Bipartisan congressional leadership seeks critical care for victims of directed energy attacks

On May 28, 2021, just before the Memorial Day weekend, Senators Tom Cotton, Susan Collins, Kirsten Gillibrand, and Jeanne Shaheen introduced important legislation to ensure America’s civil servants injured by directed energy attacks get the best available treatment.

Directed energy attacks have targeted U.S. State Department and intelligence personnel and their families in Havana, Guangzhou, Moscow, and even personnel in the White House. These attacks are suspected to be the result of “directed, pulsed radio frequency energy” according to a report by the National Academy of Sciences. Injuries from these attacks include dizziness, piercing directional noise, nausea, vertigo, ear popping, and pounding headaches. They can also result in victims suffering Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI).

America’s military health system has significant experience treating TBI because of the high numbers of service members attacked by improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and other blast producing weapons over the course of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Victims of suspected energy attacks have so far not been able to take advantage of the military’s expertise in being evaluated for TBI however.

Marc Polymeropoulos a 26-year CIA veteran, and victim of a directed energy weapon attack, described the importance of making this treatment available in a recent op-ed :

“Amid public scrutiny and pressure, the CIA ultimately agreed to send me to Walter Reed… My physical scars of this silent wound on my brain were also matched with the emotional wound of feeling betrayed by those who did not believe what occurred and who rejected proper medical care for me.”

Stories like Polymeropoulos’ are behind the new push to improve treatment options for Americans targeted by direct energy weapons. “It is unacceptable that some victims of probable directed energy attacks did not receive the medical support they should have expected from our government when they were injured,” said Collins.

“Congress not only has a duty to protect these men, women and families, but we must provide them with high-quality health care,” added Gillibrand.

To remedy the challenge faced by Polymeropoulos and other American civil servants, lawmakers propose the Walter Reed Injury Recovery (WIRE) Act, which:

“will ensure that all U.S. Government personnel who may have suffered a brain injury as the result of an attack during the course of their duties receives immediate treatment at this facility” and “also directs elements of the departments and agencies of the federal government to remove any bureaucratic impediments to the immediate delivery of needed services.”

“I’ll continue working across the aisle to care for public servants who’ve been targeted by these attacks,” said Shaheen, who also emphasized the need to “uncover the source of these incidents to protect American personnel.”

Cotton, who previously questioned Ambassador William Burns about the care of the CIA’s paramilitary operators added, “I’m proud to join my colleagues on this important part of a long campaign to care for our men and women in uniform and hold their attackers responsible.”

Cotton and Shaheen are right that while caring for America’s injured is important, we must also work to hold attackers responsible. It is vital to demonstrate the resolve of the U.S. government to protect its people against electromagnetic threats, and to punish perpetrators of these attacks. So long as our adversaries can use the electromagnetic spectrum to do harm to our people and our infrastructure with impunity, they will continue to do so.

Walter Reed National Military Medical Center by formulanone is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0