The Havana Syndrome: The Unknowns

By Richard Murch

Many unknowns are relevant
What remains unknown, as of the moment this book goes to press, is the identity of the specific individuals, or country who operated the weapon, if a weapon was operated.

It is unknown whether the classified report Crawford described will be released in a form that reaches the public. It is unknown whether the Justice Department will bring charges against any American official for the conduct that HPSCI identified.

It is unknown whether the device the Pentagon has been testing for more than a year will produce findings conclusive enough to force a formal public attribution.

It is unknown whether the new administration's stated concern about the intelligence community's handling of the issue will translate into the structural reforms that would prevent the same thing from happening again.

What Has Been Deliberately Obscured

What has been deliberately obscured is, in some respects, more important than what remains simply unknown. The distinction matters because unknowns are the product of incomplete information, limited technical capability, and the genuine difficulty of answering hard questions about novel phenomena. Obscured information is the product of choices -- choices made by specific people in specific institutional positions to suppress, delay, manage, and reframe information that was available to them.

The 2022 CIA Inspector General report has not been declassified. The classified version of the HPSCI interim report, which Crawford said contained information previously unknown to the committee, has not been released. The specific findings that prompted two intelligence community components to shift their assessments in January 2025 have not been described publicly.

The results of more than a year of Pentagon testing on the backpack device have not been released. The specific targets of the Justice Department criminal referrals have not been named publicly. The individuals at the CIA and ODNI who shaped the 2023 ICA in ways that the HPSCI found lacking in analytic integrity have not been identified.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0H2CXMPKP
• ISBN13: 9798197649942
• Release Date: May 2026
• Publisher: Independently published
• Length: 210 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 10.0" x 0.5" x 8.0"