Michael Beck, the first of scores of federal workers to develop neurological symptoms while serving at U.S. government facilities overseas, a condition that has come to be known as Havana Syndrome and which, Mr. Beck claimed, resulted in his diagnosis of a rare form of Parkinson’s disease when he was 45, died on Saturday in Columbia, Md. He was 65.
His daughter, Regan, said that he died while shopping and that the cause had not been determined.
Havana Syndrome refers to a collection of neurological ailments, including dizziness, headaches and insomnia, that more than 200 government employees began reporting in 2016 after being exposed to what they described as a constant buzzing sound, typically in U.S. government buildings overseas — most notably in Havana, Cuba.
Despite thorough studies by government and academic researchers, no consensus has been reached on the cause of the symptoms.
The case of Mr. Beck, a counterintelligence officer, began much earlier than the others. In 1996, he and another National Security Agency employee, Charles W. Gubete, were sent to what he said was a hostile country, but which he and the government subsequently declined to identify. They were there to evaluate whether the country was installing listening devices in a U.S. facility under construction.
On their second day, they encountered what Mr. Beck later described as a “technical threat” at the site.
The next morning, he recalled to The Guardian, “I woke up and I was really, really groggy. I was not able to wake up routinely. It was not a normal event. I had several cups of coffee, and that didn’t do a thing to get me going.”
The symptoms passed, and Mr. Beck and Mr. Gubete returned to the United States apparently unharmed.
About a decade later, Mr. Beck began experiencing strange ailments. Typically a rapid-fire typist, he found it hard to locate letters on his keyboard. His right arm wouldn’t swing naturally when he walked; his right hand was stiff, and his right leg dragged.
A trip to a neurologist in 2012 confirmed the worst: Parkinson’s disease. He was extremely young for such a diagnosis, and the disease did not run in his family.
Shortly afterward, he encountered Mr. Gubete at the N.S.A. headquarters in Fort Meade, Md. Mr. Gubete was 60 but “walking like an old man,” Mr. Beck told The Guardian. “He was slumped over and walking really awkwardly. I went up to him and said, ‘What’s going on?’”
When Mr. Gubete confided that he had also been diagnosed with Parkinson’s, Mr. Beck found the coincidence suspicious.
Not long after seeing Mr. Gubete, who died the next year, Mr. Beck read a classified report detailing how the hostile country had developed a direct-energy weapon that could cause debilitating neurological symptoms in its targets.
The report said: “The National Security Agency confirms that there is intelligence information from 2012 associating the hostile country to which Mr. Beck traveled in the late 1990s 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.”
“I was sick in the stomach and shocked when I read that report,” Mr. Beck told The Washington Post in 2017. “I am familiar with other things this hostile country does, and it just felt raw and unfair.”
He filed a workers’ compensation claim with the Department of Labor in 2014 that was ultimately denied because the N.S.A. would not support his theory — even though he had managed to get some of the report declassified, and even after he had gotten experts from the C.I.A. to endorse him.
Two years later, government employees began to report experiencing similar neurological symptoms while working in Cuba, Canada, Russia and, in at least one case, Washington, D.C.
The news media and Congress began to pay attention, but studies were inconclusive. One, by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, found evidence to support the direct-energy thesis. Another, by the National Institutes of Health, said no evidence existed to show that such a device was the cause.
Despite his condition and the lack of government aid, Mr. Beck continued to work for the N.S.A. until 2016, when he became too sick to continue.
“Notwithstanding that the government abandoned him, he was still dedicated to the mission,” Mark Zaid, a lawyer who represented Mr. Beck in his workers’ compensation claim, said in a phone interview. “He would have worked for the federal government his whole life.”
John Michael Beck was born on Oct. 17, 1960, in Columbia, Pa., about 80 miles west of Philadelphia. His parents, John C. and Ruth (Zielinski) Beck, worked for the Columbia phone company.
He graduated from Pennsylvania State University in 1983 with a degree in the administration of justice, after which he joined the Secret Service. He moved to the N.S.A. in 1987, the year after he married Rita Cicala, who survives him.
Along with her and their daughter, Mr. Beck is survived by their son, Grant; a son from a previous relationship, Ryan Lewis; and two sisters, Deb Holt and Lynne Houck.
The federal government has established programs to help employees with their symptoms. It also continues to pursue the possibility that a direct-energy device causes Havana Syndrome. Last year, the Department of Defense purchased, through a classified channel, a backpack-size device that it says appears capable of causing neurological damage.
Details about the device are classified, but news media reports have said that some of its components were manufactured in Russia.
Clay Risen is a Times reporter on the Obituaries desk.
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