Rocky Mountain News December 23, 2005
Buckley 'golf balls' may be ears for Bush spying
Probably millions of calls intercepted, security expert says
By Lou Kilzer
It's a good bet that Buckley Air Force Base is playing a key role in the interception of American phone communications authorized secretly by President Bush after the Sept. 11 attacks, according to an expert on intelligence affairs.The Buckley facility forms a key part of the Air Force Space Command, and one of its official duties is to detect rocket launches.
Unofficially, it has been widely reported to be a vital arm of the National Security Agency, the department carrying out the president's controversial order.
The Aurora facility, with its white "golf ball" domes, gathers communications intercepted by satellites, including calls on cell phones, said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.Org, a Virginia-based intelligence research firm.
John Spann, a Buckley spokesman, said he only knows about the missile detection system and added that he couldn't comment on Pike's assertion.
"That's his guess," he said.
Pike said the top-secret program probably has intercepted millions of e-mail, fax and voice communications.
The Bush plan likely started out as a search for "sleeper cells" of unknown terrorists, making it impossible to get a warrant in an ordinary fashion, Pike added.
Instead, he said he believes millions of communications were intercepted and then sifted through by computers run by the NSA.
They look for key words, or patterns of speech, he said.
"If you say 'send money' and the reply is 'the quick gray fox jumped through the loop,' it could come in for further review."
Spann confirmed that "other entities" use Buckley's white-domed facilities, though he said he didn't know their mission or identity. Officials in Washington, D.C., were unavailable for comment.
Pike's assessment of the American spying campaign is bound to raise eyebrows. He long has been a frequent player in interpreting the nation's defense and intelligence policies, and was the former director of space policy and military analysis for the American Federation of Scientists.
In addition to Buckley's role, Pike said the NSA has tapped into transoceanic fiber optic cables, and that those probably produced the bulk of the intercepted communications.
Several facilities are involved in NSA's extensive eavesdropping matrix, including bases in the United Kingdom, Australia, Japan and West Virginia.
How many messages are intercepted is not known, though in 1992 a former NSA director said that 2 million messages were being intercepted hourly. Data processing speed and storage capacity since then have mushroomed.
Pike said that before Sept. 11 parts of intercepted conversations originating from Americans were blanked out. It is the procedure, or at least part of it, that he believes was switched off after the attacks.
He said he bases his reasoning on a careful reading of White House statements about the technical means used and the reasons given for not going to a special secret federal court to get warrants.
If Pike is right, then the government's spy operations have been far larger than previously disclosed.
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said the spying was limited to persons the government had reason to believe had al-Qaida links. And The New York Times, which broke the story, said the intercepts were limited to a few hundred at a time.
Pike said he does not believe the administration would have purposefully used the system to intercept calls that do not leave the United States, but the technology would be the same.
Still, the extent could be breathtaking: "The number of people is in the millions," he said.
The vast majority of calls have no significance to the fight on terror and never get flagged by NSA's supercomputers, he said.
One question Pike would like answered is what happens to the irrelevant calls. Hopefully, he said, they are deleted.
The Buckley Air Force Base - formerly Buckley Air National Guard Field - is located in Aurora. The several large "golf balls" that adorn the landscape are believed to house radar and communications gear.
The National Security Agency and the National Reconnaissance Office are the nation's top signal espionage agencies.
© Copyright 2005, Rocky Mountain News
