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- Hacker News
- I recall reading the Arab world was a major refuge for escaping Nazis. Egypt had WW2 Nazi aces flying against Israel unless I'm mistaken?
I wonder if the Arabs got nearly as much milage out of Nazi scientists as the Americans or Soviets got.
by whearyou - It is almost as if there's a country that since its foundation always find perfectly reasonable to kidnap or murder potential enemies in other jurisdictions, ignoring blatantly the sovereignty even of allied or friendly countries, without any restrictions, or respect for international law.by elzbardico
- What is the value in reminding the readers? Is there anybody who does not know at that level?
Avoidable also in view of the following: have you noticed in the past years a surge of indoctrinated that, at every misdeed from some part P immediately note how some other part S championed it? Judge: "Have you committed rape?" Defendant: "What about all the other rapists?". It's not even a bad argument, it's gut diversion - it's for the distraction of animals.
by mdp2021 - Reminded me of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Alexandrov#Disappeara...by r721
- Use Google Translate or llm to translate the content in this url
https://www.intelligence.org.il/?module=articles&item_id=16&...
by tzury - I've been enjoying the Firefox translate, but for some reason sometimes it doesn't show the option to engage it, and I have to fall back to running things through duck.ai
Too shy to file a formal bug or let the cloud know what I'm OSINTing :-)
by firefax - Interesting Heinz Krugs last traces are a car in Solln, which is very close to Pullach, the headquarter of former Gehlen Organisation now home of the German secret service. If there is a good place to vanish, then it's probably there.by bensons1
- A concerning number of stateside scientists working on hypersonics have died or vanished under questionable circumstances in a rather short timeframe recently.
It's probably nothing, I wouldn't look into it
- It just may be that they've been pulled from duty.
I haven't looked into those scientists in particular, but a few years ago I did some OSINT on others that had funerals. I was surprised to find a couple of them living in other countries with different identities.
The social media posts on their funerals were rich sources of data. So, I think some don't have funerals anymore because of the PII leakage.
If any of you were in gifted programs during the 70s and 80s, you may have experienced being scouted by intelligence agencies or at least witnessing others being scouted. I suspect the gifted program was largely created for that purpose. So, at least some exceptional scientists who grew up in that era have connections with intel.
by afpx - You're referring to this conspiracy theory? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_scientists_conspiracy_...by WalterGR
- It's easy to throw stones, but who among us hasn't lost a key missile scientist at some point or another?by firefax
- Or key industrialists.by mdp2021
- by bookofjoe
- Related? the Helwan HA-300. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helwan_HA-300
Summary: Egypt was going to develop an indigenous fighter in the 1960's based off of a mostly finished Spanish design by a post WWII otherwise unemployed Willy Messerschmitt.
I First heard of the project via a pretty good youtube documentary https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqIpJuqvsWQ Messerschmitt's Remarkably Good Supersonic Fighter (Not A Pound For Air To Ground)
by somat - If you want an interesting related story that's so incredible people wouldn't believe if it was a film plot, look up Otrag. Not the Wikipedia page, that only tells a fraction of the full story. There's a documentary floating around somewhere about their work in Zaire under Mobutu before they started building ballistic missiles for Gaddafi.
- by vrganj
- Both cases remind me of Project Harp (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_HARP). After the project was shut down by the US and Canada, the engineer behind it (Gerald Bull) decided to work for Saddam Hussein to build a "Babylon Cannon" which then caused Mossad to 'intervene' in 1990:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Bull
I wonder how many similar but unknown cases there are involving former Soviet scientists and engineers trying their luck with 3rd world despots after the Soviet Union collapsed.
PS: just remembered that Willy Messerschmitt also ended up building a jet fighter for Egypt after the project was abandondend by Spain. Egypt then also eventually cancelled the project in 1969 though and instead decided to become close buddies with the Soviet Union - I wonder if that decision saved Messerschmitt from the same fate as Krug and Bull:
by flohofwoe - The wonderful book "Rise and Kill First" is a history of Israeli assassinations, with their policy of going after the "head of the snake". There are some interesting sections on how Israel used assassination to inhibit missile programs in the Middle East, including Egypt. Its a pretty easy read despite being long.by ecshafer
- More wonderful yet is Seymour Hersh's Samson Option, outlining how Israeli spies hijacked America's intelligence agencies to support this double-standard. Those agents provided the necessary diplomatic cover for Israel to make their initial incursions into satellite intelligence and nuclear weaponry, which started the strategic imbalance that would endanger civilians in the Levant for decades to come. You can see shadows of the same US/Israel relationship in the China/Iran axis, wherein China's intelligence agencies successfully launder support for humanitarian crises like Gaza, while strategically bolstering Iran with air defenses and satellite intelligence.
Hersh's best work since unveiling Abu Ghraib. Highly recommend it over the super-spy biographies, especially since Hersh didn't have to go through Israel's Military Censor like Bergman did.
by bigyabai - Not much of an achievement when you can't hit back without the Western world responding.
Not many people know this but it was not Cuba, Korea, Vietnam or Berlin that got NATO closest to WW3. It was Israel. For the USSR the Jews in the desert were just another proxy war sideshow for Europe it was non negotiable.
by TitaRusell - Lots of shady missile deals went down in West Asia/North Africa in the 60/70s. Somewhat related: Israel was collaborating with Iran on missile projects but allegedly planned to deceive them by providing outdated missiles while using Iranian funds to develop superior versions for themselves [0].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Project_Flower
- Where's the part about deceiving in the link? Aren't you conflating Iran-Contra that happened after the revolution?by breppp
- What, you mean the thing Microsoft did to IBM with DOS? Say it isn't so!by dermacentor
- I read from somewhere that Italy, Libya and some South America country were developing missile programs together, too. Probably from a book about Fiat I think.by markus_zhang