Continuation of Chapter Two:
Hooked up to the spy network: The UKUSA system

A 1994 expose of the Canadian UKUSA agency called Spyworld, co-authored by a previous staff member, Mike Frost, gave the first insights into how much microwave interception is done. It described UKUSA "embassy collection" operations, where sophisticated receivers and processors are secretly transported to their countries' overseas embassies in diplomatic bags and used to monitor all manner of communications in the foreign capitals.

Since most countries' microwave networks converge on the capital city, embassy buildings are an ideal site for microwave interception. Protected by diplomatic privilege, embassies allow the interception to occur from right within the target country.< 13 > Frost said the operations particularly target microwave communications, but also other communications including car telephones and short-range radio transmissions.

According to Frost, Canadian embassy collection began in 1971 following pressure from the NSA. The NSA provided the equipment (on indefinite loan), trained the staff, told them what types of transmissions to look for on particular frequencies and at particular times of day and gave them a search list of NSA keywords. All the intelligence collected was sent to the NSA for analysis. The Canadian embassy collection was requested by the NSA to fill gaps in the United States and British embassy collection operations, which were still occurring in many capitals around the world when Frost left the CSE in 1990.

Separate sources in Australia have revealed that the DSD also engages in embassy collection. Leaks in the 1980s described installation of "extraordinarily sophisticated intercept equipment, known as Reprieve in Australia's High Commission in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea and in the embassies in Indonesia and Thailand. The operations are said to take a whole room of the embassy buildings and to be able to listen to local telephone calls at will. There is good reason to assume that these operations, too, were prompted by and supported with equipment and technical advice from the NSA and GCHQ.

Of course, when the microwave route is across one of the UKUSA countries' territory it is much easier to arrange interception. For example, it is likely that there is a GCHQ operation intercepting, and feeding through Dictionary computers, all the trans-Atlantic undersea cable communications that come ashore in Cornwall.

There are also definitely United States and possibly Canadian facilities for this type of interception. By far the most important of these is the NSA-directed Menwith Hill station in Britain. With its 22 satellite terminals and over 2 hectares of buildings, Menwith Hill is undoubtedly the largest station in the UKUSA network. In 1992 some 1200 United States personnel were based there. British researcher Duncan Campbell has described how Menwith Hill taps directly into the British Telecom microwave network, which has actually been designed with several major microwave links converging on an isolated tower connected underground into the station. The station also intercepts satellite and radio communications and is a ground station for the electronic eavesdropping satellites. Each of Menwith Hill's powerful interception and processing systems presumably has its own Dictionary computers connected into the ECHELON system.

Menwith Hill, sitting in northern England, several thousand kilometres from the Persian Gulf, was awarded the NSA's Station of the Year prize for 1991 following its role in the Gulf War. It is a station which affects people throughout the world.

In the early 1980s James Bamford uncovered some information about a worldwide NSA computer system codenamed Platform which, he wrote, "will tie together fifty-two separate computer systems used throughout the world. Focal point, or 'host environment', for the massive network will be the NSA headquarters at Fort Meade. Among those included in Platform will be the British SIGINT organisation, GCHQ.

There is little doubt that Platform is the system that links all the major UKUSA station computers in the ECHELON system. Because it involves computer-to-computer communications, the GCSB and perhaps DSD were only able to be integrated into the system in the 1990s when the intelligence and military organisations in the two countries changed over to new computer-based communications systems.

The worldwide developments, of which construction of the Waihopai station was part, were co-ordinated by the NSA as Project P415. Although most of the details remained hidden, the existence of this highly secret project targeting civilian communications was publicised in August 1988 in an article by Duncan Campbell. He described how the UKUSA countries were "soon to embark on a massive, billion-dollar expansion of their global electronic surveillance system', with "new stations and monitoring centres ... to be built around the world and a chain of new satellites launched'.

The satellite interception stations reported to be involved in P415 included the NSA's Menwith Hill station, the GCHQ's Morwenstow and Hong Kong stations and the Waihopai and Geraldton stations in the South Pacific. Other countries involved, presumably via the NSA, were said to be Japan, West Germany and, surprisingly, the People's Republic of China.

"Both new and existing surveillance systems are highly computerised," Campbell explained. "They rely on near total interception of international commercial and satellite communications in order to locate the telephone and other target messages of target individuals....

There were two components to the P415 development, the first being the new stations required to maintain worldwide interception. More striking, though, was the expansion of the NSA's ECHELON system, which now links all the Dictionary computers of all the participating countries.

The ECHELON system has created an awesome spying capacity for the United States, allowing it to monitor continuously most of the world's communications. It is an important component of its power and influence in the post-Cold War world order, and advances in computer processing technology continue to increase this capacity.

The NSA pushed for the creation of the system and has the supreme position within it. It has subsidised the allies by providing the sophisticated computer programmes used in the system, it undertakes the bulk of the interception operations and, in return, it can be assumed to have full access to all the allies' capabilities.

Since the ECHELON system was extended to cover New Zealand in the late 1980s, the GCSB's Waihopai and Tangimoana stations -- and indeed all the British, Canadian and Australian stations too -- can be seen as elements of a United States system and as serving that system. The GCSB stations provide some information for New Zealand government agencies, but the primary logic of these stations is as parts of the global network.

On 2 December 1987, when Prime Minister David Lange announced plans to build the Waihopai station, he issued a press statement explaining that the station would provide greater independence in intelligence matters: "For years there has been concern about our dependence on others for intelligence -- being hooked up to the network of others and all that implies. This government is committed to standing on its own two feet."

Lange believed the statement. Even as Prime Minister, no one had told him about the ECHELON Dictionary system and the way that the Waihopai station would fit into it. The government was not being told the truth by officials about New Zealand's most important intelligence facility and was not being told at all about ECHELON, New Zealand's most important tie into the United States intelligence system. The Waihopai station could hardly have been more "hooked up to the network of others", and to all that is implied by that connection.

The remaining chapters are as follows:

Chapter 3 The power of the Dictionary: inside ECHELON
Chapter 4 Fighting the Cold War: the rold of UKUSA
Chapter 5 The GCSB, ANZUS and a nuclear-free New Zealand
Chapter 6 Behind closed doors: what happens inside the GCSB
Chapter 7 The organisation: secret structures of the GCSB
Chapter 8 Secret squirrels: who runs the GCSB
Chapter 9 Station NZC-332: electronic eavesdropping from Tangimoana
Chapter 10 Under the radome: what happens at Waihopai
Chapter 11 The facts in the filofax: military signals intelligence missions
Chapter 12 What are the secrets? The intelligence product
Chapter 13 Who watches the watchers? Overseeing the intelligence agencies
Chapter 14 Leaving the intelligence alliance