Your points are valid for the AIA document. However, in the
Navy document, Number 9, image 3, there is the phrase,
"Maintain and operate an ECHELON site."
Still, you may be right that none of this proves there is a program
by that name, and it may be only a way of indicating an activity
of a particular kind. (However, I note that the military units assigned
for the various AF and Navy duties described do match what
has been reported about Echelon, as well as what has been
reported about some of those units as well -- several of which
maintain Web sites for retired and active members.)
I asked Duncan Campbell about the term "Echelon" a while back
and he said the term was not used in the ordinary military sense
in the documents he had seen. He showed a sliver of an allegedly
classified doc (the remainder concealed from me) which had the
phrase "Echelon 2" on it, among a list of what are described as
data-gathering programs. In that case the word was spelled with
the first letter capitalized. (He said that document is the first proof
he had seen of what had heretofore only been verbally described.)
That "Echelon 2" sliver is the image he put in his EuroParl report
of April 1999. On an earlier occasion we pulled out the image and
put it at:
http://jya.com/xechelon.jpg
It will be interesting to see what Jeffrey Richelson writes about
"Fear of Echelon" upcoming in the Bulletin of the Atomic
Scientists, as noted on the National Security Archive site. You
may recall that James Bamford and Steve Aftergood with FAS
have publicly stated their doubts about the threat of Echelon.
Though Wayne Madsen is a fierce believer in its danger to
privacy.
Duncan's report for EPIC should be out soon as well, I believe and
maybe he will have new information.
And, we can hope that David Kahn will soon publish what he
has found as resident scholar at NSA. Note that he is on the
National Security Archives board.
