This was published 1 year ago
The truth is out there – at a spy base 400 kilometres north of Perth
By Gary Adshead
As global media began to uncover the truth about Echelon, only one Australian journalist uncovered and reported its Australian component.Credit: Marija Ercegovac
Marked “confidential” and written in perfectly punctuated English, the letter declared “the truth is out there” and pondered whether I was “prepared to do a Fox Mulder”.
It was a cheesy way to grab my attention and I certainly considered throwing the letter straight into the rubbish bin, like many examples of crackpot correspondence sent to me over almost four decades of journalism.
But this author appeared to have some insight into the secretive world of telecommunications interception.
“This is bigger than God’s underpants,” a second letter from the anonymous source read.
“Do not get caught up too much on a few geodesic framed golf balls or a few catch phrases you may have stumbled upon.”
My “deepthroat” was referring to five gigantic white dome-shaped objects – located about 30 kilometres inland from Western Australia’s crayfishing hub of Geraldton – and the significant role they played in a global surveillance project codenamed Echelon.
“I am prepared to grant you a wish list of 10 questions for which I will endeavour to answer or steer you in the right direction,” they wrote.
“Prepare the list diligently because there will be only one crack at this!”
Uncovering Echelon’s Australian link
The Australian Defence Satellite Communications Station sits in unremarkable Mid West sheep and crop farming country known as Kojarena.
Once a pastoral station and a World War II flight training aerodrome, former defence minister Kim Beazley commissioned the base there in 1987 because it was close to the west coast of Australia, free from electromagnetic interference, and perfectly positioned to monitor satellites orbiting thousands of kilometres above Earth.
“This will contribute to Australia’s security in our area of strategic interest,” Beazley wrote in a Defence White Paper.
“The station will be totally Australian owned and will be manned and operated by the Defence Signals Directorate.”
Part of the reason for making details of the spy base public was the minister’s acceptance that it would be impossible to conceal such a large facility.
“I don’t want there to be any overt excitement, alarm or whatever in the community as it starts to be constructed,” Beazley told the Daily News.
The $150 million base opened in 1993, and began its top-secret work monitoring the satellite communications of countries such as China, Russia, Pakistan and North Korea.
It joined a network of bases in New Zealand, England, the United States and Canada to provide blanket satellite interception capability across the planet.
Its strategic significance was emphasised in 1988, even before it was built, when Australian National University professor Desmond Ball wrote about its planned role in monitoring up to 34 Soviet satellites.
American author James Bamford revealed in Body of Secrets how the base “near the scruffy port of Geraldton” was used to monitor satellite phone calls being made to and from Saudi-born terrorist Osama bin Laden in the late 1990s.
“Eventually, following president [Bill] Clinton’s 1998 American cruise missile attack on bin Laden’s camp in Afghanistan, and the realisation that his location could be betrayed by signals from the satellite phone, he stopped using the instrument,” Bamford wrote.
It then emerged, however, that the powerful data collection technology of the five bases was also being used on ordinary citizens in the search for so-called intelligence-gathering keywords.
Two journalists, Nicky Hagar and Duncan Campbell, worked for years to expose this.
“The spooks have the world covered and consider themselves free to read anyone’s email they wish to,” Hagar wrote in his 1996 book Secret Power.
The Australian Defence Satellite Communications Station in Kojarena. Credit: Defence Signals Directorate, now Australian Signals Directorate
In 2001, the European Parliament confirmed the existence of the global surveillance system, and its name: Echelon.
The EU report concluded that possible threats to privacy and to businesses posed by such a system arose not only from its power, but from its operating in a largely legislation-free area. It also noted indications of a new system being created with new partners, as a way of “acquiring additional resources to overcome Echelon’s limits”.
I uncovered the Australian connection from documents posted on a rebellious website called Cryptome, a “library” for leaked classified material related to the world of intelligence.
When a draft EU report in 2000 specifically named the Kojarena base as part of Echelon, I knew I had to write a story.
I still recall Beazley’s reaction when I bumped into him at Channel Nine’s studio soon after first hearing the term Echelon. I decided to see how he reacted to a question about it, and he answered with a question of his own.
With the WA base, Australia joined New Zealand, the UK, the US and Canada to provide blanket satellite intercept capability across the planet. Credit: iStockphoto
“How do you know about that?” he said.
I decided to go to see the facility for myself.
The road to Echelon and a man named Bob
For a bird’s-eye view of the Kojarena base during my trip in 2000, I boarded a light aircraft and soon spotted the tennis courts and swimming pool that made living on the remote site bearable.
From the air, there appeared to be up to 12 buildings interlinked to form a main operations centre.
Placed between the five white radomes – circular weatherproof structures to protect the satellite antennas inside from both the elements and anyone wanting to know where they were aimed – were large equipment sheds and a helicopter pad.
The enormity of the dome was captured by an aerial photograph showing a white van which appeared so small alongside the central dome that it resembled a Matchbox toy.
The “radomes” protect the antennas inside from both weather and from prying eyes. Credit: Mike Burgess
Once our charter flight had returned to Geraldton, the photographer and I decided to head back out to the spy base by road and drive as close to the compound’s main gates as possible, which would obviously test the patience of security staff.
Before turning down the road dotted with “authorised personnel only” signs and CCTV cameras, I drove to adjacent properties to see what wheat and sheep farmers knew about their national security-focussed neighbours.
A man called Dick answered the first door and said the only contact he had with the base was an occasional visit from maintenance contractors concerned about crop dusting.
“I had a visit from a Yank once who was worried that crop dusting was damaging one of the big golf balls,” Dick explained.
“Hang on, I’ve still got his card.”
The business card revealed the name of an American technician working for the Electronic Space Systems Corporation, which was hardly surprising given the base was designed, constructed and operated with the help of the world’s most powerful foreign signals intelligence service, the US National Security Agency.
This paper described the satellite signals interception program as Australia’s largest single space activity.Credit: Australian National University
The NSA employs more than 30,000 people and its headquarters in Fort Meade, north of Washington, is known as the Puzzle Palace.
After passing an unmanned guard house and several warning signs about trespass, I decided not to push my luck and did a U-turn.
Security vehicles came in pursuit and after pulling over on the side of the road a man, who called himself “Bob”, stepped out of a separate vehicle and introduced himself.
Bob soon realised that I was reasonably harmless even though I had thrown the word Echelon around to see how he might react.
“We’re just a communications base,” he said before reminding me not to come any closer than the viewing platform off the main road to Geraldton.
My ensuing report, which carried the headline “WA base named in Euro probe”, prompted the teasing anonymous letters. And while I didn’t need this mysterious person to tell me the importance of the base, I did send them 10 questions because any assistance with the technical details about Echelon would be useful.
“The ‘electronic ear’ gathers all microwave activity and, in layman’s terms, puts it through a sieve,” was one response.
“The geodesic domes are only there to disguise the direction they (the satellite dishes) are pointed in,” was another.
R.A.F. Menwith Hill Surveillance Centre in Yorkshire, in the UK, is the largest base of the Echelon network, and can carry out two million intercepts per hour. Credit: Stan Roberts/Sygma/Sygma via Getty Images
But the source clearly didn’t like some of my questions.
“Dear Boy, along the path to righteousness you are just going to have to accept some constructive criticism,” they wrote.
A call from the outer reaches
This was not to be my last foray into the Echelon mystery. In 2004, someone unknown left a message on my landline telephone’s answering machine.
The male voice tipped me off about a dispute and inquiry into concerns about the management of the Kojarena base.
Like Agent Mulder, I was back on the case and got more than I bargained for when I wrote a small article as part of a daily column, which included a cheeky wish to meet anyone with further information in an underground car park.
The morning it was published my telephone rang.
“Hello, Mr Adshead,” the woman said. “I’ll just put you through to the director of Defence Signals Directorate, Canberra.”
I went cold. Stephen Merchant was in charge of the most sensitive spy agency in the country and it seemed stranger than fiction for him to be calling me.
“I have a copy of your paper here,” Merchant said. “I thought I’d talk to you direct from Canberra to save you meeting anyone in an underground car park.”
His sense of humour was reassuring.
Merchant went on to confirm that a “very exhaustive inquiry” had been conducted into the “implementation of a specific project” at the Kojarena base by a former federal ombudsman.
He then, much to my surprise, sent through a direct quote from the top secret inquiry’s conclusions.
“Although it is clear there have been occasional instances from time to time over its 12-year history where particular staff have had concerns about their workplace environment and related management practices, in my view there is nothing in the nature or volume of those cases which would suggest there are or have been widespread or systemic concerns.”
A long-winded way of saying case closed.
A view of the green Yorkshire moors countryside looking down from a nearby hill to the UK Echelon base. Credit: In Pictures Ltd./Corbis via Getty Images
The next chapter
In July 2007, a statement was released by the Department of Defence revealing Kojarena would undergo a significant expansion.
“The government has agreed to host a ground station for a US strategic and military satellite communications system at the ADSCS,” the statement read.
According to the statement, the new section of the base is part of the US and Australian military’s “mobile phone network” which allows secure communications among “deployed forces”.
“It will be a joint Australia-US ground station,” the department said. “It will not be a US military base.”
Perhaps my old Echelon deepthroat will make contact again to challenge that assertion.
Next week on The Reporter: The photo and the phone call: How a tip-off toppled master manipulator Barry Urban.
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