For The Record

FTR #394 The Battle of Menwith Hill: Signals Intelligence & the 9/11 Attacks

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Pre­sent­ing analy­sis of polit­i­cal maneu­ver­ing around the Men­with Hill RAF — NSA lis­ten­ing sta­tion and the related US/UK ECHELON elec­tronic intel­li­gence gath­er­ing sys­tem, this broad­cast char­ac­ter­izes the German/EU attack on Men­with Hill/ECHELON as “the Bat­tle of Men­with Hill.” In turn, this con­flict fig­ures promi­nently in the inter­na­tional diplo­matic machi­na­tions sur­round­ing the 9/11 attacks-It may have played a sig­nif­i­cant role in the attacks them­selves. The domes­tic prong could be accu­rately char­ac­ter­ized as a Fifth Col­umn, com­prised of pow­er­ful politico/economic inter­ests allied with, among oth­ers, the Bush fam­ily eco­nomic under­tak­ings. Later in the pro­gram, the attack on ECHELON/Menwith Hill by the Free Con­gress Foun­da­tion will be dis­cussed in the con­text of the Fifth Col­umn attack on the U.S. It is the con­tention of this pro­gram that Al Qaeda and related insti­tu­tions (such as the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and the Al Taqwa milieu) con­sti­tute an ele­ment of a dual-pronged, Under­ground Reich attack on the United States, not unlike that which led to the sub­ju­ga­tion of France in World War II. The con­cept of what might be called “Proxy War” (to coin a term) is one to consider.

1. Embody­ing the his­tor­i­cal and strate­gic analy­sis of the Bat­tle of Men­with Hill, the pro­gram begins with an excerpt of text from the descrip­tion for FTR 119, recorded in Decem­ber, 1998. “In the wake of the Cold War, the lines of polit­i­cal strug­gle are being redrawn, with poten­tial con­flict between the United States and Ger­many (and beyond, the German-dominated Euro­pean Union) threat­en­ing to replace the con­fronta­tion between the U.S. and for­mer U.S.S.R. In the field of intel­li­gence, the U.S.-German con­flict is already begin­ning to man­i­fest itself. This broad­cast sets forth some of the most impor­tant and recent devel­op­ments in the fric­tion between Amer­i­can and Ger­man intel­li­gence. After a brief dis­cus­sion of Germany’s expul­sion of an Amer­i­can diplo­mat who allegedly worked for the CIA, the broad­cast reprises a sec­tion of FTR 103 orig­i­nally broad­cast in August, 1998. This sec­tion of the pro­gram sets forth fric­tion between Ger­man intel­li­gence chief Bernd Schmid­bauer and the FBI over indus­trial spy­ing, as well as a con­sum­mately impor­tant story about attempts by the Euro­pean Union (read ‘Ger­many’) to com­pro­mise the National Secu­rity Agency’s vital Men­with Hill elec­tronic lis­ten­ing post in Eng­land. Mr. Emory has char­ac­ter­ized that pres­sure on the NSA facil­ity as an act of war and believes it to be (in the ‘Infor­ma­tion Age’) as strate­gi­cally sig­nif­i­cant as the Japan­ese attack on Pearl Har­bor in World War II.”

2. In the con­text of what fol­lows, it is very impor­tant to note that the orig­i­nal broad­cast ref­er­enced in the above descrip­tion was recorded in August of 1998. That was the month in which Al Qaeda attacked the U.S. embassies in Africa and the month in which Osama bin Laden appar­ently stopped using his satel­lite phone for telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions. Is there a rela­tion­ship between the begin­ning of the Bat­tle of Men­with Hill and bin Laden’s switch to a courier sys­tem for oper­a­tional communications?

3. Dis­cussing NSA mon­i­tor­ing of bin Laden’s telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions, a recent best­seller noted the sig­nif­i­cance of August, 1998 in the con­text of Al Qaeda oper­a­tions and a shift by OBL to a courier sys­tem. “But even though NSA had the capa­bil­ity to inter­cept many con­ver­sa­tions to and from bin Laden and other mem­bers of Al Qaeda-including some of those allegedly involved in the bomb­ing of the Amer­i­can embassies in East Africa-the infor­ma­tion was not enough to pre­vent the attacks.” (Body of Secrets; James Bam­ford; Copy­right 2001, 2002 James Bam­ford; [SC] Anchor Books; p. 616.)

4. “Many of the calls were inter­cepted by Britain’s GCHQ at their lis­ten­ing post at Mor­wen­stow, near Bude, in Corn­wall. There, close to the end­less white­caps of the Celtic Sea, nearly a dozen dishes pick up sig­nals from com­mer­cial satel­lites such as Inmarsat and INTELSAT. The inter­cepted phone calls, faxes, Inter­net, and data trans­fers are then for­warded to GCHQ’s sprawl­ing head­quar­ters in Chel­tenham. Once fil­tered and ana­lyzed, they would be for­warded to NSA over secure encrypted com­mu­ni­ca­tions links.” (Idem.)

5. “Other calls to and from bin Laden were picked up thou­sands of miles to the south of Afghanistan, at a lis­ten­ing post run by Australia’s Defense Sig­nals Divi­sion located at Ger­ald­ton, a scruffy port on the Indian Ocean about 210 miles north of Perth. Sit­u­ated in the west­ern­most part of the coun­try, Ger­ald­ton was built in 1994 to eaves­drop on com­mer­cial satel­lites over the Indian Ocean.” (Idem.)

6. As noted above, August of 1998 was a fate­ful month in the sequence of events being con­sid­ered here. That was when Al Qaeda attacked US embassies in Africa, Pres­i­dent Clin­ton retal­i­ated with cruise mis­sile attacks on bin Laden’s camps in Afghanistan and the Bat­tle of Men­with Hill began. Clin­ton was fac­ing impeach­ment at the time, and was stated by the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, among other insti­tu­tions, to have con­ducted the attacks on Afghanistan and the Al Shifa phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal plant (FTR#‘s 344–46).“Eventually, fol­low­ing Pres­i­dent Clinton’s 1998 Amer­i­can cruise mis­sile attack on bin Laden’s camp in Afghanistan, and the real­iza­tion that his loca­tion could be betrayed by sig­nals from the satel­lite phone, he stopped using the instru­ment. Now when one calls his num­ber, all they hear is a record­ing stat­ing he is ‘not logged on or not in the dialed ocean region.’” (Idem.)

7. “Since 1998, bin Laden com­mu­ni­cates only through mes­sen­gers who make calls for him from dis­tant loca­tions. Nev­er­the­less, these are also occa­sion­ally inter­cepted. One such call, picked up by NSA early in Sep­tem­ber 2001, was from a bin Laden asso­ciate to bin Laden’s wife in Syria, advis­ing her to return to Afghanistan. At the time, it was filed away when instead it should have been one more clue, one more rea­son for direc­tor Hay­den to worry on the morn­ing of Sep­tem­ber 11.” (Ibid.; pp. 616–617.)

8. The pro­gram then reprises an excerpt of FTR 166 from July, 1999, high­light­ing Ger­man pro­pa­ganda about the Men­with Hill sta­tion and related pro­grams being the cause of Germany’s eco­nomic woes. Like “the Bat­tle of Men­with Hill” itself, this is a very sig­nif­i­cant devel­op­ment from a strate­gic stand­point. (“U.S. Spy Satel­lites raid­ing Ger­man firms’ Secrets” by Tony Pat­ter­son; Elec­tronic Tele­graph; 4/11/99.)

9. A barom­e­ter of the recent adverse pub­lic­ity stem­ming from the Men­with Hill sit­u­a­tion, demon­stra­tors have been demand­ing the institution’s atten­u­a­tion. (“New Action at Spy­base;” York­shire Evening Post; 9/16/99.)

10. Touch­ing on an ele­ment of the dis­cus­sion from pre­vi­ous broad­casts, we note again that the Ger­man scape­goat­ing of Men­with Hill for the country’s eco­nomic prob­lems coin­cided with an assault from the Free Con­gress Foun­da­tion in the United States. Not­ing the fas­cist her­itage of the FCF and its inter­sec­tion with the milieu of the ABN/Republican eth­nic out­reach orga­ni­za­tion, the pro­gram fea­tures dis­cus­sion of the FCF’s attack on the Men­with Hill (York­shire) and ECHELON ele­ments of the vitally impor­tant NSA/GCHQ elec­tronic coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence func­tion. (“Big Brother Is Lis­ten­ing to You” by Lisa S. Dean; San Fran­cisco Exam­iner; 7/5/1999.) The pro­gram notes that the attack by the FCF on ECHELON/Menwith Hill coin­cided with a Ger­man intel­li­gence and pub­lic rela­tions blitzkrieg against these same instal­la­tions. The motive for the Ger­man “out­rage” was alleged indus­trial espi­onage. Ger­many had the same capa­bil­ity, while charg­ing that the ECHELON/Menwith Hill liai­son had pro­vided the United States with that capa­bil­ity. The pro­gram con­cep­tu­al­izes the FCF attack on ECHELON/Menwith Hill as pre­sag­ing the 9/11 attack on the United States by the Under­ground Reich and its Islam­o­fas­cist allies. By dis­cred­it­ing the U.S. elec­tronic intel­li­gence capa­bil­ity, pro­mot­ing domes­tic U.S. oppo­si­tion to ECHELON/Menwith Hill and alert­ing Al Qaeda ele­ments to the capa­bil­i­ties of the inter­cept sys­tem, FCF and its Under­ground Reich allies might be viewed as hav­ing helped to pre­pare for the destruc­tion of 9/11. The sub­ject of FCF and its attack on ECHELON/Menwith Hill will be dis­cussed in future programs.

11. When con­sid­er­ing the admirable-sounding civic protes­ta­tions of Lisa Dean, take into account the con­nec­tions of the FCF to the milieu of the ABN and domes­tic white suprema­cists. (FTR#367). Take into account the fol­low­ing arti­cle, as well. It is openly sedi­tious and makes Trent Lott look like a “Latte Lib­eral.” “A 1999 newslet­ter pub­lished by a man look­ing to lead California’s Repub­li­can Party included an essay sug­gest­ing the United States would be a bet­ter place if the South had won the Civil War. The piece, by William Lind of the Free Con­gress Foun­da­tion, was included in a GOP e-mail newslet­ter pub­lished by Bill Back of Yuba County, who’s cur­rently vice chair­man of the state Repub­li­can Party. . . Lind’s piece sug­gested that it was Recon­struc­tion, not slav­ery, that really dam­aged race rela­tions in the coun­try and that eco­nom­ics even­tu­ally would have elim­i­nated slav­ery, even with­out a war.” (“State GOP Offi­cial in Racial Con­tro­versy” by John Wil­der­muth; The San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle; 1/5/2003; p. A23.)

12. “” ‘It’s not hard to believe that his­tory might have taken a bet­ter turn,’ if the South had won the Civil War, the piece said. If the South were a sep­a­rate coun­try, it con­tin­ued, ‘at least part of North Amer­ica would still stand for West­ern Cul­ture, Chris­tian­ity and an appre­ci­a­tion of the dif­fer­ences between ladies and gen­tle­men.’” (Ibid.; pp. A23-A28.)

13. Much of the sec­ond side of the broad­cast is an excerpt of FTR#331. The pro­gram takes up the sub­ject of an alle­ga­tion by Ger­man intel­li­gence that the ECHELON sys­tem pro­vided the U.S. and the United King­dom with advanced warn­ing of the 9/11 attacks. (“News­pa­per: ECHELON Gave Author­i­ties Warn­ing of Attacks” by Ned Stafford [News­bytes]; 9/13/2001.) With the epi­cen­ter of the con­spir­acy hav­ing taken place in Ger­many, this alle­ga­tion by the Ger­mans would appear to be an attempt at deflect­ing par­tial respon­si­bil­ity for the attack away from them­selves. As noted in past pro­grams, Ger­many has been attack­ing the ECHELON net­work and the related Men­with Hill lis­ten­ing sta­tion for years. In the past, Mr. Emory has voiced the opin­ion that ECHELON and Men­with Hill are essen­tial to both U.S. and British national secu­rity and has ana­lyzed the EU/German pres­sure to cur­tail these oper­a­tions against the back­ground of esca­lat­ing intel­li­gence fric­tion between the U.S. and Germany.

14. Sig­nif­i­cantly, a long-awaited Euro­pean Par­lia­ment report on ECHELON con­cluded that “many Euro­pean coun­tries had sim­i­lar abilities”-that would undoubt­edly include Ger­many. (“Report on U.S. Spy Sys­tem” by Suzanne Daley; New York Times; 9/6/2001; p. A6.)

15. In light of that fact, why didn’t Ger­man intel­li­gence know about the attacks? A Libyan arrested in Munich in con­nec­tion with the attacks had been under inves­ti­ga­tion since April. (“Egypt­ian Ter­ror Cell ‘Linked to Bin Laden’” by Heba Saleh; Finan­cial Times; 10/12/2001; p. 5.)

16. The Ger­man pros­e­cu­tor in charge of the inves­ti­ga­tion has been charged with ignor­ing evi­dence that might have led to the inter­dic­tion of the attacks. (“Berlin Demands Boost in Ter­ror Probe” by Hugh Williamson; Finan­cial Times; 10/9/2001; p. 2.)

17. Exam­in­ing the geopo­lit­i­cal ben­e­fits that have accrued to Ger­many from the 9/11 attacks, the broad­cast notes that Ger­man chan­cel­lor Ger­hard Schroder stated that Ger­many will no longer play ‘a sec­ondary role’ in inter­na­tional affairs. (“Ger­many Ready for More Senior Role in World Affairs” by Haig Simon­ian; Finan­cial Times; 10/12/2001; p. 7.)

18. In light of recent devel­op­ments vis a vis Iraq, the book Serpent’s Walk takes on added significance.

“It assumes that Hitler’s war­rior elite — the SS — didn’t give up their strug­gle for a White world when they lost the Sec­ond World War. Instead their sur­vivors went under­ground and adopted some of their tac­tics of their ene­mies: they began build­ing their eco­nomic mus­cle and buy­ing into the opinion-forming media. A cen­tury after the war they are ready to chal­lenge the democ­rats and Jews for the hearts and minds of White Amer­i­cans, who have begun to have their fill of government-enforced multi-culturalism and ‘equality.’”

(Excerpt from back cover of Serpent’s Walk by “Ran­dolph D. Calver­hall;” Copy­right 1991 [SC]; National Van­guard Books; 0–937944-05-X.)

19. Recall that in Serpent’s Walk, the takeover by the Under­ground Reich takes place after a dev­as­tat­ing bioter­ror attack on the United States using genetically-engineered micro-organisms. Bear­ing in mind Iraq’s own his­tory of inter­sec­tion with fas­cism and the Under­ground Reich, it is inter­est­ing to observe an unset­tling fact about the like­li­hood of a bioter­ror attack by Iraqi-allied inter­ests after a US mil­i­tary attack on that country.

“Despite claims that it has enough small­pox vac­cine for the entire U.S. pop­u­la­tion, the Bush admin­is­tra­tion has announced a lim­ited pro­gram of vac­ci­na­tions. It has decided to limit them to about a mil­lion mil­i­tary and selected health care work­ers in the first iter­a­tion, and then 10 mil­lion emer­gency work­ers in a sec­ond round. Con­fronting ‘high con­fi­dence’ intel­li­gence find­ings that Sad­dam Hus­sein has small­pox that could be released in Amer­i­can cities in retal­i­a­tion for U.S. attacks that might begin next month, the admin­is­tra­tion dis­plays a cau­tion about defend­ing Amer­i­cans at home that con­trasts sharply with its readi­ness to attack adver­saries abroad.”

(“Unpre­pared for Small­pox” by Gra­ham T. Alli­son; The Wash­ing­ton Post; 12/26/2002; p. A39.)

20. “The chair­man of the Sen­ate intel­li­gence com­mit­tee, Bob Gra­ham of Florida, has esti­mated the like­li­hood of an American-led war on Iraq in Jan­u­ary or Feb­ru­ary at 70 per­cent. Imag­ine Hus­sein responds as the lat­est, recently declas­si­fied national intel­li­gence Esti­mate pre­dicts he is ‘likely’ to do with a bio­log­i­cal attack on Amer­i­cans. Who believes that the newly estab­lished Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­rity will be able to pro­vide early iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of the virus, sup­ply vac­cines to hos­pi­tals and schools across the coun­try or admin­is­ter vac­cines to 280 mil­lion Amer­i­cans? The pub­lic health debate has treated this issue as if we were prepar­ing for a dis­tant hypo­thet­i­cal. But the new infor­ma­tion about Hussein’s capa­bil­i­ties makes it clear that a period of max­i­mum dan­ger lies not years, but months away.”

(Idem.)

21. “Should Hus­sein take a page from tom Clancy’s novel ‘Exec­u­tive orders’ and dis­patch oper­a­tives to a half-dozen Amer­i­can cities with per­fume bot­tles filled with small­pox to spray in shop­ping cen­ters, how bad could it be? Were this to hap­pen early next year, the ‘Dark Win­ter’ war game orga­nized by some of the nation’s lead­ing think tanks last year offers clues about likely con­se­quences. That sce­nario ended with 3 mil­lion Amer­i­cans infected, 1 mil­lion of whom died.”

(Idem.)

22. “How likely is such an attack? Obvi­ously, no one knows. But American’s best intel­li­gence ana­lysts offered their judg­ment on this ques­tion in the lat­est National Intel­li­gence Esti­mate on Iraq. Only after a pos­i­tive vote in con­gress autho­riz­ing use of force against Iraq was ensured were the rel­e­vant por­tions of this esti­mate declas­si­fied. Its con­clu­sion is chill­ing. In a clas­si­fied Sen­ate hear­ing on the esti­mate, Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) pressed the ques­tion: ‘If we ini­ti­ate an attack and he thought he was in extremis or oth­er­wise, what’s the like­li­hood in response to our attack that he would use chem­i­cal or bio­log­i­cal weapons?’ The senior intel­li­gence ana­lyst answered: ‘pretty high.’”

(Idem.)

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