Intelligence Agencies

The Second World War left Britain's agency GCHQ with an extensive network of sigint outposts. Many were fixed in Britain, while others were scattered around the then Empire. From stations including Bermuda, Ascension, Cyprus, Gibraltar, Iraq, Singapore, and Hong Kong, radio operators tracked Soviet and, soon, Chinese political and military developments. These stations complemented a US network which by 1960 included thousands of continuously operated interception positions. The other members of the UKUSA alliance, Australia, Canada and New Zealand contributed stations in the South Pacific and arctic regions. After the signing of the UKUSA pact, a new chain of stations began operating along the boundaries of the western sphere of influence, monitoring the signals of Soviet ground and air forces. British sigint outposts were established in Germany and, secretly in Austria and Iran. US listening posts were set up in central and southern Germany and later in Turkey, Italy and Spain. One major US sigint base - Kagnew Station at Asmara in Eritrea - was taken over from the British in 1941 and grew to become, until its closure in 1970, one of the largest intercept stations in the world. One of its more spectacular features was a tracking dish used to pass messages to the United States by reflecting them off the surface of the moon. By the mid 1960s, many of these bases featured gigantic antenna systems that could monitor every HF (High Frequency) radio message, from all angles, while simultaneously obtaining bearings that could enable the position of a transmitter to be located. Both the US Navy and the US Air Force employed global networks of this kind. The US Air Force installed 500 metre wide arrays known as FLR-9 at sites including Chicksands, England, San Vito dei Normanni in Italy, Karamursel in Turkey, the Philippines, and at Misawa, Japan. Codenamed "Iron Horse", the first FLR-9 stations came into operation in 1964. The US Navy established similar bases in the US and at Rota, Spain, Bremerhaven, Germany, Edzell, Scotland, Guam, and later in Puerto Rico, targetted on Cuba. When the United States went to war in Vietnam, Australian and New Zealand operators in Singapore, Australia and elsewhere worked directly in support of the war. Britain; as a neutral country was not supposed to be involved. In practice, however British operators at the GCHQ intercept station no UKC201 at Little Sai Wan, Hong Kong monitored and reported on the North Vietnamese air defence networks while US B52 bombers attacked Hanoi and other North Vietnamese targets. Since the end of the cold war, the history of some cold war signals intelligence operations have been declassified. At the US National Cryptologic Museum, run by NSA at its headquarters, the agency now openly acknowledges many of its cold war listening operations. It also describes the controversial use of ships and aircraft to penetrate or provoke military defences in operations that cost the lives of more than 100 of its staff. But another longstanding aspect of sigint operations remain unacknowledged. During the second world war as well as in the cold war and since, British and US intelligence agencies monitored the signals and broke the codes of allies and friends, as well as of civilians and commercial communications around the world. The diplomatic communications of every country were and are attacked. The stations and methods were the same as for military targets. Within the intelligence agencies, the civilian target was known as "ILC". ILC stood for "International Leased Carrier", and referred to the private companies or telecommunications administrations operating or administrating long range undersea cables or radio stations. Some ILC circuits were rented to governments or large companies as permanent links. The majority were used for public telegraph, telex or telephone services. Many details of the operation of the English-speaking sigint axis were revealed by two NSA defectors at a press conference held in Moscow on 6 September 1960. There, two NSA analysts, Bernon Mitchell and William Martin, told the world what NSA was doing: