A CIA Officer Visits Moscow, Returns With Mysterious, Crippling Headaches

During 26 years at the CIA, Marc Polymeropoulos spent a lot of time in rough places, like war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But he never suffered any harm until December 2017, when he was sound asleep at a Marriott Hotel in Moscow near the U. S. Embassy.

"I was awoken in the middle of the night," recalled Polymeropoulos, 51. "I just had incredible vertigo, dizziness. I wanted to throw up. The room was spinning. I couldn't even stand up without falling down. I had tinnitus ringing in my ears."

He suspected a bad case of food poisoning and carried on with his 10-day trip. The visit included meetings with senior Russian intelligence officials, a common practice despite the long history of tense relations between the two countries and their spy agencies.

But a second bout hit a few days later. Polymeropoulos canceled his remaining meetings and felt fortunate to make it back onto a plane to the U. S.

At the time, Polymeropoulos was settling into a new, senior position at CIA headquarters. After many years in the Middle East, he had become the agency's No. 2 official for clandestine operations in Europe, including Russia.

But a couple of months after he returned from his Moscow trip, in February 2018, he began suffering crippling migraines that still plague him constantly.

"I started this kind of an incredible journey of seeing multiple doctors, multiple MRIs and CT scans and X-rays," said Polymeropoulos, whose story was first reported in GQ magazine. "Ultimately a neurologist diagnosed me with occipital neuralgia."

This nerve inflammation in the back of the head would explain his headaches, though it's not clear what caused it.

Polymeropoulos is not alone.

Since 2016, more than 40 U. S. diplomats who worked at the U.S. Embassy in Havana and more than a dozen at U.S. consulates in China have complained of a range of symptoms that also include balance issues, ringing in their ears and memory loss. More than a dozen Canadian diplomats who served in Cuba in 2017 reported similar symptoms.

Polymeropoulos is the first to link his illness to Russia. He says a CIA colleague who traveled with him to Moscow in 2017 suffers similar ailments. In addition, several CIA officers working on Russia issues elsewhere in the world have also been afflicted, he said. Aside from Polymeropoulos, the others are still at the CIA and have not spoken out.

"One of whom I know very well and has been really severely affected," he said.

Many of the State Department diplomats have been examined at the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Brain Injury and Repair, as well as the University of Miami and the National Institutes of Health.

The bottom line: doctors say the ailments are real, but they don't know what's causing them, and they have not found evidence of traumatic brain injury.

In addition to the medical mystery, there are also political questions about the so-called Havana Syndrome.

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, a New Hampshire Democrat, said her office has received complaints from employees who served abroad for the State Department, the Commerce Department and the CIA.

Some have not been treated well, she said, and she wants to know if this is related to political sensitivities in dealing with Cuba, China and Russia.

"Some of the employees were doubted when they reported their symptoms. Some were pressured to stay silent. Some were ostracized and reprimanded for sayi... (Read more)

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