October 27, 2017

Cuba - U.S. Diplomats Retreat In Horror ... Because ... 'Crickets'

This incident earlier this month will probably go down in the annals as the most stupid diplomatic f***-up ever:

President Trump on Tuesday expelled 15 Cuban diplomats, escalating his response to a mysterious affliction that has stricken American Embassy personnel in Havana in a move that cast a Cold War chill over relations between the two countries.

...

American diplomats and their spouses began reporting symptoms that included hearing loss, dizziness, balance and visual problems, headaches and cognitive issues last December. By late January, the State Department realized that the illnesses were related and might have resulted from some sort of attack, perhaps by a sonic device, toxin or virus.

The U.S. diplomats were hearing strange noises at night. This within certain parts of their embassy as well as in some homes. Lots of mischief was suspected - from huge infrasound weapons to food poisoning. But no technical or medical explanation was found. The State Department described the noise as "specific attacks" on its diplomats. At least 21 were affected and half of the U.S. staff in Havana was ordered home. Cuban diplomats were expelled from the U.S.

Recordings of the mysterious sound were made available to AP. The agency noted:

It sounds sort of like a mass of crickets. A high-pitched whine, but from what?

...

The sound seemed to manifest in pulses of varying lengths — seven seconds, 12 seconds, two seconds — with some sustained periods of several minutes or more. Then there would be silence for a second, or 13 seconds, or four seconds, before the sound abruptly started again.

A Cuban investigation now found the obvious answer to the AP's "but what?" question - 'crickets':

Officials with Cuba’s Interior Ministry said that U.S. investigators had presented them with three recordings made by presumed victims of sonic attacks and that analysis of the sounds showed them to be extremely similar to those of crickets and cicadas that live along the northern coast of Cuba. “It’s the same bandwidth and it’s audibly very similar,” said Lt. Col. Juan Carlos Molina, a telecommunications specialist with the Interior Ministry. “We compared the spectrums of the sounds and evidently this common sound is very similar to the sound of a cicada.”

Crickets can make noise as loud as 100 decibel, loud enough to cause health problems. The U.S. diplomats in Cuba were "attacked" by Cuban crickets which made enough noise to cause discomfort or even symptoms of illness. As someone only exposed to crickets when traveling abroad I can confirm that night-long cricket noise can be extremely unsettling to those who are not used to it.

But why did the State Department not know this? Why did the diplomats not recognize the noise for what it was? Cicadas and crickets are not uncommon in the southern U.S. states.

Presumable some in the CIA and in the State Department do not want better relations with Cuba and resisted the 2016 reopening of the embassy. It is possible that they used the cicada "attacks" to sabotage the relations.

Whatever. The incident lets the U.S. State Department look extremely silly. Imagine all the "crickets" jokes diplomats from other countries will make about their U.S. colleagues.

The mighty U.S. was defeated! Its diplomats retreated in panic! ... because ... 'crickets'.

Posted by b on October 27, 2017 at 7:50 UTC | Permalink

Comments