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- Well, my name is Mark Polymeropoulos.
I was a 26 year veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency.
My specialty was counter terrorism.
I was the Deputy Operations Chief
for what we call the Europe and Eurasia mission center
at CIA.
That's a job that oversees our clandestine operations
everywhere from, you know, from Dublin,
all the way to the farthest time zones of Russia.
So in December of 2017,
I elected to take a 10 day trip to Moscow.
And my job was to oversee our collection efforts,
as well as our liaison relationships
or bilateral intelligence relationships.
Earlier in my career as an operations officer,
there were certainly threats.
Now, as I became more senior,
particularly on my trip to Moscow, the job is much more,
you know, official in nature.
So I was going out to speak
with our ambassador, Jon Huntsman.
In addition,
I was just going to meet with the host government.
In this case, the Russian Security Services.
Ultimately my trip to Moscow was one
where I didn't think there would be much risk at all.
Maybe the second or third night of the visit,
I woke up in the middle of the night
and I had an extreme case of vertigo.
And look, I had been in Iraq and Afghanistan.
I've been shot at, I've risked my life many times
early in my career,
but this was by far the most terrifying experience
that the room was spinning.
I couldn't stand up without falling down.
I felt, you know, nauseous, sick to my stomach.
I had incredible case of tinnitus ringing in my ears,
a headache and so I knew something was seriously wrong.
And frankly it was terrifying.
At first of course, I thought, well,
you know, glad that I have something bad to eat,
but something was different,
and because of the extreme vertigo.
So the next morning I started getting worried
that something bad might have happened.
And then certainly when I got back to the United States
and the symptoms became, you know, almost intolerable,
that's when I knew something really bad had happened.
I spent not only days, weeks,
but months seeing multiple different doctors
and specialists.
I was having incredible sinus pressure, right?
Getting incredible headaches.
I lost my long distance vision.
And so I started going to see neurologists.
I started having MRIs.
I saw an infectious disease specialist, an allergist,
a sleep apnea specialist.
I was exhausting all avenues.
I also went to the CIA doctors as well,
and they put me through their Havana protocol, you know,
based on what had happened in Cuba in 2016.
Their assessment was,
I didn't look like the Havana cohorts
because everyone was aware of what happened
to the diplomats at the US embassy in Havana, Cuba.
And it's a tragic story
because people were, you know, severely affected
and had to be medically retired and suffered tremendously.
But what was telling to me is
when the National Academy of Sciences
finally put out their report, was very clear
that everyone's bodies react differently to what they believe
was exposure from a microwave weapon.
It wasn't until finally getting
to Walter Reed's National Intrepid Center of Excellence,
only then was I finally diagnosed
with a Traumatic Brain Injury,
a TBI based on what they believe is an exposure event.
It's not only a physical injury
but it's also a moral injury.
And I say that because so many of us, you know,
we're dismissed by frankly, the doctors, the senior doctors,
the senior medical staff at CIA, or the Department of State.
And that to me was, you know, was very challenging
because ultimately when the CIA has asked me for 26 years
to go overseas and kind of do some really risky things,
I always thought, you know,
you made a pact with your leadership,
that they would have your back if you got jammed up,
if something happened to you.
I wish I had been shot in Moscow
and not have been subject to some type of,
you know, exposure event.
And so if I had been shot, I would have had a visible wound.
It would have been treatable.
People would have believed me.
I think that this was deliberate
having been an intelligence officer for 26 years
and kind of seeing what our adversaries can do,
what we can do, it seems to me it's not a stretch at all,
that they would be able to develop this.
It's a microwave weapon.
And so it's really in for all intents and purposes,
you know, a brilliant weapon that incapacitates
and sows kind of terror and confusion in the adversary
which I think they've done for us because ultimately,
you know, this has been pretty disruptive
to the kind of the US personnel who are deployed overseas,
you know, knowing that something like this can happen
and I've talked a lot to commerce about this.
And so I think there is a recognition
that we failed our officers, our diplomats
and intelligence officers
and we have to find out who did this.
I think it's gonna end up being pressure
put on our adversaries that a, they cannot do this
and that b, that there'll be a cost, if this continues.
They have to get to the bottom of,
you know, for, you know,
again, for Americans to kind of feel safe.
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