Simon Mason Writes" from the pages of the ENIGMA magazine.

+NEW PHONETIC ALPHABET (E10) STATION FOUND - There I was minding my own business listening to the latest output figures of tractors, built at factory no.1 on that most interesting and unbiased of stations - Radio Pyongyang, when out of the blue came a very familiar voice "HOTEL NOVEMBER CHARLIE HOTEL, this was on 6575 kHz on 29 March 1998 at 20.25 UTC. The transmission only lasted 3 minutes. I then listened for the next few nights and was rewarded at 19.00 on 2 April 1998 with "HNC-Z", again lasting only 3 minutes. Then on 9 April 1998, there it was again, this time for 6 minutes between 20.00 and 20.06 UTC with "HNC-A". Monitoring is still ongoing to try and establish a pattern, but it would seem to be one of those rare and infrequent stations like ZWL and NPD. It's quite a good hiding place, under the sometimes quite strong Radio Pyongyang and I wonder what those dear listeners think of their favourite programmes being mined by this Lady?

Quite a few of these stations have sent rare messages during the last few months 13 January at 19.15 on 5630 kHz - SYN had a 10 group message, MIW five days later at 19.15 UTC sent 73 - 5 Letter groups and VLB sent a 10 group message on 31 March 1998 at 19.45 UTC. On 2743/4880 kHz at 20.00 UTC, ULX had a very long message, "Group 160" she said. Should be interesting I thought, there is no way that they can send a 160 group message, repeat it and get cleared in time for another message at 20.30 UTC. To add to the interest a sawtooth jammer appeared on 4880 kHz at 20.03 UTC, then at 20.22 UTC "Repeat, Group 160" was sent and the start of the message was broadcast, however, at 20.25 UTC the station suddenly left the air. At 20.29 UTC, the carrier of the jammer reappeared and at 20.30 UTC a very faint "ULX could be heard with an 11 group message. At 21.00 UTC a stronger ULX sent 70 - 5 Letter groups.

+SWEDISH RHAPSODY (G2/M4) I have been involved with some very interesting e-mail exchanges with numbers station enthusiasts in Austria. This all came about when someone asked if anyone knew of an Austrian numbers station. I replied to the group saying that according to 'Langley Pierce's book' "Intercepting Number Stations", the Swedish Rhapsody (G2/M4) station was operated by Austrian Intelligence. Several people asked for recordings of this station so they could assess whether or not the announcer had an Austrian accent, so I sent a sound file to them. The replies stated the announcer had no Austrian accent and indeed was not even a native German speaker at all. This seems strange, as it has been on the air for so many years that it should have been identified by now in much the same way that other stations have been made. Of course, several theories have been proposed including Poland, Italy and Switzerland, but none has really been accepted as definitive, but one of these is much more likely than the others. Here are the comments of Jascha Ruesseler of Marburg, central Germany. "I listen to this station regularly and for me (as a German) it does not sound like having an Austrian accent. That does not mean that it isn't Austrian Intelligence. What I do know is that it has been active since at least the early 1960s; its activities didn't change after the German unification, and it is strong in central Europe. To my knowledge DF'ing attempts have not yielded definite results

+ WHISKY LIMA (G16) PROPAGATION INTRIGUE One of the German 2-letter stations (G16), Whisky Lima shows very unusual frequency usage. The 1000 UTC transmission every Sunday seems to be broadcast from the Southern Hemisphere Let's look at the frequencies used. In November and December 1997 heading towards mid-winter in the Northern Hemisphere it is on 20240 kHz, a very high frequency for winter especially at sunspot minimum. In February 1998 it dropped to 19755 kHz. Spring arrives and it changes to 16220 for March and April. At the height of summer in June it uses 13890 and in July 12095. This is the complete opposite of what would be expected for a station operating in the Northern Hemisphere. Also, the time slot used could be an early evening transmission for the Far East and Australia. Contrast this with the WL broadcast on Thursdays at 19.30 UTC- a European evening slot. In January 7404 kHz is used compared with 13890 kHz for July's transmission. This would mean that WL is used for two separate locations and I intend to see if the addressees used are different for the two days, I suspect they might be.

WL 10.00 SUN China    WL 19.30 THU Russia   MD 09.00 SUN China
MD 13.30 THU Iraq        GK 21.30 FRI  Europe   GK 01.30 SAT U.S.A
BL 08.00/20.00 Daily, possibly Europe (prior to and after office hours)

Hello again and welcome to another column in the ENIGMA newsletter.

Firstly, the holy grail of Number Station monitoring- contacting a person who actually used the broadcasts to decode messages. One such person contacted me after reading about his story on my website. I've decided to protect his anonymity by using false names, but the story is quite fascinating. I am currently trying to tease more of the story out, but unfortunately it may never see the light of day.
" Periodically I check various search engines to see if anyone has added new stuff to the Net that deals with my "illustrious" background. I enjoyed reading your excerpt about Klaus Schmidt. The girlfriend mentioned in it was my mom - and contrary to a lot of things Klaus published, my mom and I had a much bigger part in the entire defection. For example quite frequently I would check the short-wave transmissions. Its funny how you have all sorts of details listed that I had forgotten - it's been 20 years and I was just a 17-year-old "shrimp" back then. As I recall, the East German and West German espionage stations were almost next to one another on the short-wave (or so it seemed). The only way I could tell them apart was by the pronunciation of the number 5." I then replied and told him that I knew about the differences in the pronunciation of the two versions of the number 5. One is "Funnef" and the other "Funf" Here is his reply:
" You know about the "Fuennef"! ! ! ! That's so great!
It's the one way I could tell the stations apart. You know, as I said, I wasn't into the radio aspects of it too much so the frequency means more to you than to me. However - this is kinda cute.... as you had mentioned in the description on your home page, the transmissions were often pretty bad depending on a lot of factors. I do remember one winter night very clearly though. The reason is that my mom had to work until 11:00 PM and I was in "charge" of getting the messages. So I tuned in, all nervous not wanting to miss the number of columns we were supposed to get. Turns out that maybe because it was a crystal clear winter night with snow on the ground and no clouds at all I had the best reception in the world - almost 100% static free. So when I was finished I called my mom at work and told her "you know my friend XYZ, he wants to sell me a West-German record for 250 marks. Its really crystal clear and excellent quality " That was supposed to tell her we had gotten 250 groups of numbers and everything came out great. So there is a little anecdote for you :-)
 Did you know there is a website out there that has pictures of Stasi uniforms and insignia. I couldn't believe it. Must be an American. Living over here I can see how people get fascinated with this stuff."
  I then offered to send him a tape with recordings of German stations to see if he could recognise the actual one, but he probably only has hazy memories of the era and probably couldn't identify anything.
" The offer of the tape is very kind - but like I said, I have a feeling you get a bigger kick out of the whole numbers thing than we did. I did listen to the sound clips on your site and did not see the West German lady. Of course you have to remember this all happened in 1979. Who knows what has changed since then. I'm actually contemplating writing the story of our escape and posting it on the web - just for fun. The problem is that my own site is used for business and it would look sort of peculiar to potential customers to see this crazy stuff. So for now I'm just happy chatting with folks like yourself. Sorry that I'm not the best source about the radio stations - but I really was "tickled pink" when I saw that you knew about the way the number five was pronounced by the east-Germans. It really was my only way to tell that I was listening to the wrong station. Oh before I forget. Did I mention that my mother bought the short-wave receiver in an Intershop in East Berlin? An Intershop was a store were one could buy Western goods for Western currency. The problem is that she had to register that radio in some way - I think they took down her ID information. Now you can imagine that this is not the thing a person wants to do when that person plans to use the radio for espionage. Mom was pretty upset about the German officialdom. Luckily they didn't catch on in time. Back in 1991 a German TV station ran a documentary about this entire story and I found out that 20 minutes after we left our apartment to get on the train to defect the Stasi showed up to arrest us. If your interested, my hometown has a website its www.oberhof.de and if you click on the coat of arms it shows you some pictures - including the very train station we went to catch the "final train". It's a pretty little town in the mountains."
   Hopefully more of the story will come out, especially from the mother.   It has read it here!

 
Next, a review of the CD-ROM,  "The Numbers Racket" by Chris Smolinski. You navigate through the CD as web pages with your browser and you view through the pages as you would on the Internet. After a short introduction, the basics of number stations are discussed. These include a brief introduction, why anyone would want to use this method of communication, an excellent overview of one time pads and other means of encryption, suggested times and frequency ranges, a list of the stations along with their corresponding ENIGMA designation and station families. There then follows a list of the majority of past and present stations, however, since none of these has an ENIGMA designation, it is somewhat difficult to cross reference each station with the old sometime erroneous name such as "Bulgarian Betty". To be fair, you can access each station by the ENIGMA code on different page.  Each station is dealt with comprehensively and in the majority of cases an audio clip is included. I recognised quite a few of my own recordings, including a few taken with an open mike in my kitchen, complete with sound effects!
  Taking a look at the stations then, starting with Cherry Ripe (E4). A list of operating frequencies is shown along with a recent schedule and a description of the station format.
A sound clip is included, although quite who would want to listen to the full 45 minutes is another question! Some of the stations are covered very comprehensively such as the Counting Stations (E5/G5), which describes the alleged connection with the Warrenton Training Centre. A clip of the unique transmission of 24 DEC 97 by the buzzer (S28) on 4625kHz is included, as well as a very nice recording of "Oblique" (E11) sending a 141 group message. In fact the best feature of the CD is the diversity of recordings.
  Finally, a bibliography, tribute to the late Havana Moon, number station web sites, a language identifier and various other items complete the CD. The CD ROM is still available form Chris Smolinski in limited quantities and is well worth the $25 for the recordings alone. Details available in last month's column.

A possible new station has appeared as described next by its discoverer, Larsen in Denmark.
"The so-called "Slavic Female" is every weekends at 7.00 GMT on 2136 KHz for 5 minutes active. Similar like some other number stations, some minutes before the usually transmission a short test transmission appears. At 7.00 GMT it starts then with a strange 9 tones call up followed by the also strange message. Special thanks to my friend Frank van Gerwen, who says that the message is an repetition of the numbers from 20 (dvadeset) to 29 (dvadeset devet), and ended at 7.05 GMT." Later on the new station was further clarified:
" On 2136 KHz every weekend at 7.00 GMT, my thanks to Karel Honzik. He say's it's an Czech female reading numbers 50-59 (pades�t, pades�t jedna... pades�t devet) with parallels to TX on 1122 KHz during daytime at H+10-12 and H+40-42, transmitter on 1122 is located easterly of Prague."

Next Rimantas Pleikys answers the age-old question of why no one has ever come forward out of the woodwork and admitted working at a number station transmission site:

Sometimes we ask ourselves, why nobody from the "spy numbers" transmission professionals tells us some details? Well, first of all, many of them even don't know that we ask such questions about these transmissions, which are for most of them nothing but a routine job. Secondly, all the insiders in any country, involved in intelligence communications, must be prosecuted by law for any public dissemination of professional information, not to say about spying. Third, the tactical operative radio transmission systems are organized in such a way that nobody (except of a few top managers) knows the entire process, which is automated, and nobody can see the plain text except those who write and receive it; the radio communications staff could be a part of a different organisation (army, embassy, etc.) with no understanding or right to ask where do they receive an audio signal from or is it an operative, camouflage, dummy or training message. Rimantas also commented on the pip transmission and the SLHFM. He stated:
On Jan. 20, at 06:35 UTC, the Russian military HF channel marker ("XX" Enigma designator, or "The Pip") was still going in on the both, day and night, frequencies: 5448.0 kHz and 3756.0 kHz, while the usual TX and frequency change time is at 05:30 UTC.
   Sometimes the "Plavets-41" ("Swimmer-41", the Russian navy Izhevsk based CW "R" channel marker), the Krasnodar area channel marker station operating on 3756/5448 kHz ("The Pip"), and even the famous Moscow area based "UVB-76" ("The Buzzer") transmit a short "live" male voice SSB messages, usually consisted of short number groups.  The purpose of such control transmissions is to check a readiness of the receiving network operators. That is the reason why the message transmission time and content is varying. The Russian military communications people call such messages "a signal" (the "Plavets-41" call it on air a "rescript"). The receiving facility officers write the content of the received "signal" into the shift journal, then immediately contact the transmitting (central, o hub) station, sending back the received "signal" message, or the corresponding answering message, taken from the special table. The hub and network stations are connected by more then one heavy duty channel: dedicated telephone or cable line, satellite, microwave link, or fixed two-way HF
channel. The short-wave circuits are mostly the reserve (backup) links.


Finally, I recently received an excellent set of recordings from Hideharu Torii from Japan. Visit his number station website on http://www.246.ne.jp/~abi/ransu/index.html.

Here he describes the current scene on the Korean peninsular:
Numbers Stations on the Korean Peninsula
North Korean Numbers Stations
Numbers stations operated by North Korea have been monitored for decades. The activities of the stations have been reduced compared with those in early 1980s. The North Korean numbers stations in voice, which transmit five-digit figures, have currently three outlets. Of them, two use Radio Pyongyang, a Korean service beamed to South Korea and Korean residents in Japan. At 1500 (midnight Korea and Japan time), Radio Pyongyang's service is separated into two programs. One opens with Red Flag Song on 657, 855, 3250, 6400 kHz and other frequencies, while the other starts with March of the Guerrilla Army on 3320, 6250kHz and other frequencies. The Red Flag Song outlet broadcasts coded messages almost every day.
The March of the Guerrilla Army outlet transmits numbers and correspondence for specific agents or collaborators on fixed dates. For example, messages for the No. 101 are sent on every 10th and 12th of
January, March, July and September, while messages for the No. 3166 are transmitted on every 13th and 14th of March, June, September and December. The messages of the second day transmission are a rebroadcast. After coded message broadcasts end, Radio Pyongyang returns to a unified program. The last outlet is not affiliated with Radio Pyongyang's service and opens with the interval signal using an arranged version of Song of General Kim Il Sung on 4770 and 5870kHz. The station plays Cantata to
Marshal Kim Il Sung after the interval signal. The station has been monitored irregularly at 0400, 1000, 1200, 1400 or 2200. When there are no messages, the station broadcasts readings of essays or music played by Pochonbo Electronic Ensemble, Wangjaesan Light Music Troupe, Korean
People's Army Concert Troupe, Mansudae Art Troupe and Pobada Opera Troupe.
At 1230 on every 8th and 28th of March, June, September and December, the station plays music "requested by servicemen and workers." At 2200 on December 31st, February 15th and April 14th and at 1200 on January 1st, February 16th and April 15th, only music is played without announcement. February 16th is the birthday of North Korea's leader Kim Jong Il and April 15th is the birthday of the late North Korea President Kim Il Sung.

Format of North Korean Numbers Stations
After opening music, a woman announcer calls out the numbers of agents for whom messages will be sent and the starting time of the messages. During this broadcast, first a message for the No. 2883 will be sent, and then a message for the No. 692 will start from 1208, and a message for the No. 2185 will follow at 1214. A preamble is repeated twice. There is no such a preamble in the case of only one message and a woman announcer begins with like this: "A message for the No. 2833 will be sent. A message for the No. 2833 will be sent. A message for the No. 2833 will be sent. Count 21. Count 21. Text. The voice then goes into the text of five-figure groups with a pause between the third and fourth digit like this: "374 79, 686 53, 468 80" After a message is finished, an announcement like this follows: "I'll repeat the message. A message for the No. 2833 will be sent. A message for the No. 2833 will be sent. Count 21. Count 21. Text." There is no pause between the third and fourth digit this time like this: "37479, 68653, 46880"A message ends with announcement of "That's all."
South Korean Numbers Stations
Numbers stations run by South Korea was first noted in late 1970s. The purpose and the nature of the stations remain in a mystery. The stations appear sporadically on the hour or the half hour between 1400 and 1700 on 4500, 4600, 5715 or 6215kHz. The stations start with a South Korean popular song. Various songs have been used. The names of recipients of messages are referred to such as the No. 008, phoenix and mountains in the Korean Peninsula. Texts are either four-figure or five-figure groups. The stations occasionally end after only playing opening music.
  Format of South Korean Numbers Stations
The typical format of the stations is as follows: "The No. 3825, the No. 3825. Please receive a message. Count 64. Text." A woman announcer then goes into the text with a pause between the third and fourth in the case of five digits and between the second and third in the case of four digits.
The text is repeated again without pause between digits, saying, "I'll repeat the message again." The broadcast ends with such an announcement like this:" That's all. Thank you.