The Eavesdroppers
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Britain's largest spy network organis- cations between them, Each country's Mozambique to monitor the Frelimo retum=tbey had been flying a 'pro- ation is 1I0t MI5 or MI6 but an electron- signals intelligence (SIGINT) agency guerillas. (Information on the signals vocative' mission into the Soviet k intdli",ence network controlled from has authority to monitor communi- and positions of Frelimo transmitter> Caspian Sea Special Missile Test Range a country town ill {lie Corswords. With .cations HI one area. Lurope west of the was then passed on to the Portuguese and on to test the Soviet air defences. the huge US National Security Agency Urals and Africa come under Britain's via NATO.) Deliberate intrusion into foreign as partner, it intercepts and decodes representative in the UKUSA pact- . In Cyprus ten years earlier, Foreign territory is not new. In 1958, two communications throughout the world. Government Communications Head~ Office radio teams were also found to be Oxford University students exposed Freelance writer Duncan Campbell and quarters, known as GCHQ. operating in interesting proximity to the some of Britain's clandestine intel- Mark Ilosenball trace the rise to power monitoring station and the BBC there. ligence gathering in an article in the • of the electronic eavesdroppers, After the abortive Suez operation the University magazine, lsis: Theyde- RAF Chicksands, between Bedford and Foreign Office-furious with the BBC's scribed a fleet of spy boats manned by. Hitchin, could be a pleasant day trip . calm objectivity-took over a British '." Germans and captained by Britons, from London. The sixteenth century priory is open, and you won't be dis- PoIiciR,IM .irw.... A senes of fixed POS1Office and turbed by overflying aircraft. Instead I The Home Office is the only British Home orn« monitoring stations 011$.0 I Chicksands is dominated bya giant hill- Olgency with a legal ri~1 to monitor liskn out fer illicit transmi~ion$. The top monolith, a steel circle a quarter communications. The Home Offke's equipmenl is similar to the open Inter- Radio Technology Directorate carries ference Division, but the activities arc mile wide. Not far ofT, in a long low out several monitoring tasks to keep mprc concealed. Around London.a chain building, 200 operators of the United '.the alrwavcs free of pollution-and of direction finding aerials can be used States Air Force Security Service sit illcgll transnuucrs, The Radio Tcch- to track down pirates and others. Such over radios monitoring the ether from nolcgy Directorate employ 400 PuSI stations are at Ewell, near Epsom. Office .radio officers thcoui;hcut Sanderstead near Croydon, Friaton in their giant 'Steelhenge'. Britain to track down an unwanted Essex. and elsewhere around Britain. I Chicksands is the la rgest listening Home Office ~terfe~;~ tracing is done signal, lis Interference Division Ir.lCCS One is even on the roof of the Director- post in Britain of the US National over 40,(0) complaints of Interference ate~, Headquuters at Waterloo Brid-ge by a fleet of 3~O specially equipped a year all for the price of it form filled House. Security Agency. NSA is responsible vans. The larger ones carry a 30 foot in at the 1"".1 Pest Office, With 300 At Baldock in Hertfordshire. the for directing American intelligence from telescope mast with directional aerials spccl4Il vans, many equipped with tele- Home Office runs an 'International satellites to spy ships. Last summer, scopk direction finding aertats and Frequency Monitoring Station' called and wide coverage receiving equipment special surveillance equipment, they Radconrrcl, which fulfils Britain's treaty former CIA director William Colby to pinpoint any interfering signal. can trJ..:k down sources of interference. obliganons to check on interference told a US Senate Committee that NSA In important cases, such as the lime I caused to radio overseas. With two monitorcd zs? phone call. to and from rrorn two modern office blocks on local factory W3S accidentally ja.~ming direction findmg substations in the I communications to aircraft landing at south of England, Radcontrol is the iJ.; rs, ::l!.;t~cpted ce;:\!~:';f~.alccm- HIe outskirts of Cr.e!~enharr., the direc- Manchester, they have spent six mouths HorN Office's communications Interpol. muncations, and raided embassies for tors of GCHQ manage a world-wide pinning down tbe source or dzngerous investigating complaints of serious 15ng I codebooks. network of listening posts. They have interference. rollge inferre~ce. I No cue is immune.not eVe;, America's directed aircraft and ships into foreign closest allies. Former NSA analyst air and sea space to obtain information Winslow Peck (belo .•••·)worked in the late on their communications and defences The listening posts are often found if the most remote places-Cyprus, Hong Kong. Singapore, Oman.Belize, St Helena, the Ascension Islands. and Botswana among others. Another' base was recently identified in Australia On.very ••••""teng11l when after a typhoon hit Darwin; large The Composite Sib'l1als Organisation ""••s numbers of RAF personnel were dis- set up in Iq6J 10 bring all clandestine radio and monilorin~ operations under covered on a nearby off-shore island. control of GC'ftQ. Two of lrs sttes ere The GCHQ network comprises an v.:ithin ten miles of Belfast, and may be estimated 50 stations. In 1963 it won a involved in monitoring (RA udio. At Morwenstow, near Bude,"Comwall secret battle to take control of all army, two lOQ.foot urellitr terminals report- air force, and navy monitoring and edly receive pictures from 'American clandestine radio stations. reconnaissance satellites, GCHQ's director Bill Bonsall, M<>St.if not .11. of the Composite sixties at the US Air Force installation Signals Organisation stations in Britain- near Istanbul, another station in the although nominally responsible to the and there are mort overseas-Ire in- chain of 12 key NSA sites that includes Foreign Office, sits on the Joint Intel- volved in monitoring the airwa"es, using Chicksands, On a recent visit to Britain ligence Committee and probably works computer controlled radio recervers. At Poundon, near Bkester in Oxford- he described to Time Out top secret lists for Cabinet intelligence chiefs. Hi5 pre- shire, a well-guarded radio station of monitored UK commercial corn- decessor, Sir Leonard Hooper, KCMG, marked 'Foreign and Commonwealth munications kept at the Turkish site. now works in the" Cabinet Office after Office' is situated miles from the neat-" est t own, Two long sheds inside a Called TEXT A, these lists revealed that 32 years with GCHQ-a clear indication fenced-off compound hou se the listen- the UK business communications were of the modern pre-ernincnce of SIGINT. ers and their radio sets. while outside apparently being intercepted from east- But since the Labour government took stands one of Plessey's 'Pusher' aerials for direction finding. and much other em England. power in 1974, GCHQ's secret budget sophisticated equipment. Another ex·NSA serviceman, who has been reduced, and its listening posts served three years in Chicksands recent- east of Suez considered for closure. ly, described how British representatives The worldwide intelligence collec- SIS undercover anti-Nasser station to sailing under Swedish colours. These were effectively excluded from checking tion by GCHQ provides Britain with run the 'Voice Of Britain', which re- made regular patrols in Russian terri- on NSA work-and how one of two key considerable power. At Francistown layed the Foreign Office view in op- torial waters. On one occasion, a British monitoring controllers were responsible in Botswana, the RAF operates an position to the BBC. The radio side captain took his boat into Leningrad for in tcrcepting communications from electronic intelligence base on behalf of Britain s dirty. tricks agencies are harbour, The authors, who had worked France! of GCHQ, which, with powerful apparently run by the Composite in a Royal Navy monitoring station in NSA is partnercd in a worldwide antennae, can monitor the signals of Signals Organisation «('SO), which is Germany, were sentenced to six months electronic intelligence pact by four guerilla movements and government run by the ubiquitous G(,HQ. imprisonment shortly afterwards for other powers: Britain, Canada, forces from its strategic position in In the early '60s, according to Peck, breaking the Official Secrets Act. Australia and New Zealand. By a 1947 the centre of Southern Africa. They arc two RAF aircraft equipped with elec- Their article also identified a 'chain secret agreement, UKUSA, these five much better placed than the NSA, who, tronic intelligence equipment took off of monitoring stations Ir om Iraq to the Engli~;h'~peakin!! nations have divided according to WinsL)w Peck, har to use a frnm J base on the Caspian seacoast of Baltic-vi» flagrant breach CIf 'he Ccneva the rnorntor ing of the world's communi, Pueblo type Spy ship on patro! off Iran. The planes and their crew didn't convention'. The stations recorded the effects when British and American air- GCHQ. In 1968 they set up a new corn- record and analyse it, army arid GCHQ same for GCIlQ. In Germany bored craft (lcw over the borders to trigger pany called Racal (Slough) specifically electronic warfare experts can simulate intercept operators sitting in front of OtT;1 Soviet response. These nights were to manufacture secret communications the 'quite sophisticated' control signal- their dials and switches would forget conducted regularly='there is no con- equipment in co-operation with the making the bomb go off prematurely. about the Soviet Air Force and tune It'Olling the appetite of the statistical government. In just four years Racal Or they can devise a way of jamming along the band for the orchestra from analysers at Cheltenham,' the students (Sloughj's turnover grew sixfold.