Radio buff finds mystery station connected to Iraq

Most evenings after dinner, Bjorn Fransson retires to a walk-in closet to fiddle with his powerful Japanese-made radio, hunting through a cacophony of distant voices speaking languages he can't understand.

"It is like collecting stamps or birds," says the 59-year-old Swedish schoolteacher, who lives on the blustery island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea. "We all dream of finding something no one else has."

Earlier this month, while tuning into an AM frequency usually clogged by country music from Prague, he picked up an unfamiliar broadcast in Arabic. He couldn't fathom what was being said but "understood this must be something new."

He made a recording and announced his find on the Internet. Three weeks later, Mr. Fransson is wondering whether his 300 yards of wires and antennas lassoed more than just a new radio station: Did it actually ensnare a covert -- and somewhat clumsy -- American operation aimed at Iraq?

That is certainly the view of many fellow radio buffs, who, having tuned into the enigmatic Arabic station themselves, are now abuzz with speculation that Mr. Fransson stumbled onto an American plot to rattle Saddam Hussein and foment dissent among his most loyal supporters. Some say they've even detected secret messages to U.S. operatives embedded in the station's astrological forecasts.

"I'd be prepared to wager quite a few Iraqi dinars ... on this station having been invented in a room somewhere in Washington," says Andy Sennitt, a British radio enthusiast who, back in 1974, was the first to find an elusive outfit called Voice of Iraqi Kurdistan. He has a day job with Radio Netherlands.

Nick Grace, the Washington editor of clandestineradio.com, a Web site that tracks illicit radio stations from Iraq to Indonesia, says he's so convinced of a secret American link to Mr. Fransson's find that "I'd bet my whole house on it. ... This has all the hallmarks of a classic CIA operation." The Central Intelligence Agency declined to comment.

As for Mr. Fransson, who has been hunting exotic radio signals for more than four decades, he's relishing all the excitement. Over the years, he has monitored and received acknowledgement cards from more than 2,000 stations in 216 countries, but this, he says, is the first time he has bagged a possible spy venture.

He has written up his exploit for the magazine of the Swedish radio federation, given interviews on Sweden's state radio and regaled the few people on Gotland island who share his nocturnal passion for unintelligible babble. He has even become a minor celebrity outside Sweden, at least among radio fans, who are known as DX-ers, a name that derives from the Morse-code abbreviation for long distance.

The last time Mr. Fransson stirred any cloak-and-dagger buzz, he says, was 20 years ago when Swedish-security-service agents checked to make sure he wasn't using all the wires entwined around his trees to transmit illegal broadcasts.

When he first picked up the new signal on Feb. 3, the Swede was puzzled by its unusual strength and the constant repetition of words that, to his ears, sounded like "radio secret." It was, he says, "very mysterious." Shortly afterward, though, a Finnish enthusiast tuned in to the same frequency and reported on the Web that the station's name sounded more like "Radio Tigris."

Mr. Fransson turned for help to some Arabic-speaking students in his math class. He played them a cassette tape of the broadcast. "They got quite excited," he says. They told him that the station's name was in fact "Radio Tikrit" and that Tikrit is Mr. Hussein's hometown.

The Iraqi government has no such station, though it does have a Mother of Battles Radio. The Iraqi National Congress, or INC, an umbrella opposition group, says it has nothing to do with Radio Tikrit.

Each evening since the start of the month, a male and female announcer have chanted the same opening jingle: "For all of Iraq and for all Iraqis, this is Radio Tikrit."

As news of Radio Tikrit's discovery spread, Arab radio amateurs tuned in and questioned whether the announcers who claimed to speak "for all of Iraq" were actually Iraqi. Some said their accents sounded more Lebanese. The choice of frequency -- 1584 kHz -- also aroused curiosity: an Iraqi faction long backed by the CIA, Iraqi National Accord, broadcasts on nearby frequencies from a U.S. transmitter in Kuwait.

Tarek Zaidan, an Egyptian DX-er, added another piece to the puzzle. Radio Tikrit's male announcer, he said, sounds remarkably similar to an announcer on Radio Information, an overtly American-run station beamed into Iraq from "Commando Solo" planes flown by the 193rd Special Operations Wing. Mr. Zaidan said this suggests Radio Tikrit was perhaps recorded in studios also used by the Pentagon for some of its own burgeoning radio ventures. These, in preparation for a potential war, include broadcasts from a ground station in northern Iraq and a proposal to set up a clandestine transmitter in Jordan. A spokesman said that as a matter of policy, the Pentagon wouldn't comment.

By mid-February, news of Radio Tikrit had reached an area in the north of Iraq where opponents of Mr. Hussein were gathering for a planned big meeting. Zaab Sethna, a London-based adviser to the INC, had made the journey and, after a tip-off about Radio Tikrit from an American buff, began to make inquiries.

"Everyone here is completely mystified: Why would anyone name a radio station after Tikrit?" he said by telephone from Sulaimania in the northern no-fly zone of Iraq. "It's a very good way to turn off anyone who doesn't live in Tikrit, which is nearly everyone. It's worse than a bad joke."

Even more puzzling than its name is Radio Tikrit's evolving message. When it started up, the station railed against the U.S. and Britain as "ravens of evil," mimicked news reports on Iraqi media and featured a talk titled "Before It's Too Late" that urged Iraqis to prepare to battle America.

Gradually, though, antagonism toward Washington softened and praise of the Baghdad regime soured into criticism.

By last week, the station had completed a 180-degree turn. It denounced the Iraqi leader as a "tyrant" and lambasted his family, according to BBC Monitoring, a service that transcribes, translates and analyzes foreign broadcasts. The "Before It's Too Late" slot featured a letter from an "honorable officer of the Republican Guard" urging fellow officers to abandon the Iraqi dictator: "You would be fools not to realize the extent of popular wrath that awaits you if you do not leave this gang and flee."

This bizarre about-face, say radio aficionados, suggests that the station belongs to an exotic category of psychological operations known as "black clandestines."

Unlike the U.S. military's Radio Information broadcasts into Iraq, which make no secret of their affiliations and include recordings of Pentagon briefings, covert "black" stations try, for a time at least, to imitate features of enemy broadcasts. By shifting direction later, they hope to unsettle the enemy and even create the impression that former loyalists have changed sides.

It's unclear whether Radio Tikrit's flip-flops have had any impact inside Iraq. But they have flummoxed even professional radio experts listening from outside.

Four days after Mr. Fransson first detected Radio Tikrit's signal, BBC Monitoring issued a brief report describing "what appears to be a new Iraqi opposition radio station." Three days later, it declared Radio Tikrit "pro-government." After a two-week silence, it pronounced the station anti-Hussein. BBC Monitoring is an arm of BBC World Service, which is funded by the British Foreign Office.

Amateur radio buffs jumped on BBC Monitoring's zigzags and period of silence as evidence of interference by the CIA, which funds FBIS, an American monitoring service. FBIS collaborates with the BBC's service and provides most of its translations of Iraqi broadcasts. "It's very fishy," says Mr. Grace, the Washington-based clandestine radio hunter. A spokesman for BBC Monitoring says it "definitely wasn't leaned on."

Mr. Fransson, meanwhile, has returned to his closet to stalk new signals, but he hasn't caught anything interesting. The Radio Tikrit mystery just gets "bigger and better" and has been fun, he says. He thinks the station is "connected to America in one way or another" but he doesn't know to whom exactly.

For a hard-core DX-er, this is a big problem: He can't write to ask for an acknowledgement card to add to his collection. He sent an e-mail message to an Iraqi opposition radio station in London in the hope that it might lead him to Radio Tikrit. He isn't holding his breath.

"I'm basically a collector," Mr. Fransson says. "I like making contact with different people, but I don't know who these people really are."

I'm not too sharp on the numbers stations. I'm only a poor shmuck with an old Sangean ATS-803 (radio Shack DX-440). But even with an el cheapo radio you can't help but eventually stumble on one of those transmissions, hence my surprise at the tone of this article. The writer could've done some rudimentary research and found out about what goes on in the shortwave bands.

Here's a page to help the ones out who haven't heard of numbers stations:

http://www.dxing.com/numbers.htm

For decades, SWLs have been hearing stations that do nothing but read blocks of numbers, usually using a woman's voice, in a variety of languages and on innumerable different frequencies. All available evidence indicates that some of these transmissions may be somehow connected to espionage activities. These are the numbers stations, the most enduring mystery on the shortwave bands.

Even though they do not operate on any fixed schedule or frequencies known to the public, numbers stations are really very easy to hear. Just tune outside the established shortwave broadcasting or ham radio bands and you'll hear several with patient tuning. While numbers stations can be heard any time on any frequencies, most seem to be heard in North America during the evening and night hours on frequencies from 3 to 12 MHz.

Most numbers stations heard in North America transmit in Spanish. Other languages often heard include English, German, and scattered other languages such as Chinese and Russian. Almost all will use a woman's voice, although on rare occasions a man's voice might be used. You will quickly notice that the numbers you hear sound much like the "intercept" messages used by telephone companies to give out new numbers when you dial a discontinued number, and a similar technology is obviously in use to generate numbers messages.

There are two main types of English and Spanish numbers transmissions you can hear. The first, the five-digit stations, transmits messages in blocks of five digits. The second, the 3/2-digit stations, are so named because there is a distinct pause between the third and fourth digit of each group. For years, stations were heard in Spanish and English transmitting numbers in four-digit blocks. These now seem to have been replaced by the 3/2-digit stations, although some four-digit German numbers stations are still heard in Europe.

Five-digit Spanish stations are the most frequently heard variety. They begin transmissions with something like "atención 341 67" repeated for several minutes. The three-digit group is believed to the identifier of the recipient of the message, while the second number is the number of five-digit groups in the message. Sometimes as many as three different messages may be sent in the same transmission. Transmissions usually conclude with the words "fínal, fínal." Almost all of these stations use AM.

The next most commonly heard type is the 3/2-digit Spanish station. These open with a three-digit group sent three times (again believed to be the intended recipient) followed by "1234567890." This sequence is repeated for several minutes. After ten tones, something like "grupo 154, grupo 154" is sent. The number following "grupo" is the number of groups that will be transmitted.

Numbers stations using English, German, and other languages generally follow similar formats, although often with some significant variations. Some numbers stations using Morse code have been reported, although the Morse is usually sent using audio tones over AM instead of as CW. Morse code numbers stations were once common, but their number has steeply declined in recent years.

One interesting aspect of numbers broadcasts is that a message may be repeated hours or days later on the same or different frequency. The purpose of this is not known, although one logical reason would be to allow the intended recipient another opportunity to receive the message in the event they were unable to listen at the earlier time. Another possible explanation is that some messages could be for training and practice rather than to actually convey information.

The formats used by the five-digit and 3/2-digit stations follow two well known cryptological techniques. The first is the one-time pad system, which fits with the format of the five-digit stations. In this system, both the sender and recipient have copies of a code pad. The code pad will have several columns of numbers, seemingly at random. The received numbers are added or subtracted from the numbers on the sheet of the one-time pad being used, and the results are compared to a master code key list. Each number block will usually represent a complete word or phrase rather than a sequence of characters. After each page in a one-time pad is used, it is torn from the pad and destroyed. (The CIA has reportedly developed one-time pads whose pages turn into chewing gum upon contact with saliva!) One-time pads as small as postage stamps are known to exist. While the one-time method sounds crude, messages sent using it are unbreakable so long as a copy of the pad used doesn't fall into the hands of the "opposition."

The 3/2-digit stations seem to be using some variation of the dictionary code system. In this system, a book available to the sender and recipient is used as the basis of message encoding and decoding. The first three digits represent the page number, while the last two digits are the position of a certain word on the page, usually counting from the upper left corner of the page. This method has the advantage of eliminating the risk of delivering one-time pads to agents and having those pads discovered. The big disadvantage has traditionally been a lengthy, slow encoding process, although computers can now handle this easily and quickly. It may be no accident that 3/2-digit first appeared in the early 1980s, when PCs began to greatly increase in power!

Many 3/2-digit transmissions are made using reduced carrier AM. This modulation method reduces the carrier power and puts additional power in the sidebands. This method allows improved intelligibility and reception over normal AM, but is compatible with shortwave radios that only receive AM signals.

While some dispute this conclusion, there is evidence that most numbers stations may be connected with intelligence and espionage operations. Books such as The Spy Who Got Away by David Wise, Widows by William R. Corson, Susan B. Trento, and Joseph J. Trento, and KGB Today by John Baron, have all detailed espionage operations, both American and Soviet, involving the use of messages sent via radio as number groups. Other spies, like England's Geoffrey Prime, have been arrested with one-time pads and a shortwave radio in their possession. However, not all numbers stations may be connected to espionage. Some transmissions, especially those using a man's voice or sent "live" rather than taped, may be connected to drug smuggling or other illegal activities.

The five-digit Spanish transmissions appear to be originating within Cuba. These often have hum and other technical difficulties, and sometimes audio from Radio Havana Cuba has been heard mixed in with the numbers messages! This indicates the five-digit Spanish numbers and Radio Havana Cuba probably use the same transmitting facilities.

Another possibility is that some numbers stations operate from embassies and consulates in the United States and elsewhere. Under international law, embassies and consulates have the right to maintain radio facilities to communicate with their home countries. Since embassies and consulates are "extraterritorial" to the nation they are located in, stations there could be used for numbers transmissions.
There are still other mysteries surrounding numbers stations. SWLs equipped with spectrum analyzers have found data bursts buried within numbers transmissions. Subaudible tones have been detected on other numbers signals. And listeners like Brian Webb of California and Zel Eaton of Missouri have heard numbers transmissions, in the AM mode, on frequencies above 30 MHz during sporadic-E openings. This is noteworthy because frequencies above 30 MHz are normally restricted to local reception.

There is another category of mystery station closely related to numbers stations, known as "phonetic" stations. These transmit messages using groups of five letters from the international phonetic alphabet (alpha, bravo, charlie, delta, etc.). These stations are often heard repeating a phrase like "charlie india oscar two" for hours before any message is actually sent. It is widely believed that phonetic stations are operated by the Mossad, Israel's intelligence service. In addition to Israel itself, it is believed that these stations also operate from Israeli embassies. (Some of these stations have been heard with local quality signals in the Washington area, for example.)

While most SWLs couldn't care less about numbers stations, others are obsessed with them. And it's understandable. . . . how often do you get to play James Bond and match wits with the CIA, the Mossad, and other intelligence services of the world?

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