“So we knew what we were getting into from the standpoint of the hostile country being a critical threat environment.” “It was a sensitive assignment,” Beck told the Guardian. “The 2012 intelligence information indicated that this weapon is designed to bathe a target’s living quarters in microwaves, causing numerous physical effects, including a damaged nervous system.”īeck is still not allowed to name the hostile country he visited in 1996, but said he and a colleague, Charles “Chuck” Gubete, had gone to make sure a US diplomatic building under construction was not bugged. “The reality is that this has been an intelligence community issue for decades,” said Mark Zaid, a lawyer representing both Beck and Havana Syndrome victims.Īn NSA statement declassified in 2014 for Beck’s work injury compensation case stated: “The National Security Agency confirms that there is intelligence information from 2012 associating the hostile country to which Mr Beck traveled in the late 1990’s, 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. That raises more questions about why the CIA and state department were so reluctant to believe their own officers could have been targeted by such weapons when cases appeared in Cuba and then China in 2018 and elsewhere around the world. The reality is that this has been an intelligence community issue for decades Mark Zaidīut what is so striking about Beck’s case is that its origins were two decades earlier – and that it produced official confirmation more than eight years ago that such weapons had been developed by America’s adversaries. The CIA and state department have launched taskforces to investigate and it was reported last week that the Pentagon had launched its own inquiry into suspected microwave attacks on US troops in the Middle East.Įarlier this month, the senior director for the western hemisphere in the national security council, Juan Gonzalez, voiced concern over the lingering risk to US diplomats from microwave weapons in Cuba, in an interview with the CNN Spanish language service. The statement came the day after the White House said it was looking into “ unexplained health incidents” after reports that two of its own officials had been targeted in the Washington area. The Democratic and Republican leadership on the Senate intelligence committee put out a bipartisan statement on Friday, saying: “This pattern of attacking our fellow citizens serving our government appears to be increasing.” Last December the National Academy of Sciences published a report finding that the scores of CIA and state department officials affected by “Havana syndrome” in Cuba, China and elsewhere, were most likely suffering the “effects of directed, pulsed radio frequency energy”.Īfter years of playing down the reports and failing to provide proper medical care for the victims, Washington is now clearly alarmed at the implications of the attacks. I’m one of many.’”īeck had been forced into retirement in late 2016 by a rare early-onset, non-tremor form of Parkinson’s disease, and he had evidence, supplied by the NSA and the CIA, that he could have been the victim of a deliberate attack from a microwave weapon.Īfter years of lonely struggle, he now feels vindicated. “I felt bad for the victims but thought: ‘Now I’m no longer one of one. “I got excited because I thought: well, it’s coming out now that it’s not a mirage,” Beck said.
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