Re: NSA Declassified
John Young <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> responded: >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." I had missed that reference. A agree that the capitalization here is consistent with a code name. On the other hand, the sentence "Maintain and operate an ECHELON site." is the first item in a list of specific functions and tasks that the commander of Sugar Grove is being ordered to carry out. The dictionary meaning of "echelon" fits well in this context, i.e. the commander is instructed to operate a facility subordinate to headquarters in the overall Navel Security Group hierarchy. While a few items on the list are blacked out, most seem to be boilerplate. The main mission of Sugar Grove appears to be detailed in a classified "Enclosure 1." I did a search on "echelon" at www.navsup.navy.mil (they had a search engine that actually worked) and found a number of examples of the word's ordinary usage in the Navy: "Multi-echelon modeling optimizes spares requirements across the wholesale and consumer echelons, and provides the ability to compute wholesale requirement on a readiness-to-response time basis. " http://www.navsup.navy.mil/flash/1096.html "All naval commanders will report through their immediate superior via the chain of command (ISIC) to second echelon commanders when this action has been complete. All second echelon commanders will report to DON CIO upon completion of this tasking by their claimancy NLT 15NOV98. " http://www.navsup.navy.mil/corpinfo/net-policy/alnav.html "Equal Opportunity Assistants provide equal opportunity/sexual harassment subject matter expertise to second and third echelon commands." http://www.navsup.navy.mil/flash/1996.html In light of these examples, the appearance of the term "Echelon 2" in the document fragment at http://jya.com/xechelon.jpg could also be interpreted as telling the recipient that he is responsible for documents coming from the second echelon level in the chain of command. The ACLU Echelon watch page http://www.aclu.org/echelonwatch/ says "ECHELON is a code word for an automated global interception and relay system operated by the intelligence agencies in five nations: the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand (it is rumored that different nations have different code words for the project)." I have no doubt that NSA runs automated global interception and relay systems and has cooperative agreements with the nations listed and many others. Interception is the essential first step in signals intelligence (SIGINT) which is a major mission of NSA. "Today, SIGINT continues to play an important role in maintaining the superpower status of the United States." http://www.nsa.gov:8080/about_nsa/ Do these interception capabilities include the monitoring and recording of individual phone calls? I am sure they do. I even remember press reports decades ago about whether NSA was restricted from monitoring intercepted down links from Soviet SIGINT satellites that were capturing the phone conversations of US citizens over microwave relays. But I am not convinced that ECHELON is the overarching code word for this activity or even a major component. I wonder why the code word question attracts so much interest. SIGINT is such a large part of NSA mission that it must have spawned dozens or hundred of code words. ECHELON might be better viewed as press moniker for an important story a la Watergate or Whitewater. The activities are real enough. Why does the code name matter so much? Arnold Reinhold
Re: NSA Declassified
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.
Re: NSA Declassified
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.
