CBS Television Stations Dec 30, 2005 6:33 am US/Mountain
Buckley 'Golf Balls' May Be Used For Spying
Rick Sallinger Reporting(CBS4) AURORA, Colo. The large white balls housed at Buckley Air Force Base can be used for more than detecting missile launches. The equipment inside can also intercept phone calls, pagers and all sorts of radio signals.
Congress is expected to hold hearings next month into a secret eavesdropping program President Bush authorized after the 9/11 attacks. The so-called giant golf balls at Buckley may be involved in that secret National Security Agency program.
The balls are called Radomes. They're made out of an aluminum shell.
Inside the balls are giant satellite dishes on movable platforms. They're contained in the domes for weather protection. The domes also conceal the dishes from the view of enemies of the United States.
"The antennas under these golf ball looking devices collect information which is sent to them from satellites which has picked up transmissions from ground transmitters," Bill Sulzman, director of a group called Citizens for Peace in Space.
Sulzman believes the data from satellites like Orion, Magnum, Misty and Intruder is then mined by the Aerospace Data Facility at Buckley. Government defense contractors have offices around the base to help.
"They do a lot of the processing at Buckley," John Pike of GlobalSecurity.org told CBS4. "Basically having automated speech recognition computers that would be going through all of the conversations that have been collected by those satellites."
The computers would try to pick up individual voices or words like 'Osama bin Laden' or 'bomb.' The NSA is in charge of evaluating the information.
The agency shares intelligence with English speaking allies as part of a network of computers called Echelon. Sulzman suspects his group has been the target of eavesdropping.
"We think that allowing an institution like NSA to operate basically outside our laws is very dangerous," Sulzman said.
He believes the domes are an important part of that NSA program.
Many of the satellites involved in the NSA spy program are made in Colorado and launched on rockets also built in the state.
Officials at Buckley had little to say about the secretive program. Everyone involved in the special type of spy work has to sign a form which threatens prosecution if information is revealed through them.
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