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in New Statesman Magazine
12 August 1988
from
Duncan Campbell Website
They’ve got it taped
In the booming surveillance industry they spy on whom they wish,
when they wish, protected by barriers of secrecy, fortified by
billions of pounds worth of high, high technology.
Duncan Campbell
reports from the United States on the secret Anglo-American plan for
a global electronic spy system for the 21st century capable of
listening in to most of us most of the time
American, British and Allied intelligence agencies are soon to
embark on a massive, billion-dollar expansion of their global
electronic surveillance system. According to information given
recently in secret to the US Congress, the surveillance system will
enable the agencies to monitor and analyze civilian communications
into the 21st century. Identified for the moment as Project P415,
the system will be run by the US National Security Agency (NSA). But
the intelligence agencies of many other countries will be closely
involved with the new network, including those from Britain,
Australia, Germany and Japan--and, surprisingly, the People’s
Republic of China.
New satellite stations and monitoring centers are to be built around
the world, and a chain of new satellites launched, so that NSA and
its British counterpart, the Government Communications Headquarters
(GCHQ) at Cheltenham, may keep abreast of the burgeoning
international telecommunications traffic.
The largest overseas station in the Project P415 network is the US
satellite and communications base at Menwith Hill. near
Harrogate in
Yorkshire. It is run undercover by the NSA and taps into all
Britain’s main national and international communications networks
(New Statesman, 7 August 1980). Although high technology stations
such as Menwith Hill are primarily intended to monitor international
communications, according to US experts their capability can be, and
has been, turned inwards on domestic traffic. Menwith Hill, in
particular, has been accused by a former employee of gross
corruption and the monitoring of domestic calls.
The vast international global eavesdropping network has existed
since shortly after the second world war, when the US, Britain,
Canada, Australia and New Zealand signed a secret agreement on
signals intelligence, or "sigint". It was anticipated, correctly,
that electronic monitoring of communications signals would continue
to be the largest and most important form of post-war secret
intelligence, as it had been through the war.
Although it is impossible for analysts to listen to all but a small
fraction of the billions of telephone calls, and other signals which
might contain "significant" information, a network of monitoring
stations in Britain and elsewhere is able to tap all international
and some domestic communications circuits, and sift out messages
which sound interesting. Computers automatically analyse every telex
message or data signal, and can also identify calls to, say, a
target telephone number in London, no matter from which country they
originate.
A secret listening agreement, called UKUSA (UK-USA), assigns parts
of the globe to each participating agency. GCHQ at
Cheltenham is the coordinating centre for Europe, Africa and the Soviet Union (west
of the Ural Mountains).
The NSA covers the rest of the Soviet Union and most of the
Americas. Australia--where another station in the NSA listening
network is located in the outback--co-ordinates the electronic
monitoring of the South Pacific, and South East Asia.
With 15,000 staff and a budget of over £500 million a year (even
without the planned new Zircon spy satellite), GCHQ is by far the
largest part of British intelligence. Successive UK governments have
placed high value on its eavesdropping capabilities, whether against
Russian military signals or the easier commercial and private
civilian targets.
Both the new and existing surveillance systems are highly
computerized. They rely on near total interception of international
commercial and satellite communications in order to locate the
telephone or other messages of target individuals. Last month, a US
newspaper, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, revealed that the system had
been used to target the telephone calls of a US Senator, Strom
Thurmond. The fact that Thurmond, a southern Republican and usually
a staunch supporter of the Reagan administration, is said to have
been a target has raised fears that the NSA has restored domestic,
electronic, surveillance programmes. These were originally exposed
and criticized during the Watergate investigations, and their
closure ordered by President Carter.
After talking to the NSA, Thurmond later told the Plain Dealer that
he did not believe the allegation. But Thurmond, a right-wing
Republican, may have been unwilling to rock the boat. Staff members
of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence said that staff
were "digging into it" despite the "stratospheric security
classification" of all the systems involved.
The Congressional officials were first told of the Thurmond
interception by a former employee of the Lockheed Space and Missiles
Corporation, Margaret Newsham, who now lives in Sunnyvale,
California. Newsham had originally given separate testimony and
filed a lawsuit concerning corruption and mis-spending on other US
government "black" projects. She has worked in the US and Britain
for two corporations which manufacture signal intelligence
computers, satellites and interception equipment for NSA, Ford
Aerospace and Lockheed. Citing a special Executive Order signed by
President Reagan, she told me last month that she could not and
would not discuss classified information with journalists. But
according to Washington sources (and the report in the
Plain Dealer,
she informed a US Congressman that the Thurmond interception took
place at Menwith Hill, and that she personally heard the call and
was able to pass on details.
Since then, investigators have subpoenaed other witnesses and asked
them to provide the complete plans and manuals of the ECHELON system
and related projects. The plans and blueprints are said to show that
targeting of US political figures would not occur by accident. but
was designed into the system from the start.
While working at Menwith Hill, Newsham is reported to have said that
she was able to listen through earphones to telephone calls being
monitored at the base. Other conversations that she heard were in
Russian. After leaving Menwith Hill, she continued to have access to
full details of Menwith Hill operations from a position as software
manager for more than a dozen VAX computers at Menwith which operate
the ECHELON system.
Newsham refused last month to discuss classified details of her
career, except with cleared Congressional officials. But it has been
publicly acknowledged that she worked on a large range of so-called
"black" US intelligence programmes, whose funds are concealed inside
the costs of other defense projects. She was fired from Lockheed
four years ago after complaining about the corruption, and sexual
harassment.
Lockheed claimed she had been a pook [as written] timekeeper, and
has denied her charges of corruption on "black"
projects. But the
many charges she is reported to have made--such as the use of top
secret computers for football pools, or to sell a wide range of
merchandise from their offices, and deliberate and massive
overcharging and waste by the company--are but small beer in a
continuing and wider scandal about defense procurement. Newsham’s
testimony about overcharging by contractors is now the subject of a
major congressional inquiry.
From US sources not connected with Margaret Newsham, we have
obtained for the first time a list of the major classified projects
in operation at Menwith Hill. The base currently has over 1,200
staff, more than two thirds of them Americans. Other than the
ECHELON computer network, the main projects at Menwith Hill are
code-named SILKWORTH, MOONPENNY, SIRE,
RUNWAY and STEEPLEBUSH. The
station also receives information from a satellite called BIG BIRD.
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Project SILKWORTH is, according to signals intelligence specialists,
the code-name for long-range radio monitoring from Menwith Hill
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MOONPENNY is a system for monitoring satellite communications
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RUNWAY is thought to be the control network for an eavesdropping
satellite called VORTEX, now in orbit over the Soviet Union
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The base
earlier controlled a similar series of satellites called CHALET
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The
new STEEPLEBUSH control centre appears connected with the latest and
biggest of the overhead listening satellites
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These are code-named MAGNUM, according to US intelligence sources
BIG BIRD, which is not usually connected with
Menwith Hill, is a
low-orbiting photographic reconnaissance satellite. But
investigators have worked out, from details of the clearances
necessary to know about BIG BIRD, that this satellite--and indeed,
many other satellites, variously disguised as "weather
satellites"--also carry listening equipment. One such sigint package
is said to have been aboard the doomed space shuttle Challenger,
despite its ostensibly civilian purpose.
Recently published US Department of Defense 1989 budget information
has confirmed that the Menwith Hill spy base will be the subject of
a major $26 million expansion programme. Information given to
Congress in February listed details of plans for a four-year
expansion of the main operation building and other facilities at
Menwith Hill. Although the testimony referred only to a "classified
location", the base can be identified because of references to
STEEPLEBUSH. According to this testimony, the new
STEEPLEBUSH II
project will cost $15 million between now and 1993. The expansion is
required to avoid overcrowding and "to support expanding classified
missions".
During the Watergate affair, it was revealed that NSA, in
collaboration with GCHQ, had routinely intercepted the international
communications of prominent anti-Vietnam war leaders such as Jane
Fonda and Dr Benjamin Spock. Another target was former Black Panther
leader Eldridge Cleaver. Then in the late 1970s, it was revealed
that President Carter had ordered NSA to stop obtaining "back door"
intelligence about US political figures through swapping
intelligence data with GCHQ Cheltenham.
Among important stations being developed in the new P415 network,
sources indicated, are Bude in Cornwall, mainly run by
GCHQ, Bad Aibling in Germany, and two sites in the People’s Republic of China
(which are used only for monitoring the USSR). The western
intelligence agencies have not yet resolved the question of how to
replace the recently upgraded British intelligence listening station
at Chung Hom Kok in Hong Kong (which at the moment listens to
China
itself) when the colony is handed back to China next decade.
In Australia three months ago, New Zealand Defense Minister Bob Tizard revealed that two Australasian interception stations planned
for the early 1990s will be targeted on new communications
satellites launched by third world countries such as India and
Indonesia. The new satellite spy bases are at Geraldton in northern
Australia and Blenheim, New Zealand. The similar
British spy base at Morwenstow, near Bude, Cornwall, has been continuously expanded
throughout the 1980s, including the provision of massive US analysis
computers.
If Margaret Newsham’s testimony is confirmed by the ongoing
Congressional investigation, then the NSA has been behaving
illegally under US law--unless it can prove either that Thurmond’s
call was intercepted completely accidentally, or that the highly
patriotic Senator is actually a foreign spy or terrorist. Moreover
NSA’s international phone tapping operations from
Menwith Hill and
at Morwenstow, Cornwall, can only be legal in Britain if special
warrants have been issued by the Secretary of State to specify that
American intelligence agents are persons to whom information from
intercepts must or should be given. This can not be established,
since the government has always refused to publish any details of
the targets or recipients of specific interception warrants.
When the Menwith Hill base was first set up there was no British law
controlling phone tapping, or making unauthorized interception (such
as by foreign intelligence agencies) illegal. Now there is, and
telecommunications interception by the Americans from British
territory would clearly be illegal without the appropriate warrant.
When the new Interception of Communications Act was passed in 1985,
however, it was obviously designed to make special provision for
operations like ECHELON or Project P415 to trawl all international
communications to and from Britain. A special section of the Act,
Section 3(2), allows warrants to be issued to intercept any general
type of international messages to or from Britain if this is "in the
interests of national security" or "for the purpose of safeguarding
the economic well-being of the United Kingdom". Such warrants also
allow GCHQ to tap any or all other communications on the same cables
or satellites that may have to be picked up in order to select out
the messages they want. So whether or not a British government
warrant can legally allow American agents to intercept private
British communications, there is no doubt that British law as well
as British bases have been designed to encourage rather than inhibit
the booming industry in international telecommunications
surveillance.
Both British and American domestic communications are also being
targeted and intercepted by the ECHELON network, the US
investigators have been told. The agencies are alleged to have
collaborated not only on targeting and interception, but also on the
monitoring of domestic UK communications.
Special teams from GCHQ Cheltenham have been flown in secretly in
the last few years to a computer centre in Silicon Valley near San
Francisco for training on the special computer systems that carry
out both domestic and international interception.
The centre near San Francisco has also been used to train staff from
the "Technical Department" of the People’s Liberation Army General
Staff, which is the Chinese version of GCHQ. The Department operates
two ultra-secret joint US-Chinese listening stations in the Xinjiang
Uighur Autonomous Region, close to the Soviet Siberian border.
Allegedly, such surveillance systems are only used to target Soviet
or Warsaw Pact communications signals, and those suspected of
involvement in espionage and terrorism. But those involved in
ECHELON have stressed to Congress that there are no formal controls
over who may be targeted. And I have been told that junior
intelligence staff can feed target names into the system at all
levels, without any check on their authority to do so. Witnesses
giving evidence to the Congressional inquiry have discussed whether
the Democratic presidential contender Jesse Jackson was targeted;
one source implied that he had been. Even test engineers from
manufacturing companies are able to listen in on private citizens’
communications, the inquiry was told.
But because of the special Executive Order signed by President
Reagan, US intelligence operatives who know about such politically
sensitive operations face jail sentences if they speak out--despite
the constitutional American protection of freedom of speech and of
the press. And in Britain, as we know, the government is in the
process of tightening the Official Secrets Act to make the
publication of any information from intelligence officials
automatically a crime, even if the information had already been
published, or had appeared overseas first.
Selected references:
Note: Duncan Campbell has
generously provided additional US sources of information on
electronic interception which shall be offered on this site when
available.
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1972 Winslow Peck, former NSA
analyst, Ramparts interview on NSA electronic interception:
http://jya.com/nsa-elint.htm
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1976 Duncan Campbell, "British
MP Accuses U.S. of Electronic spying," New Scientist, August
5, 1976, p. 268.
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1979 Duncan Campbell, "The
Threat of the Electronic Spies," New Statesman, February 2,
1979, pp. 140-44.
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1980 Duncan Campbell, "Society
Under Surveillance," Policing The Police, Vol. 2. (Ed: Ha.)
John Calder, London.
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1980 Duncan Campbell and Clive
Thomas, "BBC’s Trade Secrets," New Statesman, July 4, 1980,
pp. 13-14.
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1980 Duncan Campbell and Linda
Melvern, "America’s Big Ear on Europe," New Statesman, July
18, 1980, pp. 10-14.
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1981 Duncan Campbell, (Ed.) "Big
Brother Is Listening - Phone tappers and the security
state", 1st ed. Vol. 2. New Statesman, London.
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1983 Duncan Campbell, "Spy in
the Sky," New Statesman, September 9, 1983, pp. 8-9.
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1983 James Bamford, The Puzzle
Palace: A Report on America’s Most Secret Agency, London,
Penguin. Excerpts:
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Chapter 8 - Partners
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Chapter 9 - Competition
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Chapter 10 - Abyss
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1984 Duncan Campbell, The
Unsinkable Aircraft Carrier: American Military Power in
Britain, London, Michael Joseph.
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1985 Jeffrey T. Richelson and
Desmond Ball, The Ties That Bind: Intelligence Cooperation
Between the UKUSA Countries, London, Allen & Unwin.
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1986 Duncan Campbell and Patrick
Forbes, "UK’s Listening Link to Apartheid," New Statesman,
August 1, 1986, pp. 101-11.
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1986 Duncan Campbell and S.
Connor, On The Record, Michael Joseph, London.
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1987 William Burrows, Deep
Black: Space Espionage and National Security, New York,
Random House. Excerpt:
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1989 Jeffrey T. Richelson, The
U.S. Intelligence Community, New York, Ballinger. Excerpts:
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1996 Nicky Hager, Secret Power:
New Zealand’s Role In the International Spy Network, Craig
Potton, Nelson, New Zealand.
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1996 Intelligence Online report
on UKUSA cooperation:
http://www.blythe.org/Intelligence/readme/brits-usa.int45
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1997 Daily Telegraph report
"Spies Like US" on Mentwith Hill (with aerial photo) and
other commentary:
http://www.accessone.com/%7Erivero/POLITICS/ECHELON/echelon.html
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1998 Nicky Hager, Covert Action
Quarterly article on ECHELON:
http://jya.com/echelon.htm
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1998 European Parliament, STOA
report, Assessment of the Technologies of Political Control:
http://jya.com/stoa-atpc.htm
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The book excerpts provide
extensive additional sources.
The National Security Agency Web site:
http://www.nsa.gov:8080
Related US Office of Technology Assessment reports on
electronic surveillance, 1972-1996:
http://jya.com/esnoop.htm
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