Mickey Gurdus, Who Eavesdropped on the World, Dies at 73 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.” Mr. Gurdus called himself a journalist, but his professional niche — rendered less exclusive but not defunct by the internet — was so unusual that Israelis coined a Hebrew word for him: kashaveynu, or “our listener and correspondent.” “I define myself as a journalist,” he once told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, “but first of all as a patriot.” In 1974, he was credited with helping to save the life of Archbishop Makarios III, the president of Cyprus, after he was deposed in a bloody military coup. The White House was calling to say that the Watergate special prosecutor was on his way to retrieve potentially incriminating tape recordings of Oval Office conversations from “the red safe.” “We just don’t want anyone to have access to any tapes,” Haig was heard saying. During the Watergate scandal in 1974, he intercepted a White House phone call to Alexander M. Haig Jr., President Richard M. Nixon’s chief of staff, who was on Air Force One as it flew over the Middle East. “Whenever I have information that could jeopardize human lives,” he said, “I do not publish it.” In 1984, he overheard Shiite Muslim hijackers executing one hostage and beating others after they had commandeered a Kuwaiti plane.
