THE MENWITH HILL SITE
MENWITH HILL- INTERCEPTION [ 9 ]
Long distance national and international communications are conveyed by cables, microwave radio links, and satellites. All forms of modern communications: telephony, television, fax, computer links and the Internet are carried in this way. Companies such as BT install and provide high capacity national and international links used for these purposes and each is subject to interception. Some long distance communications are still conveyed by traditional high frequency (HF) radio systems. Except for domestic mobile radio systems, this traffic is predominantly but not exclusively military.
A great deal of this information comes from spy satellites. The importance of MHS to US intelligence activities has recently been emphasised by the closure of other UK stations run by the NSA, and by its new designation as a Regional Sigint Operations Centre (RSOC) which is responsible for running remote, automated intelligence-gathering sites.
Menwith Hill was first established to intercept traditional radio signals, but this is now only a small part of its activities which are conducted under two systems - RUNWAY OPERATIONS and SPECIAL OPERATIONS . The primary targets are Europe, northern Africa and western Asia, because satellites positioned to provide communications in these regions are not visible from the United States - but they are from Menwith Hill.
Menwith Hill Base from satellite picture and plan of security fence supplied by Harrogate Planning Office - details supplied by Anne Lee and described by Duncan Campbell [ 8 ].
Menwith Hill controls satellites positioned over the equator over target areas to intercept long distance microwave radio communications between cities in Eurasia. Operators at Menwith Hill can monitor messages and conversations passing between companies and individuals within, say, Jordan or the Ukraine. Other international messages and conversations from different starting places, but being conveyed along the same route, can also be intercepted. Satellites can be directed to intercept particular links and relay the information back to Earth where they are sorted and processed at Menwith Hill. Those signals that satisfy specific criteria are selected and passed on. All forms of communications are intercepted and processed.
RUNWAY runs east and west across the south edge of Menwith and is used to receive information from the geosynchronous VORTEX satellites. The first of these satellites, originally named CHALET , was launched in June 1978. In 1982, the NSA obtained approval and funding to expand to operate four VORTEX satellites simultaneously. The STEEPLEBUSH operations centre was constructed to process the data and is connected to GT1- GT4 while GT5 connects to THISTLE (in a project called MAGISTRAND ) and GT6 to STEEPLEBUSH II (as project RUTLEY which links to a new network of Sigint satellites launched in 1994 and 1995 ).
After publication of the name VORTEX in 1987 the satellites were renamed MERCURY . Around 1988 the UK abandoned plans to orbit its own Sigint Satellite (ZIRCON - exposed by Duncan Campbell in 1987) and instead purchased for around £500 million some capacity on the MERCURY satellite constellation which staff from GCHQ at Menwith assist in tasking and operating.
The SPECIAL OPERATIONS (SO) (MOONPENNY/SPRINKLER) system is the unauthorised reception of ordinary satellite communications used by other countries. Now called COLLECTION PROCESSING (CP) , it consists of interception terminals (designated by letters - A, B, etc) placed so as to intercept the signals broadcast to the earth's surface by national or international communication satellites (COMmunications INTelligence - COMINT ). These may include satellites launched by single nations, such as Russia or Israel, or by groups of nations, such as ARABSAT , or by the international community as a whole (INTELSAT ). Because the ordinary function of these satellites is to broadcast their signals to earth, no special equipment needs to be placed in space to intercept them.
SO's main targets were originally the collection of data from the former Soviet Union and Eastern European countries. However, since the end of the Cold War SO has in addition focused on Europe and the Middle East.
With the help of its partners the NSA aims to collect, examine and process all international (and many national) communications. Statements made in 1992 by former Director Vice Admiral William Studeman indicate that the NSA collected about 2 million intercepted messages per hour. Of these, all but about 13,000 an hour were discarded and of these about 2,000 met forwarding criteria, of which about 20 are selected by analysts, who then write 2 reports for further distribution. Therefore, in 1992 17.5 billion messages a year could have been intercepted, of which some 17.5 million may have been studied for analysis [ 11 ].
A third Operational Directorate called CTAR (Collect, Transcript, Analysis & Recording) also exists. This system (now known as EP - Exploitation & Product) uses data from RUNWAY and MOONPENNY and has three sections:
- CTAR 1 to cover Russia etc.;
- CTAR 2 for "ROW" - the Rest Of the World (with a special sub-section MENA for Middle East Nations);
- CTAR 3 for WATCH - possibly the ECHELON system.
An investigating European Union Committee in 2001 received evidence that the ECHELON system gives 55,000 British and American operatives access to data gathered by 120 spy satellites worldwide. "Every minute of every day, the system is capable of processing three million electronic communications" (see "The European Parliament" ).
- Alice Mahon MP.
