Intellectual Properties: Are They As Important As Trump Says?

Raw invention or device

Yes! Communist nations have a long and storied history of being able to take giant leaps forward, escaping the necessity of large capital expenditures, by stealing research from companies that have paid the burden of research.

When Dr. Gatlin, the inventor of the famous Gatlin Gun, the first machine gun, received an order for five guns from Russia he stated, “That’s the only guns we will ever sell to Russia.” The reason for this statement was the well-recognized policy of Russia to obtain a new invention and then reverse engineer it. They would then use the new “intellectual property” without having to pay the high price of royalties that all of their competitors would have to pay. These royalties are meant to reimburse the inventing party for all of the costs associated with exhaustive experimentation necessary to bring a product to market. Of course, they are also supposed to bring to that party the financial rewards that entice one to risk substantial expense in order to try to prove their concepts.

Here is a list of just a few: The nuclear bomb. It was developed by the USA who expended billions of dollars. Contrary to popular reports about the Manhattan Project, the code name for the nuclear research of the bomb, the project was a sieve of leaks. The U.S. Army was responsible for the security of the project. When they couldn’t give clearances to many “scientist” many of whom were not U.S. citizens, the scientific culture inside the project objected and threatened to walk out if the Army did not give the suspects clearance. The army relented. It’s now known that the ongoing research was leaked in near “real-time” to Russia. Russia would then try to replicate the research. When they couldn’t replicate it, they would tell their spies in the project, who in turn, would steal “more thorough” research and give it to Russia so they could get the required results.

Near the end of WW-II, a crew of a U.S. B-29 bomber was forced to land at a “safe” airport belonging to Russia because it suffered damage that would not allow it to return to a U.S. airport. The crew was imprisoned by Russia. It returned to the safety of the U.S. only because it escaped the Soviets and made its way to neutral territory. It’s only because of their escape that the U.S. learned of the capture of one of their B-29 bombers by Russia. After the war, Russia proudly unveiled its new modern bomber. It looked exactly like the U.S. B-29 bomber. Stolen intellectual property.

After WW-II England had the most advanced jet engines. When Russia asked to have access to these advanced models, England’s Churchill, who was constantly suspicious of the Soviets, agreed and provide them with ten. A mystery to this date. This was done in secrecy so as the keep the USA from knowing. When the Korean War broke out just a few years later, the U.S. military was astonished to find themselves facing the fast and nimble MiG jet fighters produced by Russia. A fighter years ahead of where Russia would have been had they developed them themselves. The U.S. had been developing jet fighters on their own but not in large quantities because the U.S. was sure our enemies were decades behind us in development of their own. That is when England told the U.S. of its error in furnishing Russia jet engines. Our bombers were being escorted by prop planes that were very inferior to the MiGs. The U.S. military suffered much damage due to England’s gift of intellectual properties to Russia. The U.S. had to scramble to produce and then furnish jet fighters to the war zone that could equal the MiG.

The list of theft by Russia and later their and the U.S.’s arch-enemy, Red China, is inexhaustible. Everything from refrigerators to the most advanced military intellectual property. Did you know that there is a U.S. Patent Office in the buildings belonging to the UN? And that it was burglarized so often that the UN security stopped responding to the burglaries? That the video surveillance for the office was archaic and the locks were ineffective? Why would the U.S. have such an office at the UN except to enable the theft of intellectual property? Who, what, which administration authorized it and then allowed it to continue?

The list of stolen intellectual property goes on forever. From the most top-secret to the most mundane. These thefts don’t just hurt the bottom line of corporations and the workshop inventor, but they threaten the very safety of all of the USA. Some day we will be facing the very weapons we discovered.

Howard Hughes: Was His Paranoia About Russia Justified?

Image by skeeze from Pixabay

Howard Hughes was a multi-millionaire back in the day. He was a Hollywood playboy, an investor in industries, an inventor, an aerospace leader, and a Hollywood movie director/producer; but, above all this, a patriot. Hughes built the famous “Spruce Goose,” (the largest airplane ever built up to that time) he bought several Las Vegas casinos and lived as a recluse in various resort penthouses. He claimed that the USSR wanted to kill him. Every aspect of his life was greatly controlled by him. Howard only met face to face with a few persons. He conducted business over the phone. It’s claimed that when he died he was unkempt and had fingernails two inches long. His body had to be fingerprinted by the FBI for identification because he was so unrecognizable. However, much of his lifestyle was blamed on his, unwarranted fear, of being assassinated by the USSR.

In 1968, the USSR had a nuclear missile-armed submarine disappear in the Pacific Ocean northwest of Hawaii. The CIA waited and waited for them to retrieve their very valuable and top-secret asset. They watched until they realized that the USSR was searching in the wrong locations. They were off by many hundreds of miles. That is when they realized that the USSR had no idea of where it was. However, the CIA did. The CIA didn’t want to let the USSR know that they knew where the sub was for two reasons; not the least of which, was that the CIA didn’t want to reveal to the USSR the fact that the CIA had the ability to track the USSR’s submarines better than they themselves could.

The CIA went to Hughes asking him to participate in a cover story in hopes that the CIA would be able to raise the submarine along with its nuclear-armed missiles without the USSR getting wise. Hughes agreed. A large ship was reconfigured in a way that would disguise its true intent. It was able to have salvage equipment that would be lowered from the center of the ship and out of the line of sight of surface ships, Russian trawlers. The cover story was that Hughes was interested in dredging the deep ocean floor to explore, and possibly find valuable minerals. This ship was supposedly for this purpose. It was a top-top secret mission.

The ship was able to lower equipment that attached its self around the girth of the sub. The sub was in waters thousands of feet deep. The CIA hoped that the absurdity of being able to do this would help keep the suspicious Russians from guessing the true mission. However, the night before the ship was to leave to go to the salvage spot the ship builder’s officer was mysteriously burglarized. Their safe had been opened. No doubt the KGB.

The USSR dispatched a spy trawler to follow the CIA’s ship. The CIA’s ship anchored over the wreck and began its operations. They were able to get a large grappling claw around the sub and began raising it. Part of the sub broke away and fell to the ocean floor. The remaining part of the sub did reach the mother ship and that section did contain at least two or three missiles. The CIA was now sure that their cover was blown. The section of sub salvaged contained bodies of at least six USSR sailors. The CIA performed a very publicized burial of them at sea. Why? They were trying to convinced the USSR that nothing valuable was retrieved. These bodies, no doubt, would have been given names (by the CIA, regardless of their real names) of sailors whos work stations were in a part of the sub that would not be valuable to the USA. This was to convince the USSR that a worthless section of the sub was salvaged. The CIA officially took the stance that the mission was a failure, but, both they and the watching USSR knew better.

It was because of Hughes’ involvement with this mission that convinced him that the KGB wanted him killed. If you look back at persons who were enemies of the USSR State you will see a high mortality rate. The commy hunter Senator George McGovern mysteriously died young, the official cause of death was cancer: he died in a hospital while getting treatment for it. His early death was shrugged off by the Commies in the media by saying he was a heavy smoker and drinker. Killing enemies in a hospital was/is the perfect weapon. Most Americans would not suspect a hospital. The Commie hating George Patton was killed as a result of a very minor car accident. The accident report and the investigation report were lost. The driver in the other vehicle was a drunk soldier who had stolen the military truck he used in the accident, yet, the driver and none of his fellow AWOL friends were not punished. As Patton’s health took a turn for the better, his wife began to make plains to return him from Europe to the USA. Then inexplicably, he died; in the hospital. Leon Trotsky was a competing communist leader to Joseph Stalin. Fearing assassination he fled Russia and lived under tight security in exile in Mexico, yet somehow, an assassin was able to get in and kill him. The USSR has a near-perfect record of killing anyone they wish. This is true even today. Recently, a USSR dissident named Sergei Skripal was assassinated by the KGB using a highly radioactive bb. This is not an exhaustive list, there are many more.

Suffice it to say, Hughes may have had many idiosyncrasies and had good reason to be paranoid; he doesn’t deserve to be called a loony solely for this.

U-2 Spy Over-Flights Of USSR

What you need to know: CIA pilot Frances Gary Powers was doing a top secret (spying) over-flight of the USSR in a top secret U-2 spy plane when he claimed to be shot down. He failed to follow any of the standing orders if shot down. He failed to push the destruct aircraft switch to keep the top-secret aircraft and just as valuable its top secret camera system from falling into USSR hands, and he failed to take the poison given him. Despite the claim that he was shot down, the top-secret aircraft was whole except for minor damage. He suffered even less damage. All this was after crashing from over 70,000 feet. The USSR did not have the ability to shoot down an aircraft at that altitude. He was a double agent for the USSR.

The Details: In the 1960s USA President Dwight D. Eisenhower needed to see what the Soviet Union’s military threat really was. He was frightened that they had the capability to do what they boasted of. Lockheed Aircraft was able to produce an aircraft that could overfly the USSR. It couldn’t fly high enough to evade radar but too high to be shot down, and that was good enough. The USSR would never publicly acknowledge that the USA could overfly their country and they could not stop it.

The U-2 can fly well over 70,000, feet AGL (above ground level) and the USSR had nothing that could fly that high, neither missiles nor planes, thus, they had to sit quietly and not say anything. They were unable to demand the USA to stop without having to admit to the rest of the world that they were not able to stop us.

Then came a mission flown by then CIA officer Francis Gary Powers on 1 May 1960. He was overdue. To the horror of the CIA and the president, the USSR announced that it had shot down a U-2, flight. There, on television, for the world to see was Powers, in remarkably good health for having been shot down and ejected from a disintegrated airplane. Well not quite. It seems that the aircraft didn’t disintegrate and was, in fact, in remarkably good condition. Nearly completely intact. Despite the plane freefalling for about 70,000, feet it crashed with no “crush” damage (caused by a falling plane hitting the ground at a high rate of speed) and nearly no other damage. And we had the images to prove this, on Soviet TV. The Soviets got a nearly intact airplane. The Soviets got a top-secret plane and top-secret photo and imaging equipment. Powers failed to initiate the self-destruct mechanism on the plane as he was ordered to do. Powers also failed to use the poison he was given to kill himself (yes, it’s true, these things do happen) before being captured. Powers stated that he didn’t use the poison because, “…had hopes of escaping from the USSR.” Yeah, an American deep inside the USSR would be able to make it a thousand miles without being captured.

I remember this incident very clearly. The fact is, our CIA was certain that Powers was a USSR spy even if they couldn’t admit it. One of Power’s stories was that he had some kind of engine troubles that caused him to lose enough altitude to allow the Soviet missiles to reach him. Then another one where he said the missile reached his altitude but just nicked the plane which then fell like a leaf over 70,000, feet to land with no “crush” damage, as would be expected. However, his injuries along with the damage done to the fallen U-2 plane did not ring true. The Soviets were broadcasting images of the pilot and plane that showed little damage. But, what could the CIA do? The USA would have to expose valuable intelligence assets to try to disprove the shoot down.

About five years later Powers was released back to the USA in a spy swap. He was not welcomed home as a hero. He was not treated the same as our shot down pilots of the Vietnam war. Nope, he returned and was not offered any position anywhere. Not with the CIA or any government vendor. His considerable abilities were not desired anywhere. Not by an airline or even by flying tours. He got the only job he could, and that was with the sympathetic news media. He became a helicopter pilot for a Southern CA news station.

Eventually, he met the same fate that all persons seem to meet when the Soviet Union is fearful that some embarrassing information might be made public. For instance, as in a bestselling book or autobiography. His chopper fell from the sky and he was killed. He ran out of fuel because “someone” had worked on the fuel gauge without telling him.

Of course, there are several cover stories manufactured by the media over time. Often they do more harm (for Powers) than good. For example, when Powers was debriefed by the CIA upon his return he proudly told them that he gave the USSR some misinformation. He told them that he U-2 could not fly over 68,000 feet while it can fly well above that. But, didn’t the Soviets see that he was flying at a higher altitude. This was a tacit admittance that he was not flying at the altitude he was supposed to. And then there is the one where the Soviets had an unarmed Su-9 fighter in the area and he was instructed to ram the U-2. (During WWII both British and Nazi pilots ramed planes when necessary) As the story goes, the Su-9 missed the U-2 because he was flying too fast to maneuver to the U-2. Really. Please note that the Su-9 can only fly to 55,000, feet altitude. Powers must have been well below where he was supposed to be.