Gabbard Rescinds Intelligence Reports on Mysterious Syndrome

Outgoing Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has retracted intelligence community reports on mysterious health problems known as Havana Syndrome, according to a memorandum released on June 11.

Gabbard found that the intelligence community assessments of the anomalous health incidents, released in 2023 and 2025, failed to meet the community’s analytic standards.

That included selectively excluding intelligence and evidence that did not support the conclusions and relying on an “ethically flawed medical study without noting methodological critiques,” Gabbard’s office said in the memo, sent to members of Congress.

The 2023 assessment concluded it was very unlikely that a foreign adversary was behind the incidents, which have impacted staffers in countries such as Cuba and China.

The updated assessment released in 2025 said most intelligence agencies still held it was very unlikely an enemy was responsible for the syndrome, but two components judged there was a “roughly even chance” that a foreign actor had used a novel weapon to target Americans, or had developed such a weapon.

Gabbard’s team said future assessments on the matter would adhere to “rigorous ethical standards incorporating all available intelligence sources and engaging a broad range of experts from agencies including the CIA.”

Rep. Rick Crawford (R-Ark.), the former chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence CIA Subcommittee, who has criticized the government reports, praised the new development.

“The assessment was deliberately manufactured and used to discredit some of our nation’s bravest and impede their access to medical care. As was the case with other high-visibility intelligence assessments, it fell far short of analytic integrity standards,” Crawford wrote in a post on X.

He added that the retractions were “a glimmer of hope for our nation’s intelligence officers, service members, and diplomats stationed around the world who have defended this country in austere locations and subsequently had the nation they served turn its back on them.”

The subcommittee said in a 2024 report that it was increasingly likely that a foreign adversary was behind some number of the reported health problems, and that the 2023 assessment was developed “in a manner inconsistent with analytic integrity and thoroughness.”

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine said in 2020 that the most likely mechanism behind the incidents was directed, pulsed radio-frequency energy, citing symptoms people have described, such as perceptual dizziness.

Government employees reporting the problems have had difficulty obtaining treatment, the U.S. Government Accountability Office said in July 2024, recommending that the military develop written guidance and create a plan to rectify those difficulties.

Gabbard said last month that she is resigning from her position as the director of national security, citing her husband’s recent cancer diagnosis.

President Donald Trump said on June 11 that he is nominating Jay Clayton, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York and a former Securities and Exchange Commission chairman, as director of national intelligence. The job oversees the coordination of 18 intelligence agencies.