-Caveat Lector-
SHOW: ALL THINGS CONSIDERED (9:00 PM ET)
April 2, 2001, Monday
JAMES BAMFORD DISCUSSES THE INTELLIGENCE GATHERING
DONE BY THE US SURVEILLANCE EP-3 PLANE
ANCHOR: ROBERT SIEGEL
ROBERT SIEGEL, host: James Bamford has been writing for years about
signals intelligence, most recently in a book called "Body of Secrets:
The National Security Agency."
James Bamford, can you tell us what this plane, the EP-3 and the kind of
flight that it was on, how that fits into a larger picture of US signals
intelligence gathering? How vital is it to begin with?
Mr. JAMES BAMFORD (Author): Well, signals intelligence is where the US
gets probably 70, 80 percent of its intelligence on what foreign
countries and foreign governments are doing. On this particular flight,
what they were interested in is the Chinese navy; where the ships are,
what they're communicating, who they're communicating with, what kind of
radars they have. So the people on board the airplane would be listening
for several types of signals. One of them would be communications signals
where people are talking to each other. The ships are talking to other
ships or talking to the shore bases. And there's other intercept
operators on the plane that specialize in what's known in ELINT, or
electronic intelligence. And those people are listening for signals
coming from radar, for example. If you know the pulses and the frequency
of different radar, you're able to jam those radars or evade the radars.
SIEGEL: And this is something that a plane like this would do regularly
and week after week, or day after day for that matter?
Mr. BAMFORD: That's right. It's not just the Navy. The Navy has these
flying and then the Air Force have their own planes where they fly and do
their own monitoring.
SIEGEL: And this is a kind of intelligence that you couldn't gather from,
say, satellites. There's no way you could get the same information from
up in orbit?
Mr. BAMFORD: It'd be very difficult because these particular signals--a
lot of them are short-range and the best way to pick them up is with a
plane or a ship in the area.
SIEGEL: So when the EP-3 is aloft, you say that its crew members are
monitoring these different kinds of communications. Two dozen people
aboard the plane. It seems like a fairly labor-intensive mission.
Mr. BAMFORD: Well, it is because they're all listening for different
things. You have linguists on there that are trying to translate some of
the Chinese. They have electronic intelligence people that are trying to
pick up information on the radars. And they have communications
intelligence people that are trying to intercept the voices.
SIEGEL: If the planes are flying these missions all the time, does that
mean that the Chinese are routinely changing their signals or changing
their codes, that you would want to send the plane back week after week,
or are they filling in with ever more detail the same picture that's
essentially unchanging?
Mr. BAMFORD: Well, it's a little bit of both. Some of the things they are
changing so they want to get these changes. And at the same time these
planes and the people who run them have found ways to maybe break some of
the codes or to eavesdrop on some of the more profitable signals. And so
it would send the planes back to pick up those types of information.
SIEGEL: Well, what's your sense, although, obviously, we don't know the
full story by any means so far, but what is your sense of how big a
problem or disaster or catastrophe this is for the National Security
Agency that this particular plane fell into Chinese hands?
Mr. BAMFORD: Well, it's a very serious problem now particularly because
the United States seems to be edging more and more towards a new Cold War
particularly with China. And the last thing you want a potential
adversary to do is to get ahold of an entire plane and its crew that's on
a very sophisticated eavesdropping mission. So it's very serious. The
seriousness actually depends on what happens next. If the crew is sent
back right away and if the plane's sent back. What the Chinese may end up
doing is just saying that this was a very serious situation, a Chinese
plane went down and a pilot was lost and we need to keep the plane here
while an investigation goes on. But it could be ended fairly easily if
they just let the crew go, after they, you know, Xerox some of the
documents on the plane and taken a look at some of the equipment and let
the plane go back. It all depends on how each side wants to play this
game out at this point.
SIEGEL: Well, James Bamford, thank you very much for talking with us
about this.
Mr. BAMFORD: My pleasure. Thank you.
SIEGEL: James Bamford is the author most recently of "Body of Secrets:
The National Security Agency."
SHOW: ALL THINGS CONSIDERED (9:00 PM ET)
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Copyright 2001 National Public Radio (R)
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