ENIGMA 2000 Newsletter - Issue 16

May 2003
Articles, newsreports and Items of interest :enigma2000-owner@yahoogroups.com

Enigma 2000 article - 'Conspiracy Cantata' from Simon Mason

In this issue we are please to feature an offering from Simon Mason:

A Greek Cypriot composer living in Amsterdam has produced a "Conspiracy Cantata" , a sort of opera come art piece, using recordings of numbers transmissions. Here Yannis Kyriakides describes the inspiration for the composition.

I became interested in these transmissions since hearing the Conet Project CD's - I subscribed to Enigma and read up all I could find on the subject -your site being a very informative source. As a composer- I suppose I was fascinated by structure of these messages -by their sound - the hypnotic quality of the transmissions - how the messages appear and fade into noise - communication at its most basic and yet most mystifying.

I thought of the parallel between that and the Delphic Oracle whose cryptic messages and double meanings not only acted as some kind of divine pronouncement but was used to serve the interest of the various city states who where in control of the sanctuary - to manipulate the flow of political power.

So I was inspired to compose this piece for 2 voices ,piano and electronics 'a conspiracy cantata' - in which I combine these two worlds. [The piece is coming out on CD in January - I will send you a copy if you are interested. You have a credit on it ]!

Having visited your site again - just now - I was fascinated to read about the 'Cyprus TV exposes Lincolnshire Poacher' - It confirmed what I suspected to be the case - that the British use their bases in Cyprus to transmit to the middle east - and that Cyprus is a playground of spies and political interests. I would be very curious to know more about this - who was the reporter and when was this programme transmitted. My brother has just returned to Cyprus (coincidentally working in television) - he could get a copy of the programme for me.

Spi is an electronic cantata which juxtaposes two forms of cryptic message communication :the clandestine world of spy number transmissions on the shortwave radio, and the enigmatic uttering of the ancient oracle of Delphi. Both mediums were/are used as forms of political machination.

So-called 'number stations' sprung up on the shortwave radio in the early sixties at the height of the cold war. They are used to transmit coded text messages in numbers, phonetic letters, morse or noise. They are operated by the world's intelligence agencies (such as CIA - MI6 - BND - Mossad - UDBA - KGB -) to relay messages to their agents in the field in an anonymous and undetectable form.

The messages which are transmitted at regular times on certain frequencies on shortwave radio are encrypted with the 'one-time pad' system making them almost impossible to decipher for anyone except the agent in the field who has the particular random set of numbers which are used only once per message.

Although anyone in the world can receive these messages, it is impossible to deduce the destination of the messages nor anything about the content. Many different languages and forms are used for depending on the agency that has sent them.

They vary from simply Morse to synthesized voices reading phonetic alphabet strings. These transmissions usually begin with an introduction such as a single letter of the alphabet in Morse or a fragment of music played for several minutes (the identity of the sender). The first numbers called are usually a three-digit number (the recipient's identity) and there is then a call to attention (bells, gongs, tones or spoken "attention"," ready".) A 'group count' giving the number of message elements that are to be sent is then transmitted, followed by the 'groups' which are sets of numbers or phonetically spoken letters . At the end of the groups, there is sometimes a repeat, if not there is an ending indicator, either by a spoken 'end' or a repeat of the introduction music. Though number stations continue to proliferate (in spite of the end of the cold war) no government agency officially admits their existence.

Spi is scored for two alto voices piano and electronics. The electronic sounds are made up of layers of radio transmissions, noise textures, pre-recorded voices and sampled piano sounds.

The piece mixes together an archaic modal sound world with an eerie 'cold war' atmosphere.

The piece can be divided into six parts:

This slowly changing static electronic texture acts as an introduction to the material of the piece. It is made up of what is thought to be CIA transmission.
A modal melodic line heard on the piano/sampled piano is juxtaposed with sung fragments (voice 1) of what is thought to be an old StB station (Czech Statni Bezpecnost) nicknamed 'the Czech lady'. Voice 2 speaks part of a list of one-hundred basic words.
The introduction and numbers used by voice 1 is based on the five number groups broadcast by MI6 nicknamed 'the Lincolnshire poacher'. Characteristically each group is repeated twice. Voice 2 together with the piano, slowly unravels the ancient Greek oracle quote: 'The Cast is made ,the net is spread, and the tuna will leap on a moonlit night.'
Electronic textures made up of pre-recorded voices (voice 1) and different fragments of number stations and static noise.
A spoken text inspired by the three-letter phonetic alphabet stations typically used by MOSSAD (the Israeli secret service) is heard together with the hundred basic words. Towards the end , the voices sing a reprise of the Czech language station over a development of the modal piano line heard in part 2.
Morse code features in this part. The inspiration behind it being the Cuban cut number messages (DGI) where Morse letter code is used as a substitution for numbers. The electronic part is comprised of Morse code (counts 0-10) and changing harmonic fields. Voice 2 and the piano re-iterate the text of the Delphic oracle in a further development of part 3.
The final part opens with voice 1 providing a stuttered repetition of the oracle quote, with voice 2 speaking a five-figure Spanish number station (DGI). The modal piano line reoccurs in a further development with various electronic textures. Towards the end the voices revert to the hundred basic word lists while the piano provides a pulse of violently struck notes on the inside of the piano. The end radio quote comes again courtesy of the CIA.

Next, a German cryptography student noted some unusual aspects in the traffic of the BND stations: Let me explain why I'm interested especially in G14/G15/G16/E16.

I as a mathematician intensively analyzed many loggings with many statistical methods.

Many traffic indeed matches randomness, but for some recipients traffic NEVER matches randomness criteria.

This is the reason that I got more and more interested in this station and logged all I could receive with my radio. But I have not enough material to get more results on my analysis.

Therefore the question to you on full loggings from (callsign/recipient): PZ/143 and EG/267 . I've found more recipients, but these are the two most interesting.

Short explained :

143 : weight of number '8' : average of all messages : 25.4 % and for
267 : weight of number '8' : average of all messages : 24.6 % .

Others are EG/795 with a weight >10% of '9' (16-18%) and KR/171 with >10% of '1' (15-17%)

Ok I think this explains my interest especially in this station.

(Currently I'm also logging E10/E5 if I catch some transmissions.)

The interest on this numbers comes also from the fact, that I'm working as an ongoing cryptographer on an institute. This means, all what looks like encrypted data, got my very interest.

[Tnx Simon]