I appreciate all the hard work that went into into prying this
material loose from NSA, but there is a case to be made that
"Echelon" as use in these documents is being employed according to
its dictionary meaning "A subdivision of a military force" rather
than as a code word.
The text in the two paragraphs titled "Activation of Echelon Units"
describes activities that fit the ordinary usage of the word
"echelon," which is common military jargon. Also "Echelon" is always
written in lower case in the text, while code words generally in all
caps, e.g. "LADYLOVE or COBRA DANE". (Echelon is capitalized in the
title of one referenced report, but not in another.) Finally the
titles "Activation of Echelon Units" are marked "(U)" for
unclassified in the original text and the referenced reports. I
expect that such a sensitive code word would itself have been
classified.
I'm not convinced that this batch of documents proves ECHELON's existence.
Arnold Reinhold
At 3:44 PM -0500 1/24/2000, John Young wrote:
>Noted intelligence author Jeffrey Richelson and the
>National Security Archives have obtained some 17
>declassified documents from the NSA tracing its history
>and operations. One of them confirms for the first time
>in an official document the existence of Echelon
>(except for a thumbnail photo of the word in Duncan
>Campbell's EuroParl report):
>
>Richelson's introduction:
>
> http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB23/index.html
>
>The documents with annotations by Richelson:
>
> http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB23/index2.html
>
>The lie put out by DoD for years that Echelon was only
>a fabrication of journalists is now shown to be what it was.
>
>And there's more good stuff, including a letters of
>Stewart Baker and others with a need to know and never
>ever tell.
