Wilderness of Radios
Ken Goldstein runs a blog called The Illuminated Donkey, which reminded Unqualified Offerings of the Democratic Party somehow, so it shied away. In fact, Goldstein’s chief crime is participating with Justin Slotman in an act of sports woofing so heinous that UO, cross-eyed with rage, mistakenly asked Andy Kashdan to fuck off and die in private correspondence because it lost track of just which fine blog contained the offending item. Unqualified Offerings will travel next month to Africa to apologize to Andy Kashdan.
Goldstein’s blog is actually quite good! He’s been following the Case of the Non-Missing Radio as closely as anyone, critiquing today’s AP report on his site, and sending a link to the far less confused New York Post version of the story by e-mail. Goldstein (presumably no relation to the pseudonymous Emmanuel Goldstein, unless you can be pseudonymously related) muses:
A private pilot staying one floor below Higazy, who had no knowledge of either the case or Higazy, inquired about his missing aviation radio, at which point investigators questioned the hotel employee who had originally discovered the radio. According to the Times, “On Wednesday morning, the case fell apart completely. Agents reinterviewed the hotel employee and he said he recalled finding the radio on a table in Mr. Higazy’s room, not in the safe.”
So this case might be a simple mistake, an investigative screwup, a plant by an attention-seeking hotel employee, or something else entirely. I’m guessing that the FBI isn’t finished talking to that hotel employee.
This site would be untrue to itself if it forebore baseless speculation about this kind of thing. You have a well-connected (diplomat dad) Egyptian air corps veteran who, at 30, is just getting ready to start graduate school. He tells the media he wants to get his Master’s because master’s degree in computers “makes me a big shot [back home in Egypt],” but he’s enough of a big shot already that when his student lodging falls through he stays in a Hilton for almost three weeks before buildings fall on it. (Rooms are not currently available at the Millenium Hilton, but other NYC Hilton’s seem to be in the $150-and-up range.
Or: Let’s face it: it could all be just like they say. All sorts of people pass through New York. Coincidences happen.
Note: You can see some nice pictures of different styles of aviation transceivers on the official Icom America site. Not all of them look like the sort of thing a random hotel worker would identify as an aviation transceiver.
