Field Station Berlin - Teufelsberg

Field Station Berlin 1980s

Teufelsberg (Devil's mountain), located in west Berlin, Germany, has a most unique history. With its 375 ft (114 m) it is the highest hill in the Berlin area, and it's man-made! It is made of 12 million cubic meter rubble, from about 400,000 destroyed buildings, during the rebuilt of Berlin after the Second World War.

In the late 1950's, Allied mobile listening post, eavesdropping on East German and Soviet communications, discovered that Teufelsberg was an ideal location, with its unobstructed reception of signals from all directions. In 1961, the US Amry Security Agency (ASA) started their first Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) operations out of trucks on top of the hill. Soon after, the first buildings were constructed of what became known as Field Station Berlin (FSB).

Eavesdropping on the East

Although Teufelsberg was located in the British sector of Berlin, there was a close cooperation between  US and British intelligence. Initially operated by the ASA, the American part of the station came under control of the Army Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM) in 1977 and the National Security Agency (NSA) provided most of the personnel and equipment.

Field Station Berlin gradually grew over the next years to become one of the largest  SIGINT stations ever, with some 1500 personnel working in shifts. They lived in military barracks like Andrews Barracks or were housed in neighborhoods among the Berliners.

With its large antenna park and huge dishes in their radomes, FSB intercepted East German and Soviet radio communications, directional microwave links and satellite transmissions, and analysed different types of technical signals. If it was in the air, they got it. After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the station became useless and American and British troops abandoned Teufelsberg in 1991.

More about the Teufelsberg SIGINT station on  CCC's Field Station Teufelsberg - A Late Post Mortem (archived). The Field Station Berlin Veterans Group (FSBVG) (archived) wants to save the Teufelsberg site. The story of veteran Lew McDaniel is found in Abandoned Berlin's Teufelsberg Tale. The Berlin Brigade website lists all U.S. Barracks in Berlin (archived) and has an installation map of Teufelsberg.

There's also an interesting website of the 13th British Signal Regiment Birgelen Vets, running several intercept stations in Germany during the Cold War and US border operations in Germany with a complete description of the Iron Curtain and related operations.

From 1982 to 1985, US Army SIGINT analyst James Hall worked at Field Station Berlin. He copied a huge amount of top-secret documents and sold them to the Russians and East Germans. This is explained in the post James Hall – The Spy Within Field Station Berlin. More about the battle over radio waves, including many audio samples, is available at Cold War Signals on my website.

The Dark History Beneath Teufelsberg

Welthauptstadt Germania model
Source: German Architecture

As if the hill wasn't mysterious enough, the secret that lies beneath is just as curious: the Nazi military-technical college, designed by Albert Speer. When the Allies captured Berlin, they tried to demolish it with explosives, which turned out to be impossible. They decided to bury the massive building under a pile of rubble from destroyed Berlin.

The story of the military-technical college starts in the 1930's, when Adolf Hitler ordered architect Albert Speer to develop a new Berlinn called 'Welthauptstadt Germania' (World Capital Germania). The project included a huge Olympic stadion, a new Chancellary, an avenue of victory, a triumphal arc and other monumental architecture. Here's a video of how it would look like.

In 1937, they started with the first part of the project, the Wehrtechnische Fakultät or military-technical college. Changing priorities during the Second World War halted the project and it was never resumed. Today, there's even an association, called Berlin Unterwelten (underground), that wants to explore the remains of the elite military academy underneath the Teufelsberg.

Teufelsberg Then and Now

To have a birds-eye look on Teufelsberg, start up your Google Earth and type "Berlin Teufelsberg" in the search box. Type "Bischofsgruen Schneeberg" to fly to another one. With "Brocken Schierke", you'll jump right to the most famous former Soviet station in East Germany.

On YouTube there are several videos about Teufelsberg and how it looks today. Below three good videos to start with. The fourth video by Andy Mcloone is the story of the Brocken mountain Soviet SIGINT station, a counterpart of Teufelsberg.

Top Secret - Teufelsberg Spy Station

Inside the Ruins of Berlin's NSA Spy Station


NSA Field Station Berlin "Teufelsberg" Part 2

The Brocken - The Soviet Spy Mountain (Teufelsberg's counterpart)

Related Posts

• The Spy Within Field Station Berlin James Hall
  
• Tracking Cold War Signals FLR-9 HF-DF Elephant Cage 
• Mysterious Cold War Signals reveal their secrets
• More posts about signals intelligence

James Hall – The Spy Inside Field Station Berlin

James W Hall III

James Hall was a U.S. Army signals intelligence analyst, stationed at Field Station Berlin from 1982 to 1985. Although less known to the general public, he became one of the most prolific and most damaging spies of the Cold War.

The listening station on top of Teufelsberg intercepted and analyzed East German and Soviet signals (SIGINT) and electronic intelligence (ELINT) during the Cold War, from radio communications, microwave links, satellite transmissions to different types of technical signals. Initially operated by the U.S. Army Security Agency (ASA), the Army Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM) took over in 1977 and the National Security Agency (NSA) provided most of the personnel.

Given its strategic importance and secretive mission, the well-guarded Field Station Berlin was an important target of both the Russian state security service KGB and the East German foreign intelligence service HVA (Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung).

Field Station Berlin on top of Teufelsberg (source: INSCOM)

James Hall was 17 when he joined the U.S. Army in 1976. He was trained as a signals specialist and his first assignment was in 1977 to Det J in Schneeberg, a U.S. listening station in West Germany near the Czech border. The Schneeberg station was a detachment of the 326th ASA Company in Augsburg. In 1981 he was transferred to Berlin.

From Secrets to Cash

Working at Field Station Berlin, Hall realized he could make a lot of money by selling top secret information. In 1982 he dropped a letter in the Soviet consulate mailbox, offering his services to the Soviets. After a first covert meeting with his KGB contact, Hall started his spying career to increase his low pay, but wasn't quite happy with the cumbersome KGB tradecraft and complex agent communications schemes.

Auto Craft Shop
Source: Berlin Brigade (archived)

Already in 1979, the HVA had recruited walk-in Huseyin Yildirim, a Turkish national who proved valuable in 1980 when he started working as mechanic in the Auto Craft Shop inside U.S. Andrews Barracks Berlin. Yildirim was a very skilled mechanic, nicknamed "Der Meister" (the master) by the Army personnel, but he was even more skilled in profiling people and making money fast.

Yildirim, codename BLITZ, was the ideal man to approach people who worked at the SIGINT station and serviced their car in the Auto Craft Shop. In 1984, Sergeant Hall then 27 years old,  got acquainted with Yildirim and proved to be an extremely valuable source for the HVA. Hall now had an additional and easier source of income.

Operating under the codename PAUL, Hall sold huge amounts of highly classified information to both KGB and their HVA counterpart. Yildirim served as middleman between Hall and HVA agents, and as his courier and paymaster.

Crown Jewels for Sale

Hall compromised ELINT systems to locate and identify enemy aircraft, missiles and vehicles, revealed NSA's SIGINT targets and several top secret programs, including TROJAN, a worldwide intelligence collection and dissemination system, and CANOPY WING, the electronic warfare plans to disrupt and mislead crucial Soviet command and missile communications in the event of a war against the Eastern Bloc.

He also sold the complete National SIGINT Requirements List (NSRL) to the KGB and HVA. The crown jewels and holy grail in one. The massive 4258-page NSRL was a catalog of all NSA activities, their list of targets, and the U.S. government wishlist of intelligence and enemy capabilities they were interested in.

Hall was reassigned in 1985 to 513th Military Intelligence Brigade in Fort Monmouth, New Jersey. The KGB took over running Hall during his stay in the United States because the HVA had no agents over there. Due to Hall's problem with elaborate precautions and using dead drops, his spying was temporarily halted.

Huseyin Yildirim's entry pass
for U.S. military installations

Hall transferred back to Germany in 1986, this time to 302nd Military Intelligence Battalion (205th MI Group) in Frankfurt where he worked as chief of the SIGINT and EW (electronic warfare) section.

He resumed passing large amounts of classified SIGINT information to the HVA through his trusted courier Yildirim. Hall meticulously copied classified documents during his working hours or smuggled them out to photocopy them.

When Hall applied for an appointment as warrant officer, he was subjected to a routine background investigation. A supervising officer complained that Hall apparently spent more money than his wages could afford, but Hall told him that a deceased aunt left him a large trust of which he received $ 30,000 annually.

Hall was reassigned in 1987 to Fort Stewart, Georgia. After completing his training as warrant officer, he was assigned to the G-2 (military intelligence staff) of the 24th Infantry Division in early 1988. As a warrant officer, he now had even greater access to classified material. Yildirim had also moved to the United States in 1987, but the tide had turned for both men.

Defector vs Traitor

East German professor Manfred Severin, who was hired by the Stasi as interpreter for Hall, defected in 1988 and offered his services to the CIA. His information lead to the identification of Hall, who was put under surveillance by the FBI and Army counterintelligence for several months. The FBI moved Severin in December to Savannah, close to Fort Stewart. Severin contacted Hall to arrange a meeting with a KGB agent in a hotel. On 20 December, Hall was introduced to an FBI agent, posing as KGB agent Vladimir.

FBI mugshot

During that meeting, videotaped by the FBI, Hall believed he was talking to a genuine Soviet contact. He explained to “Vladimir” that he made a lot of money by selling secrets and bragged about his work as an agent. The FBI agent assured him that Moscow pays better than the East Germans, and Hall handed over several top secret documents in exchange for $60.000. When Hall walked out the hotel he was arrested. Yildirim was arrested one day later in Tampa.

In total, Hall had received an estimated $300.000 from the East German and Russian agents, which was actually a bargain for the HVA and KGB. His flood of documents enabled the Eastern Bloc to take countermeasures, prevent eavesdropping and adapt their strategy. An NSA official estimated that Hill caused $3 billion worth of damage to the United States.

 

Hall and Yildirim to Court

On 9 March 1989, James Hall was court-martialed and sentenced to 40 years in prison for espionage. Huseyin Yildirim was convicted on 20 July 1989 for conspiring with Hall and carrying classified intelligence to East Bloc agents. He was sentenced to life.

Hall served 22 years in Leavenworth military prison and was released in 2011. Yildirim was released after 14 years in a secret 2003 prisoner exchange with Turkey, under the condition that he would serve his sentence in Turkey. The Turkish government however immediately set him free for humanitarian reasons.

The New York Times archived the 1989 investigation of James Hall and a report on Hall's trial. Smithsonian Magazine brings the story of FBI agent Dimitry Droujinsky who posed as KGB agent Vladimir (mid-page, after Robert Lipka case). The book Seduced by Secrets - Inside the Stasi's Spy-Tech World by Kristie Macrakis has 14 detailed pages on James Hall. You can also read about James Hall at the DOD PERSEREC website.

Der Spiegel published three interviews with James Hall. Hunt for the Stasi Superstar (translation) and many photos of the FBI arrest, the follow-up interviews The Treasure from Teufelsberg (translation) and The Scope of NSA Surveillance Surprised Me (in English) with former Stasi agent Klaus Eichne. Huseyin Yildirim's side of the story was published on the 6941st Guard Battalion Berlin website (you can select your language).

The Stasi archives contained a steel container with copies of 13088 classified documents, marked Top Secret and Top Secret Umbra, sold by James Hall to the HVA. After the reunification of Germany, these documents were returned to the U.S. government, as explained in Der Spiegel's Destruction of Traces in the Office (translation).

Related Info on this Blog

More about Teufelsberg in the Field Station Berlin. The damage Hall inflicted on U.S. military and intelligence was comparable to the betrayal by John Walker, a US Navy communications specialist, who was preceded by Joseph Helmich. Both sold technical details and key lists of crypto machines.

Some argued that personnel with low income and access to highly classified documents, like James Hall, might be tempted to sell secrets for cash. However, even people with high income committed espionage, out of greed or financial problems. Besides money, the other incentives to spy are ideology (Ana Montes), compromise (Romeo spies and Swallows) and ego (Robert Hansen). 

Visit the Cold War Signals page on the website for information on signals intelligence. US Army Border Operations provides more on other intelligence operations in Germany with links to Det J Schneeberg, including many photos of the listening station.

There are several posts on legendary HVA chief Markus Wolf. In a German documentary (subtitles available), Markus Wolf talks about James Hall. Jump directly to Part 2 segment at 21:16 (enable CC Subtitles with Settings > Subtitles > Auto-translate > English).

There's also a documentary, Deckname Blitz, about Huseyin Yildirim and the James Hall spy case, which includes video footage of the actual meeting between the covert FBI agent and Hall (at 36:00). The documentary is in German, but no subtitles.

Deckname Blitz - Der Spion vom Teufelsberg

Tracking Cold War Signals

Adcock four element antenna array
WWII Naval direction finding station
(source: Frontline Ulster)

The Cold War was also a war of signals. This battle comprised chatter over radio, Morse, data and technical signals. Eavesdropping on enemy communications and analyzing their technical signals was a vital part of that battle. However, to know where those signals came from was just as important.

Directional antennas find the bearing of a signal. Early simple loop antennas had to be turned mechanically to find the signal bearing. With two or more such antennas on different locations, the target is located at the crossing of those bearings, but it was a cumbersome task. Later, double loop antennas and Adcock antenna arrays with four elements improved performance, but many more special  direction finding (DF) antennas were built to locate signals, and some were quite extraordinary.

German Wartime Research

The Wullenweber antenna array
(source: FGCRT)

Significant progress was made during the Second World War by Dr. Hans Rindfleisch, who invented the Circularly Disposed Antenna Array (CDAA). Rindfleisch also headed the Communications Research Command of the German Navy, and together with Telefunken they developed his antenna array under the codename Wullenweber.

The first Wullenweber, build in Skibsby in northern Denmark, was designed as high-frequency direction finding (HF/DF) antenna array and operated in the 6-20 MHz range. The above drawing shows, at the top, the view of the antenna array and the reflector screen wires behind them (click image to enlarge)

 

First Wullenweber at Skibsby site
(source unknown)

The antenna consisted of 40 vertical radiator elements, each supported by a wooden structure and placed in a large circle, 120 m (392 ft) in diameter. Inside that circle was a reflector screen of wires, supported by 40 poles and arranged in a smaller circle, 105 m (344 ft) in diameter.

The Foundation for German communication and related technologies (main page) has a description of the Wullenwever (original spelling), including German Naval research on Wullenwever (pdf p11-20) and the Landsberg-Lech conference (pdf) with technical details and several photos of  the Skibsby Wullenweber site.

German Technology in Soviet Hands

Many German scientists were rounded up by US and Soviet forces in the final days of the war. Both were interested in this new CDAA technology, but the Soviets were the first to start building them in 1951 with assistance of German scientists.

The Soviets eventually build 31 CDAA's of various types and called them KRUG. They were placed in Russia, Warsaw Pact countries, Mongolia, Cuba, Vietnam and Burma. These KRUG stations tracked radio communications of US and NATO reconnaissance aircraft and nuclear bombers. GlobalSecurity has info and photos on Soviet KRUG antenna arrays.

The Global U.S. Antenna Network

One of the German antenna researchers was moved to the United States to assists in the development of a CDAA. The US version of the Wullenweber was the AN/FLR-9 antenna, nicknamed "Elephant Cage". The first was built in 1962 at the RAF Chicksands base in the UK, leased by the US Air Force.

FLR-9 at USASA Field Station Augsburg, Germany (source: US Air Force ISR)

The huge FLR-9 antenna had an outer diameter of 440 m (1,443 ft) and height 37 m (121 ft). A network of eight FLR-9 was constructed in Alaska, England, Germany, Italy, Japan, Philippines, Turkey and Thailand. This network could accurately locate HF signals anywhere on Earth, to track enemy airplanes, ships or ground based transmitters, but also to follow own or friendly targets.

The US Naval Security Group operated the AN/FRD-10, also a Wullenweber antenna but smaller than the FLR-9. Its outer diameter was 263 m (863 ft). A network of sixteen FRD-10's was located at coastal lines of the Pacific and Atlantic on US mainland and Alaska, Hawai, Puerto Rico, Canada,  Panama, Japan, Spain and Scotland.

More about the Wullenweber

FLR stands for Fixed Countermeasures Receiving. FRD stands for Fixed Radio Direction-finder (see JETDS designations). More about the FLR-9 on FAS and Freedom Through Vigilance Association (USAFSS). Navy Radio has details of the AN/FRD-10. There's a report on the dismantling of the AN/FLR-9 at Misawa air base in Japan and the decommissioning of Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Alaska (video). See also locations of AN/FLR-9 antenna system at the Station Hypo website.

More on WWII direction finding at the RSS Secret Listeners website and on Frontline Ulster's WWII Aircraft Direction Finding in the UK.

The NSA video below explains the history and purpose of the FLR-9.

The Last Elephant Cage

 
The American Forces Network Pacific gave a look inside Misawa’s FLR-9, build in 1962. The antenna was demolished in 2014.

FLR-9 AFN Misawa

More on Signals

Many different signals were sent, received and analyzed during the Cold War. Below some posts on this blog about Signals Intelligence (SIGINT), but there's much more to discover...

• Mysterious Cold War signals Fascinating signals revealed
• Field Station Berlin ASA/NSA listening post
• Russia’s Modern Early Warning Systems
  
• Electronic Intelligence at NSA History of  ELINT
• More posts about signals intelligence...

Visit also the Cold War Signals page about the battle over radio waves on our website