Expedition Files (2024) s01e01 Episode Script

1
Tonight on "expedition files"
In the Arizona wilderness,
Travis walton is taken by
forces beyond our understanding.
Travis! Travis!
Now, new evidence suggests
the supposed alien abduction
might actually be true.
At the turn of the century,
aviator Charles Lindbergh's family
is destroyed in the most
horrifying way imaginable.
And a recent theory about
the identity of a suspect is
almost too terrible to imagine.
And, at this very moment,
American spies and diplomats
are under siege from
a mysterious enemy.
For the first time ever,
I'll uncover extraordinary
revelations behind
these terrifying attacks.
In the corridors of time
Are mysteries that defy explanation.
Now, I'm traveling through history itself,
on a search for the truth.
New evidence.
Shocking answers.
I'm Josh gates,
and these
are my "expedition files."
I was nine years old when
my neighborhood Nemesis,
Jimmy Donovan, walked up to
me in the school yard and punched
me square in the face it hurt.
It's not pain I'll forget,
and I won't forget who did it
either, Jimmy Donovan.
But disturbingly, some
attackers are unknown,
hurting us without ever
revealing who or what they are.
Tonight, we study
the files of three people
whose brutal attackers remain unknown.
From a terrifying ufo abduction
in the Arizona wilderness,
to an unimaginable crime
that shocked the nation,
to a shadowy super
weapon first fired at innocent
American diplomats in Cuba.
For each of our three stories,
the question remains the same
who was behind these shocking attacks?
We begin here, just after
dark, in the white mountains of
Arizona, in the fall of 1975.
When we get back, remind
me that we need to put some
gas in the chainsaw for the
For these seven young
men, it's a night they'll both
never forget, and also
struggle to remember.
They've been working all day,
chopping down the pine trees
that cover these mountains.
What they don't know is that
their drive back to town will
become a road trip like no other.
One of these men will
suddenly vanish in jaw-dropping
circumstances, setting
off one of the most gripping
and bizarre missing
person cases in history.
Pretty soon, people all across
the country and the world will
be asking, "what really
happened to Travis walton?"
Travis, get back!
In the summer of 1975,
Travis walton is a member of
a seven-man logging
crew hired to thin out trees
in the apache-sitgreaves national forest.
They're a tight-knit, hardworking group.
Then, several months into
the job, on November 5th,
as they head back to town,
everything in their world changes.
As they drive along
the rocky forest road that
they've traveled countless times
before, suddenly, the men are
stunned by a large, mysterious object
floating in the sky.
What the hell is that?
While fear grips the rest of the crew,
something inexplicably
draws Travis walton
towards the light.
- Travis
- Come back here! -Travis!
- Travis!
- Travis, come back!
Hey, Travis, come on back here, man!
- Travis!
- Travis!
- Travis!
- Travis!
Trav
drive on.
Drive!
Gripped with panic, his
friends flee the scene.
Travis! Travis!
15 minutes later, when
the light appears to be
gone, they return to the
site to find nothing, no craft,
no light, no Travis
their friend has vanished.
So they race to the nearest
phone to call the sheriff,
Chuck Ellison.
Our friend's been taken.
Though he's skeptical,
sheriff Ellison accompanies
the men back to the scene.
- Travis!
- Travis!
Travis! Travis, come back!
Travis!
- Travis!
- Travis!
But after a search that
drags late into the night,
they're forced to call off the hunt
as the temperature plummets.
If Travis is out there somewhere,
he's in for a brutally cold night.
Over the next five
days, the sheriff's office
and volunteers
frantically search the area.
In an odd moment that would
become relevant decades later,
the logging foreman and
others recall an investigator
using a geiger counter.
When they test the men's hard
hats, the needle jumps way up.
But let's file that away for
now, because this small logging
crew is about to have
their feet held to the fire.
Three days after Travis goes missing,
the sheriff's department
administers polygraph tests
for the six loggers.
The men deny any involvement
in Travis's disappearance,
and they all recount the
same bright light in the sky.
They pass with flying
colors, but there's still
no explanation for where
Travis walton could be.
Five days after Travis's disappearance,
his brother-in-law receives a call.
Hello? Who is this?
It's Travis.
He's stumbled to a
payphone on the outskirts
of a small town about 10 miles
from where he disappeared.
Travis, buddy, you're gonna be ok.
When they find him, all
he remembers is waking up
earlier that night, lying flat on the road,
with a light above him that disappeared.
But in the days to come,
Travis would remember
more and more.
And what he remembers
transforms this from a simple
missing persons case
to an out-of-this-world
alien abduction nightmare,
unlike anything anyone
had heard before.
When the word gets out to
the public, newspapers all over
the world run with the story,
creating a feverish interest
that will last decades.
But doubters also come
out of the woodwork.
The loggers are accused of
fabricating an elaborate hoax
to get them off the hook from
running behind schedule on
their logging contract.
Other skeptics write it off
as ball lightning, a run-in with
a military craft,
drug-induced hallucinations,
or simply a drunken prank.
But Travis and the
rest of the logging crew
stand by their story.
And none of the alternative
theories can be proven.
But if it all really happened,
where is the evidence?
Well, some of the best
evidence is Travis himself.
Blood tests taken soon after
Travis's return come back
completely clean for
drugs and any intoxicants.
Though he is dehydrated
and a few pounds lighter,
five nights of no food
in the forest should have
left his body much more malnourished.
You're gonna be ok.
And perhaps the most amazing thing
is that Travis survived at all.
At night, the forest can reach
below freezing temperatures.
Few could survive such
an ordeal wearing just jeans
and a flannel shirt.
Another point in Travis's favor
is that he, just like the other
crew members, takes a polygraph test.
He too passes.
So, at the very least,
Travis believes his own story.
And as days turn to
weeks, months, years,
and even decades,
Travis's story always stays
remarkably consistent,
never changing or shifting
like lies sometimes do.
And Travis seemed genuinely
honest that the event had
affected him deeply when I
sat down with him 40 years later.
For years, the memory
was so clear that every time
I recounted the events,
that I would re-experience
that level of fear, my
Heart and respiration would
go way up, and I would just be
drenched in sweat after
describing what had happened at
- that time.
- Well, thank you
for letting us consider the facts.
Thank you for sharing your story with us.
I really appreciate it.
The Travis walton story has
been a mystery for 50 years,
but it may not be a
mystery for much longer.
Thanks to an unexpected find
at the original site, we may be
able to reveal the
remarkable truth of his story.
Was Travis walton
really abducted by aliens,
as he and his friends claim?
It's a question that has
puzzled the public for decades.
But now, there may finally be an answer.
In 2014, ufo researcher
and former federal agent
Ben Hansen returns to the
clearing site of the original incident
with Travis by his side to
try and uncover any remaining
evidence of the so-called ufo encounter.
They located the exact spot
of the supposed abduction.
And as it turned out,
they found compelling
new evidence that Hansen
thinks could be the smoking gun.
I regard the Travis
walton incident as the most
well-documented case of
alleged ufo abduction in history.
But a lot of people dismiss
ufo cases because they say,
"there's no video of it.
There's no hard evidence."
In my previous career as
law enforcement investigation,
you have to approach things
very methodically, as if you're
going to present this in court.
So when I went back with
Travis to the scene of the original
1975 incident, it was very
important that we actually
process the scene like a crime scene.
We quarantined an area, a boundary.
We defined it. We mapped it out.
We gridded it out.
And that's when we
discovered that the area that was
surrounding where the craft was
hovering had trees that seemed
to have grown like exponential growth
compared to the other trees.
And on one side of the
tree, it's thicker, meaning
those rings after 1975
were spaced further apart.
But they also had an
unusual quality about them.
They were all pointing towards
one specific point in the middle.
No matter where those trees
were, they were growing thicker
and bigger facing the side
where the craft was hovering.
After the 1975 event,
there were high levels of
radiation that were
documented over ground zero,
where the craft had been hovering.
I started to research
radiation, and I came across
a couple of papers.
Now, these academic
papers were written
after the chernobyl
incident in the Soviet union.
Now, when the leak and
the radiation had spread,
most people would
assume any living organism
within that radius is dead.
But if you also remember,
think about radiation
and its ability to mutate.
And what they found was there
was a certain type of pine tree,
and these trees were
growing much, much quicker
because there was
residual radiation left at the scene.
So I thought this is compelling,
because with the Travis walton
case, the side of the trees
facing where the craft was is
where the exponential
growth and the wide tree rings
were occurring.
So is it possible that
the propulsion system,
or this discharge, or
whatever the effects of this
craft had, had then radiated
the trees, but only on the side
facing where the craft was?
And for years to come, it
caused this unusual growth?
So now we have evidence that
seems to support the idea that
something quite unusual
happened in the forest
that night.
Will this remarkable new
discovery silence the doubters
and finally prove the
most high-profile case
of alien abduction in history?
Studying the data, it certainly
does seem to show something
beyond our understanding
happened, and it happened in
the very same place
and at the very same time
as Travis's alleged alien attack.
But was Travis walton
taken by extraterrestrials?
His controversial story
has perplexed the public for
50 years, and in all that
time, Travis himself has never
wavered from his account.
Meanwhile, science has
come a long way on the question
of extraterrestrials.
Experts now theorize
there could be 40 billion
earth-sized planets in our galaxy alone.
There is a growing consensus
that it is not only possible,
but likely, that alien life does exist.
Our next file takes us from
a tale of alien abduction to
the story of a kidnapping
at the hands of someone
much more human
and much more sinister.
It's march 1st, 1932.
In a New Jersey suburb, a
man is putting his young son
down to sleep for the night,
but this is no ordinary father.
He is world-renowned aviation
pioneer and American hero,
Charles Lindbergh.
And the baby is his only son, Charlie Jr.
What Lindbergh doesn't know
is that soon, his son
will vanish into thin air.
The tragic tale of the
Lindbergh baby kidnapping
captivated and confounded the nation.
And now, nearly a century
later, new analysis of evidence
is revealing overlooked
suspects with darkly disturbing
motives who may have
gotten away with murder.
On an icy, stormy evening,
an intruder slips through
the window of Charlie
Jr.'s second-floor nursery.
And just like that, the boy is gone.
When Charles and Anne Lindbergh
discover their son is
missing, they're terrified.
They call the New Jersey state police.
When detectives arrive,
they find an envelope with
a ransom note inside.
The kidnapper wants
$50,000 for the safe return of
Charlie Jr they also
find muddy footprints,
but there's no blood and no fingerprints.
Investigators also discover
a ladder with a broken rung,
suggesting the kidnapper snapped it
while climbing up or down.
When the press catches
wind of the kidnapping,
it sets off an international firestorm.
Not a single bed is overlooked
in the search for the most
famous baby in the world.
Because Charles
Lindbergh is a living legend.
In 1927, Lindbergh
becomes the first aviator to fly
nonstop from New York to
Paris across the Atlantic ocean.
After he lands, he becomes
the most famous man
on the planet.
And with so much fame
comes incredible fortune.
Lindy becomes one of
the wealthiest celebrities in
the world, making the
Lindbergh family a target.
Stealing Charles Lindbergh's
son is an audacious crime,
and police have little to go on.
They launch a nationwide
manhunt to locate the kidnapper
and return Charlie Jr. home safely.
Desperate to get his son back,
wealthy Lindbergh agrees to pay
the $50,000 ransom for junior's release.
But to catch the
kidnapper, the FBI marks
the serial numbers on the money
used for the ransom payment.
The trap is set.
If so much as a single
bill is deposited in a bank,
investigators will be
able to trace it back to.
Charlie's kidnapper.
The kidnapper receives
the ransom and reveals that
the boy is at wood lawn cemetery,
at whittemore and fremont.
But when investigators arrive,
there is no sign of the boy.
Charles and Anne are devastated.
It's a shocking setback.
But detectives begin to
wonder, is there more to this case
than meets the eye?
Months later, the kidnapping case takes
a horrifying turn.
Just four miles from the flyer's estate,
Charlie Jr. is found dead in the forest.
And when detectives look
closely at the boy's body,
there is little trace of
blood, and Charlie has
a hole in his skull.
Even more alarming, several vital organs
are missing.
Investigators want to know,
how did Charlie Jr. suffer
such ghastly injuries?
What they uncover will
outrage the nation, but a fresh
analysis of the autopsy report
almost a century later has
inspired a controversial new
theory that suggests an even
more twisted and macabre
motive for the young boy's death.
If accurate, the identity
of the suspected killer is
almost unthinkable.
Months after the disappearance
of Charles Lindbergh's
young son, he turns
up dead, just miles from
the family estate.
And the condition of the
boy's body is disturbing.
There's a hole in his
skull, which is also crushed.
There is little sign of blood.
And in a bizarre twist,
some of his organs
appear to be missing.
Looking at all the
evidence, detectives believe
the kidnapper dropped
Charlie while descending from
the nursery when their wooden
ladder broke, creating the hole
in junior's skull.
Police suspect that within
minutes, the child dies from
the massive impact, and
the abductor abandons.
Charlie's body in the forest.
They suspect the toddler's
internal injuries are caused by
wild animals.
When the press gets a hold of the story,
outrage spreads from coast to coast.
The son of america's greatest
living hero dies in a grisly,
brutal murder.
And police still can't find Charlie's killer.
It isn't until two years
later that some of the FBI's
marked bills from the ransom
are spent at a gas station
in New York City.
Agents trace the money back
to the man who buys the fuel,
German carpenter
Bruno Richard hauptmann.
You are under arrest.
Looking into hauptmann's background,
detectives are surprised.
They see no connection between
Bruno and the Lindbergh family.
However, when they search
hauptmann's old junkyard shack,
they fined over $14,000
in marked ransom bills.
Bruno is arrested for the
kidnapping and murder of
Charles Lindbergh Jr., but
hauptmann asserts he's innocent.
Around the world, newspapers
hail hauptmann's case
the trial of the century.
He wanted that money
so he could, and he did,
live a life of luxury and ease
so he wouldn't have to work.
He quit his job the day
he collected the $50,000,
the very day!
During his trial, Bruno's attorney claims
the case against hauptmann is weak.
Bruno testifies the money
found in his garage belongs to
a deceased business partner.
Bruno's wife, Anna, testifies
that hauptmann was with
her the night of the kidnapping.
And Bruno's attorney
reminds the court that none of
hauptmann's fingerprints
are ever found on the ladder,
the ransom note, or inside
the Lindbergh nursery.
But to the jury, the
marked ransom bills are
compelling evidence.
Bruno Richard hauptmann
is found guilty of murder.
And on April 3, 1936,
he dies in the electric chair.
America is relieved.
Justice has finally been
served for the terrible murder of
Charles Lindbergh's poor baby son.
But many begin to wonder,
did authorities execute
the wrong man?
In the years following Charlie's death,
biographers discover
Lindbergh was obsessed
with his son's physical appearance.
Authors contend, when
Charlie is born in 1930,
his aviator father is unhappy
with junior's large head
and deformed toes on his right
foot, symptoms of the condition
known as rickets.
Some allege that
Lindbergh, america's rugged,
handsome hero fears his
own son looks like a weakling.
Charles Lindbergh is
also a believer in eugenics,
a now discredited science
based on the theory that one could
use selective breeding to rid the world of
genetically inferior humans.
And Lindbergh was known to
have a close relationship with
the nefarious godfather
of eugenics, Alexis carrel.
This leads a group of academics
to come up with a new theory
for Charlie's disappearance.
In 2020, forensic
pathologist Dr. Peter speth
conducts new analysis
on the forensic
evidence from the murder,
and what he finds is disturbing.
When I looked at the autopsy report,
there was something
that caught my attention.
The body, when it was
found, was in a state of
advanced decay, and
the organs were gone,
but what struck me was the face.
The forehead
was so well preserved.
And the skin on the right foot
was white, and yet, the
legs were skeletonized.
How did that happen?
How was it possible to preserve
the face and the right foot?
It suggests chemicals.
So I began to research
what do taxidermists use to
preserve the hide.
They use what is called
tannic acid, or tannin.
Now I became interested
in who had knowledge of
tannic acid, and I hit pay dirt.
Alexis carrel.
As we know, Alexis carrel
is the godfather of the sinister
theory of eugenics, who
Lindbergh counted as
a close friend.
Dr. Speth speculates
that this evidence points to
a harrowing possibility.
I believe that Charles
Lindbergh and Alexis carrel
carried out surgical procedures
to solve some of these many
problems that chas Jr.
Had because he's abnormal
and then failed.
So they personally
were involved in the killing
of that child.
Many find this theory
too shocking to believe.
However, there is compelling
evidence supporting
Dr. Speth's claims.
Why then preserve the
face and the right foot?
Well, if the body's in advanced decay,
how are you gonna identify the baby?
And what are the two
identifying features?
One, the prominent forehead,
and secondly, the overlapping
toes on the right foot.
Dr. Speth further speculates
that Lindbergh was certain that
he wanted the body of Charles
Jr. recovered, so that no one
would come out later in life
claiming they were the lost boy.
There's no doubt this
is a highly controversial
allegation, but there's one
more detail that may fuel
this theory even more.
Charles Lindbergh was leading
the investigation and telling
the state police what
they could or could not do.
He had the baby cremated
and put out an order that none
of the evidence would ever undergo
further scientific investigations.
To this day, the governors,
the Attorney General,
and state police have been
upholding that.
Charles Lindbergh was
a larger-than-life icon
who changed the world forever.
But he was also a very complex figure,
living a life of contradictions.
Will we ever know what really
happened that stormy night
in 1932?
Most Lindbergh authors, scholars,
and historians dismiss
this unsettling theory
as too lurid to believe.
My own take is that
the evidence to support it
is highly circumstantial.
What cannot be doubted,
though, is the true tragedy
here, the senseless
death of an innocent child.
We now take you from
the historic tragedy of
the Lindbergh baby to an assault on
American diplomats and
secret agents in modern day.
Welcome to paradise.
But it's a paradise that's soon to be lost.
It's 2016 on the island of Cuba in a quiet,
upscale neighborhood considered
the Beverly Hills of Havana.
It's a popular location
for foreign diplomats
and us embassy workers,
but soon, they'll be
seemingly attacked
by something terrifying,
something beyond all comprehension.
Doug Ferguson and Kate husband
are a married couple working at
the us embassy in Havana.
They're enjoying a
relaxing evening after work.
What they don't know is
that their world is about to be
turned upside down.
As they prepare for dinner, a
high-pitched sound suddenly
fills their home, and it feels
like something is drilling into
their skulls and somehow
piercing their brains.
Is it all in their heads?
Or are there far more
sinister forces involved?
Embassy workers Doug
Ferguson and Kate husband
are suffering the worst
headaches of their lives after
a high-pitched noise penetrates
their home in Havana, Cuba.
But Kate seems to get the worst of it.
She deals with a constant
state of vertigo, nausea,
as well as brain fog.
What they're experiencing
doesn't have a name yet.
At work, Doug makes
a shocking discovery
the same strange things
are happening to his co-workers.
Dozens of us embassy workers
in Havana are experiencing
the same strange collection
of symptoms dizziness,
trouble sleeping, vomiting,
and short- and long-term memory loss.
This is definitely not the office flu.
The media catches wind,
and the mystery illness is
dubbed "Havana syndrome."
But it's not just limited to Havana.
Cases with similar
symptoms start popping up,
affecting us employees
all around the world.
There are incidents in
Poland, Taiwan, Australia,
Colombia, Tbilisi, Georgia, and Moscow.
All the victims are either
state department employees,
CIA intelligence officers, or their families.
Is this all just a strange coincidence,
or are dark forces at work?
December 2017,
CIA officer Marc
polymeropoulos is in Moscow,
visiting intelligence contacts.
Little does he know he's
about to get taken out by
an invisible attack.
I wake up in the middle of the
night in early December 2017
in a hotel room in Moscow,
and something really
extraordinary is happening.
My ears are ringing.
I have tinnitus, which is very disorienting.
It's a sound that never stops in your ear.
I have an incredible case of vertigo.
The room is spinning uncontrollably.
I'm physically sick.
I have a splitting headache,
a migraine, and I'm realizing
that something is going on
much more than food poisoning.
Something is happening to me,
which was something
that was very disconcerting,
because I've been shot at in places like
Iraq and Afghanistan.
I put my life at risk numerous times.
This is a feeling I've
never experienced before,
because I had no control
over what was happening.
I was terrified.
It seems Mark is the latest
victim of Havana syndrome.
One year since cases began,
people start asking the obvious
question, if American
diplomats and spies are
the only people affected,
could this be some sort of
targeted attack?
The us state department
is eager to find answers
and sets up a study at the
university of Pennsylvania.
In march of 2018, 21
victims from Havana,
including Doug Ferguson
and Kate husband,
are flown to Philadelphia
and put through a battery
of tests at university of.
Pennsylvania's center
for brain injury and repair.
Paging doctor
The doctors are looking
for any possible causes of
Havana syndrome, a virus,
neurotoxins, even mass hysteria
or group psychosis.
What they find is even more bizarre.
Scans reveal brain damage in
these patients, consistent with
what you'd expect to see after a series of
repeated concussions.
But none of these patients
have sustained any kind of
physical head injury.
For some victims, like
Doug Ferguson, he'll make
a full recovery nine
months after the attack.
But his wife, Kate, is told
that her brain looks as though
it's aged 25 years almost overnight
and is forced into medical retirement.
And then researchers at
the university of Pennsylvania
come to a truly shocking conclusion.
They believe they've
determined the cause of all of this
microwave radiation.
Researchers point to the
screeching cricket sound
that often accompanies
Havana syndrome.
It's consistent with something
called "the frey effect,"
the sound microwave radiation makes
when it penetrates your skull.
And exposure to microwaves
results in the excruciating
symptoms that line
up with those reported
by syndrome victims.
The penn study doesn't pinpoint
where the microwaves come from,
but at the end of their report,
they do mention that Russia has
been developing capabilities
around microwave weapons.
Ok, feels like they might have
buried the lede on that one,
but come on, the idea that
Russian spies are shooting
beams of microwave
energy at Americans?
It sounds like something
out of a Sci-Fi movie
or a cheap spy novel except it isn't,
because they've already done it.
American attorney Mark
zaid, who represents
more than two dozen victims of
Havana syndrome, is leading
the campaign to find answers to
this mysterious illness.
I was provided an unclassified
memorandum by NSA
in October 2014, two
years before Havana,
that revealed the existence of
intelligence information
concerning a foreign adversary,
quote, "with a high-powered
microwave system weapon that"
"may have the ability to weaken,
intimidate, or kill an enemy
over time and without leaving evidence."
Despite this testimony,
the government continues to
deny that Havana syndrome
is a real medical condition.
In summer of 2020, my
symptoms are getting much worse.
And so I make a decision
to go public with my story,
because I was so
desperate for healthcare.
The agency is refusing
to send me to a doctor.
Again, it's the notion, all I
want to do is see a doctor.
For over eight years,
Havana syndrome has affected
American diplomats
and officials, but its origin,
and indeed its very
cause, are still shrouded in
controversy and mystery.
Then, in march of 2024,
a bombshell investigative
report is published, perhaps revealing all.
Long before Travis walton,
the idea of aliens captivated
pop culture all the way back to
the pulp magazines of the '20s
and Orson welles' famous radio
broadcast of "war of the worlds"
in the '30s.
But in 1959, Soviet
astrophysicist iosif shklovsky
dropped a cosmic
bombshell that sent ufo fever
into a global frenzy.
He suggested that phobos,
one of Mars's moons,
might actually be an artificial satellite.
That's right, a martian death star.
Shklovsky believed the
strange orbit and low density of
the moon were clues that it
was a secret spacecraft built by
an advanced civilization
of ancient extraterrestrials.
And even though his bold
theory was categorically debunked,
it did nothing to diminish
our collective obsession with
the hope that we aren't completely alone
in the universe.
The truth is out there, right, guys?
Starting in Havana, Cuba,
in 2016, cases of a strange
sickness affect over 200
Americans working for
the government all around the world.
Many victims believe
it's a deliberate attack,
but us authorities remain
stubbornly unconvinced.
A new investigative
report could change all that.
October 2021, in Tbilisi, Georgia, a quiet
eastern European town
along the Russian border.
The wife of an American
diplomat is home,
doing laundry.
Suddenly, as acute ringing
fills her ears, her head feels
like it's in a vice grip, and a knife is
stabbing her brain.
Panicked, she sees a car
outside she doesn't recognize.
Standing next to it is a tall,
well-dressed young man.
She locks eyes with him
before he turns and leaves.
For three years, she suffers with
the painful effects from that day.
Severe daily migraines,
hearing problems,
and two major surgeries to repair holes
in her ear canal that
her doctors can't explain.
She doesn't know what happened
to her, but she's convinced
the man she saw outside
her home played a part.
It's a face she can't forget,
but never expects to see again.
March 2024, investigative journalist
christo grozev is working
on his biggest story yet,
trying to uncover the
origins of Havana syndrome.
As part of his investigation,
he is interviewing the diplomat's wife.
We want to see if you
can identify this man.
And shows her a picture
of a young, blonde man.
She is instantly filled with fear and dread.
It's the man she knows is
responsible for her three years
of torture and torment.
The man in the picture
Albert averyanov, a Russian military
intelligence operative.
He's part of a secret unit
inside Russian military
intelligence, known only
by its code number, 29155.
In march of 2024,
grozev and his magazine,
"the insider," released
the shocking findings
of their investigation.
Grozev uncovers a secret
Russian cable, showing members
of unit 29155 receiving awards
for work on the development of
non-lethal acoustic weapons.
After 10 years of confusion
and suffering, this document
and the entire investigation
possibly confirm the cause
and the culprits behind
Havana syndrome.
This issue becomes very problematic,
because in my view,
and I think in the view
of many others, this is an act of war.
And so it then calls
into question, what does
the United States
government do about this?
Perhaps that's one of the
reasons they don't want
to get to the bottom of it,
because then the
question, as you sit around
the national security council
or in the white house is,
"what do we do?"
Officially, the us government still says
they do not believe Havana
syndrome is caused by
any kind of weapon.
The CIA, the house
intelligence committee,
and the national
intelligence council all state
that there's no conclusive evidence
a foreign adversary is
responsible for the phenomenon.
But try telling that to Kate
husband, Marc polymeropoulos,
and the hundreds of others
who are convinced they've
suffered and are still suffering due to
some kind of secret attack.
So, is a Russian intelligence
operation really to blame
for Havana syndrome?
And are we standing
on the precipice of a new
and terrifying kind of warfare?
Hopefully, the answers
will soon be definitively
on the record.
But be warned, the truth
could be extremely painful.
I'm Josh gates.
Until next time, travel adventurously.