for this episode by Char Dreyer.
Additional production by Emilio Polo and Javier Labrador.
Original score by the fabulous Attacca Quartet.
Additional music from Max Johnston, Ian Enright, Rebecca Seidel and Blue Dot Sessions.
Editorial and Production assistance at Goat Rodeo from Isabelle Kerby-McGowan, Cara Shillenn, Jay Venables and Megan Nadolski.
At Project Brazen, Mariangel Gonzales (Mah-ree-un-hell), Megan Dean, Susie Armitage (Arm-eh-tedge), Francesca Gilardi Quadrio Curzio, Salber Lee, Lucy Woods, Siddhartha Mahanta, and Neha Wadekar.
Our producer in Havana is Boris Crespo.
Ryan Ho is series creative director. Cover art designed by Julien Pradier (Pra-dee-yay).
Series video production by Javier Labrador, Andrija Klaric, Giulia Franchi, Emily Chao and Nicholas Brennan.
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