POLITICAL SPOTLIGHT ON ECHELON IN DENMARK

[Intelligence <adi@ursula.blythe.org>]

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INTELLIGENCE                                ISSN 1245-2122
N. 110, 17 January 2000
Every Two to Three Weeks
Next Issue on 7 February 2000
Publishing since 1980

Editor
Olivier Schmidt
(email  adi@ursula.blythe.org;
web  http://www.blythe.org/Intelligence;
tel/fax  33 1 40 51 85 19;
post  ADI, 16 rue des Ecoles,
75005 Paris, France)
Copyright ADI 2000, reproduction in any form forbidden
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subscription (18 issues with full index) is US $305.


TABLE OF CONTENTS, N. 110, 17 January 2000

[...]

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FRONT PAGE


Intelligence, N. 110, 17 January 2000, p. 1


DENMARK

POLITICAL SPOTLIGHT ON ECHELON


On 7 December, in replying to questions in the Danish
Parliament from the Unity Party MP, Keld Albrechtsen, on
whether the Danish government would try to persuade the US "to
refrain from spying on Denmark and monitoring Danish citizens",
the Social Democrat Minister of Defense, Hans Hakkerup, replied
that such an agreement "would merely involve a false sense of
security .... because there would still be a great number of
countries and organizations that would be able to monitor
Danish communications." Although he denied direct knowledge of
the National Security Agency's ground station at Bad Aibling,
near Munich in southern Germany, one of the facilities -- along
with Menwith Hill in Great Britain -- which targets Danish
telecommunications and computer-based traffic, Mr. Hakkerup
admitted that "communications coming in and out of Denmark are
monitored from a large number of facilities around the world."
He also stated that the "best way to protect Danish companies
and citizens is to make sure they have access to powerful
encryption. There is no other option for protecting electronic
communications" -- a statement which should have been noted
with interest by NSA Director, Michael Hayden, at NSA
headquarters in Fort George Meade, Maryland.

Denmark has been a "third party" to the UKUSA Agreement since
1947 when the head of the Forsvarets Efterretningstjeneste
(FET) intelligence agency of the Danish armed forces, Commander
P. A. March, initiated "informal surveillance collaboration"
with the US Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner
of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), whose post-World War
II job included interrogating German counter-intelligence
personnel and examining confiscated files to determine which
British and American spies were captured, turned or executed.
Under the terms of the covert arrangement, the OSS agreed to
provide surveillance equipment and Denmark agreed to allow
Washington access to everything that was intercepted by FET
agents. In 1950, a formal agreement was reached between FET and
the CIA, negotiated by FET Commander, Finn Haugsted, and
approved by the Social Democrat Defense Minister, Rasmus
Hansen.

The main FET/NSA listening post in Denmark is Sandagergard,
located at Aflandshage on the island of Amager, south of the
capital, Copenhagen. The facility is equipped with a High-
Frequency Direction Finding (HFDF) system, known as "Pusher",
which can be used to scan signal traffic and is an exact
replica of the facilities used by the NSA at Menwith Hill, Bad
Aibling, and the New Zealand Tangimoana ground station on North
Island and Waihopai on South Island. A large part of the covert
activity at the Sandagergard complex takes place within a large
white dome, built in the mid-1990s. Originally equipped with
IBM mainframe computers -- some of the largest in existence in
the mid-1980s -- to store and decipher intercepted signals, the
facility also uses equipment and software supplied by the US
Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), Unisys and Microsoft.

One of the key US military units involved in NSA Echelon in
Europe is the 650th Military Intelligence Group which acts as a
"single point of contact" for the NSA, the CIA, the US Defence
Intelligence Agency (DIA) and the various intelligence agencies
within NATO, including the BND in Germany, the BVD in Holland,
the Surete de l'Etat in Belgium, the EYP in Greece and Italy's
SISMI. According to Danish journalists, Bo Elkjaer and Kenan
Seeberg, who work with the daily, "Ekstra Bladet", the 650th MI
Group's "mission statement" describes the secret unit as "part
of Europe's Allied Command (ACE)" within NATO, responsible for
"acquiring support for the counter-intelligence services for
the Supreme Allied Headquarters Europe (SHAPE), its subsidiary
commands and the Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR).

The 650th MI Group is tasked with monitoring alleged threats to
ground stations at Menwith Hill, Bad Aibling, Sandagergard and
the recently upgraded NATO "subsidiary headquarters" at Karup,
on the Jutland peninsula, known as BALTAP (Baltic Approach),
where NATO's Danish/German unitary command -- with affiliated
British and American military personnel -- is based. In 1997,
when defense ministers from NATO's sixteen member states
approved the reorganization of BALTAP, the 650th MI Group was
given the authority to operate within Denmark, to carry out
"offensive counter-intelligence operations" (OFCOs) against
Danish citizens and organizations if necessary to protect Karup
and Sandagergard. In the "small print" of this secret
arrangement, the 650th MI Group is referred to as the US link
between FET and its domestic counterpart, Politiets
Efterretningtjeneste (PET), which is responsible to the Office
of the National Police Commissioner at the Department of
Justice, Copenhagen.

In one of a series of articles published last year in "Ekstra
Bladet", Elkjaer and Seeberg interviewed US Republican
Congressman, Robert Barr, a former CIA agent who worked "mainly
on legal issues" for "The Company", and served as US District
Attorney in Georgia before being elected to Congress. Bob Barr
believes the Danish government should investigate the
relationship between the FET, the NSA and the CIA, and "demand
to be fully informed by their intelligence agencies so they can
tell the Danish people what is happening". Mr. Barr, who is
currently preparing a series of Congressional hearings, with
Congressman Dan Burton, to take place later this year, claims
the US Congress "has not examined the work of its intelligence
agencies for the past twenty years". These organizations have
acquired, over the last two decades, "a totally new potential
to collect and forward information", according to Mr. Barr who
expressed his surprise that "countries operating the system
with the NSA [the so-called UKUSA partners, Canada, Australia,
England and New Zealand] haven't demanded to be informed before
now. Furthermore, to the best of my information, it seems that
almost every Western European country is participating".

It appears Danish politicians have been "economic with the
truth" when it comes to the country's intelligence relationship
with the US. According to "Ekstra Bladet", ministers and senior
officials in Denmark's Social Democratic governments, which
negotiated the "third party" agreement with US intelligence
agencies, have repeatedly denied knowledge of Denmark's "direct
participation" in Echelon. This includes Justice Minister,
Frank Jensen, former IT Research Minister, Jan Trojborg (who
was responsible for Denmark 's telecommunications
infrastructure), and the current Defence Minister, Hans
Hakkerup, who stated in an article published in the armed
forces magazine, "Dansk Forsvar" (Danish Defence), that
"Denmark's armed forces, including the intelligence agency ...
do not participate in a world-wide surveillance network known
as Echelon".

"Ekstra Bladet" also interviewed Wayne Madsen, a former US Navy
officer, NSA staffer based at Fort Meade, and employee, from
1975 to the late 1990s, of RCA and the Computer Science
Corporation (CSC), two of the NSA's technical partners. Madsen
stated that the eavesdropping agency's long-term aim, in 1985,
was "total hearability" -- the capability to "listen in on all
communications around the world". Since the end of the Cold
War, the NSA monitors "everything and everyone", including
politicians, private individuals, companies, organizations and
"even friends in allied countries". Apart from Echelon, US
embassies throughout Europe secretly house "Special Collection
Elements" (SCEs), small teams of signals specialists who
monitor low-frequency communications, including private
conversations between local politicians, government ministers
and companies. According to Mr. Madsen, "anything of interest"
is forwarded to Fort Meade for analysis. What cannot be
monitored by the embassy-based SCE teams is intercepted by NSA
ground stations locally or in neighboring countries.

Apart from the Danish interest in Echelon, the Green Party in
New Zealand has called for an official inquiry into the NSA
ground stations at Tangimoana and Waihopai, following a report
by the country's Security Intelligence Service (SIS) that the
facilities are "useful to and accessible by the intelligence
agencies of New Zealand's intelligence partners". Despite the
SIS claim that "intelligence material is at all times
controlled by New Zealand", the Greens have correctly pointed
out in parliament that the spy bases are "part of a non-
military global spying network" capable of intercepting all
telephone calls, faxes and email, and are used by the "five
Anglo countries spying on the rest of the world, including
Japan, Europe and the Pacific nations". The Greens have called
for the closure of Waihopai, and are seeking a meeting with the
recently-elected Labour Prime Minister, Helen Clark, claiming
both the Labour Party and the National Party, have deliberately
covered-up "what really goes on at Waihopai and Tangimoana".

[......]

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