by kleinbl00

Because am_Unition buried the lede on a three year old thread:

Let's read along shall we?

The report, obtained Friday by NBC News, does not conclude that the directed energy was delivered intentionally, by a weapon, as some U.S. officials have long believed. But it raises that disturbing possibility.

"The CIA is not ready to let go of the fact that mmmmaybe the Russians decided to give them headaches on purpose"

NBC News reported in 2018 that U.S. intelligence officials considered Russia a leading suspect in what some of them assess to have been deliberate attacks on diplomats and CIA officers overseas. But there was not — and is not now — conclusive intelligence pointing in that direction, multiple officials who have been briefed on the matter said.

"No we can't make a diplomatic incident out of this but fuckin' hell we want to goddammit

“The committee felt that many of the distinctive and acute signs, symptoms and observations reported by (government) employees are consistent with the effects of directed, pulsed radio frequency (RF) energy,” the report says. “Studies published in the open literature more than a half-century ago and over the subsequent decades by Western and Soviet sources provide circumstantial support for this possible mechanism.”

"Upon retrospect we surmised that we've known what this was since LBJ was president but we're dealing with a Trump-shaped bureaucracy which slows everything down"

While important questions remain, “the mere consideration of such a scenario raises grave concerns about a world with disinhibited malevolent actors and new tools for causing harm to others, as if the U.S. government does not have its hands full already with naturally occurring threats,” says the report, edited by Dr. David Relman, a professor in medicine, microbiolology and immunology at Stanford, and Julie Pavlin, a physician who leads the National Academies of Sciences global health division in Washington.

"We are shocked - shocked, I tell you - that global intelligence agencies get all Spy vs. Spy on each other from time to time"

In the last year, as first reported by GQ Magazine and The New York Times, a number of new incidents have been reported by CIA officers in Europe and Asia, including one involving Marc Polymeropoulos, who retired last year after a long and decorated career as a case officer. He told NBC News he is still suffering the effects of what he believes was a brain injury he sustained on a trip to Moscow.

"Those of us at NBC wish to remind our audience that we are somehow still relevant"

A source directly familiar with the matter told NBC News the CIA, using mobile phone location data, had determined that some Russian intelligence agents who had worked on microwave weapons programs were present in the same cities at the same time that CIA officers suffered mysterious symptoms. CIA officials consider that a promising lead but not conclusive evidence.

"The CIA regrets any involvement the public may have had in this ridiculous kerfuffle because frankly we knew what was going on all along which raises uncomfortable questions about why we have no effective countermeasures against technology that first embarrassed us in 1945"

The State Department, responding to the report, said that "each possible cause remains speculative" and added that the investigation, now three years old, is still "ongoing." Although it praised the National Academies of Sciences for undertaking the effort, the State Department offered a long list of "challenges of their study" and limitations in the data the academies were given access to, suggesting that the report should not be viewed as conclusive.

"The State Department wishes to remind you that despite decades of embarrassment, interagency squabbles still trump patriotism"

"While the above limit the scope of the report, they do not lessen its value," the State Department said in an emailed statement. "We are pleased this report is now out and can add to the data and analyses that may help us come to an eventual conclusion as to what transpired."

"We're not gritting our teeth YOU'RE gritting your teeth"

The CIA did not immediately respond to a request for comment late Friday. Russia has denied any involvement in the incidents.

"The CIA and FSB continue to be the CIA and FSB"

The study examined four possibilities to explain the symptoms: Infection, chemicals, psychological factors and microwave energy.

"The study examined three things that nobody took seriously so that the idiots were willing to accept their conclusions"

“Overall, directed pulsed RF energy … appears to be the most plausible mechanism in explaining these cases among those that the committee considered. ... The committee cannot rule out other possible mechanisms and considers it likely that a multiplicity of factors explains some cases and the differences between others.”

"The committee wishes to remind its readers that interlocuting between three warring spook agencies is fucking exhausting"

Over the years, the FBI, CIA, U.S. military, State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service, National Institutes of Health and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have investigated the incidents. None has come forward with any conclusions, and the State Department has quietly ceased using the word “attacks” to describe what happened, as then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and other top officials did in the early days after the incidents first came to light publicly in 2017.

"The CIA wishes to express their thanks for letting this die quietly"