Ayios Nikolaos Station
The Ayios Nikolaos Station (Άγιος Νικόλαος) (code name: Sounder ) is a base of the British secret service GCHQ in Cyprus and serves the military and intelligence service electronic reconnaissance ( SIGINT ). The station is located in the British overseas territory, the Sovereign Base Areas Akrotiri and Dekelia . The Joint Service Signal Unit (JSSU) and the Royal Air Force's 33 Signals Unit are officially stationed here.
According to experts, the Ayios Nikolaos station is the most important reconnaissance station of the GCHQ after RAF Menwith Hill in Yorkshire .
Strategic location
The strategic location of the island of Cyprus is well suited for a listening station. The coast of Turkey is only around 75 km away, that of Syria is only around 100 kilometers away, and Lebanon and Israel are also within easy reach for radio reconnaissance. Since the 1980s, the island of Cyprus has also been an important hub for wired Internet and telephone communications from the Middle East and North Africa to Europe. 14 submarine cables run across Cyprus.
The British overseas territory, the Sovereign Base Areas , in which the station is located, borders in the north on the territory of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus , which is not recognized by any other state except Turkey and has no seat in the UN . In the south, the area, which lies about five kilometers inland from the east coast, borders on the sovereign territory of the Free Republic of Cyprus . The next settlement is also five kilometers away. The station is located 2 kilometers from Famagusta and 15 kilometers north of Ayia Napa . The station is connected to the main settlement of the Dhekelia garrison via a road .
"Ayios Nikolaos" or "Agios Nikolaos" is a very common place name in Greece and Cyprus and means "Saint Nicholas".
deployment
The Joint Service Signal Unit (Cyprus) (JSSU (Cyp)) was formed on April 1, 1999 from the amalgamation of the Joint Service Signal Unit (Ayios Nikolaos) and parts of the 33 Signals Unit RAF . Formally, the station is run by a Royal Signals Lieutenant Colonel. In fact, GCHQ and American NSA employees work on the station.
development
Cyprus became the central base for British espionage in the Middle East as early as the late 1940s . The British presence in Sinai , Iraq or Syria was flanked by the station's wiretapping activities.
In 1947, British Signals Intelligence (SIGINT), which had been stationed in Iraq until then, moved to the village of Pergamos , near Ayios Nikolaos. Up to a thousand English employees worked at two locations until September 1968. The radio reconnaissance staff initially lived in a tent complex.
The British secret service Government Communications Headquarters GCHQ has been cooperating closely with its US counterpart, the National Security Agency (NSA), since the base was commissioned . The cooperation is based on the UKUSA Security Agreement . Ayios Nikolaos Station already works as a SIGINT and ELINT station during the Palestine War in 1948, then in 1956 in the Suez Crisis , the independence conflict in Cyprus (1955–1959) and during the Bloody Christmas (1963). In 1967 the stations in Cyprus were busy with SIGINT actions in the Six Day War and in 1973 in the Yom Kippur War. It can be assumed that the information gathered from the Middle East was passed on to decision-makers in London and Washington.
The Cypriot state company Cyprus Telecommunications Authority (CYTA) is involved in many undersea cables that run aground on the island. The company is contractually bound to work with the UK Services.
Israel is also being spied on from Cyprus, a country which, under the code name "Ruffle", cooperates with the Americans and the British and exchanges information with them. The employees of the Ayios Nikolaos station allegedly succeeded in infiltrating the gate network, which is considered bug-proof . In a 2012 document, Cyprus staff are praised as "committed people" who have "put a lot of hard work" behind them.
The British Army wanted to close the station several times for cost reasons. However, under pressure and with money from the American allies, operations continued. According to media reports, American services have been operating $ 115 million to access the facility since 2009.
In the course of the NSA affair, u. a. the Süddeutsche Zeitung 2013 in detail about the wiretapping activities that are operated from the Ayios Nikolaos station. She describes the station as "one of the most important listening posts for British intelligence". The base is codenamed "Sounder" in the documents of the American whistleblower Edward Snowden . This was the result of joint research by the Greek newspaper Ta Nea , the television station Alpha TV , the Italian magazine L'Espresso and the Süddeutsche Zeitung in 2013.
During the Syrian Civil War , communications from the Syrian Armed Forces were bugged and, according to the Times, information was passed on to Syrian opposition groups.
technology
In aerial photos , some buildings can be seen, according to the Süddeutsche Zeitung. Satellite dishes and other antenna systems are located around the building. Satellite communication is received with the antenna systems of the Royal Air Force Station Troodos . Radomes with eavesdropping technology are located in both Akrotiri and Dekelia at the Akrotiri and Dekelia bases . The pre-evaluation of the received and read signals takes place in the facilities of the Ayios Nikolaos station. The station was named in an EU report from 2001 as the location of the worldwide Echelon interception network . Since there is hardly any reliable information about the structure of the network, the location was classified as "not unique".
Wired communication is read at the telecommunications company's nodes and forwarded to Ayios Nikolaos for analysis.
The Royal Air Force operates the over-the- horizon radar (OTHR) PLUTO on the island with a transmission power of up to one megawatt. This enables air movements to be observed beyond the horizon as far as Afghanistan , Kazakhstan and Russia . The observation of Soviet ballistic missile tests on the mainland of the USSR has been possible by the OTH since 1964. The "Backscatter" (code name COBRA SHOE) is located in the SBA Akrotiri. The backscattering from the radar transmitter is received here. Declassified British reports indicate that the OTHR was stationed in Ayios Nikolaos from 1974. The orientation of the antennas to the southeast and the design indicate that the systems near the station are the OTHR, which monitors the successor states of the Soviet Union .
Intelligence activity was also likely coming from the BBC relay station on the island. MI6 broadcast the programs of the numbers broadcaster Lincolnshire Poacher through this station until 2008 for agents in the Middle East.
See also
- NAVFAC Gerolakkos , SIGINT station of the Naval Security Group that existed from 1957 to 1974 . After the station was closed, the NSA increasingly used the Ayios Nikolaos station.
- RAF Olympos , RAF radar system for air surveillance in the western Middle East, range 1500 to 3000 kilometers.
- CYTA Yeroskipos - Yeroskipos Submarine Cable Station , submarine cable connection of the CYTA on the southern tip of Cyprus.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Giorgos Georgiou in http://cryptome.org/2012/01/0060.pdf
- ↑ http://cryptome.org/2012/01/0060.pdf
- ↑ a b Frederik Obermaier: Island of Spies. In: sueddeutsche.de . November 5, 2013, accessed October 13, 2018 .
- ↑ http://www.tagesschau.de/ausland/nsa-z Zonen100.html ( Memento from November 5, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ "Spynumbers". Profile of The Lincolnshire Poacher http://www.spynumbers.com/profiles/index.html
Coordinates: 35 ° 5 '34.6 " N , 33 ° 53' 12.4" E