The Numbers Station Movie

The new movie The Numbers Station, starring John Cusack and Malin Akerman, will be released in April. When Black Ops agent Emerson (John Cusack) is put aside, he's reassigned to a seemingly boring job. He should protect a remote CIA shortwave numbers station.

The station sends encrypted numbers messages through shortwave radio to agents in the field. Katherine (Malin Akerman) works at the station and is responsible for encrypting and announcing the messages over radio. What looked like a dull job turns into a nightmare when the station is overrun and both have to fight for their life. Meanwhile, they discover that a series of messages has been sent to start a series of assassination.

To the layman, the story line might sound like absurd spy fiction. The truth, however, although seemingly less spectacular, is just as scary. Numbers Stations have been around since the Second World War and their use has grown exponential during the Cold War. They are more than real. The movie obviously is fiction and doesn't depict things very accurately, but I'm glad so see a movie with the numbers station in it.

For those who think the Cold War is far behind us, think again! These stations still broadcast today in English, Russian, Chinese, Spanish and many other languages. The messages are destined to Intelligence personnel in foreign countries, Special Ops teams behind enemy lines, sleeper agents and...who knows. Several spies who received their operational instructions through numbers stations have been caught and convicted... also very recently.

Some believe that such shortwave espionage broadcasts are a thing of the past. However, these broadcasts have nothing but advantages. The operational messages are converted into numbers and encrypted before they are sent over shortwave radio. The shortwave broadcast travels around the world and no one can tell who is listening to them.

 

Anyone with a small commercial shortwave radio can receive these messages and decrypt them manually with a unique (mathematically unbreakable) one-time pad. No compromising equipment to be carried by the agent, no insecure communications channels to be used, unbreakable encryption. And even when all telephone networks, Internet and satellite communications are down or unavailable, numbers messages still arrive. It's the ideal one-way method to send instructions.

On my website you can learn more about Numbers Stations, and also check out my one-time pad page which explains how such numbers messages are composed and encrypted. Some very recent U.S. spy cases are documented in the paper Cuban Agent Communications. On this blog are several posts, related to numbers stations and spy cases. More about the movie at the Internet Movie Database.

The Numbers Station Movie Trailer 2013

Lincolnshire Poacher Off Air

After decades of broadcasting, the Lincolnshire Poacher numbers station (E3 voice) has gone off-air. Numbers stations are used by intelligence agencies to transmit encrypted messages to agents in foreign countries. These shortwave stations send streams of numbers or letters by Morse or voice.

The Lincolnshire Poacher is probably the best know numbers station ever. Nicknamed after the English folk song that is used as introduction signal, each of its transmissions starts with repeating the melody and a call sign group, followed by a message of exactly 200 groups of five numbers, spoken by an electronic English-accented female voice. Every single day, each hour, from 1200 to 2200 UTC on different frequencies.

With its transmissions in voice and on such a regular basis, it was easy to capture with a small shortwave radio. The station apparently transmits from the RAF Akrotiri basis in Cyprus and is believed to be operated by the British Secret Intelligence Service. The reason for fixed number of 200 groups is probably that they always send numbers to keep the lines active and ready for use when required, and opponents who monitor the station won't notice any difference when message traffic changes or increases.

The station is inactive since the end of June 2008 and whether the station will reappear is unknown. It's Asian twin station, the Cherry Ripe has also gone off-air. I encourage the readers to help tracking the station and hopefully find out when and on which frequencies it comes back. Although a decrease of active stations is noticed since the end of the Cold War, intelligence work is far from decreasing in the current global situation, and numbers stations are still active and useful in some circumstances. The Lincolnshire Poacher is a true monument of Cold War spy stations and let's hope this mysterious station will get active again.

On my website you can find more information about these mysterious numbers stations, listen to some recordings and visit additional links. Download the BBC program 'Tracking the Lincolnshire Poacher' about numbers stations on Simon Masons Shortwave Espionage (archived page).

For those who want to help tracking the Lincolnshire Poacher, it was received very clear across Europe and the Middle-East. Its last known broadcast schedule was each day from 1200 to 2200 UTC on the following shortwave frequencies in Khz: 5422 - 5746 - 6485 - 6900 - 6959 - 7337 - 7755 - 8464 - 9251 - 10426 - 11545 - 12603 - 13375 - 14487 - 15682 - 16084

Update: it's reported that the Cherry Ripe is still in the air. Nothing heard of the LP for now.

Spies and Numbers - The Kendall Myers Case

On June 5, 2009 the US Department of Justice announced that US State Department official Walter Kendall Myers and his wife Gwendolyn Steingraber Myers were arrested on charges of espionage for the Cuban government for nearly 30 years. Myers, now retired, worked at the Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR). He held a Top Secret security clearance and had daily access to classified information. This is without a doubt a most damaging spy case.

He and his wife acknowledged having received encrypted messages from Cuban Intelligence via a shortwave radio they possessed. The Columbia State District Court indictment stated that "Cuban intelligence broadcasts encrypted shortwave radio messages in Morse Code or by a voice reading numbers" and also that "It was part of the conspiracy that Cuban Intelligence would and did broadcast shortwave messages in Morse Code which were receive by Kendall Myers". Cryptome published the State Court indictment (3.3 MB zip file) which contains sections describing the numbers station.

Kendall Myers and
Gwendolyn Steingraber

This case once again confirms that the mysterious numbers stations are indeed used by Intelligence agencies to communicate with their agents. The streams of numbers or letters are sent by powerful shortwave transmitters in Morse or by voice. Although there were more numbers stations in the Cold Ware era, many are still very active and, not surprisingly, some of them are Cuban.

Radio amateurs monitor these broadcasts and they sometimes give nicknames to stations, according to the introduction phrase. The Cuban Spanish Lady "Attencion", described at Simon Mason's Shortwave Espionage pages, is one of them. The Attencion station is still active to date, as you can hear at the Shortwave Radio Audio Archive.

Although no government or legal broadcaster has ever acknowledged the existence of numbers stations or admitted any involvement with these stations, the official court documents again show clearly that these stations are indeed used by intelligence services to send secret messages. And still, every day, numbers messages are transmitted all over the world. Who's listening to them? If you want to learn more about the mysterious numbers stations, what they are and how they operate, visit the Numbers Stations page on my website.

More about the Myers case is found on the US DOJ website. The FBI affidavit (pdf) on the Ana Belen Montes case, a Cuban agent caugth in 2001, is also published. It describs in detail how she received and deciphered numbers messages. And as a bonus, a video of the  Stasi Speech and Morse Generator, used by the East German Ministerium für Staatssicherheit and the Attencion station. Update: In november Tom Diaz wrote a good two-part post called "Spies Like Them" on the Myers case. Read Part One and Part Two on his Fairly Civil weblog.

True Spies SPYSCAPE - Spycatcher is an interview with spycatcher Robert Booth who identified Kendall Myers as the spy inside the INR. Visit their SPYSCAPE page for more espionage podcasts.

Read my Cuban Agent Communications (pdf) to learn more about three Cuban spy cases, including Myers, and how their communications security was compromised. Based on official FBI documents and court papers on these cases.

Update July 16, 2010: The US Department of Justice announced that Walter Kendall Myers is sentenced to life imprisonment without parole and that Gwendolyn Steingraber Myers is sentenced to 81 months in prison, for their 30 years spying carreer and for passing highly-classified U.S. national defense information to the Cuban Intelligence.

Cuban Spies in US Government (Declassified Spy Stories)

Martha Peterson and TRIGON

Martha Peterson on her
1975 Russian driver license

The story of CIA operations officer Martha Peterson Shogi and her work related to Soviet spy Aleksandr Ogorodnik is quite remarkable and also sheds some light on how the two communicated in Moscow.

Martha 'Marti' Peterson, née Denny, met her first husband John Peterson at Drew University and married him in 1969. John enlisted as Green Beret to serve in Vietnam and was later hired by the Central Intelligence Service for covert operations in Laos. In 1971, Martha and John travelled to Laos, where John was killed one year later in a helicopter crash during a mission in Laos.

 

The Source Inside

In 1972, the CIA recruited Aleksandr Ogorodnik, a Soviet diplomat at the Soviet embassy in Bogota, Colombia. He was given the codename TRIGON. Ogorodnik provided the CIA with communications between Soviet ambassadors in South America, giving the CIA an insight in Soviet foreign politics. In 1974 he was recalled to Moscow to work at the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs. His new job provided him access to communications and reports of Soviet ambassadors from all over the world. The CIA struck gold.

Aleksandr Ogorodnik

Before he returned to Moscow, the CIA provided him with a pen with miniature camera to photograph documents, a schedule to make dead drops, special carbon paper for invisible writing and trained him in the use of these materials. Ogorodnik also insisted on having a suicide pill, to use in case he got caught. CIA provided him with such so-called L-pill, concealed in a pen.

Martha Peterson returned to the Washington after her husband's death and applied for a job at the CIA. She was hired as CIA operations officer and agreed to be sent to Moscow. She received operational training and took a Russian language course. Peterson arrived in Moscow in November 1975.

Marti at the Front Line

 

At the age of 30 she became the first ever female CIA officer to be stationed in Moscow and was now responsible for the exchange of communications and spy items with TRIGON. Moscow was what is called a denied area, a term used by intelligence for a hostile area where conducting operations is extremely difficult due to heavy surveillance.

Peterson had an important advantage over here male CIA colleagues. The Soviet Intelligence Service did not believe that an American female would be a CIA officer and assumed that she was a low-level clerk. Peterson was therefore never under surveillance and, in contrary to other CIA officers, could travel around Moscow without being followed.

Peterson never met TRIGON in person. He delivered photographed documents and messages through pre-arranged dead drops, mostly in parks. During such operations, Peterson always wore an SRR-100 surveillance receiver to intercept and detect KGB surveillance communications (see also videos below).

After extensive surveillance detection runs, she collected the content of the dead drops, at the same time supplying him with a new pen-camera with film, instructions and one-time pad duplicates, through that same dead drop, which he in turn collected later on. TRIGON used the one-time pads to decrypt messages that he received trough CIA numbers station broadcasts from West Germany.

TRIGON Disappears

In early 1977, the CIA started worrying about the quality of the material that TRIGON provided and grew concerned about his security. Eventually, on June 26, TRIGON failed to retrieve a dead drop and there was no more communications. TRIGON neither showed up after a numbers station broadcast, instructing him to meet at a pre-arranged location on July 14.

In the evening of July 15, after the usual surveillance detection runs, Peterson arrived at the Krasnoluzhskiy railroad bridge over the Moscow river, near Lenin Central Stadium. At 2230 hours she placed a dead drop package, concealed as a hollow piece of concrete, in a niche in one of the bridge’s towers. As soon as she walked out of the tower, she was grabbed by three men who immediately strip-searched her, took photos and put her in a van that drove straight to Lubyanka prison in KGB headquarters.

KGB photo of Martha Peterson's apprehension at the Krasnoluzhskiy bridge

Martha Peterson during the interrogation at Lubyanka prison

Peterson's arrival for interrogation was filmed (see video at 48:58). She was interrogated while all items from the dead drop package and her SRR-100 receiver were displayed in front of her.

The U.S. Consul was summoned to Lubyanka prison to explain who she was and what she was doing. The KGB had no other choice than to release Peterson because she had a diplomatic status as vice consul (which of course was a cover for her CIA work). She was returned to the U.S. embassy and flown to Washington the next day. Declared persona non grata, Martha Peterson would never return to Russia.

The displayed espionage items, retrieved from the dead drop, and the SRR-100 receiver

In 1978, the Soviets released the story in the Izvestia newspaper, and the heavily publicised spy case also ended up in U.S. press. The Soviets alleged that Peterson smuggled poison to kill a Soviet citizen that interfered with a spy's criminal activities (see Washington Post archive June 13, June 15 and June 21, 1978). These accusations at the height of the Cold War were later proven false by the KGB itself.

The Downfall of TRIGON

The fate of Aleksandr Ogorodnik was unknown until the Soviets aired the 1984 TV series TASS Is Authorized to Declare. Its script was almost a copy of TRIGON’s story. In that movie, the spy committed suicide during interrogation with a pill from his pen. KGB accounts confirmed that Ogorodnik was arrested a month before Peterson got caught. During interrogation, he pretended to write a confession, took the special pen and quickly used the L-pill.

However, even today accounts vary on what actually happened to Ogorodnik and some even believe that he was killed by the KGB. We will probably never know the real story. The CIA believes that Karl Koecher, an agent of the Czechoslovak intelligence service StB that infiltrated the CIA as translator and analyst, betrayed TRIGON to the Soviets.

Martha Peterson continued to work as CIA officer in operations, including 10 years of foreign assignments, married her second husband Joseph Shogi in 1978 and retired in 2003 after a distinguished 32-year career in the Agency. 

The Veteran Tells Her Story

Find at Amazon

Peterson wrote The Widow Spy. The book is a fascinating personal and detailed account of her time in Laos, how she joined the CIA and her work as CIA officer in Moscow. I can highly recommend the book. More at her website Widow Spy.

Eight years after its release, a Russian version of her book was released in October, 2020. Find the Russian version at Labirint (translation).

The CIA published a short Featured Story on TRIGON. CNN's DECLASSIFIED page tells how she revealed her secret spy life to her kids, including several images of her Moscow era. They also aired Trigon: The KGB Chess Game (see below).

The Spy Museum published the podcast Caught by the KGB where Martha Peterson tells about how she was captured by the KGB. She also talks about her life in Moscow in the SPY: The Exhibit video. An account of Peterson's arrest is found at the The Espionage History Archive which also has the Russian view on the death of Aleksandr Ogorodnik.

The first female CIA officer in Cold War Moscow, is the first part of the Cold War Conversions two-part interview with Marti Peterson. where she tells about her life in Laos with het husband who worked for the CIA, why she returned to the U.S. In part two, Arrested by the KGB and taken to the Lubyanka prison, she tells the harrowing story of exchanging dead drops with TRIGON, how she was caught by the KGB and taken to the notorious Lubyanka Prison in Moscow for interrogation.

More about TRIGON's communications by Andrei Sinelnikov (translation) and there's also the Russian documentary Trianon. Encryption from Beyond.

More information about the equipment, used in this spy case, is found at the Crypto Museum's Martha Peterson page. Numbers-station.com published TRIGON Numbers Station and on my website there's more on number stations and use of one-time pads.

Declassified Spy Stories - Trigon: KGB Chess Game

Below her fascinating talk about her time in Moscow as case officer with many details on TRIGON. Highly recommended!

Meet the Author: Martha D. Peterson at Darien Library

 

Former CIA Chief of Disguise Jonna Mendez explains some of the tradecraft, used to mislead KGB surveillance in denied areas like Moscow. In the video she also explains the SRR-100 and the pen with suicide pill, used by TRIGON.

Former CIA Chief of Disguise Breaks Down Cold War Spy Gadgets

Mysterious Cold War Signals

ASA SIGINT truck at Czech border
Source: ASA Det J Schneeberg Vets

An important part of the Cold War was fought over radio waves and all sorts of radio signals filled the aether. A shortwave or VHF receiver with a good antenna was, and still is, all you need to discover innumerable signals. Of course, these signals also caught the attention of both radio amateurs and intelligence organisations.

 

Signals intelligence (SIGINT) comprises communications intelligence (COMINT) and electronic intelligence (ELINT). The latter is the interception and analysis of various technical signals such as weapons systems, navigation and radar. ELINT was an important part of the Cold War and is today still an indispensable part of modern intelligence gathering and warfare.

The secrets behind the signals were often revealed, either by ELINT or HUMINT (Human Intelligence i.e. espionage). However, some signals remained unidentified for decades and even rose to the stardom of mysterious Cold War signals. Speculation about their purpose fueled the paranoia of that era. Occupying certain frequencies for use in case of war, or the notorious Dead Hand autonomous launch system for nuclear missiles that would initiate a launch when the mysterious signal interrupted. Eerie, but only speculations.

Tracking Nukes

One of those mysterious signals was nicknamed Russian Woodpecker, with its characteristic repetitive tapping noise. The Woodpecker's annoying high-power signal - an estimated 10 Megawatt - switched between different frequencies and disrupted legitimate HF signals (3-30 MHz) from utility and amateur communications across the world. The signal first appeared in 1976 and continued until 1986. Only after the fall of the Soviet Union it was confirmed that the signal came from an over-the-horizon (OTH) radar, part of Soviet early warning system for  ICBMs (intercontinental ballistic missiles, i.e.nukes).

Receiver antennas Chernobyl-2 site from the Duga-1 (source: Ingmar Runge)

The Soviet Duga-1 OTH (Rus. Дуга-1 ЗГРЛС) comprised two military sites in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR). The Liubech-1 transmitter site near Kloniv, and 50 km southwest the Chernobyl-2 receiver site near Chernobyl. Both transmitter site and receiver site each had two giant antennas. The huge antenna for the lower HF frequencies (right on photo) was 450 m (1476 ft) wide and 150 m (492 ft) high. The "small" antenna for the higher HF frequencies (left) was 250 m (820 ft) wide and 90 m (295 ft) high.

Duga-1 became operational in 1976 and was directed over Greenland towards North America. The Chernobyl-2 site was codenamed STEEL YARD by Western military intelligence, who apparently managed to photograph the site during the Cold War.

Coverage Duga-1, 2 and N radars
(Earth's northerly top view)

The first experimental OTH radar, called Duga-N or Duga (no number) was located in Ukraine near Mykolaiv at the Black Sea and directed towards China. Duga-N became operational in 1972.

The Duga-2 radar was located in the far east of the USSR, in the region Komsomolsk-on-Amur, with the transmitter in Lian and receiver in Bol'shaya Kartel, 50 km southeast of Lian. Duga-2 was directed over the North Pole towards Canada and North America. Note that the map shows the approximate coverage of the radars, not necessarily the actual reach, which depended on various conditions.

The Duga was designed to track ICBMs at 6-10.000 km (3400-6200 mi) and aircraft up to 3000 km (1865 mi). The actual range depended on the ionospheric conditions. They operated between 5 and 28 MHz, right on HF band (3-30 MHz), causing the strong interference. The huge antennas were phased array antennas where the beam could be directed electronically without any moving parts. The received signals were processed digitally.

 

Peeking Beyond the Horizon 

 

Most radar waves (30 MHz up to 300 GHz) go straight ahead. Radar therefore works line-of-sight (LOS) and the curvature of the Earth limits its range. You can't look beyond the horizon, only above it. If the Duga with its 150 m (492 ft) high antenna was a normal LOS radar, it's horizon was a mere 44 Km (27 mi) away, since the distance to its horizon in kilometer = √ 13 x 150 m (for miles use 1.5 x ft).

Therefore, the further an ICBM or nuclear bomber is, the higher it must fly or the closer it must get to become visible above the radar's horizon, and that's way too long after its launch. LOS radar was therefore insufficient to provide early warning in case of an attack against the Soviet Union.

The solution to this problem was the over-the-horizon radar station. In Russian, Загоризо́нтная радиолокационная станция (ЗГРЛС) i.e. Zagorizóntnaya radiolokatsionnaya stantsiya (ZGRLS).

Over-the-horizon radar principle

Over-the-horizon (OTH) radar transmits a powerful HF signal towards the ionosphere. Depending on the angle of the signal, the ionosphere reflects the signal back to Earth over a long distance, a so-called skip (hence the name Duga, Russian for arc) and can also reflect the signal from Earth back to the ionosphere multiple skips in a zigzag pattern, traveling huge distances around Earth.

When the OTH signal hits a moving ICBM, the reflected signal creates a small frequency shift (Doppler effect) as any radar does. However, only a very small portion, called backscatter, is reflected back by the ionosphere and effectively received by the OTH station. Complex digital processing is required to extract and analyse the very weak signal and the effect of the ionosphere and skips on the backscatter. Its accuracy and resolution are low, but the system works good enough for a raw early warning.

Disaster and Downfall of Duga- 1 

 

Noteworthy is that the Duga-1 receiver site Chernobyl-2 is located only 10 km (6 mi) from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. According to Vladimir Musiyets, former Commander Chernobyl-2, the installation was damaged during the 1986 Chernobyl disaster and never became operational again. The site now lays within the 30 km (18 mi) Chernobyl exclusion zone. Some sources state that the Woodpecker continued broadcasting until 1989. These reportings possibly refer to other OTH sites.

On the history of over-the-horizon radar (translation) by Yuri Davydov, chief designer OTH radar, details the history and technical aspects of the Duga radars. The Ukrainian Chernobyl -2: the secret twin of the city Chernobyl (translation) from the exclusion zone website has a short history and photos. Global Security also has details on the Duga stations. Radartutorial explains phased array antennas for radar, but if you're not that technical, watch Duga Radar - How it Works.

 

Chernobyl 35 Years Later has excellent photos of the Duga-1 antenna, the control station and its consoles. To get a good sense of the sheer size of the Duga-1 antennas, visit English Russia and check the 14th photo with people underneath the antenna. Many more photos at Lost Places and Egorka's gallery.

Note: The following video mistakenly states "Duga-3 alias Chernobyl 2". The Chernobyl-2 receiver in this video was, together with the Liubech-1 transmitter, part of Duga-1. There was never a Duga-3.

Chernobyl: The Duga radar (Russian Woodpecker)

 

Note: The BBC video mistakenly translated site "Chernobyl-2" into system "Duga-2", although Sergei Babakov in the interview correctly said "Чернобыль-2", which is part of Duga-1. Duga-2 was in the Far East, 9000 Km from Chernobyl. The video title should be Duga-1.

 

The secret Soviet radar hidden in Chernobyl’s shadow - BBC REEL

The mistakes about the different Duga radars are understandable, as each Duga had two separate sites, one transmitter and one receiver site, and the site numbers didn't match the unrelated Duga number.

 
Substitutes for the Duga System

By the mid-1980s it became clear that the computer technology, used for the Duga phased array radars, was insufficient. However, the 1972 Око program for early warning satellites resulted in the first-generation US-K and US-KS satellites, operational in 1982 and the Око-1 program with second generation УС-КMO satellites in 1991. From 2015 on, these satellites were replaced by satellites of the Unified Space Detection System and Combat Control system.

 

In 2005 the Russian Federation also started to build a new generation of phased array radars for early warning, called Voronezh. Seven of these radars are already operational across Russia. More detailed info at Russia's Modern Early Warning Systems.

Buzzing Air and Messages for Spies

Another famous mysterious Soviet signal is known under its call-sign UVB-76. The station, nicknamed The Buzzer, started in 1982 with a two-seconds beep tone and switched after a decade of operation to a monotonous 25 buzz tones per minute, every single day. The station was extensively observed by radio amateurs (without doubt an equally monotonous job) and only a handful of voice conversations were recorded in its 28 years of operation.

Its call-sign UVB-76 was revealed during one of its rare voice conversations. The purpose of The Buzzer remains unknown until today. UVB-76 stopped broadcasting in August 2010 and remains silent since then. The transmitter site is located near Povarovo, 40 km (25 mi) north-west of Moscow, and now appears abandoned.

The UVB-76 "Buzzer" at Numbers Stations Research and Information Center, including some rare voice recordings. Photos of the abandoned alleged Buzzer site are published on English Russia.

Another true Cold War icon are the notorious Numbers stations. The stations broadcast streams of numbers or letters in voice or Morse and are used by intelligence agencies to communicate with their agents, operating abroad. Although the Cold War officially ended, there are still many active numbers stations and new keep popping up.

 

Further Information about SIGINT on the Blog

• Tracking Cold War Signals Wullenweber FLR-9 antenna
• 3 Second from World War 3 Early warning going wrong 
• Russia's Modern Early Warning Systems
  
• OXCART and ELINT Research Stealth for A-12 and SR-71
• Silent Warriors, USAF C-130 downing in Soviet airspace
• USS Pueblo Incident Capture SIGINT ship by North Korea
• Numbers Stations and many related spy cases on the blog
  
• More posts about signals intelligence
  
  

More About SIGINT on the Website

Cold War Signals details the SIGINT battle during the Cold War. You can listen to many audio samples of signals from spy transmitter and international shortwave broadcast stations.

Numbers Stations explains the origins of these broadcasts, their purpose, who uses them and their encrypted messages. Also many documents of the spies cases that involved numbers stations.

Cuban Numbers Stations and Spies

Ana Belen Montes receiving
CIA Intelligence Award

The August edition of Spycast has an interview with Scott Carmichael, the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) counterintelligence official who investigated the Ana Belen Montes case. Montes, the senior Cuba analyst at the DIA, was arrested in 2001 and charged with committing espionage for Cuba.

The federal prosecutors stated that she communicated with the Cuban Intelligence Service through encrypted messages and received her instructions through shortwave encrypted transmissions from Cuba. This case reminds me again at the famous numbers stations, and more specific at the Cuban "Attencion" station.

This case, just as the "Spy With No Name" case I wrote about last month, once again confirms that numbers stations are indeed spy stations. The messages on these numbers stations are believed to be encrypted with the absolutely secure one-time pad.

See also my Cuban Agent Communications (pdf) about the implementation flaws by Cuben Intelligence and its agents, about Ana Montes, Carlos Alvarez and his wife Elsa Alvarez, Walter Kendall Myers and his wife Gwendolyn Steingraber. Crypto Museum also covers the Ana Belen Montes case and the radio equipment she used to receive the Cuban numbers station messages.

 

Update: Ana Belen Montes, sentenced to 25 years in prison, was released on January 6, 2023 after serving 20 years in prison. In 2002 she had pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate on a full debriefing of her spying activities, to reduce her sentence and avoid a possible death sentence. Spycast interviewed Jim Popkin on his book about Montes.

SPYCAST - Code Name Blue Wren: Cuban Spy Ana Montes is an interview with Jim Popkin about his book on the most damaging female spy in the United States. More about Popkin's book at  Goodreads.

Declassified Spy Stories - Cuba: Traitor on the Inside

 

Documentary with several of Ana Montes' colleagues interviewed.

 

The Two Faces of Ana: Model Employee/Cuban Spy

Spy With No Name

Vaclav Jelinek

The Czech Cold War spy Vaclav Jelinek, a.k.a Erwin van Haarlem, lived two lives. The story begins in the Second World War, when the Dutch Mrs Joanna van Haarlem got a child with a German soldier. Joanna, who had Jewish roots, was shunned by her family and left the child with the Red Cross in Prague. No one ever heard of the child's whereabouts.

Years later Vaclav Jelinek, a young Czech man who just finished his military service, was approached and recruited by the StB, the Czech Secret Service. The StB decided to give him the false identity of Erwin van Haarlem and trained him over several years to become a skilled secret agent with a false - but existing - background.

As the - alleged - child of a Dutch mother,  Jelinek had both Czech and Dutch nationality and therefore acquired a Dutch passport at the Dutch Embassy in Czechoslovakia. In 1975 he arrived in Britain and started his spying career for the Czech StB and the Russian Secret Service. Meanwhile, Mrs Joanna van Haarlem found him through the Red Cross and finally was reunited with her alleged son in 1977.

More than ten years she believed to have found her lost son, until he was arrested in 1988 by British Special Branch detectives in his apartment while receiving encrypted shortwave messages from a numbers station. In his apartment they also found one-time pads, hidden inside a soap bar. Thes one-tima pads were used to decrypt numbers messages.

DNA samples later confirmed that he wasn't Joanna's son. Vaclav Jelinek never told his real name during the investigations or at the trial and the spy with no name was sentenced in 1989 to ten year imprisonment. He was released and deported to Prague in 1994.

Joanna finally found her real son who had changed his Dutch name in a Czech one at the age of 15. He knew nothing about the misuse of his name by the StB. Jelinek's story is a good example of infiltration under stolen identity during the Cold War.

BBC Magazine publish an excellent story on  Vaclav Jelinek with many details and photos. The story of Jelinek is told in a two-part radio program (in Dutch), with his mother (part 1) and an interview with Vaclav Jelinek himself (part 2).

More on one-time pads and numbers station on my website.

OTP Radiograms 101

I wrote last year about the fascinating life of the Jack Barsky, a former KGB agent who lived and operated in the United States from 1978 to 1988. After his cover was blown, he decided to stay in the United States and broke his ties with the KGB. It still took the FBI nine years to put all pieces together and catch him in 1997.

One of the tricks of the trade that Barsky used was the reception of radiograms that contained operational instructions. These messages were encrypted with one-time pad and broadcast by the KGB in Morse through a so-called numbers station. This is a most secure method because the radiograms are unbreakable and you cannot trace the receiver as anyone at any locations can receive the broadcast. That's why numbers stations are still in use today.

TAG Cyber Media just published a video interview with Jack Barsky where he explains the reception and decryption of these numbers messages.

Former KGB Spy Jack Barsky: One Time Pad

Also check out Jack Barsky's KGB Radiograms and Family Tales to find that the life of an illegal can take quite a toll on his social life. You can read my review of Jack Barskt's book Deep Undercover that details his extraordinary life and career. More in depth technical and historical information about espionage and communications are found on my web pages about numbers stations and one-time pad. Jack Barsky also talked about other aspects of espionage during the TAG Cyber interview.

Operation Tinker Bell has Relocated to the Website!

Operation Tinkel Bell has moved to the Cipher Machines and Cryptology website. The move offers more flexibility for HTML and maintenance, and a broader audience. It's also easier to switch from the operation to the technical and historical research on the website. If you love Cold War spy stories, secret operations and cryptology, then this is the perfect mix for many exciting hours.

Operation Tinker Bell is a spy case that you solve using cryptography. The year is 1964 and Operation Tinker Bell takes place at the height of the Cold War. You are assigned to the operation as COMSEC officer, and your task is to decrypt the message traffic between intelligence agencies, their stations abroad and agents in the field. All required crypto tools, keys and clear instructions are provided. You get the proper training to work with the TSEC/KL-7 crypto machine, decrypt numbers station broadcasts, and use one-time pad encryption.

You experience spy tradecraft, operations behind the Iron Curtain, illegal border crossings, fake passports and safe houses. CIA transmitter sites in West Germany provide support, and the dreaded East-German Stasi and Czech StB secret police are some of your opponents. British intelligence helps to arrange clandestine meetings, the U.S. Army Security Agency provides SIGINT support and some USMLM operations don't take the rules of engagement too seriously.

Click the banner and join the operation!

The Cold War at its best, with authentic details, many historical photos, and as real as it gets. If you successfully decrypt all messages, your name is engraved in the Wall of Honor. However, this operation is no walk in the park, and failure is not an option. Read up on the operation in the briefing room, and be prepared.

VENONA Declassified

The National Security Agency's Center for Cryptologic History published a large number of documents about the VENONA project on its Declassification Initiatives section. The VENONA story is a summary of the Intelligence, derived from deciphered VENONA messages, and explains how the codebreakers succeeded in deciphering these important messages.

The top secret VENONA project was initiated in 1943 by the U.S. Army Signal Intelligence Service in Arlington Hall, Virginia, and was continued by its successor, the NSA, until 1980. What started as an attempt to exploit and decipher Soviet diplomatic and trade communications would soon become a vital source of information about Soviet Intelligence operations in the United States. Analysts discovered that portions of the encrypted Soviet diplomatic communications contained espionage related information.

Miniature one-time pad

Richard Hallock, Cecil Phillips and Meredith Gardner were the key players in the VENONA decryption efforts. Analysis identified five different ciphering systems on the diplomatic traffic. The messages were encoded into digits with the aid of different sets of codebooks and additionally enciphered with so-called one-time pads (see image right). These one-time pads, containing series of truly random numbers, are added to the message digits. A one-time pad provides mathematically unbreakable encryption, if used only once.

However, the codebreakers discovered that the Soviets mistakenly reused a small portion of these pads. Time pressure and tactical circumstances during the Second World War lead in some cases to the distribution of more than two copies of certain keys. Although VENONA is often referred to as the project that broke Soviet one-time pads, they never actually broke one-time pads, but exploited a most fatal implementation error: you should never ever reuse a one-time pad.

Nonetheless, the codebreakers faced an enormous challenge. Due to the vast quantity of intercepted messages, the few reused pads and the lack of Soviet codebooks they had to decipher and reconstruct the messages and codebooks painstakenly, piece by piece, solely relying on cryptanalysis. It took 37 years before they closed project VENONA.

From 1946 on, they began to read portions of KGB (Soviet Security Service) messages that had been sent between the KGB station (rezidentura) in New York and Moscow Center. The derived Intelligence was sensational. When VENONA ended, around 3,000 messages (only a fraction of the intercepted traffic) were partially or completely deciphered. These were mostly communications between the KGB's First Chief Directorate (Foreign Intelligence) and its KGB Station Chiefs.

The messages revealed critical information on KGB and GRU (Military Intelligence) operations in the United States and Great Britain, and the KGB's role in the Soviet consulates, the TASS news agency, COMINTERN and the AMTORG Trading Corporation. The decrypts disclosed massive espionage efforts against the U.S. Departments of State and Justice, the Department of the Treasury, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), and the War Department.

Kim Philby

Information, derived from VENONA, identified many Soviet Intelligence operations, hundreds of Soviet agents and people who collaborated with the Soviets. This enabled the arrest of major Soviet spies such as Klaus Fuchs and Harry Gold (MANHATTAN Project and A-Bomb), the Rosenberg's spy ring, and the identification of Donald Maclean, which lead to the unmasking of "Cambridge Five" members Kim Philby and Guy Burgess.

Because of its importance, and the difficulty to decipher and identify the covernames and codenames in the messages, the VENONA project lasted until 1980, providing the FBI and CIA over the years with vital counter-intelligence information to solve many spy cases. VENONA is a good example of "we will get you, sooner or later", as many spies were arrest upto decades after they stopped spying.

The VENONA story (pdf), many of its deciphered messages and other related documents are found on NSA's VENONA project page. Another very good reference is The Secret Sentry, recently declassified by The National Security Archive. It contains the extensive 66 page VENONA document (alt. link) and other previously top secret documents, related to the Korean war and Vietnam.

Update: A great tip from Mark Stout is the VENONA Names Cross Reference, created by John Taber. It comprises an index of names and identifications, and an index of names to decrypts, both as Excel files. A very extensive work that links thousands of files, names and locations from the VENONA decrypts.

Large SVR Spy Ring Arrested in the U.S.

On June 27, 2010, ten individuals were arrested in a ten-year joint operation between the FBI and the counterespionage Section and the Office of Intelligence within the Justice Department’s National Security Division. The FBI used a wide range of counterintelligence and investigation techniques to observe the Illegals and collect evidence. The arrest were announced at the U.S. Department of Justice Briefing Room.

All ten individuals allegedly carried out long-term deep-cover operations on US soil on behalf of the Russian foreign intelligence agency SVR (Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki). Goal was to recruit sources in policy-making circles and collect Intel to send back to Russia. The court documents (see below) read as a real Cold War thriller. The perfect stuff for books and movies! Another example of how the Cold War still lives on as a Cold Peace.

FBI Mugshots of the arrested illegals (names with & are real couples)
Donald Heatfield & Tracey Ann Foley, Juan Lazaro & Vicky Peláez, Anna Chapman,
Michael Zottoli & Patricia Mills, Richard & Cynthia Murphy, Mikhail Semenko.
Their real names:
Andrey Bezrukov & Elena Vavilova, Mikhail Vasenkov & Vicky Peláez, Anya Kushchenko
Mikhail Kutsik & Nataliya Pereverzeva, Vladimir & Lidiya Guryev, Mikhail Semenko.

The court complaint documents reveal numerous details on the espionage activities and a range of true spy craft methods to communicate. Moscow Center (SVR Headquarters) used non-commercial steganographic software to insert text messages in images, located on publicly available websites. During surreptitious searches, the FBI discovered and copied sets of computer disks containing steganographic software and found a hidden paper with a 27 characters key. Website links, retrieved from their hard-drives, directed to website images that contained well over 100 hidden messages, communications between the Illegals and Moscow. These so-called Internet Messages contained all kinds of operational instructions.

The Illegals also received encrypted radio messages by burst transmission (sending data on high speed). During another surreptitious search, the FBI also found a short-wave radio and photographed notebooks with columns of seemingly random numbers . These are typically used to receive encrypted numbers messages. During audio surveillance (bugging) of the suspects house, the FBI heard the sounds of receiving a burst transmission. Surveillance of conversations in their house also revealed the use of invisible ink to convey messages to Russian government officials.

To enable clandestine payments from the SVR to the Illegals, they travelled to South American countries to receive money and returned to the U.S. with the money hidden in the luggage. Back in the US, they exchanged bags with money in various city parks. Several of these exchanges were recorded during FBI video surveillance.

The FBI searched bank safe deposit boxes containing documents, photos and U.S. and Canadian birth certificates, to create the false identities of the Illegals. The Illegals also received false British and Irish passports to travel via Europe to Russia. The required false passports were provided by brush-passes in Europe. On one occasion, an Illegal was ordered to buy a laptop in the U.S. and bring it along to Moscow. When he returned to the U.S. with the - probably SVR customized - laptop, he received instruction on how to use it for communications with Moscow.

Christopher Metsos, a secret SVR agent, assisted the spy network but was based outside the Unites States. He was arrested on 29 June in Cyprus. He had several meetings with the network members. These meetings were recorded on video by the FBI. Metsos also received money from a Russian diplomat. One part of the money was given to other Illegals and another part was buried in New York. Two years later, another conspirator dug it up. Several other money exchanges were done by a so-called brush-pass, where they swapped bags when passing each other on the train station stairs. Several other brush-passes between Russian government officials and the Illegals to exchange cash and a memory stick were observed by the FBI.

Anna Kushchenko
a.k.a. Anya Chapman

Private wireless networks to connect Laptops by LAN (Local Area Network) within a limited distance. were another method of covert communications. Russian citizen Anna Chapman, née Anya Kushchenko, the red haired spy vamp and one of the illegal SVR agents, was observed ten Wednesdays in the vicinity of a Russian government official.

In one occasion, she used her laptop in a coffee shop while a black minivan stopped along the coffee shop. FBI registered a network connection between their two PC MAC addresses. Other LAN connections were established between the Chapman in a book story and the Russian official across the street and between Illegal agent Mikhail Semenko in a restaurant and a car with diplomatic licence plate on the parking.

Last Saturday, after having problems with her wireless network exchanges, Anna Chapman was lures into a sting operation by an FBI undercover agent. Pretending to be a Russian official, he asked her help to deliver a false passport to a supposedly illegal agent. Surveillance right after the meeting showed that Chapman bought a cellphone and pre-payed card under a false name, apparently to contact SVR after she got suspicious. She did not appear on the sting meeting on Sunday.

A similar sting operation ran against Mikhail Semenko on that same Saturday. An FBI undercover agent met with Semenko and discussed with him about his network communications. Semenko was asked to deliver money by dead-drop (a hidden cache) in a park on Sunday. He was observed carrying out the assignment last Sunday, the day that the complete network was arrested.

All alleged spies, or at least illegals having contact with Russian intelligence, are charged with conspiring to act as unregistered foreign agents and eight of them with money laundering. They are currently not charged with espionage and it is unclear if and what information they sent to Russia and whether this information damaged U.S. national interest.

You can find the criminal complaints with the results of the FBI investigation on the U.S. Department of Justice website or you can read or download them direct from the following links: Complaint1 (pdf 1.2 Mb) The United states vs Anna Chapman and Mikhail Semenko and Complaint2 (pdf 2.3 MB) The United states vs Christopher R. Metsos, Richard Murphy, Cynthia Murphy, Donald Howard Heathfield , Tracey Lee Ann Foley, Michael Zottoli, Patricia Mills , Juan Lazaro and Vicky Pelaez. Finally, here are the Deparment of Justice Metsos and Mills, Zottoli and Semenko bail letters.

This case is another example of how difficult these covert communications are in today's digital world, and why it is a very bad idea to combine normal personal computers with cryptography and espionage. Modern covert communications are countered with just as modern surveillance and interception, and old-school espionage communications still depend on human success and failure. The Cold Peace hasn't changed that much since the Cold War. More about FBI successes on catching Cuban spies at my Cuban Agent Communications blog and paper.

Update July 3, 2010: until now, three suspects have admitted the use of a false identity. Michael Zottoli told investigators he is a Russian citizen and that his real name is Mikhail Kutzik. Patricia Mills confessed that her name is Natalia Pereverzeva and all her family and relatives live in Russia (see Detention Letter). Juan Lazaro admitted working for the SVR under a false name but refuses to give his true identity. Anna Chapman, nee Anya Kushchenko, is identified as the daughter of Vasily Kushchenko, a high-ranked MID (Ministry of Foreign Affairs) official and, according to her ex-husband, a former senior KGB officer (see Telegraph UK). Christopher Metsos, who was arrested in Cyprus, disappeared withing 24 hour of being bailed. Therefore, the Department Of Justice requested the Judge to refuse any bail for the other suspects.

Update July 9, 2010: the 10 suspects are exchanged with 4 Russian individuals that served sentences in Russia for alleged cooperation with Western intelligence services. More at US - Russian Spy Exchange blog post.

Update November 12, 2010: Four months after uncovering this spy ring, the true reason of its failiure surfaces: the 10 agents were betrayed from the inside. More to read in U.S. Spy Ring betrayed by Defecting SVR Colonel.

Update November 3, 2011: The FBI release a large number of documents, photos and videos from operation Ghost stories, the investigation and arrests of the ten illegal SVR agents. All information is released through the FBI records webpage The Vault.

A follow up with numerous articles is published on the CI Centre news and more will follow. Some media on this case: Spies in the suburbs on BBC News. Anna Chapman on Mail Online and on ABC News. Background info on Richard and Cynthia Murphy on CI Centre and the New Jersey Star. Spy ring financial intel on CNN Fortune. Donald Heatfield on the New York Times. Michael Zottoli and Patricia Mills on The Seattle Times. Vicky Pelaez on NY Daily News. Juan Lazaro on CBS News. Why Russia and the US still Spy by Peter Earnest. Dismanteling Russian operation at STRATFOR. Richard and Cynthia Murphy on Telegraph UK. The Illegals Program on Wikipedia.

More on the ending of this case on my US - Russian Spy Exchange blog and on U.S. Spy Ring betrayed by Defecting SVR Colonel. Below an interview with Anna Chapman, earlier this year.

Anna Chapman - Sexy Hot Russian Spy

  

Overview of this Spy Case

• Large SVR Spy Ring Arrested in the U.S. 
• U.S. Russian Spy Exchange
• Spy Ring Betrayed by SVR Colonel
• FBI releases 2010 SVR Spy Ring information

FAPSI - Russia's SIGINT Agency

The Russian FAPSI (Federalnoye Agentsvo Pravitelstvennoi Svayazi I Informatsii) was Russia's Federal Agency for Government Communications and Information. In short: the Russian equivalent to the American NSA or British GCHQ.

After the reforms in 1991, the KGB was divided into several different smaller agencies. One of them was FAPSI, created from the KGB's 8th Main Directorat (communication and cryptography), the 12 Directorat (eavesdropping) and the 16th Directorat (interception of communications and Signal Intelligence). FAPSI was responsible for SIGINT (Signal Intelligence), government communications, cryptography in all its aspects and information technology.

FAPSI operated a large satellite network (since the 1970's more than 130 satellites) for interception and communications and had a large number of SIGINT stations around the world. One of the largest was located in Lourdes, Cuba. An enormous interception facility at the doorstep of the US, in the footprint of several American satellites, and a transmitter site of numbers stations. Another large station was located in Cam Ranh Bay, Vietnam.

If you think only the West has its Echelon SIGINT collection, you forgot FAPSI, with far more personnel than NSA and GCHQ together! Inside Russia, FAPSI monitored civil and government communications and was responsible for approving all cryptographic software (other crypto software is forbidden in Russia).

FAPSI incorporated the Military School of FAPSI (aka the world largest hackers school) and the Military School of Communications. FAPSI also employed graduates from the Academy of Cryptography of the FSB (not a school but a "scientific organisation", read codebreakers). FAPSI also provided secure communications to the Leaders of the Russian Federation and encrypted HF telephone communications for the government. All together an enormous service that controlled all communications security and gathers large quantities of information, home and abroad.

From 2003 to 2004, FAPSI was gradually dissolved and its various departments were integrated in departments of the Federal Security Service (FSB), the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) and in the Service of Special Communications and Information (Spetssvyaz) from the Federal Protective Service of the Russian Federation (FSO). The recourses and operations of FAPSI remained largly the same, but are now controlled by other agencies of the Russian Federation.

More about FAPSI on Agentura.ru, KGB Military School (archived page) and the Federation of American Scientists.