It's worth noting that this article is from 2017. It's basically a highly speculative claim with no evidence. Unfortunately there's that significant financial motivation that can't help but skew his opinion:A claim has been made that he was only 46 when Parkinson's disease first was seen.
https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/was...d-by-a-secret-microwave-weapon-attack-1784488External Quote:
One of the first signs came at the keyboard. Mike Beck, a National Security Agency counterintelligence officer, could always bang out 60 words a minute. But in early 2006, Beck struggled to move his fingers at their usual typing speed. He had to hunt and peck.
Soon after, a brain scan showed why: Beck had Parkinson's disease, the second-most-common neurodegenerative disorder in the United States, behind Alzheimer's. He was only 46 - unusually young for Parkinson's. No one in his family had ever had it.
Article: For the last four years, Beck, 57, has been trying to persuade the Labor Department to award him 75 percent of his salary, or about $110,000 a year.
But the Labor Department won't approve Beck's request without solid evidence that he was targeted. In Beck's case - short of obtaining proof from the hostile nation's spy service - he'd need the endorsement of the NSA, which has refused to provide it.
Glenn Gerstell, the NSA's general counsel, said the agency has not found any proof that Beck or his co-worker were attacked. Absent evidence, the NSA can't tell the Labor Department whether it agrees or disagrees with Beck's claim, he said.
"We have tremendous sympathy for him, and we'd like to try and help him. But we can't manufacture evidence," Gerstell said. "If the Department of Labor asked us, 'Do you think this is a possibility?' then that would be different. But they didn't ask that."
That's not to say he's lying, just that things would be much better for him if reality was one way rather than the other, so naturally he'd favor that way. Potentially, a couple of million dollars can have an effect on forming your beliefs.