Secret weapons and a government cover-upAbout this Event
An evening discussion between Pulitzer Prize winning author Lowell Bergman and the authors of "The Havana Syndrome," Michael Rey and Oriana Zill de Granados, about their book digging into a secret weapon that has baffled and confused the US public, amid years of government denial.
From Havana to Tbilisi, from Vienna to Key West, the authors reveal how they spoke to the victims of Havana Syndrome attacks -- diplomats, covert intelligence officials, FBI agents and military officials -- to get the true story of what happened to them and how their government employers to this day are fighting them to hide the truth. The U.S. government fumbled its response so severely that one high-ranking former US intelligence official calls this "the biggest cover-up in my adult life."
Bergman will ask the authors about their ten-year investigation at CBS News, "60 Minutes" that led to this book, and the struggles to break down the wall of classified material to get inside the investigations at CIA and the Pentagon. The authors put aside their own professional skepticism to keep digging when, over and over, they began to discover new leads the government had ignored, video evidence, eyewitness testimony about the perpetrators and internal documents placing adversaries close to known incidents. As scientists warned them that the technology was indeed possible, the authors found clues to a new type of highly specialized weapon that is both frightening and very, very real.
Lowell Berman is a journalist, television producer and professor of Journalism. Bergman was a producer, reporter and director of investigative reporting at ABC News and later a producer for CBS News "60 Minutes." His investigation into the tobacco industry at "60 Minutes" was depicted in Michael Mann's movie The Insider, which was nominated for seven Academy Awards and featured Al Pacino as Bergman. From 1999 to 2008, Bergman was an investigative correspondent for The New York Times, where he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 2004 for "A Dangerous Business," about worker safety and environmental law violations in the cast-iron pipe industry. Bergman was a producer and correspondent for PBS "Frontline." He founded the investigative reporting program at the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley, where he taught for 28 years.
Michael Rey is an Emmy-award winning investigative producer at 60 Minutes. He has produced a series of stories about the mystery behind the Havana Syndrome, Cuban spies' networks in the United States, and Lance Armstrong's use of performance enhancing drugs, among many other long-form investigative projects. He was a senior producer for the CBS Evening News and a founding member of the CBS News Investigative Unit. He and Oriana were awarded the Alfred I. duPont/Columbia Journalism Award for their reporting on the U.S. border crisis and family separation policies.
Oriana Zill de Granados has been an investigative producer for 60 Minutes since 2011. She has produced a series of stories about the mystery behind the Havana Syndrome, the mysterious deaths of the enemies of Vladimir Putin, allegations of fraud by insurance companies in Florida, scams targeting senior citizens, child separation policies of the first Trump Administration, sexual harassment in the restaurant industry, and Lance Armstrong's use of performance-enhancing drugs, among others. Her work has been awarded a duPont Award, multiple Writers' Guild and Emmy Awards, a Peabody and an IRE medal for investigative reporting.
Event venue
Clio's Books, 353 Grand Avenue, Oakland, United States
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