'I feel like I am disappearing,' a medically retired Defense Department professional told me over a meal near Capitol Hill.

Then, she bravely showed me a neuroimaging scan of her brain. It was disturbing. Her mind is wasting away.

Her neurons – the functional cells composing the 'grey matter' of her brain – have atrophied. Some structures exhibit neural activity ranking in the bottom 5th percentile of healthy people. A neurologist who reviewed the scans told her that her irreversible, progressive brain damage is consistent with an injury from a traumatic event.

Strangely, these images were, perhaps, more upsetting to me than the woman who I was sitting across the table from. 

To her, these scans were reassuring because they appeared to prove what she and others have been telling the United States government for nearly a decade: that they aren't imagining their symptoms, or faking them, or suffering from a hereditary neurological disease. 

Instead, this lifelong Defense Department professional and her doctors insist that this is evidence that she's the victim of an attack by a directed energy weapon, most likely wielded by a hostile foreign government. 

And now, for the first time, a leading US neuroscientist and advisor to the US military is backing her up and the White House is finally taking notice.

For years, the United States intelligence community has assessed that it was 'very unlikely' that a foreign adversary or a 'novel' weapon was behind a mysterious cluster of neurological ailments that first began afflicting US diplomats serving at the US embassy in Havana, Cuba in 2016.

Since that time, more and more of America's spies, diplomats, law enforcement professionals and military operatives have come forward to claim that they too are victims of 'Havana Syndrome' or otherwise known as Anomalous Health Incidents. 

But still, the official line from the US intelligence community has been that 'Havana Syndrome' is not real.

Then in March, I secured a rare interview with Dr James Giordano, a leading US neuroscientist and advisor to the US military.

Dr Giordano is the director for the Center for Disruptive Technology and Future Warfare at the National Defense University's Institute for National Strategic Studies, which is funded by the Department of Defense.

While Dr Giordano does not speak for the US government, he was permitted to speak on the record with my team.

According to Giordano, directed energy weapons – that use microwave or ultrasonic energy to cause damage to a target – exist. Furthermore, Giordano believes that US government personnel serving overseas have been attacked by these weapons. 

When asked if reports of directed energy weapon attacks inside the US are also credible, Giordano said 'Absolutely.'