Fred Burton, vice president of the private global intelligence agency STRATFOR, joined Ian Punnett to discuss his investigation into the 1973 assassination of Col. Joe Alon, a former Israeli fighter pilot who resided in Bethesda, Maryland. Alon was a handpicked Israeli military attaché to Washington, Burton said, later noting that Alon was assisting the U.S. Air Force in developing tactics to take on the superior air power of the Soviet MiGs. Seven years before he was killed, Alon had helped acquire a MiG-21 from a defecting Iraqi pilot and that plane had been shipped to Groom Lake for examination, he added.
On the night of his murder, Alon had just returned home from a diplomatic reception, Burton continued. As he was fetching his jacket from the car, a unseen assailant shot Alon five times, with one of the bullets fatally ripping through his heart, Burton explained. The day after his murder, then-President Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger curiously assigned Air Force Two (the aircraft that carries the Vice President) to fly Alon's body and family back to Israel, he reported. Stranger still, Burton said Kissinger had requested daily updates on the status of the investigation into the Alon killing.
The case eventually stalled and was left unsolved, which Burton pointed out was quite odd given Israel's propensity for seeking retribution against those who harm their own. Perhaps even more bizarre, the FBI destroyed all of the forensic evidence linked to the Alon murder, he noted. Burton said he eventually discovered that Col. Alon belonged to Mossad (Israeli intelligence agency), and had, at least partially, uncovered a conspiratorial plot surrounding the Yom Kippur War. According to Burton, Alon was assassinated because his knowledge would have jeopardized a secret plan to allow the Arabs to strike first, in order for the U.S. to see how their weapons stacked up against the Soviet technology used by Israel's enemies.
Burton also commented on the world of sanctioned dark world assassinations, as well as why he does not subscribe to 9/11 conspiracies.