[today’s run: 3.5 miles]
A recent email newsletter from the ARRL (ham radio organization) mentioned there is now an online searchable source of CIA documents from years gone by, and that ham radio is mentioned a number of times.
Here is a snip from a 1954 document:
2 replies on “Find those hams”
Very interesting! The hams are where the brains are…I guess I knew that. 🙂
Fascinating. I read up on Leopoldville and had no idea about nukes there. And, as often happens, found out still more that is a bit unsettling. Page 46 inset item:
https://www.princeton.edu/~aglaser/2008aglaser_bulletin.pdf
The United States in 1970 replaced the first Congo reactor with a higher power TRIGa (Mark II) reactor (above). Gen. Mobutu Sese Seko, who had seized power in 1960, was a U.S. ally and saw the reactor as a symbol of power and prestige and good relations with Washington. The TRIGa II reactor never used highly enriched uranium, but two of the re- actor’s fresh fuel assemblies did go missing from the site some time in the 1970s. One of the assemblies resurfaced in a 1998 sting operation in Rome, where it was for sale on the black market. nothing is known about the whereabouts of the second fuel assembly.
The reactor is still listed as operational. It continues to stand as an object lesson that one cannot parachute a nuclear reactor into a developing country and expect it to be an automatic source of progress and development.