28 February 2000. Thanks to anonymous.
Source:
http://www.lemonde.fr/article/0,2320,seq-2037-43570-QUO,00.html
See also:
http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/scs/scsfac.htm
http://www.iptvreports.mcmail.com/ic2kreport.htm
http://villagevoice.com/features/9908/vest_madsen.shtml
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/unscom/interviews/gellman.html
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Senate/8789/sunday1.htm
Translation by Cryptome. More information on Special Collection Service invited:
scs@cryptome.org
Satellite photos of the SCS facility:
http://cryptome.org/eyeball/scs-bird/scs-birdseye.htm
(2005)
http://cryptome.org/eyeball/scs/scs-eyeball.htm
(2002)
Le Monde, February 23, 2000
A Secret Alliance Between the CIA and the NSA
Updated Tuesday February 22, 2000
In the United States, the NSA and the CIA have created a common agency, named
Special Collection Service (SCS), whose activities are highly secret and
whose role is to give to Americans, in all clandestinity, information
on new means to overcome the difficulties encountered by interception operations
caused by progress in encryption for protection of world communications.
The existence of the SCS is not officially recognized. It is known only that
this new federal agency brings together CIA and NSA teams expert in decrypting
of transmissions especially protected against any intrusion which comes from
the outside.
Indeed, the NSA usually carries out its remote interceptions relatively
"passively:" it intercepts what it is asked to oversee. However, the encryption
of communications by the same parties which transmit them has become increasingly
effective. It requires time - and money - to access these communications,
and it becomes difficult "to crack" without reliable and easy access to suspected
equipment.
It is thus necessary to find processes which allow authentic - but secret
- intrusions into the targeted systems, i.e., "active" electronic and
data-processing mechanisms, like, for example, the possibility of introducing
viruses, of collecting key words which will facilitate their locations with
impunity, and of infiltrating computers or communication networks. Only the
CIA, thanks to its agents specialized in "covert actions" - in other words
clandestine operations on the ground - is able to intervene. This is the
reason of this alliance between the CIA and the NSA, through joint teams
which work to the benefit of the SCS.
J. I.
Le Monde, February 23, 2000
Une alliance secrète entre la NSA et la CIA
Mis à jour le mardi 22 février 2000
AUX ÉTATS-UNIS, la NSA et la CIA ont créé une agence
commune, dénommée Special Collection Service (SCS), dont les
activités sont très secrètes et qui a pour rôle
de donner au renseignement américain des moyens nouveaux lui permettant
de s'affranchir, en toute clandestinité, des difficultés
rencontrées par les interceptions, liées aux progrès
dans le cryptage et la protection des communications dans le monde.
L'existence de la SCS n'est pas officiellement reconnue. On sait seulement
que cette nouvelle agence fédérale réunit des équipes
de la CIA et de la NSA expertes dans le décodage de transmissions
particulièrement préservées contre toute intrusion qui
viendrait de l'extérieur.
En effet, la NSA effectue habituellement ses écoutes à distance,
et de façon relativement « passive » : elle intercepte ce
qu'on lui demande de surveiller. Or, le cryptage des communications (lire
page 3), par ceux-là mêmes qui les émettent, se fait
de plus en plus efficace. Il requiert du temps - et de l'argent - pour en
venir à bout, et il devient difficile à « casser »
sans une véritable effraction volontaire dans les équipements
incriminés.
Il faut donc trouver des procédés qui permettent des intrusions
authentiques - mais secrètes - dans les systèmes adverses,
c'est-à-dire des mécanismes électroniques et informatiques
« actifs », comme, par exemple, la possibilité d'introduire
des virus, de collecter des mots-clés qui faciliteront les repérages
en toute impunité, et de s'infiltrer dans les ordinateurs ou dans
les réseaux de communication. Seule la CIA, grâce à ses
agents spécialisés dans les « coverts actions »,
autrement dit les opérations clandestines sur le terrain, est en mesure
d'intervenir. C'est la raison de cette alliance entre la CIA et la NSA, au
travers d'équipes conjointes qui travaillent au profit du SCS.
J. I.
Le Monde daté du mercredi 23 février 2000
http://villagevoice.com/features/9908/vest_madsen.shtml
The Village Voice, February 24-March 2, 1999
Jason Vest and Wayne Madsen
When probing the world of espionage, rarely does a clear picture emerge.
But according to a handful of published sources, as well as assessments by
independent experts and interviews with current and former intelligence officers,
the U.S. government's prime mover in Iraqi electronic surveillance was most
likely a super-secret organization run jointly by the the CIA and the NSA
the spy agency charged with gathering signals intelligence (known as
SIGINT) called the Special Collection Service. Further, there is evidence
to suggest that the Baghdad operation was an example of the deployment of
a highly classified, multinational SIGINT agreement one that may have
used Australians to help the U.S. listen in months after the CIA failed
to realize the U.S. objective of overthrowing Saddam Hussein through covert
action.
According to former UNSCOM chief inspector Scott Ritter, when the U.S. took
over the group's intelligence last year, a caveat was added regarding staffing:
only international personnel with U.S. clearances could participate. "This
requirement," says Ritter, "really shows the kind of perversion of mission
that went on. The U.S. was in control, but the way it operated from day one
was, U.S. runs it, but it had to be a foreigner [with a clearance] operating
the equipment."
Under the still-classified 1948 UKUSA signals intelligence treaty, eavesdropping
agencies of the U.S., United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand
share the same clearances. According to Federation of American Scientists
intelligence analyst John Pike, this gives the U.S. proxies for electronic
espionage: "In the context of UKUSA, think of NSA as one office with five
branches," he says. As UNSCOM demonstrates, though, sometimes the partnership
gets prickly; the British, according to Ritter, withdrew their personnel
following the U.S.'s refusal to explain "how the data was going to be used."
(According to a longtime British intelligence officer, there was another
reason: lingering bad feelings over the NSA's cracking a secret UN code used
by British and French peacekeepers during a Bosnian UN mission.) At this
point, says Ritter, he was instructed to ask the Australian government for
a "collection" specialist. "We deployed him to Baghdad in July of 1998,"
recalls Ritter. "In early August, when I went to Baghdad, he pulled me aside
and told me he had concerns about what was transpiring.
He said there was a very high volume of data, and that he was getting no
feedback about whether it was good, bad, or useful. He said that it was his
experience that this was a massive intelligence collection operation
one that was not in accordance with what UNSCOM was supposed to be doing."
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/unscom/interviews/gellman.html
Frontline, PBS, April 27, 1999
Barton Gellman, Washington Post reporter:
Now what the CIA did not tell UNSCOM is that the people that they sent to
install these radio relays were also covert operatives. And they rigged this
equipment to have a second purpose. It's actually a joint operation of the
CIA and the National Security Agency. They operate a service called the Special
Collection Service, and it's quite skilled at building hidden antennae and
covert listening devices. And these are quite large mass, these antennas,
and they're spaced throughout the Iraqi countryside and they beam signals.
They're like repeater stations used in commercial radio transmissions.
But they built into these a hidden antenna capable of detecting microwave
communications. This is not their open purpose. And they stationed some of
these antennae near critical nodes of Iraqi microwave communications. Now
what do the Iraqis use these microwaves for? These are very high band width,
high capacity communications links that operate from hilltop to hilltop,
in line of sight. They beam a very tight, narrowly focused beam from one
point to the other, which makes them relatively harder to intercept. They
can't be intercepted, usually, from space or from aircraft, because the angle's
too oblique and the signal gets dissipated. If you want to get at their signals,
you need someone nearby on the ground to do it. So they essentially built
a Trojan horse with these radio masts that they built for UNSCOM that was
also feeding other Iraqi traffic back to the CIA. So you learned a lot about
Iraq's military from that. Most of it was not related to special weapons
or to UNSCOM's mission.
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