they've got it taped

8/12/2019 They'Ve Got It Taped

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is a to p sec re t n e w g lo b a lsu rv e illa n c e sy ste m . I t c a ntap in to a b illio n c alls a y e a r inthe UK alone. Inside DuncanC am p b e ll o n h o w sp y in ge n te re d th e 2 1 st c en tu ry ...


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n the b oom ing su rveillance indu stry th eyspy on whom they w ish when they w ishpro tected by barriers o f secrecy fortifiedby billions of pounds w orth of h igh h ightechnology. D uncan C am pbell reportsfrom the U nited States on the secretAnglo-Am erican plan for a globalelectronic spy system for the 21stcentury capable of listening in to m ost of usm ost of the tim e

merican, British and Alliedintelligenceagencies are soon to embark on amassive, billion-dollar expansion oftheir global electronic surveillancesystem. According to informationgiven recently in secret to the US Congress, thesurveillance system willenable the agencies tomonitor and analyse civilian communicationsinto the 21st century. Identified for the momentas Project P415, the system willbe run by theUS National Security Agency (NSA). But theintelligence agencies of many other countrieswill be closely involved with the new network,including those from Britain, Australia, Ger-many and Japan-and, surprisingly, thePeople's Republic ofChina.New satellite stations and monitoring centresare to be built around the world, and a chain ofnew satellites launched, so that NSA and itsBritish counterpart, the Government Commu-nications Headquarters (GCHQ) at Chelten-ham, may keep abreast ofthe burgeoning inter-national telecommunications traffic.The largest overseas station in the ProjectP415 network is the US satellite and communi-cations base at Menwith Hill,near Harrogate inYorkshire. It is run undercover by the NSA andtaps into all Britain's main national and interna-tional communications networks N ew S ta te-sm n 7 August 1980). Although high techno-logy stations such as Menwith Hillare primarilyintended to monitor international communica-

tions, according to US experts their capabilitycan be, and has been, turned inwards ondomestic traffic. Menwith Hill, inparticular, hasbeen accused by a former employee of grosscorruption and the monitoring ofdomestic calls.The vast international global eavesdroppingnetwork has existed since shortly after thesecond world war, when the US, Britain, Can-ada, Australia and New Zealand signed a secretagreement on signals intelligence, or sigint . Itwas anticipated, correctly, that electronic moni-toring ofcommunications signalswould continue. to be the largest and most important form ofpost-war secret intelligence, as it had beenthrough the war.Although it is impossible for analysts to listento all but a small fraction of the billions oftelephone calls, and other signals which mightcontain significant information, a network ofmonitoring stations in Britain and elsewhere isable to tap all international and some domesticcommunications circuits, and sift out messageswhich sound interesting. Computers automa-tically analyse every telex message or datasignal, and can also identify calls to, say, a targettelephone number in London, no matter fromwhich country they originate.A secret listening agreement, called UKUSA(UK-USA), assigns parts of the globe to eachparticipating agency. GCHQ at Cheltenham isthe co-ordinating centre for Europe, Africa andthe Soviet Union (west of the Ural Mountains).


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g and waste by the company-are but smalleer in a continuing and wider scandal aboutfence procurement. Newsham's testimonybout overcharging by contractors is now thebject ofa major congressional inquiry.From US sources not connected with Marga-t Newsham, we have obtained for the firstme a list of the major classified projects ineration at Menwith Hill. The base currentlyas over 1,200 staff, more than two thirds ofem Americans. Other than the ECHELONomputer network, the main projects at Men-ith Hill are code-named SILKWORTH,OONPENNY, SIRE, RUNWAY andEEPLEBUSH. The station also receives in-mation from a satellite calledBIG BIRD.Project SILKWORTH is, according to signalstelligence specialists, the code-name for long-nge radio monitoring from Menwith Hill.ONPENNY is a system for monitoring satel-te communications; RUNWAYis thought to bee control network for an eavesdropping satel-te called VORTEX, now in orbit over theoviet Union. The base earlier controlled amilar series of satellites called CHALET. Thew STEEPLEBUSH control centre appears

onnected with the latest and biggest of theverhead listening satellites. These are code-ed MAGNUM, according to US intelligenceBIG BIRD, which is not usually connectedith Menwith Hill, is a low-orbiting photo-raphic reconnaissance satellite. But inve-tigators have worked out, from details of theearances necessary to know about BIG BIRD,hat this satellite-and indeed, many othertellites, variously disguised as weather satel-ites -also carry listening equipment. One

uch sigint package is said to have been aboardhe doomed space shuttle Challenger, despiteostensibly civilianpurpose.Recently published US Department offense 1989 budget information has confirmedat the Menwith Hillspy base willbe the subjecta major 26 million expansion programme.nformation given to Congress in Februarysted details ofplans for a four-year expansion ofe main operation buildingand other facilities atnwith Hill. Although the testimony referrednly to a classified location , the base can beentified because of references to STEEPLE-USH. According to this testimony, the newTEEPLEBUSH II project will cost 15 millionetween now and 1993. The expansion is re-uired to avoid overcrowding and to supportanding classified missions .During the Watergate affair, it was revealed

that NSA, in collaboration with GCHQ, hadroutinely intercepted the international commu-nications ofprominent anti-Vietnam war leaderssuch as Iane Fonda and Dr Benjamin Spock.Another target was former Black Panther leaderEldridge Cleaver. Then in the late 1970s, it wasrevealed that President Carter had orderedNSA to stop obtaining back door intelligenceabout US political figures through swapping in-telligence data with GCHQ Cheltenham.Among important stations being developed inthe new P415 network, sources indicated, areBude in Cornwall, mainly run by GCHQ, BadAibling in Germany, and two sites in thePeople's Republic ofChina (which are used onlyfor monitoring the USSR). The western intelli-gence agencies have not yet resolved the ques-tion of how to replace the recently upgradedBritish intelligence listening station at ChungHom Kok in Hong Kong (which at the momentlistens to China itself) when the colony is handedback to China next decade.In Australia three months ago, New ZealandDefence Minister Bob Tizard revealed that twoAustralasian interception stations planned for

the early 1990s willbe targeted onnew commu-

nications satellites launched by third world coun-tries such as India and Indonesia. The newsatellite spy bases are at Geraldton in northernAustralia and Blenheim, New Zealand. The simi-lar British spy base at Morwenstow, near Bude,Cornwall, has been continuously expandedthroughout the 1980s, including the provision ofmassive US analysis computers.If Margaret Newsham's testimony is con-firmed by the ongoing Congressional investiga-tion, then the NSA has been behaving illegallyunder US law-unless it can prove either thatThurmond's call was intercepted completelyaccidentally, or that the highly patriotic Senatoris actually a foreign spy or terrorist. MoreoverNSA's international phone tapping operationsfrom Menwith Hilland at Morwenstow, Corn-wall, can only be legal in Britain if special war-rants have been issued bythe Secretary ofStateto specify that American intelligence agents arepersons to whom information from interceptsmust or should be given. This can not be establ-ished, since the government has always refusedto publish any details ofthe targets or recipientsofspecific interception warrants.When the Menwith Hillbase was first set upthere was no British law controlling phone tap-ping, or making unauthorised interception (suchas by foreign intelligence agenciesjillegal. Nowthere is, and telecommunications interceptionby the Americans from British territory would

clearly be illegal without the appropriate war-rant.When the new Interception of Communica-tions Act was passed in 1985, however, it wasobviously designed to make special provision foroperations like ECHELON or Project P415 totrawl all international communications to andfrom Britain. A special section of the Act, Sec-tion 3(2), allows warrants to be issued to inter-cept any general type of international messages

to or from Britain if this is in the interests ofnational security or for the purpose of safe-guarding the economic well-being of the UnitedKingdom . Such warrants also allow GCHQ totap any or allother communications onthe samecables or satellites that may have to be picked upin order to select out the messages they want.So whether or not a British government warrantcan legally allow American agents to interceptprivate British communications, there is nodoubt that British law as well as British baseshave been designed to encourage rather thaninhibit the booming industry ininternational tele-communications surveillance.Both British and American domestic commu-nications are also being targeted and interceptedby the ECHELON network, the US inve-stigators have been told. The agencies are al-leged to have collaborated not only on targetingand interception, but also on the monitoring ofdomestic UK communications.Special teams from GCHQ Cheltenham havebeen flown in secretly in the last few years to acomputer centre inSiliconValleynear San Fran-cisco for training on the special computersystems that carry out both domestic and inter-national interception.The centre near San Francisco has also beenused to train staff from the Technical Depart-ment of the People's Liberation Army GeneralStaff, which is the Chinese version of GCHQ.The Department operates two ultra-secret jointUS-Chinese listening stations in the XinjiangUighur Autonomous Region, close to the SovietSiberian border. Allegedly, such surveillancesystems are only used to target Soviet or War-saw Pact communications signals, and thosesuspected of involvement in espionage and ter-rorism. But those involved in ECHELON havestressed to Congress that there are no formalcontrols over who may be targeted. And I havebeen told that junior intelligence staff can feedtarget names into the system at all levels,without any check on their authority to do so.Witnesses givingevidence to the Congressionalinquiry have discussed whether the Democraticpresidential contender Iesse Iackson was tar-geted; one source implied that he had been.Even test engineers frommanufacturing compa-nies are able to listen in on private citizens'communications, the inquiry was told.But because of the special Executive Ordersigned by President Reagan, US intelligenceoperatives who know about such politically sen-sitive operations facejail sentences ifthey speakout-despite the constitutional American pro-tection of freedom of speech and of the press.And inBritain, as we know, the government isinthe process oftightening the OfficialSecrets Actto make the publication of any information fromintelligence officials automatically a crime, evenifthe information had already been published, orhad appeared overseas first.

Specia l team s from G HQ heltenham havebeen flow n in secre tly to a com pu ter cen tre nearSan rancisco for tra in ing on com pu ter system sth at carry ou t dom estic an d in terna tion alinterception

they've got it taped

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