“Numbers stations” spies on 40 meters
Ana Montes
I heard my first “numbers station” on my grandparent’s old Zenith Transoceanic decades ago. My most recent copy of a numbers station was last week on the 41m SW band. What worked in the 70’s for communicating covertly with spies is still a valid method in the Internet Age.
From 1985 until her arrest in 2001, Ana Montes made use of the method to receive communications from Cuban Intelligence – the government for whom she spied while working as a senior analyst in matters pertaining to Cuba for the Defense Intelligence Agency in Washington, DC.
On February 6 1999, Montes received a transmission on 7887 kHz from Havana for 45 minutes, keying 150 five-digit numbers into her computer. A diskette containing a decryption program then converted the seemingly random numbers into Spanish text.
Upon her arrest, agents found a Sony shortwave receiver in Montes’ apartment and were able to recover 11 pages of deleted text from her Toshiba laptop – part of the text instructed Montes to use a “wipe” program to completely delete the decrypted text, which she evidently failed to do.
Although difficult to decrypt a message without the proper key, the very act of decrypting leaves a copy of the decrypted text on the computer’s hard drive and simply deleting that file doesn’t really delete it.
Further details of Montes and the technical aspects of her communications with Cuban agents can be read in her arrest warrant here. Ana Montes is currently serving a 25 years sentence in a prison near Fort Worth, TX.
Kendall Myers
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More recently (2009), Kendall Myers – a US State Dept officer and a great-grandson of Alexander Graham Bell (!) - was arrested on charges of spying for Cuba. Also a professor of political science at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, Myer’s syllabus contained “Lectures in praise of double agents.”
Like Montes, Myers and his wife decided to forgo his great-grandfather’s invention and used instead a Sony shortwave radio for their communications with Havana, receiving messages in both voice and Morse (could he have been a ham?). By the time the traitorous couple were caught they’d been spying for Castro for nearly three decades.
Myer’s arrest warrant contains verbiage to the effect that the FBI records the text of numbers stations in the event the numerical sequence matches that found on computers confiscated by suspected spies. Failing the ability to decode the message, the sequences themselves constitute evidence of “nefarious usage”.
According to Myers, money wasn’t the motive – ideology and a “love of the Cuban system” provided the impetus to sell-out his country. Sean Penn has a friend.
Judge Walton
On July 16, 2010, Kendall Myers was sentenced to life imprisonment without possibility of parole. The couple were so unrepentant about their crimes that the judge cited their lack of remorse in hitting Kendall with a term that ensures he’ll die in prison.
Incidentally, the presiding judge, US District Court Judge Reggie Walton, whose grandfather was born into slavery, told the couple he felt America provides a great opportunity to its citizens, “The United States has a lot to be proud of, which is something that you can’t seem to acknowledge.”
Touche, Judge.
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Themocracy
Believe it or not I occasionally heard the “numbers” in Iraq during my recent year there teaching in a private high school. The RFI was so high that I didn’t spend a lot of time on frequencies below 21 mHz, but the numbers were heard through the racket once or twice. 72,
Jerry N4EO, ex-YI9EO, the license is actually good through 2012
Interesting, Jerry – what language?
Oh my, nice story! Time to shut down my own number station ;-)
http://youtu.be/AoDADQT24cQ
73, Bas
Very nice effect, Bas!
I still have my Zenith Transoceanic that I bought in 1971. It went all the way to Turkey and back with me, still works. Noisy pots and bandswitch though
Hi John,
More info on this can be found in the papers “Cuband Agent Communications” and “Qpies and Numbers”:
http://users.telenet.be/d.rijmenants/en/papers.htm
Much more about ciphers and codes on the Cipher Machines and Cryptology website:
http://users.telenet.be/d.rijmenants
73,
Dirk – ONL11714
Thanks for that info, Dirk – that’s quite an interesting website you have.