Reddit reviews Chasing Shadows: A Special Agent's Lifelong Hunt to Bring a Cold War Assassin to Justice

My grandfather was one of the children he saved! He went on to become one of the first military pilots for the Israeli Air Force, and had an impressive military career up until 1973 when he was assassinated in Maryland while serving as a military attache.

The FBI recently reopened the murder case due to new evidence and our family is still investigating and looking for clues.

If anyone by any chance knows or has heard of anything related to Col. Joe Alon's murder on July 1, 1973 in Chevy Chase, Maryland please contact me at [email protected]. If you want to help but you're afraid for your safety, there are secure channels we can communicate through - PM me for more info.

For more info:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yosef_Alon - Wiki about my grandfather

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwLkaWfwmU0 - Documentary about attempts to find his killer

https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/5mxje4/my_grandfather_was_an_israeli_diplomat_who_was/ - reddit post with a lot of information

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/08/us/politics/carlos-the-jackal-yosef-alon-assassination-israel.html - why FBI opened the case

https://www.amazon.com/Chasing-Shadows-Special-Lifelong-Assassin/dp/0230620558 - Book about a former FBI agent's attempt to find the killer

P.S. trying to get some visibility so i've reposted this comment.

EDIT: Glad this got the visibility I wanted. fuck the karma I'm just hoping to find leads. We believe there are still people alive in the US that know something about his murder, whether it's former government officials or rogue terrorist groups - i dont know - but the clock is ticking and soon no one directly involved in the assassination will be alive. We hope to find someone who worked in the US government (or CIA) in Washington around 1972-1976 on the Egypt-Israel relations or with Henry Kissinger and is willing to come forward with the facts they are hiding from us. So if you think you might know somebody like that, and you are willing to drop him the question "have you ever heard of colonel joe alon?" or direct him to the email address I posted I would be eternally grateful.

Regarding the Anti-(zion/semit)ism here, this is expected - this is the internet after all - but actually I regard myself as more liberal and left wing, not that it matters. I don't want this to become a political debate. I'm doing this for my mother and her sisters who lived without a father since they were 5, 14 and 19 years old, without ever getting an answer to the question 'why was he killed?'

Shadow banned - Nope haven't heard anything from those with the power to do anything. I'm okay wherever I can approve of my own comments. What I've had to say in /r/EndlessWar has been approved of also, as well as elsewhere, but I'm at the mercy of the moderators.
*****
Projects Have Donut", "Have Drill" and "Have Ferry"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Area_51#Foreign_Technology_Evaluation

http://www.amazon.com/Chasing-Shadows-Special-Lifelong-Assassin/dp/0230620558/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1318824960&sr=8-2

In the 'Search inside book function' search for " In early 1968 " and click on the entry for page 81.

The background for what appears on page 81, is the following (from the same book)"

“During the Korean War, the USAF claimed a seven-to-one kill rate over the Communist MiG-15s it faced. Despite the fact that the USAF was heavily outnumbered and faced a very good fighter in the MiG-15, its tactics and training carried the day. Yet only a generation later, the USAF could not conquer an air force a fraction of its size over North Vietnam. Even worse, that air force kept inflicting jarring defeats on the USAF’s strike aircraft.

“By late 1967, the days of seven-to-one kill rations were long past. From October 1967 until President Lyndon Johnson suspended air operations over North Vietnam in 1968, the MiGs scored a five-to-one kill rate against the USAF’s latest jets and fighter-bombers. ... "

Some basic facts

FBI agent Frank Corn surmised the killer hid behind a large bush next to the garage, shot Alon and fled to a nearby getaway car with a waiting driver - perhaps the car Dvora spotted.

The gunman was only about six feet away when he opened fire.

Corn, like other agents, felt that whoever had killed Alon was a professional and had stalked him.

"That was the feeling that I got," said Corn, now retired. "That they knew his movements."

Investigators discovered a "perfectly shaped bullet," fired from a foreign-made, .38-caliber revolver. The bullet was pulled from the ground next to Alon's car. The FBI narrowed the possibilities to a Titan Tiger or Arminius, of which a staggering 74,000 were in circulation.

Titan Tiger is one of trademarks used for Arminius series revolvers manufactured by the German firm Weihrauch. Arminius/Titan Tiger revolvers were cheap in the US.

“She received strange phone calls, what are called 'ruse calls,' to see if they were home,” as well as “wrong numbers” from people speaking Hebrew - a very unlikely scenario in Maryland, long before the internet made it easy to find people, says Burton. “There was a strange visitor from the phone company' who wanted to get into the basement to do work that could easily have been done from the street.”

More details are described in Chasing shadows by Burton and Bruning. For example, the perpetrator fired 5 bullets, all scored a hit, 3 injured victim's chest, one struck his heart. We should take into account that Alon was in left profile to the shooter so such results indicate quite a good marksmanship.

Obviously, the murder was executed in a professional manner. It was carefully planned and prepared. The preparations could take weeks and months. The victim certainly was put under surveillance prior to the assassination. Most likely, a group, which consisted of the US residents was responsible for the surveillance and logistic support (the murder weapon, cars, safe hoses etc.), and there was another group (the killer and his driver), which actually performed the hit and, possibly, its members had been sent to the US from Europe or Middle East.

Fred Burton was a founding member of the United States' Diplomatic Security Service. He was the DSS's specialist in Middle Eastern affairs, over time he came to be the head of the Counter Terrorism division as well as the vice director of the DSS. His office predicted an Al Qaeda strike against the US but decide the threat wasnt valid enough. He was involved in the arrest Ramzi Yousef and brought up warrants for Imad Mugniyah. He wrote the book Ghost, which is very fun to read.

Edit: For must Reads:The Encyclopedia of the CIA, America's Secret War, and Spies Among Us. Also the aforementioned Ghost and Chasing Shadows

Area 51, eh? Wake up Sheeples and connect the dots!!!1!!!1!

“ In the early 1960s, the Israeli Air Force (IAF) watched with growing alarm as the Soviet Union equipped its Arab client states with its latest-generation fighter, the MiG-21. Little was known about the new aircraft, but its capabilities were rumored to be superior to anything the Israelis possessed. Could the new MiG tip the balance of power in the Middle East? [IAF chief] General Motti Hod worried that it just might.

“ With Hod’s urging, Mossad set out to get a MiG-21 into Israeli hands. ...

“ ...

“ [O]n August 16 [1966], Captain [Monir] Radfa took off from Rashid Air Force Base near Baghdad on a navigation training mission. He had managed to secure a long-range external fuel tank for this flight; otherwise, the MiG-21 would never have had the range to make the 486 miles to Radfa’s real destination: Hatzor Air Base in Israel.

“ ...

“ The Israelis had just secured the Cold War brass ring. In the months that followed, their experts dissected the MiG-21’s assembly, avionics, radar system, weapons, and construction techniques. After they mapped the MiG’s weaknesses and vulnerable points on the ground, the IAF’s top test pilots flew it to figure out its performance envelope. Eventually, it was flown in mock air combat against Israel's Mirage IIIs in order to develop tactics that could exploit the MiG’s weaknesses. The plane, which the Israelis designated number 007 in homage to James Bond, served as the single greatest treasure trove of aerial intelligence the IAF had ever received. It also became a currency more valuable than gold.

“ ...

“ ... After the Six-Day War, the Israelis approached the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and offered to lend the United States their precious MiG-21. In return, the Israelis wanted to purchase F-4 Phantom fighter-bombers.

“ President Johnson personally approved the deal and also released the A-4 Skyhawks [the sale of a small number of which was suspended as a result of Israel’s preemptive attack] for delivery to the IAF. In exchange for the MiG-21, the Americans supplied the Israelis with fifty gun-armed F-4E Phantoms. These aircraft played a pivotal role in saving Israel in the years to come; the deal itself became the first major connection between the United States and the Israel military. ...

“ In early 1968, the Israelis crated up the MiG-21 and sent it to Groom Lake, Nevada--known in conspiracy circles as Area 51. There the USAF’s Foreign Technology Division undertook the same rivet-by-rivet study of the MiG-21 the Israelis had conducted the year before. At last, the USAF had its hands on the weapon that was causing its fighter-bomber wings in Southeast Asia so much grief.

“ Dubbed the Have Donut program, the testing lasted for months, and the MiG-21 underwent a complete technical, engineering, and operation evaluation. ... "

Source: Fred Burton and John Bruning (Chasing Shadows) (2011)