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 (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 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 , 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 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. Inter­ the radio bomb so that the real signal Radio Moscow. wrote. estingly, the main developmenf centre can't get through- but the jamming ,CCIIO now has an estimated 5000 of Racal (Slough) is at Tewkesbury, must be done cleverly, or the bomb will monitoring operators reporting to it noticeably closer to Cheltenham than detonate before it can be defused. from bases round the world. They may is Slough. GellO also decodes considerable be tivilians, RAF personnel or embassy Another'British company to do well amounts of commercial traffic just like employees. Although the official out of the boom in electronic espionage NSA, according to a senior ex-diplomat. budget was only some £5,000,000 two is Plessey, who manufacture an aerial The results get to British companies, years ago, there is no doubt that most system for eavesdropping. One special formally or informally-'lt's bound to of GC I IQ's work is funded from else­ P\essey aerial-an array of slender posts happen'. where- in particular by the Ministry of on a 500 foot pole which can pinpoint Communications interception is Defence. All GCHO headquarters' the bearing of any signal-was originally front line of intelligence work, scientific staff are employed by the developed under a secret GCHQ con­ operators and analysts can't be Defence Ministry, and after an internal tract and codenamed 'PUSHER'. Now ceived about 'enemy' intentions. They

Inside Chicksands could be because Oticksands monitors Britain, according to former NSA 'unilateral' interceptions that they The 'Blackbird' SR71 high flying personnel is a 'nice secure place' 10 set don't want Britain to know about. reconnaissance aircraft can gather up their hardware. ~So much so that At Edzell, north of Dundee, another electronic inteUigence and photograph Britain has three extensive US elec· FLARE antenna nestles in the foothills tronic intelligence bases, one run by of the Highlands. tntercepted com· 100,000 square miles of countryside each arm of the US services. At munications are relayed back to the in an hour while flying more than 17 Chicksands, the 6950th security group US via satellite terminals and radio miles up at a speed of Mach 3. of the USAF Secunty Service main- tinks. This is the home of the Naval tain a round-the·clock watch with Security Group, the US Navy's monitor­ three shirts of 200 operators and ing branch. analYSIS, all working through the But the Army Security Agency base Ultra Secret Beginnings gigantiC FLARI:. 9 aerial installation on at Menwith Hill, near Harrogate, may a nearby hilltop. Wllh this and luxiliary be the most secret of all. Ostensibly, a GCHO's history starts at the Govern­ equipment they can monitor and mostly civilian communications relay ment Code and Cypher School in allalyse radio traffic from Ru~sja to the centre for the US Defence Department, , Bucks, and its enormous Atlantic. locatin g any transmitter of they admit that 'your government won't wartime codebreaking effort. At the interest. One of Chicksands' prime task. let us talk about anything else we do'. according to an ex-NSA serviceman from Former NSA officers suggest that peak, more than six thousand people Chicksands. is monitoring French dip- Menwith Hill - which has no FLARE worked at B1etchley decoding German 10lllatic cOllllllunications. Inside the antenna-may concentrate on inter­ signals- this was the Ultra secret that slllgie floor operations building. a large ception and analysis of telephone calls. sign over one co-ordination centre is OIicksands is also a major communi­ only emerged in detail in 1974. . France' - anot he r. 'Cachoslova kia·. cations centre on the international NSA At Hanslope Park north of Bletchley British superviSion is minimal. Apart network for cryptographic material , and Barnet, in north London, a still from an inconsequential RAF squadron codenamed CRtTTtCCOM. All intel· leader who is nominally the base com· ligence bases have special designators secret unit codenamed 'SCU-3' co­ mander, there is a room reserved for identifying them. Chicksands is USA· ordinated the monitoring and locating the British learn which Iiaises with 50, CCIlQ in Chettenham USDJ025. of enemy secret transmitters. A key Chlcksands. But theirs IS the room Every base in the UK USA pact countries closest to the entrance. and the only is linked to the network, as well as monitoring site for Ultra was Chick­ one with a door in Ihe open plan build· others who have more limited access, sands, east of Bletchley, still the im­ ing. TIlis, the former staffer suggested, such as NATO. portant US base today. During the War a series of com­ puters called Colossus were devised to solve the daily-changing key to the German 'Enigma' machine. Even now the government refuses to reveal how the Colossus machines were built, al­ though it is known that the 1940 Loughborough machines read information from paper (Communications Centrt.'l . tape at a rate five times faster than is normal today. The immense secrecy which still sur­ rounds the Bletchley operations may be due to the development of decoding GCHQ. Cheltenham . Poundon . C1Iicksands techniques of value today. Britain's !,;Cklade. • cracking of the Enigma cypher was not GCHQ. London . revealed for 30 years because electronic A . Suslo. . Monitoring and administrative sites of C;'''-eoll'h London - ...... __ versions of the Enigma cypher were GCHQ (and the Composite Signals ·"'0 If-eorC/. -"'p4,* being sold to Third World countries by o"'n Organisation). . Monitoring sites of US National European firms such as Crypto AG of Security Agency and Special Liason Office -and thus were an easy "'Other monitoring sites, SSC, lBA and target for GCHO and NSA codebreakers. Home Office. Headquarters was formed at Eastcote in the north west of London. In 1953 it moved to Cheltenham, and consolidated struggle in the early '60s, all the main affectionately known as 'Pushie', it is know only too well the shallow lies its control of Britain's communications monitoring stations are now co­ sold widely to African and Middle and public myths which remain out­ intelligence services. ordinated from Cheltenham. The total Eastern countries building up their side. For years, NSA knew and said The tradition of having the biggest cost may be as higll as £100 million. own surveillance systems. that the Vietnam war was unwinnable, and best in computing goes back to the Typical GCI 10 receivers scan the Some of the most advanced sur­ that the US was fighting the South original Colossus. On numerous oc­ radio spectrum under computer· control veillance equipment has been used Vietnamese themselves on behalf of a casions, new generations of computer and cost upwards of £80,000. The con­ recently, not to monitor Soviet satellit es, pu ppet regime. So, when Nixon ordered. equipment from the US have been de­ tracts awa rded to their suppliers are but the activities of the IRA. A few thc bombers over Hanoi, NSA staff at livered in quantity to Cheltenham cxtrcmely lucrative. Most of the money months ago, the IRA started detonating 'Ram3sum Radio Research Station' in before being 'officially' marketed in has gone to a handful of British and bon' bs by remote radio control. Bcfore -Thailand went on strike. Without NSA's Britain. With at least five major com­ Amcri~an firtllS. Racal, mentioned in con­ such a bomb is placcd, however, the electronic eye, B52 bomber losses shot puter installations, GCHO has the nection \\~th the army bribes cont rovcrsy, radiO control is tested-and if monitor­ up. electricity requirement of a medium has sold many surveillance receivers to ing stations can capture this signal, During the cold war years, it was the sized town.

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