Opinion
The repair job at Immigration
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The department’s top bureaucrat answers a critical report, with rare candour
Seven months ago Neil Yeates, a retired former deputy minister of immigration, submitted a report on the organization of the department of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada to the current deputy minister, Christiane Fox.
Yeates’s 28-page report was blunt, plainspoken, critical but constructive. It said “the current organizational model at IRCC is broken.” At a time of global upheaval and dizzying growth in immigration levels, the department that decides who gets into Canada was no longer “fit for purpose,” he wrote. It was time for “major change.” When? “[T]he advice is to proceed now.”
On Thursday, a copy of Yeates’s report landed in my email inbox.
On Thursday night, Christiane Fox told me she is implementing many of Yeates’s recommendations, and described for me her plans for the department with a level of detail and candour I almost never see in today’s Ottawa.
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Copies of Yeates’s February IRCC Organizational Review Report have been floating around Ottawa because the department began implementing big changes this week. Some of the nearly 13,000 people who work in the department have asked for the rationale behind the changes. Yeates’s 28-page report makes the case succinctly.
Yeates was a top civil servant in Saskatchewan before moving to Ottawa in 2004. He held senior positions in three other departments before becoming deputy minister at Citizenship and Immigration Canada, the department now known as IRCC, where he served from 2009 to his retirement in 2013. That means he was Jason Kenney’s deputy minister for all of Kenney’s time at Immigration, but he was also a Trudeau Foundation mentor if you want to get excited about that instead.
His report’s purpose, he wrote, “is to provide strategic advice to the Deputy Minister on how the department can become a more efficient and effective organization.” After interviewing 36 people inside and outside the department, he decided it was a mess.
‘“[T]he current organizational model at IRCC is broken but is being held together by the hard work and dedication of staff,” he wrote. “At IRCC today department-wide planning is limited and some interviewees suggested it has in fact disappeared completely . There is no multi-year strategic plan, annual plans are not in place consistently across the department and consequently reporting is seen by many as haphazard.”
What the department did have going for it was a decent work environment: “In talking to senior managers at IRCC the culture was universally seen as ‘committed,’ ‘collaborative,’ ‘supportive’ and so on.” The senior managers Yeates interviewed saw this culture as “helping to overcome the shortcomings of the current organizational structure and of the weakness of the governance and management systems.”
The immigration department has always been the main portal between a messy world and an anxious nation. Lately the world had grown messier, Yeates noted, and the demands on the department were starting to hurt. “[T]he operating environment, both nationally and internationally, has grown ever more complex, unstable and frenetic,” he wrote.
In response, “the department has grown exponentially,” from 5,217 staff when Yeates left it in 2013 to12,721 this year, an expansion of 144%. The “Ex complement,” the department’s management cadre, grew from 135 to 227 over the same period, a smaller increase of 68%. That might explain why the department’s managers are so stressed, Yeates speculated. At any rate, the department’s structure was conceived for a much smaller staff and caseload.
To catch up, Yeates proposed big reform in four areas: Organizational Structure, Governance, Management Systems and Culture. He cautioned that tinkering with only one or a couple of those areas wouldn’t have the effect that a “Big Bang,” however difficult, would achieve.
The big problem in Organizational Structure was that the department isn’t organized along business lines: that one of the world’s leading destinations for asylum and humanitarian immigration doesn’t have an assistant deputy minister for asylum, for instance. The obvious challenge was that in a hectic world there will certainly be more crises, like those of recent years. “Should IRCC have a permanent ‘response team’ in place? The short answer is no.” Between crises that team of experienced trouble-shooters would just be twirling their thumbs. Instead Yeates proposed better contingency planning, including lessons learned from other crisis-management departments such as National Defence.
Under Governance, Yeates found a proliferation of over-large committees sitting through endless presentations and not really sure, at the end of each, whether they had decided anything. “Most of the actual decision-making occurs in DMO/ADM bilats,” he wrote, referring to meetings between the Deputy Minister’s office and a given Assistant Deputy Minister.
The section of Yeates’s report that deals with Management Systems reads like a parable of contemporary Ottawa: a “series of periodic crises” that somehow nobody anticipated, “descend[ing] into ‘issues management.’” What’s needed is much better planning and reporting, he wrote. When he was running the department barely a decade ago, every part of the department was reporting on progress against targets every three months. That system has fallen by the wayside. A department that’s obsessed with its “priorities” or with the to-do items in “a minister’s mandate letters” is “inherently limited” and guaranteed to be side-swiped by events intruding from the real world, he wrote.
The upshot of all this tunnel vision was that the department was expecting to “lapse,” or leave unspent, $368 million in projected spending for the year underway, even as passport-related spending was projecting a $238 million deficit.
Yeates’s report closed with the sort of plea that’s traditional in this sort of exercise, essentially pleading not to be ignored. “IRCC is at a crossroads and as Yogi Berra famously quipped ‘when you come to a fork in the road, take it,’” he wrote. Change is hard, but a “substantial majority” of the people he interviewed told him it was overdue.
Neil Yeates and Christiane Fox.
And that’s where the report ends. I had to decide what to do with it. First, always consider the possibility that you’ve been handed a fake report, or the first draft of something that was later amended beyond recognition. I emailed the office of Immigration Minister Marc Miller looking for comment. They handed me off to the civil servants in the department’s communications staff. But I also emailed Christiane Fox, the deputy minister, offering her a chance to comment. This is the sort of chance that people in Ottawa usually don’t touch with a barge pole.
But Fox called me on Thursday night and responded in detail. I asked: was the conversation on the record? She thought out loud for a few seconds, working her way up to a “Yes.” I don’t want to belabour this, but that answer is very rare these days.
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Christiane Fox had been the DM at Indigenous Services for all of 22 months when she was sent to run IRCC in July of 2022. The new job “felt like crisis”: the department was sending weekly updates to an ad hoc committee of ministers whose job was to fix months of chaos in airports and passport offices.
“They felt like they were under duress,” Fox said. “Everyone was exhausted.” New staff were just “tacked on when there was a problem,” including the creation of an entirely new sector for Afghanistan. Fox talked about this with some of the most experienced public servants in town, including Yeates and Richard Dicerni, Fox’s former DM from her days as a young public servant at Industry, who passed away this summer and whose contribution to public life in Canada is hard to measure.
“I kind of said, ‘We’ve got to make some changes. And I don’t want to do it overnight. But I also don’t want to spend two years figuring out what a new model could look like.’” Yeates, whom she didn’t know well but who knew the department’s history, seemed like solid outside counsel.
While Yeates was doing his thing, Fox and the previous immigration minister, Sean Fraser, were consulting — with “business leaders, academics and clients” — about the department’s future. By June of this year, she had a plan, based on Yeates’s report and those consultations. She’s been rolling it out since then, from top managers on down, and on Wednesday, by way of explanation for the changes that are coming, she sent the Yeates report to enough people that I got a copy. A department-wide meeting is scheduled for this coming week.
What’s changing? “The model is now just more of a business-line model,” she said, reflecting Yeates’s first big recommendation.
So there’ll be a stronger crisis-planning sector. In a world that keeps producing humanitarian crises, the goal is to learn lessons for next time from Ukraine, Afghanistan and elsewhere. “Most importantly, we’ll have a group dedicated to thinking about these issues, planning for crisis.” It won’t eliminate the need to “surge,” or quickly add new staff when something flares up. “But in the past, we ended up surging so much that all of our other business lines suffered every time there was a crisis.” The goal now is to get better at anticipating so the department’s regular work doesn’t suffer.
“Asylum and Refugee. There was no Asylum ADM,” she said, reflecting another Yeates critique. “This is probably the thing that causes me the most heartache, in terms of, how are we going to deal with this as a country, globally? What are some of the tools that we have? How do we support the most vulnerable? How do we have a system that is fast and fair? So Asylum and Refugee will now be a sector within the department.”
In addition, there’ll be a sector focused on Economic Immigration and Family. “The business community didn’t really feel like we were actually talking to them about labour shortages, about skills missions, about what is the talent that the country needs.” And a sector on francophone immigration, identifying French-speaking sources of immigration and taking into account the needs of French-speaking newcomers.
“Other sectors remain kind of consistent. Like, we’ve always had a focus on border and security, but we will now have a team that’s really migration integrity, national security, fraud prevention, and looking at case management in that context.”
Fox said she’s working on more of a “client focus” in the department’s work. “When I joined the department I remember, my first few weeks, thinking, ‘Everybody talks about inventory and backlog and process.’ But I didn’t feel clients and people were at the forefront.” This may sound like a semantic difference. But anyone who’s been treated as inventory and backlog can testify to the potential value in any reform that restores a measure of humanity to recipients of government service.
I’ve been arguing for months here that simply acknowledging problems and identifying possible solutions is better communications than the happy-face sloganeering that passes for so much of strategic comms these days. Here, quite by accident, I’d stumbled across somebody who seems to have had similar thoughts. (There’s an irony here, because Fox’s CV includes a long stint as a director of strategic communications in the Privy Council Office.)
“There will be things that will come up,” Fox said, “that may not be as smooth a transition as we thought, or maybe a bit clunky, that we need to rethink. What we’ve told the employees is, it won’t be perfect. We needed to change, we’re going to change, but there’s going to be room for conversation around issues that arise as we go through this process.”
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From the Brownstone Institute
When Avril Haines, Director of National Intelligence, announced during Event 201’s pandemic drill in 2019 that they would “flood the zone with trusted sources,” few understood this preview of coordinated narrative control. Within months, we watched it unfold in real time—unified messaging across all platforms, suppression of dissent, and coordinated narrative control that fooled much of the world.
But not everyone stayed fooled forever. Some saw through it immediately, questioning every aspect from day one. Others thought it was just incompetent government trying to protect us. Many initially accepted the precautionary principle—better safe than sorry. But as each policy failure pointed in the same direction—toward more control and less human agency—the pattern became impossible to ignore. Anyone not completely subsumed by the system eventually had to confront its true purpose: not protecting health or safety, but expanding control.
Once you recognize this pattern of deception, two questions should immediately arise whenever major stories dominate headlines: “What are they lying about?” and “What are they distracting us from?” The pattern of coordinated deception becomes unmistakable. Consider how media outlets spent three years pushing Russiagate conspiracies, driving unprecedented social division while laying the groundwork for what would become the greatest psychological operation in history. Today, while the media floods us with Ukraine coverage, BlackRock positions itself to profit from both the destruction and reconstruction. The pattern becomes unmistakable once you see it—manufactured crises driving pre-planned “solutions” that always expand institutional control.
Mainstream media operates on twin deceptions: misdirection and manipulation. The same anchors who sold us WMDs in Iraq, promoted “Russia collusion,” and insisted Hunter Biden’s laptop was “Russian disinformation” still occupy prime time slots. Just as we see with RFK, Jr.’s HHS nomination, the pattern is consistent: coordinated attacks replace substantive debate, identical talking points appear across networks, and legitimate questions are dismissed through character assassination rather than evidence. Being consistently wrong isn’t a bug—it’s a feature. Their role isn’t to inform but to manufacture consent.
The template is consistent: Saturate media with emotional spectacles while advancing institutional agendas with minimal scrutiny. Like learning to spot a fake smile or hearing a false note in music, you develop an instinct for the timing:
Money and Power:
- While the media fixated on January 6th, BlackRock and Vanguard quietly tightened their grip on the residential real estate market
- While coverage obsessed over Trump’s Twitter ban, Congress passed the largest upward transfer of wealth under cover of “Covid relief“
- While breathless reporting tracked every move of the Johnny Depp trial, the Fed printed more money than in the entire previous century
- While media flooded us with Ukraine coverage, unprecedented restrictions on energy production reshaped the global economy
- While reporters breathlessly tracked Trump indictments, central banks accelerated plans for programmable digital currency
Medical Control:
- While media focused on celebrity vaccine promotion, unprecedented numbers of young athletes collapsed on field
- While networks ran wall-to-wall coverage of school shootings, documents revealed Pfizer knew about hundreds of side effects
- While coverage fixated on anti-vax “misinformation,” insurance data showed alarming excess death rates
Digital Control:
- While media obsessed over Twitter content moderation, digital ID infrastructure was quietly built worldwide
- While coverage focused on TikTok privacy concerns, central banks accelerated digital currency development
- While endless AI chatbot debates dominated headlines, biometric surveillance systems expanded globally
As these deceptions become more obvious, different forms of resistance emerge. The truth-seeking takes different forms. Some become deep experts in specific deceptions—documenting early treatment successes with repurposed drugs, uncovering hospital protocol failures, or exploring the impact of vaccine injuries. Others develop a broader lens for seeing how narratives themselves are engineered.
Walter Kirn’s brilliant pattern recognition cuts to the heart of our manufactured reality. His tweets dissecting the United CEO murder coverage expose how even violent crimes are now packaged as entertainment spectacles, complete with character arcs and narrative twists. Kirn’s insight highlights a critical dimension of media control: by turning every crisis into an entertainment narrative, they divert attention from deeper questions. Instead of asking why institutional safeguards fail or who benefits, audiences become captivated by carefully scripted outrage. This deliberate distraction ensures that institutional agendas move forward without scrutiny.
His insight reveals how entertainment packaging serves the broader control system. While each investigation requires its own expertise, this pattern of narrative manipulation connects to a larger grid of deception. As I’ve explored in “The Information Factory” and “Engineering Reality,” everything from education to medicine to currency itself has been captured by systems designed to shape not just our choices, but our very perception of reality.
Most revealing is what they don’t cover. Notice how quickly stories disappear when they threaten institutional interests. Remember the Epstein client list? The Maui land grab? The mounting vaccine injuries? The silence speaks volumes.
Consider the recent whistleblower testimonies revealing suppressed safety concerns at Boeing, a company long entangled with regulatory agencies and government contracts. Two whistleblowers—both former employees who raised alarms about safety issues—died under suspicious circumstances. Coverage of their deaths disappeared almost overnight, despite the profound implications for public safety and corporate accountability. This pattern repeats in countless cases where accountability would disrupt entrenched power structures, leaving crucial questions unanswered and narratives tightly controlled.
These decisions aren’t accidental—they result from media ownership, advertiser influence, and government pressure, ensuring the narrative remains tightly controlled.
But perhaps most striking isn’t the media’s deception itself, but how thoroughly it shapes its consumers’ reality. Watch how confidently they repeat phrases clearly engineered in think tanks. Listen as they parrot talking points with religious conviction: “January 6th was worse than 9/11,” “Trust The Science™,” “Democracy is on the ballot” and, perhaps the most consequential lie in modern history, “Safe and Effective.”
The professional-managerial class proves especially susceptible to this programming. Their expertise becomes a prison of status—the more they’ve invested in institutional approval, the more fervently they defend institutional narratives. Watch how quickly a doctor who questions vaccine safety loses his license, how swiftly a professor questioning gender ideology faces review, how rapidly a journalist stepping out of line gets blacklisted.
The system ensures compliance through economic capture: your mortgage becomes your leash, your professional status your prison guard. The same lawyers who prides themselves on critical thinking will aggressively shut down any questioning of official narratives. The professor who teaches “questioning power structures” becomes apoplectic when students question pharmaceutical companies.
The circular validation makes the programming nearly impenetrable:
- Media cites “experts”
- Experts cite peer-reviewed studies
- Studies are funded by industry
- Industry shapes media coverage
- “Fact-checkers” cite media consensus
- Academia enforces approved conclusions
This self-reinforcing system forms a perfect closed loop:
Each component validates the others while excluding outside information. Try finding the entry point for actual truth in this closed system. The professional class’s pride in their critical thinking becomes darkly ironic—they’ve simply outsourced their opinions to “authoritative sources.”
Most disturbing is how willingly they’ve surrendered their sovereignty. Watch them defer:
- “I follow the science” (translation: I wait for approved conclusions)
- “According to experts” (translation: I don’t think for myself)
- “Fact-checkers say” (translation: I let others determine truth)
- “The consensus is” (translation: I align with power)
Their empathy becomes a weapon used against them. Question lockdowns? You’re killing grandma. Doubt transition surgery for minors? You’re causing suicides. Resist equity initiatives? You’re perpetuating oppression. The programming works by making resistance feel like cruelty.
Something remarkable is happening beneath the surface noise: a genuine awakening that defies traditional political boundaries. You see it in the subtle exchanges between colleagues when official narratives strain credibility. In the growing silence at dinner parties as propaganda talking points fall flat. In the knowing looks between strangers when public health theatre reaches new heights of absurdity.
This isn’t a movement in the traditional sense—it can’t be, since traditional movement structures are vulnerable to infiltration, subversion, and capture. Instead, it’s more like a spontaneous emergence of pattern recognition. A distributed awakening without central leadership or formal organization. Those who see through the patterns recognize the mass formation for what it is, while its subjects project their own programming onto others, dismissing pattern recognition as “conspiracy theories,” “anti-science,” or other reflexive labels designed to prevent genuine examination.
The hardest truth isn’t recognizing the programming—it’s confronting what it means for human consciousness and society itself. We’re watching real-time evidence that most human minds can be captured and redirected through sophisticated psychological operations. Their thoughts aren’t their own, yet they’d die defending what they’ve been programmed to believe.
This isn’t just media criticism anymore—it’s an existential question about human consciousness and free will. What does it mean when a species’ capacity for independent thought can be so thoroughly hijacked? When natural empathy and moral instincts become weapons of control? When education and expertise actually decrease resistance to programming?
The programming works because it hijacks core human drives:
- The need for social acceptance (e.g., masking as a visible symbol of conformity)
- The desire to be seen as good/moral (e.g., adopting performative stances on social issues without deeper understanding)
- The instinct to trust authority (e.g., faith in public health officials despite repeated policy reversals)
- The fear of ostracism (e.g., avoiding dissent to maintain social harmony)
- The comfort of conformity (e.g., parroting narratives to avoid cognitive dissonance)
- The addiction to status (e.g., signaling compliance to maintain professional or social standing)
Each natural human trait becomes a vulnerability to be exploited. The most educated become the most programmable because their status addiction runs deepest. Their “critical thinking” becomes a script running on corrupted hardware.
This is the core challenge of our time: Can human consciousness evolve faster than the systems designed to hijack it? Can pattern recognition and awareness spread faster than manufactured consensus? Can enough people learn to read between the lies before the programming becomes complete?
The stakes could not be higher. This isn’t just about politics or media literacy—it’s about the future of human consciousness itself. Whether our species maintains the capacity for independent thought may depend on those who can still access it helping others break free from the spell.
The matrix of control deepens daily, but so does the awakening. The question is: Which spreads faster—the programming or the awareness of it? Our future as a species may depend on the answer.
Author
Catherine Herridge
CIA whistleblower accusing government of “Havana Syndrome cover up” EXCLUSIVE Catherine Herridge Report
“Alice” is a medically retired CIA Officer with two decades of government service |
| After years of quiet advocacy, a CIA whistleblower is speaking publicly for the first time about mysterious symptoms known as “Havana Syndrome” and accusing the intelligence community of a “cover up.” |
| We recently sat down with the medically retired CIA officer – we agreed to call “Alice” to shield her identity -– after a House GOP report found “it appears increasingly likely” a foreign adversary is behind these debilitating cognitive and neurological conditions. |
| The Congressional Report also called out the intelligence community for frustrating congressional oversight efforts to uncover the facts. |
| Alice said of the intelligence community leadership, “If they’re politicizing this, what else are they not telling the president? ” |
| DEEP DIVE | |||||||||||||||
| Our reporting is based on conversations with more than a dozen individuals who have explored or experienced the mysterious set of symptoms that takes its name from a cluster of cases, reported in Cuba, in 2016. Though the evidence indicates the incidents were happening much earlier. | |||||||||||||||
| The US government refers to it as “Anomalous Health Incidents” or AHIs. A previously disclosed National Security Memo confirmed intelligence information about “a high-powered microwave system weapon that may have the ability to weaken, intimidate, or kill an enemy over time and without leaving evidence.” | |||||||||||||||
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| The memo continued, “The 2012 intelligence information indicated that this weapon is designed to bathe a target’s living quarters in microwaves, causing numerous physical effects, including a damaged nervous system.” | |||||||||||||||
| Alice, who spent two decades in government service, says she experienced an AHI in 2021. In many respects, her experience mirrors the National Security memo. | |||||||||||||||
| Alice, once trusted with the nation’s secrets, now relies on a service dog to navigate daily life. She takes a cocktail of drugs to manage chronic headaches, balance issues, nerve pain, eye tracking disorders, memory lapses among others. | |||||||||||||||
| Much of Alice’s work at the CIA remains classified to this day. | |||||||||||||||
| While our investigation explores new claims about directed energy weapons and their possible use by a foreign adversary, it also documents allegations of government gaslighting. | |||||||||||||||
| And importantly, it underscores credible claims that the intelligence community, specifically the CIA, has failed to care for its own people after they reported directed energy attacks. | |||||||||||||||
| A new bipartisan Senate Intelligence report faulted the CIA, finding “many individuals faced obstacles to timely and sufficient care.” The report went further, criticizing the Agency for halting its collection of clinical research. Meanwhile, the Defense Department’s work is ongoing. | |||||||||||||||
| “…the Committee nevertheless assesses that CIA may not be well postured to respond to future AHI reports and to facilitate quick, accessible. high-quality medical care for those who need it, particularly in the case of another AHI cluster.” | |||||||||||||||
| CONTEXT: THE DISCONNECT | |||||||||||||||
| This is an extraordinary group of national security personnel. They are highly vetted and trusted with the US government’s most closely guarded secrets. But after they reported AHIs to their leadership, they say they were dismissed as crazy and unstable. Some officers report their security clearances were pulled, limiting their ability to work in the future. | |||||||||||||||
| I complained to an intelligence official about the apparent disconnect. “Either they have the worst vetting system and they only pick crazy people, or in fact, their really talented, very smart, very dedicated people are being hit.” And the official had no response for me. | |||||||||||||||
| GOP HOUSE INVESTIGATION | |||||||||||||||
| In early December, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, released an unclassified interim report. The CIA subcommittee chairman Rick Crawford (R-Arkansas) was highly critical of the Intelligence community leadership. | |||||||||||||||
| “I have discovered that there is reliable evidence to suggest that some Anomalous Health Incidents (AHIs) are the work of foreign adversaries,” Crawford said. “Sadly, the IC has actively attempted to impede our investigation, but we have nonetheless been able to gather significant evidence, and I have reason to believe that its claims of environmental or social factors explaining AHIs are false.” | |||||||||||||||
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| Asked if the House report findings amount to a government coverup, Alice did not hesitate. “It’s a coverup and it’s terrifying and it should be terrifying to all Americans.” | |||||||||||||||
| The new House congressional report conflicts with the 2023 Intelligence Community Assessment or ICA that found “..most IC agencies have concluded that it is ‘very unlikely’ a foreign adversary is responsible for the reported AHIs.” | |||||||||||||||
| “Thank God they’re saying it, “ Alice said of the house interim report. “Thank God they were brave enough to stand up to the CIA.” | |||||||||||||||
| Alice went further, “If they’re politicizing this, what else are they not telling the president and that’s scary. That’s where it becomes more real.” | |||||||||||||||
| LEADING EXPERT WEIGHS IN | |||||||||||||||
| Dr. James Giordano served as the consulting forensic neuroscientist on the original cases of AHI in Havana, Cuba. | |||||||||||||||
| “The recognized likelihood that a foreign peer competitor nation can be attributed to AHI engagements is both unsurprising, and validating, given my original analysis of AHI cases in Havana.” | |||||||||||||||
| Giordano is the Pellegrino Center Professor of Neurology and Biochemistry, at Georgetown University; and Executive Director of the Institute for Biodefense Research, a federally funded think tank focusing upon global biosecurity. | |||||||||||||||
| “I believe that this (house) report substantively validates the research community’s efforts to demonstrate that directed energy technologies were the source of AHIs, and appropriately recognizes those victims of these engagements who have suffered for so long with both the resulting signs and symptoms, and difficulties in acquiring the care and support they so direly needed.” | |||||||||||||||
| MULTIPLE WEAPONS – ATTACKS REPORTED DOMESTICALLY AND ABROAD | |||||||||||||||
| Alice’s injuries are so debilitating, she relies on a service dog. She needed multiple breaks during our interview. At times, she wore dark glasses to blunt the studio lights. | |||||||||||||||
| Respecting classification and sensitive matters related to her intelligence work, Alice could only share the basic outlines of her AHI experience in 2021. | |||||||||||||||
| “I was serving in Africa and I experienced an anomalous health incident in my home on a Saturday night,” Alice explained. | |||||||||||||||
| “I heard a weird noise. It was a really weird sound that I’ll never, never forget it… and after about a second or two, I felt it in my feet, kind of like the reverb from a speaker.” | |||||||||||||||
| In military and intelligence circles, they call it the kill zone or the X. If you are under attack, you need to get off the X. | |||||||||||||||
| When she moved off the X to another room, Alice said her partner provided the initial hint something was terribly wrong. | |||||||||||||||
| “I went into the master bedroom..and I said, ‘Hey, do you hear that weird noise?’ And the first sign that something was off, I should have known, was when he said, ‘what noise?’” | |||||||||||||||
| Alice left the bedroom and then experienced the strange sound for a second time. | |||||||||||||||
| “Immediately, as soon as I reentered the space, I heard the noise again. My ear started hurting. I started having vertigo. The room was spinning, my head started pulsing. It hurt so badly and I had a ton of pain in my left ear and my ears started ringing and I thought I was going to pass out. “ | |||||||||||||||
| Alice believes there are multiple weapons which explain varying symptoms and diagnoses among AHI survivors from traumatic brain injury to memory failure, balance issues, eye tracking disorders and nerve pain. | |||||||||||||||
| “I think there are weapons that can be fit in backpacks, ones that can be fit in the trunks of cars, ones that can be planted at a position with line of sight to people from across the street.” | |||||||||||||||
| Based on our investigative reporting, many US government personnel who experienced AHIs were assigned portfolios linked to Russian interests from cybersecurity to election interference and disinformation. Others had specialized language skills. | |||||||||||||||
| While Alice would not discuss her work in Africa, she said she thinks Moscow is to blame. “I believe the Russian GRU (Russian military intelligence) came to my house late at night and took me off the battlefield.” | |||||||||||||||
| Alice and other intelligence professionals who experienced AHIs describe their brains being fried. Think of a computer: the hardware is still there, but the software is corrupted. You no longer get updates, you can’t connect the dots anymore. System components, like your balance, and vision, don’t work together. We were told some intelligence officers had to learn to walk again. | |||||||||||||||
| While we don’t have the whole picture, we understood that many officers who experienced AHIs were on a leadership track. Some privately question if there may be an insider threat. We will explore those questions and others in follow up reporting. | |||||||||||||||
| Asked if her old self died the day she experienced an AHI, Alice responded, “A little bit. I was paid for my brain. I was paid for my ability to write well and to write for the president. I was paid to meet with foreigners and to get information that would help advance US security objectives …and I can’t do that anymore the way I used to and it’s really, that’s one of the hardest parts.” | |||||||||||||||
| CASES SPIKE IN 2021 BEFORE RUSSIA INVADES UKRAINE | |||||||||||||||
| As cases spiked in 2021 the same year, Alice says she was hit, multiple sources told us CIA director Burns said privately that it was his personal belief Russia was behind some of the attacks. | |||||||||||||||
| “I think he’s a really good person at his core. I think he was being honest when he said he thought it was Russia,” Alice explained. “He is a Russia expert. He was the US ambassador there….I mean, I think it’s a sign of how political this is that even he fell in line.” | |||||||||||||||
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| While an Intelligence Community panel of experts had uncovered evidence suggesting a directed energy weapon may be responsible, in 2023 the intelligence community took a different position. It released a new intelligence community assessment or ICA that Alice and other AHI survivors called a “slap in the face.” | |||||||||||||||
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| The ICA reads in part, “..most IC agencies have concluded that it is ‘very unlikely’ a foreign adversary is responsible for the reported AHIs. IC agencies have varying confidence levels, with two agencies at moderate-to-high confidence while three are at moderate confidence.” | |||||||||||||||
| Alice said the 2023 ICA did not meet CIA standards.” If I had received the finished paper on my desk as a team chief, I would’ve sent it back to the analyst and said, ’you have to start over again’ It didn’t meet any of our most basic tradecraft standards.” | |||||||||||||||
| Alice emphasized analysts are trained not to frame arguments around a lack of information. | |||||||||||||||
| The intelligence community assessment on AHIs also stood out to me because the coordinated media rollout seemed designed to push the controversial findings. | |||||||||||||||
| GASLIGHTING | |||||||||||||||
| Miriam Webster defines gaslighting as psychological manipulation that “causes the victim to question the validity of their own thoughts.” | |||||||||||||||
| Alice said the CIA was gaslighting her and other AHI survivors. “It was designed to make us think, ourselves, are crazy and to question our own injuries.” | |||||||||||||||
| Alice said she expected more from the CIA. “We swore this oath and every day I watch them really continue to deny people’s humanity and their injuries. People that put themselves and their families on the line in horrible, horribly dangerous places and situations to protect this country.” | |||||||||||||||
| Asked if it is reasonable to think that the intelligence community doesn’t want to acknowledge a foreign adversary, because then, they would have to act? | |||||||||||||||
| “Yes and it’s complicated with Russia, right?” Alice responded. “One theory we bat around – is it possible that it’s Russia and China? Is it possible that one country created it, sold it, or gave it to another country.” | |||||||||||||||
| We were told that even the prospect of a directed energy weapon attacking US personnel was bad for recruitment and bad for employee retention. | |||||||||||||||
| While the CIA still questions the cause, based on government records, the Labor Department does accept Alice’s Traumatic Brain Injury or TBI as a “work injury.” Alice qualified for limited compensation through a law called the Havana Act but she and others told us it falls short. | |||||||||||||||
| 100K OUT OF POCKET MEDICAL EXPENSES | |||||||||||||||
| “It is a full-time job to try to get medical treatment and is another full-time job to try to handle the bureaucracy of trying to access benefits,” Alice emphasized. I’ve gone over a hundred thousand dollars out of pocket.” | |||||||||||||||
| Alice said AHI survivors need specialized care that is not covered by insurance. In many cases, effective treatments are experimental. | |||||||||||||||
| “The reality is a normal physician cannot help us. This is different. AHIs are much more complicated and we’re basically ticking time bombs. Catherine, I have already started having to go to funerals. Friends of mine, I mean my friend that was with me the day I got my dog has already passed away..a fellow AHI survivor, of a rare form of cancer. I have friends in nursing homes. I have friends with dementia and Parkinson’s. In some ways, people have a heart attack and if you don’t die of it, we know how to fix a heart attack. We don’t know how to fix this.” | |||||||||||||||
| CIA PULLS ALICE’S SECURITY CLEARANCE CITING “PSYCHOLOGICAL CONDITIONS” | |||||||||||||||
| According to heavily redacted government records, reviewed by our investigative team, after Alice retired, the CIA pulled her security clearance citing “psychological conditions” among other alleged issues. | |||||||||||||||
| Alice believes the revocation of her clearance was retaliation, adding that women who came forward about AHIs were treated differently by the CIA. | |||||||||||||||
| “It’s like we’re in the 1950s. They brought up, Could you be pregnant? Are you upset because you’re not pregnant? Is it hormones? Is it menopause? Is it perimenopause? Do you have an anxiety disorder? | |||||||||||||||
| Alice said the men who reported AHIs were not treated well either, but added, “there hasn’t been a systemic action against them.” | |||||||||||||||
| DOD LETTER “WE BELIEVE YOUR EXPERIENCES ARE REAL” | |||||||||||||||
| What’s striking is the lack of a coherent response across the US government. Alice and others who say they experienced AHIs get the greatest support and medical help from the Pentagon. | |||||||||||||||
| This March letter, obtained by our investigative team, was sent by the then head of the DoD AHI Cross-Functional team, Brigadier General Shannon O’Harren. The DoD Cross-Functional team addresses AHI medical needs and national security implications. | |||||||||||||||
| Brig Gen O’Harren, who now serves on the Joint Staff, wrote at the time, “We believe your experiences are real and we are unwaveringly committed to continue to provide quality care for you and those who are eligible.” | |||||||||||||||
| The March letter was sent to the AHI cohort after two reports found no medical explanation for their symptoms. | |||||||||||||||
|
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| Alice told us the DoD letter was significant affirmation. “The Department of Defense believes us and has actually gone to bat for those of us from across the US government. I would not be getting care if it wasn’t for senior DOD leadership.” | |||||||||||||||
| It is hard to explain the apparent disconnect between the DoD letter and the Intelligence Community’s position that AHI symptoms were probably the result of “pre-existing conditions, conventional illnesses, and environmental factors.” | |||||||||||||||
| Alice argued the two are not hard to reconcile. “The brave people of the Department of Defense that have worked on this issue and were willing to stand up to the CIA.” | |||||||||||||||
| Asked why she is speaking up after years of quiet advocacy, Alice was blunt. “Because the CIA is betraying and not just betraying but making friends of mine and my life a living hell. I want them to stop hurting my friends. I want them to give everyone I care about medical care and Havana Act payments and to take care of us in the long term. I want them to stop denying what is happening to us and so there can be opportunities to collect the information that we need so that we can prevent this from happening to more people.” | |||||||||||||||
| Asked if a Trump/Vance administration can make a change, Alice was hopeful. “I’m not sure the phrase ‘cleaning up the swamp ‘is thrown around a lot in DC but at the bare minimum, I do not believe that those people that were involved in the earlier reports should be allowed to touch this. I think they need to actually recuse themselves or should be replaced.” | |||||||||||||||
| Alice predicted the CIA would respond to the allegations by saying “we take every reported case seriously and we’re committed to taking care of our people.” Alice said, “that’s what hurts so much because they’re not.” | |||||||||||||||
|
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| FULL RESPONSES | |||||||||||||||
| In response to nearly a dozen questions, which included Alice’s claims of retaliation and sexist treatment of female officers, a CIA spokesperson provided the following statements. | |||||||||||||||
|
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| Because the CIA statements did not address our reporting that in 2021, CIA Director Burns said privately, it was his personal belief Russia was behind some AHIs, we followed up. | |||||||||||||||
| The CIA media office provided additional on the record comment. | |||||||||||||||
| “As the Director has said, he had his own assumptions when he became Director – so much so that he even warned his Russian counterparts in late 2021. But, as he has said, our analysts’ job is not to validate his assumptions, but to ensure an intensive and professional effort to get as close to ground truth as we can. And that is what we have done and continue to do.”the spokesperson provided a second statement. | |||||||||||||||
| The CIA spokesperson said of the bipartisan senate intelligence committee report that found CIA personnel faced delayed and insufficient care: | |||||||||||||||
| “We have no greater responsibility than to care for the health and safety of our people. Our dedication to fulfilling this obligation has been, and will continue to be, steadfast. | |||||||||||||||
| During the critical periods covered by this report, CIA had to design a response to a vexing problem as both our understanding of the problem and the problem itself evolved – including in the midst of the unprecedented global health pandemic that profoundly disrupted individuals’ access to standard healthcare, medical evaluations, and treatment. At the same time, CIA worked with the IC to conduct a deep and rigorous investigation into the possibility that foreign actors were harming US Government personnel and their families, while also working tirelessly to assist officers and their families in getting the care and support they needed and rightly deserved. | |||||||||||||||
| In that environment, supporting our officers and their families required us to dynamically adapt our programs and processes to changing needs and circumstances. Whether, in hindsight, we could have done better is for others to evaluate, but our commitment to ensuring that our officers and their families had access to the care they needed has never wavered. | |||||||||||||||
| In addition, while there was no consistent set of symptoms for those reporting possible AHIs, we nonetheless significantly shortened the timeline for individuals to access appropriate care and resources. CIA continues to provide support and access to facilitated treatment and resources. | |||||||||||||||
| CIA continues to approach every reported possible AHI with the utmost seriousness and compassion.” | |||||||||||||||
| Asked if the National Security Agency has intelligence in its holdings that cast doubt on the 2023 ICA findings that it was unlikely a foreign adversary was behind some attacks, a spokesperson said “we have nothing to give you on this topic, but would refer you to ODNI Media Relations.” | |||||||||||||||
| A spokesperson for the nation’s top intelligence official, the Director of National Intelligence or ODNI, strongly disagreed with the House GOP committee interim report among other issues. | |||||||||||||||
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| A DoD spokesperson for the Joint Staff said BG O’Harren did not dispute the authenticity of the March 2024 letter, obtained by our team, and he stands behind its contents. | |||||||||||||||
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Thank you for the consideration and, most of all, for supporting our journalism! |
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Best, Catherine |
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