The Times (London) February 07, 2003
No place to hide from hi-tech spies in the sky
By Tim Reid
COLIN POWELL'S presentation to the Security Council on Wednesday provided an unprecedented glimpse into the array of technology used by the United States Government to spy on its enemies.
In detailing his case against Iraq, the Secretary of State put on display signal intercepts, satellite photographs, recordings of private conversations and reports from captives and spies within the country.
The US intelligence community, most notably the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency, has always been fiercely protective of its sources and methods.
Jeffrey Richelson, an intelligence analyst in Washington, said: "There's never been a case when the United States intelligence community has disclosed so much at one time."
In interviews with The Times yesterday, former intelligence officials and independent experts detailed the scope and sophistication of the US high-tech spy network, how conversations are intercepted, and certain sites targeted by spy satellite cameras. The most damning evidence produced by General Powell was conversations between Iraqi military officers, particularly one in which a colonel orders a captain not to mention the phrase "nerve agents" in wireless instructions.
Conversations conducted on land-line telephones, mobile telephones, military radios or even inside a room can be picked up by satellites, spy planes, unmanned drones, electronic bugs planted by agents, or permanent listening stations based, for example, hundreds of miles away in Turkey.
There are three types of US communication and intercept satellites over the Gulf region, up to ten in total, including CIA Orion 2 satellites and US Air Force Mercury and Jumpseat satellites. More than 100 yards in diameter, and with antennae the length of a football pitch, they have an eavesdropping scope extending as far east as India and Pakistan, into large parts of southern Russia and northern Africa, and the whole of Europe.
They can pick up microwaves emitted from cellular telephones or from landline calls which need to be retransmitted every 20 miles at microwave repeating stations. They can also pick up transmissions used by military radio transmitters using VHF, UHF or short wave frequencies. All these signals can also be intercepted by pilotless aircraft within 300 miles of Iraq, or "Rivet Joint" spy planes, converted 707 cargo aircraft. These are filled with digital listening equipment and linguists. They can eavesdrop from as far away as the skies above Saudi Arabia or Turkey.
Knowing that conversations with his senior command are at risk of interception, Saddam Hussein paid Chinese companies millions of dollars after the Gulf War to install underground fibre-optic communication cabling, which is fairly secure from aerial interception. However, it is possible for an agent on the ground to plant electronic bugs on this cabling.
The key to using this technology efficiently is being able to filter the billions of conversations taking place. This is done with constantly updated and complex computer software that singles out conversations using triggers, including key words, frequencies, tone of voice, telephone numbers and time and place of call.
Tim Brown, of Globalsecurity.org, said: "They have been intercepting conversations in Iraq for 12 years. They have got to know voices and patterns very well." The intercepts are relayed to the National Security Agency in Fort Meade, Maryland, and are then pored over by analysts.
As a result, Mr Brown said, the Iraqi military now uses frequency scrambling radios. But US satellites can listen to thousands of frequencies in the same instant and piece back together a scrambled conversation. The Iraqis also train their officers not to use open channels or easily intercepted methods of communication. vWhat was not disclosed by General Powell, intelligence officials said, were intercepts on lines the Iraqis still believe are secure. Daniel Goure, a former Pentagon official, said that the Iraqi officers whose conversations were relayed on Wednesday might have become careless and breached Iraqi security protocols.
"I have a great certainty that those guys are either dead or not in their former jobs," he said. The CIA was particularly anxious about playing intercepts because alerting Iraqi officials to which conversations had been recorded is particularly risky on the eve of a war. One official surmised that those disclosed on Wednesday were selected because the channels were about to dry up.
The US has four optical "keyhole" spy satellites able to take 10,000 pictures a day, which can be relayed live back to the CIA and NSA. They orbit every 90 minutes. "They cannot read a licence plate but they can pick up objects as small as a grapefruit," Mr Brown said. Together, they can take pictures of sites in Iraq every two hours. Suspect chemical and biological sites are probably photographed at least once a day, he said.
General Powell's presentation went further than many experts predicted. In satellite images of purported weapons laboratories, for example, he pointed to ancillary buildings and "decontamination vehicles" which, he said, were signatures of illegal weapons work, a tip the Iraqis are sure to note. "We burnt some very good sources here," Kenneth Pollack, a former CIA official, said.
The CIA argues that national security would be damaged even if it released its 1947 budget figure, the year of its inception. However, Washington did disclose an intelligence budget of $ 30 billion (Pounds 18 billion) four years ago. Sincethe September 11 attacks, analysts believe that it has risen to nearer $ 40 billion (Pounds 24 1/2 billion).
LISTENING IN
AMERICA eavesdrops on conversations all around the world with about 30 specially designed intercept communication satellites.
Up to 10 Orion 2, Air Force Mercury and Jumpseat vehicles operated by the Central Intelligence Agency are currently orbiting above the Gulf Region. They pick up microwaves emitted by cellular and land-line telephones, or radio waves emitted by military radios. These are augmented by unmanned drones and giant converted 707 cargo planes packed with digital listening equipment that can pick up conversations while flying outside the borders of Iraq.
Experts believe the conversations played to the Security Council on Wednesday were intercepted on military radios or mobile telephones.
The mass of information and conversations are filtered by software -a billion-dollar, highly complex equivalent of an internet search engine -that is programmed to single out certain factors such as voice patterns, numbers, key words and locations.
Filtered intercepts are then relayed back to the National Security Agency, in Fort Meade, Maryland, for analysis and evaluation.
SATELLITE PHOTOGRAPHS
THESE are taken by four optical satellites, each costing in the region of Pounds 2 billion -the same as the Hubble space telescope.
They orbit on a north-south axis, and pass the North Pole every 90 minutes while the Earth rotates beneath them.
Their cameras, which can be directed to the left or to the right, can take as many as 10,000 photographs a day, which can be transmitted to technicians back on Earth as live images.
Between them, the four optical satellites are capable of capturing images in Iraq every two hours, with a sharp resolution of objects as small as one foot wide.
They are also capable of tracking moving objects, such as armoured vehicles, trucks or missile launchers, over long distances.
One of the problems that the satellites have to contend with is that, at any one time, 60 to 80 per cent of the Earth is covered by cloud.
The Gulf region is rarely obscured by cloud, but satellite images of North Korean weapons violations -another area of concern for the US -have been far more difficult to obtain.
Copyright © 2003, Times Newspapers Limited
