Former U.S. officials talk about being victims of Havana Syndrome

Two former U.S. Homeland Security officials spoke for the first time about their experiences with the Havana Syndrome while working for the White House, CBS News reported Sunday.

Olivia Troye, National Security Advisor during Mike Pence's vice-presidential term, and Miles Taylor, National Security Chief of Staff during the Trump Administration, opened up on the show 60 Minutes about the effects of Havana Syndrome.

Troye was affected in the summer of 2019 and was hit with intense vertigo on a staircase in an executive building near the White House. "It was a piercing sensation on the side of my head. I remember it was on the right side, and I had vertigo," she recounted. In addition, she felt "unsteady" and "nauseous." She had as many as four such episodes between 2019 and 2020.

Olivia Troye, homeland security advisor to Vice President Mike Pence, speaks with 60 Minutes for the first time about the summer of 2019 when she says a “piercing feeling on the side of [her] head” developed while leaving White House grounds. https://t.co/LRhn4YEW8j pic.twitter.com/jyH1Od7tj2

— 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) February 21, 2022

Taylor claimed he was woken up early one morning in her Capitol Hill home by a strange sound soon after becoming deputy chief of staff at the State Department.

"It was kind of a chirping sound, something between what you would think of as a cricket or a digital sound. I didn't know what it was, but it was enough to wake me up," he added.

After hearing the noise, he went to the window of his house and saw a white van speeding away. The next day he started feeling sick.

Miles Taylor, the Trump admin’s DHS chief of staff, is also speaking out for the first time about a “strange sound” he heard late at night in his DC home in 2018. He says another incident occurred 5 weeks later, leaving him with “concussion-like symptoms” https://t.co/7KvSMPKtWT pic.twitter.com/hHl9bYOjVP

— 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) February 21, 2022

Five weeks later, he suffered a similar attack also at his home during nighttime hours. "This to me, as a national security professional, was a big red light. We may have ongoing activity targeting U.S. government officials in our own country," he thought.

“Someone is trying to send us a message that they can strike blows against us and we can’t strike back.” Miles Taylor thinks he was targeted, and other victims are confident in what happened.

CIA Director Bill Burns: “we’re not done [investigating] yet.” https://t.co/7KvSMPKtWT pic.twitter.com/crAmJqcBqs

— 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) February 21, 2022

The effects of the attacks are still under investigation by the FBI, the State Department, and U.S. intelligence.

CIA Director William Burns has been skeptical of the facts but said that Americans who have claimed to be victims of the Havana Syndrome can no longer be doubted.

The cases have been called Anomalous Health Incidents (AHI) and have been shown to cause brain and psychological effects. Approximately one thousand diplomats worldwide have suffered the effects of this syndrome, which was first reported in Havana at the end of 2016.