A former top CIA officer has revealed he suffered from the mysterious neurological illness known as Havana Syndrome — and wants the Trump administration to expose what he calls the Biden administration’s cover-up of debilitating attacks on US personnel.
Marc Polymeropoulos, a 26-year CIA veteran and ex–senior operations chief who signed the infamous “spies who lie” letter about Hunter Biden’s laptop during the 2020 election campaign, told The Post that the 46th president’s administration perpetrated one of the worst intelligence scandals of modern times.
“The cover-up was horrific,” Polymeropoulos said.
Over the weekend, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt made headlines by highlighting the account of a Venezuelan guard protecting dictator Nicolas Maduro. As US forces swooped on Caracas early on Jan. 3 to arrest Maduro on federal drug and weapons charges, Maduro’s guards were subjected to an unknown force that caused them to be incapacitated, bleed through their nose and “vomit blood.”
The Biden administration publicly denied the existence of Havana Syndrome — believed by non-government scientists to have been caused by powerful directed-energy weapons wielded by foreign adversaries such as Russia and Cuba — despite their own intelligence personnel suffering from “unbearable pain,” Polymeropoulos said.
After Trump took office last year, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard tasked her “director’s initiatives group” to investigate “anomalous health incidents” (AHI) — government jargon for Havana Syndrome.
“The mistreatment and dismissal of Americans impacted by AHIs is unacceptable,” a DNI spokesperson said. “DNI Gabbard remains committed to sharing findings from her investigation into Anomalous Health Incidents with the American people.”
‘End of my career’
Polymeropoulos says he was stricken in December 2017 while on a CIA trip to Moscow, when he suddenly experienced intense vertigo, nausea, blinding headaches and ringing in his ears — symptoms now widely associated with Havana Syndrome.
“That night in the hotel room was basically the end of my career,” he recalled.
Once a highly decorated officer who ran covert operations across the Middle East, Polymeropoulos said he spent the next year and a half barely able to function — while the CIA refused him medical care.
“I was begging for treatment, and the agency kept denying it,” he said. “That’s where the moral injury began.”
Only after GQ published a story on Havana Syndrome in October 2020 — the same month the Hunter Biden laptop letter dropped — did the CIA relent and send him to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center for treatment, he said.
At the time, Polymeropoulos was already suffering from what doctors later diagnosed as a traumatic brain injury while being thrust into the public eye as a laptop letter signatory.
“I honestly didn’t care about that letter then, as I was in unbearable pain,” he said. “I was just trying to survive.”
The Post’s reporting revealed the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop were legitimate, though Polymeropoulos still suggests Russians could have been involved in the dissemination of its contents.
“It didn’t matter to us if the laptop was real or not because what the Russian system has done is propagate true information like they did when they hacked into the French presidential election in Macron in 2025,” he said in defense of his decision. “The Russians historically collected dirt on their adversaries and put it out to embarrass them.”
Polymeropoulos now claims senior officials privately acknowledge Havana Syndrome is real — but the Biden administration’s intelligence community deliberately downplayed or suppressed mounting evidence.
“We were told behind closed doors, ‘We believe you,’” he said of one Biden National Security Council meeting. “But publicly, they continue to let the intelligence community gaslight us.”
He claims officials feared acknowledging the truth would discourage officers from serving overseas, adding: “That’s not leadership. That’s cowardice.”
Havana Syndrome’s “patient zero,” a medically retired CIA official known as Adam, also said the Biden administration knew the truth about the condition all along — it very much existed, and was most likely caused by a Russia direct-energy weapon.
“They had active data. So much of it never saw the light of day because it didn’t fit the narrative they wanted — which was to make this go away,” he said.
“It was a cover-up.”
Even while the administration publicly denied Havana Syndrome was real, it was quietly compensating victims and their family members under the HAVANA Act, which Biden enacted in October 2021.
“That’s the contradiction,” Adam said. “On one hand they’re saying, ‘This didn’t happen.’ On the other hand, they’re paying men, women, children — even babies — because legally they had to certify it was real.
“If it wasn’t real, they’d be breaking the law” with the payments, he explained.
Despite being “a dyed-in-the-wool anti-Trumper,” Polymeropoulos says he’s prepared to give credit where it’s due if Trump officials publicly acknowledge Havana Syndrome’s existence.
“If they do the right thing here, I will absolutely say so,” he said. “Even if it costs me politically and sends me to therapy for many years.”
Polymeropoulos and Adam are now waiting on a long-delayed assessment from the DNI, which they say victims were promised months ago.
Gabbard’s office insists the report is coming, but “we are not going to rush to put out incomplete information.”
“DNI Gabbard has provided the time, resources, and support needed to ensure the review is comprehensive and accurate,” a spokesperson for her office says. “Our team has been relentless in its work and is committed to delivering the truth that the American people deserve.”
Meanwhile, Polymeropoulos said the intelligence community should oust some senior officials still in place who he said were directly involved in dismissing and mistreating Havana Syndrome victims.
“I wish I’d been shot,” Polymeropoulos said. “Then people would’ve believed me.”
“You can’t have a healthy CIA if it betrays its own people,” he added. “The government asked me to risk my life for 26 years. I believed they’d have my back. They didn’t.”
