Bad Aibling Station

Bad Aibling Station (BAS)
	Radomes of Bad Aibling Station
country	Germany
Alternative names	Field Station 81, SIGAD US 987-LA
local community	Bad Aibling
Coordinates :	47 ° 53 ' N , 11 ° 59' E Coordinates: 47 ° 52 '46 " N , 11 ° 59' 4" E
Opened	1936/1952 (closed in 2004)
Formerly stationed units
National Security Agency (NSA) ; United States Army Security Agency (ASA) ; US Army Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM)	; ;
Location of the Bad Aibling Station (BAS) in Bavaria

Radomes of Bad Aibling Station

Bad Aibling Station ( BAS ) was a large eavesdropping base of the US American intelligence service NSA in Bad Aibling near Rosenheim and part of the Echelon system. The facility closed in 2004 and had 1,800 employees. The radomes and the associated technical equipment are now a property of the BND branch in Bad Aibling . Since 2016, German and US secret services have resumed their cooperation in the listening device. The system is considered to be central to the monitoring of crisis countries such as Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq and Libya.

history

After the Second World War , US troops occupied Bad Aibling Air Base , a school air base that had been built as a military airfield for the Air Force on the site of a sports airfield in Bad Aibling - Mietraching as part of the armament of the Wehrmacht from 1936 . Airfield R.86 , so its new name, was initially set up by the US military government as a camp for prisoners of war (PWE 26). Günter Grass and Joseph Ratzinger are said to have met there as prisoners. In 1946 the prisoner-of-war camp was dissolved and replaced by a DP camp for former Yugoslav prisoners of war. From the winter of 1948/49 on, the former barracks buildings of the air base finally housed a DP camp for children and young people, the IRO Children's Village Bad Aibling , which was closed in 1951.

The area was taken over by the US Army in 1952 . After the neutrality of the Republic of Austria was decided in 1955 on the basis of a four-power agreement , the USA had to dismantle the eavesdropping systems installed there. They were relocated to Bad Aibling and subsequently “Field Station 81” was gradually expanded during the Cold War by the United States Army Security Agency (ASA) into a central listening station for the American foreign intelligence services.

In 1971 the National Security Agency (NSA) took command. The activities of the ASA were simultaneously relocated from all three German field stations ( Rothwesten , Bad Aibling and Herzogenaurach ) to Augsburg . The Bad Aibling station was expanded to become the sister station of Augsburg- Gablingen in the early 1970s and after its closure in 1993 it was the largest US eavesdropping station in Germany, later the second largest in Europe after Menwith Hill in the United Kingdom.

The BND has been present in Bad Aibling at least since 1988. In 1994 the NSA transferred control of the facility to the United States Army Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM), the US Army's military intelligence agency. On May 30, 2000, the Parliamentary Control Committee visited the station.

After the end of the Cold War , the change of government in the Federal Republic of Germany and a procedure by the European Union , which among other things assigned a task in industrial espionage in a special committee of the European Parliament , the Bad Aibling station was initially planned to be closed in 2002 conclude. The terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 prompted us to refrain from these plans. Immediately after the terrorist attacks, the security measures at the facility, u. a. by installing anti-tank barriers , greatly expanded.

On the basis of an agreement (Memorandum of Agreement) dated April 28, 2002, the NSA and BND agreed on a joint telecommunications investigation at the Bavarian location. This decision of the red-green federal government from 2002 became public in 2013.

As part of the restructuring of the American intelligence services at the beginning of the 21st century, the Bad Aibling station was finally closed on September 30, 2004, and the extensive site was handed over by US users to its owner, the Federal Republic of Germany. As far as is known, the units were relocated to RAF Menwith Hill in Great Britain, Darmstadt ( Dagger Complex ) and Turkey . On the former August Euler airfield in Darmstadt near Griesheim , a bugging base with five radomes was built in the spring of 2004.

Facilities (if known)

Various departments of the NSA (details unknown)
HOC 718th Military Intelligence Brigade (also referred to as "operations company")
C COMPANY 66th Military Intelligence Group
Air Force-402ND Intelligence Squadron
108th Military Intelligence Group (formerly 718th MI Group)
Navy NSGA (Naval Security Group Activity, "Lightning Fast Chicken Pluckers")
18th USASAFS Field Station
312th ASA Battalion
320th ASA Battalion
- Headquarters Company
- 180th ASA Company
- 181st ASA Company
- 186st ASA Company
402nd Intelligence Squadron
British Royal Signals Detachment (UK)

meaning

The Bad Aibling station was an important listening device of the Echelon system (RSOC, Regional SIGINT Operation Center), which at times employed up to 1000 people. Her duties were to gather information for American federal agencies and others, including British intelligence agencies. The Lopez affair became world-famous and was cleared up through eavesdropping at the Bad Aibling station. Russian military radio was tapped from the station. This made it possible, for example, to provide important assessments of the attempted coup against Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991.

According to official information, the tasks of the Bad Aibling station were "Rapid Radio Relay and Secure Common, Support to DoD and Unified Commands, Medium and Longhand Common HF & Satellite, Communication Physics Research, Test and Evaluate Common Equipment".

Details are known only in part. However, there are indications that various telecommunication channels including radio , telephone and internet traffic were monitored from the Bad Aibling station . In particular, communications with satellites appear to have been tapped , even outside the Intelsat system.

In the former Mangfall barracks of the Bundeswehr , the BND branch in Bad Aibling is located , which also operates radomes on the site of the former Bad Aibling station. From 2003 to 2014 it was legendary as the "long-distance communications center of the Bundeswehr" . There was also an NSA liaison office (SUSLAG) here. The collaboration between the BND and NAS was known as the “Joint SIGINT Activity” (“JSA”).

After the facility was handed over to the BND, the US operation Neptune Spear , which led to the finding and killing of Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden , is said to have been supported from there.

Field Station 81
Radome field
Radome field

Civil use

After a farewell parade with around 25,000 visitors in April, the barracks were handed back to the Federal Republic of Germany on September 30, 2004 by Colonel Susan Huggler, who was last in command. After that, the area lay fallow for some time, managed by the Federal Agency for Real Estate Tasks (BImA). Various concepts were being discussed for future use - from residential complexes to a leisure area to regional airports.

After a concept had been agreed that included a mixed use of commercial units, wellness, leisure, residential development and social services, around half of the 134 hectare area was acquired by B&O Parkgelände GmbH & Co. KG, a subsidiary of B&O Housing industry , transformed into the " zero energy city of Mietraching ".

In the course of 2008, several companies were established in the “Technology Park” area, and in October 2008 the B&O Parkhotel with 42 rooms and 4 conference rooms was opened in the “Wohlfühlpark” of the zero-energy city .

Since 1989 the well-known as "Chicken Joe" Josef Ecker a restaurant business on the grounds of Bad Aibling Station, since 1999, this was the "Biker Base" of the operational motorcycle club BAB Bavarian American Brotherhood e. V. At the instigation of the city council of Bad Aibling, the company had to be closed in 2011.

The flying hangar and other facilities on the site are also used for various events such as flea markets, the Oablinger Rock Night or the annual South East Rock Festival SORF . The Echelon Festival has also been held here every year since 2009 .

Wooden buildings in the zero-energy city of Mietraching
Wooden house H8
Radomes of Bad Aibling Station behind a sports field in the zero-energy city

Web links

Commons : Field Station 81 - Collection of Images

Detailed description of Echelon in Germany on hp.kairaven.de
Article on de.internet.com: Bad Aibling wiretapping system: Who is the USA spying on?

Message on military.com ( Memento from June 19, 2001 in the Internet Archive ) (English)

Video of a passage through the remains of the Bad Aibling station in 2011 (7 years after it was closed)

Individual evidence

↑ NSA data monitoring - Federal government continues to investigate allegations. In: Federal Government . August 7, 2013, accessed on October 28, 2019 (“SIGAD” stands for “ Signals Intelligence Activity Designator”.).

↑ Florian Rötzer: Listening post in Bad Aibling remains. In: Telepolis. January 26, 2001, accessed September 18, 2014 .

↑ ^a ^b ^c Secret service expert Schmidt-Eenboom gives a lecture on a current topic in Mietraching: There is still no end to eavesdropping. In: Upper Bavarian Volksblatt . March 7, 2014, accessed October 28, 2019 .

↑ Bad Aibling listening system: BND and NSA are cooperating again . In: merkur.de . January 8, 2016. Accessed January 10, 2020.

^ History of the Mietraching Air Base at www.mietraching.de

^ Gottfried Mayr: The Bad Aibling POW camp 1945–1946. PWE No. 26 . Bad Aibling 2002.

↑ Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger: Grass: With Ratzinger together as a prisoner of war

↑ stern.de: Did Grass dice with the Pope in the ground?

↑ open book: Ratzinger and Grass

↑ Christian Höschler: From the self-government Repatriierungsstillstand. Former soldiers of the Royal Yugoslav Army as Displaced Persons in Bad Aibling, 1946–1947 . In: Christian Pletzing and Marcus Velke (eds.): Camp - Repatriation - Integration. Contributions to displaced persons research . Biblion Media, Leipzig 2016, p. 19–46 ( online [accessed April 12, 2017]). From self-government to the repatriation deadlock. Former soldiers of the Royal Yugoslav Army as Displaced Persons in Bad Aibling, 1946–1947 ( Memento from April 13, 2017 in the Internet Archive )

↑ Christian Höschler: The IRO Children's Village Bad Aibling: A Refuge in the American zone of Germany, 1948-1951 . Dissertation, LMU Munich. 2017 ( uni-muenchen.de ).

↑ OVB online: B&O site - then and now ( memento from September 17, 2015 in the web archive archive.today ). Seen on September 16, 2015

↑ RAVEN: INSCOM in Bad Aibling

^ Adrian Lobe: What the federal government knew about the espionage activities - Tagesspiegel, July 20, 2013.

^ Gerhard Schmid: On the existence of a global system for the interception of private and commercial communications (ECHELON interception system), (2001/2098 (INI)) (pdf - 194 pages) European Parliament: Temporary Committee on the ECHELON Interception System. July 11, 2001. Retrieved December 12, 2013.

^ Yorkshire CND: Bad Aibling Station to close ( Memento of August 12, 2002 in the Internet Archive ) May 31, 2001

↑ Government: Steinmeier approved the cooperation between the BND and NSA . tagesschau.de. August 7, 2013. Archived from the original on August 10, 2013. Retrieved on December 10, 2013.

^ Charlie Coon: 66th MIG assets to begin moving to Darmstadt . The Stars and Stripes . October 7, 2003. Retrieved July 14, 2013.

↑ Gerhard Piper: The strategic importance of the US air force bases in the FRG . In: antimilitarism information . No. 3-4 , 2003, pp. 1–16 ( online [PDF; 154 kB ; accessed on September 11, 2011]).