Radio history: Mickey Gurdus dies at 73, monitored radio waves for Israel Radio.

Interesting story of a man who listened to radio signals for a living. See The New York Times.

No, he was not an “eavesdropper” in the common sense of the word. Mickey monitored the airwaves for the state-run Israel Radio and passed on information to his editors — and, sometimes, intelligence agents — to hijackings, invasions and revolutions, even intercepting a telephone call between the White House and Air Force One. He was able to listen to a conversation between President Richard Nixon and chief of staff, Alexander Haig Jr., in 1974.

After he died of a heart attack on Nov. 28 in Yehud, Israel, at 73, the country’s president, Reuven Rivlin, hailed him as “our mythological broadcaster.” Appropriately, “73” is the code used by amateur radio operators to wish some good bye and “best regards”. 73, Mickey.

Mickey Gurdus at his listening post, a small room in his Tel Aviv apartment, in March 2003, during the Iraq war. Credit Associated Press

Mr. Gurdus, perpetually sporting earphones and often sifting gibberish and static, listened in on a litany of, well, signal events. He overheard and revealed Operation Tshura, in which Israeli forces destroyed 14 Arab airliners in Beirut in retaliation for terrorist attacks on El Al planes. He got wind of a secret Soviet airlift of weapons to Egypt in 1970.

He also picked up on the hijacking by Palestinian terrorists of an Air France plane to Entebbe, Uganda, in 1976; an abortive United States attempt to rescue hostages from the American Embassy in Tehran in 1980; Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990; and a devastating earthquake in Haiti in 2010.

During the 1973 Yom Kippur War, when Arab states attacked Israel, Mr. Gurdus helped identify captured Israeli paratroopers by lifting their images from Egyptian television.