The Eavesdroppers Britain's Largest Spy Network Organis Cations Between Them
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
SEVEN DAYS The Eavesdroppers Britain's largest spy network organis cations between them. Each country's Mozambique to monitor the Frelimo return-they had been flying a 'pro· ation is not MIS or MI6 but an electron signals intelligence (SIGINT) agency guerillas. (Information on the signals vocative' mission into the Soviet • ic intelligence network controlled from has authority to monitor communi· and positions of Frelimo transmitters Caspian Sea Special Missile Test Range a country town in the Cotswolds. With cations in one area. Europe 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 Hosenball trace the rise to power monitoring station and the BBC there. Iigence gathering in an article in the of the electronic eavesdroppers. After the abortive Suez operation the University magazine. isis. They de· 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· Policing the airwnes A series of fixed Post Office and turbed by overflying aircraft. Instead The Home Office is the only Brit ish Home Office monitoring stations also Chicksands is dominated by a giant hill· agency with a legal right to monitor listen oul for illicit transmissions. The top monolith, a steel circle a quarter communications. The Home Office's equipment is similar to the open Inter Radio Te chnology Directorate carries ference Division , but the activities are mile wide. Not far off, in a long low oul several monitoring tasks to keep lnore JOl1cealed. Around London, a chain building, 200 operators of the United the airwaves free of pollution-and of direction finding aerials can be used States Air Force Security Service sit illcgnl transmitters. The Radio Tech to track down pirates and others. Such over radios monitoring the ether from nology Directorate employ 400 Post stations are at Ewell, near Epsom, Office radio officers throughout Sanderstead near Croydon, Frinton in their giant 'Steelhenge'. Britain to track down an unwanted Essex, and elsewhere around Britain. Chicksands is the largest listening Home Office interference tracing is done signal. It s hllerferem:e Division traces One is even on the roof of the Director post in Britain of the US National over 40.000 complaints of interference ate's Headquarters at Waterloo Bridge by a fleet of 320 specially equipped a year all for the price of a form filled House. Security Agency. NSA is responsible vans. The larger ones carry a 30 foot in at the local Post Office. With 300 At Baldock in Hert fordshire. the for directing American inte.lligence from telescope mast with directional aerials special vans. many equipped with tele Home Office runs an 'International satellites to spy ships. Last summer, sl'opic din.~cl ion finding aerials and Frequency Monitoring Station' called and wide coverage receiving equipment special surveillance equipment, they Radcontrol, which fulfils Britain's treaty former CIA director William Colby to pinpoint any interfering signal. can Iral:k down SO lln.:es of interference. obligations to check on interference told a US Senate Committee that NSA In import,lOt cases, such as the time a caused to radio overseas. With two monitored all phone calls to and from From two modern office blocks on local factory was accidentally jamming direction finding substations in the cOlllmunications to aircraft landing at south of England, Radcontrol is the the US, intercepted commercial com· the outskirts of Cheltenham, the direc· Manchester. they have spent six months HOrPe Office's communications interpol, muncations, and raided embassies for tors of GCHQ manage a world·wide pinning down the source of dangerous investigating complaints of serious long codebooks. network of listening posts. Thcy have interference. range interference. No one is immune, not even America's directed aircraft and ships into foreign closest allies. Former NSA analyst air and sea space to obtain information Winslow ~eck (below) worked in the late on their communications and defences The listening posts are often found in 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 {'\-cry wavelength when after a typhoon hit Darwin, large The Composite Signals Organisallon was numbers of RAF personnel were dis· set up 111 1963 to brin g all dandcstinc radiO and llIonlloringoperations undcr covered on a nearby off·shore island. conlrol of (;CIIO. Two of its siles arc The GCHQ network comprises an wllhin ten miles of Belfast, and may be estimated 50 stations. In 1963 it won a involved in monitoring IRA radio. At Morwenstow, ncar Bude, Cornwall, secret battle to take control of all army, two lOO-foot sa tellite terminals report air force, and navy monitoring and edly re c.:eive pictures from American clandestine radio stations. reconnaissance satellites. Most, if not all , of the Composite sixties at the US Air Force installation GCHQ's director Bill Bonsall, Signals Organisation stations in Britain near Istanbul, another station in the although nominally responsible to the and there are more overseas-are in· chain of 12 k;ey NSA sites that includes Foreign Office, sits on the Joint Intel· volved in monitoring the airwaves, using ligence Committee and probably works computer controlled radio receivers. Chicksands. On a recent visit to Britain At Poundon. near Bicester in Oxford he described to Time Out top secret lists for Cabinet intelligence chiefs. His pre· shire, a well-guarded radio station of monitored UK commercial com· 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 near est town. Two long sheds inside a Called TEXTA, these lists revealed that 32 years with GCHQ-a clear indication fenced-off compound house the listen the UK business communications were of the modern pre·eminence of SIGINT. ers and their radio sets, while outsid e Loop aerials at the Foreign Office's 'training' establishment I apparently being intercepted from east· But since the Labour government took stands one of Plessey's ' Pusher' aerials communications intelligence, at Poundon Lane, Bicester. for direction finding, and much o lhe r ern 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. Iy, 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 reo 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 intercepting communications from electronic intelligence base on behalf of Brilain'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 partnered in a worldwide antennae, can monitor the signals of Signals Orga nisation (CSO), which is Germany, were sentenced to six months electronic intelligence pact by four guerilla movements and government run by the ubiquilous GCHQ. 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. Aus~ralia and New Zealand. By a 1947 the centre of Southern Africa. They ore two RAF aircraft equipped with e1ec· Their article also identified a 'chain secret agreement, UKUSA, these five much bet·ter placed than the NSA, who, tronic intelligence equipment took off of monitoring stations from Iraq to the English·speaking nations have divided according to Winslow Peck, had to use a from a base on the Caspian seacoast of Baltic- in flagrant breach of the Geneva the monitoring of the world's communi· Pueblo type spy ship on patrol off Iran. The planes and their crew didn't convention'. The stations recorded the 8 TIME OLiT MAY 21·27 1976 -- SEVE effects when British and American air GCIIO. In 1968 t hey set up a new com record and anal yse it, army and GCHQ same for GCHO. In Germany bored craft new over the borders to trigger pany called Racal (Slough) specifically electronic warfare experts can simulate intercept operators sitting in front of off a Soviet response. These flights 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 trolling 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 anarysers at Cheltenham,' the students (Slough)'s turnover giew sixfold.