ENIGMA 2000 Newsletter - Issue 25

November 2004
Articles, newsreports and Items of interest :enigma2000-owner@yahoogroups.com

German branch report

Logs and events September – October 2004. Report from the German Branch of E2K

Hallo Freunde und Mitglieder der deutschen Branche und von E2K (Hello friends and members of the German Branch and of E2K)

A lot of work to do, not only on numbers stations, in the last two months. That’s why this report arrives so late.

The last two months – especially October - were rich of logs and events. The September began with 5 X06 stations on one day – it was September 7^th. Richard Ness from UK as one of my busiest X06 assistants, reported about 3 X06 stations simultaneously on 3 different freqs at around 2000 UTC: 1. on 9105, 2. on 10205 and 3. on 11093 kHz, 2. and 3. with the same sequence of tones (2. monitored in USB). Richard wrote me, that they already began at 1953, and they ended at 2006. I could record them all on cassettes. Some minutes later (2012) Richard reported me, that there were 2 more X06 on air, 1. on 8045, 2. on 9174 kHz (different tones). Thanks to RNGB for his monitoring assistance. He also emailed me the recording of a further X06 station, which he could find exactly one week later, on September 14^th, at 1623 on 15828 kHz with a very strong signal.

On September 24^th, DanielE2Kde, my busiest correspondent within the German Branch, could monitor two stations, which are of interest: MXI on 7038 kHz at 1835 UTC in CW – the “C” cluster beacon, also G06 on 5442 at 1930 UTC with a msg for “947”, beginning of msg was at 1934, ending at 1941 with “00000”.

Two days later, September 26^th, E06, monitored at 1838 in progress on 10210 by KopfE2Kde.

On September 28^th, the lst XP transmission at 0640 could be confirmed by KopfE2Kde. Then on September 29^th, E07 could be monitored by KopfE2Kde on 10110 with a msg for “201”.

October 2004 was the month of editing N&O 78, the newsletter from Ary, who couldn’t do this because of working on the WUN CD. So I volunteered him and had not enough time to monitor stations. But nevertheless, there are some interesting logs for October. S06 could be heard often in the month. First, on October 5^th, the 1730 transmission on 9150 kHz, monitored in progress by KopfE2Kde, also the 2 transmissions on October 9^th, 1700 on 10750 and 1800 on 8080 kHz, with a msg for “810”, heard by DanielE2Kde. According to the 1700 transmission, he writes, that the unmodulated carrier was already there at 1657. Msg started at 1704, ended 1721, carrier off at 1722. Mostly very good signal up to S9+40 with a few QSB. Also the 1800 transmission (repeat of msg for “810” one hour before) was of strong signal (9+30). The 2 S06 skeds on these freqs, which came on October 23^rd, were also found by DanielE2Kde. The first one on 1700 UTC was weak and disturbed by RTTY/Sitor, the second one (repeat msg) in progress with very strong (S9+40).

DanielE2Kde could also catch E07 on 10453 at 1703 on October 10^thwith msg, ended at 1709.

The most XP skeds for October can be confirmed by the German Branch, mostly the transmissions at 0620 and 0640 UTC, and as usual with very strong signal.

Many of us (not only in Germany) could hear the 6930 “CIO2” E10 sked for long, long periods in the first October week. KopfE2Kde could monitor it in the evening of October 6^thin USB. Also on the 10125 freq “CIO2” was heard for 20 minutes, between 0600 and 0620 on October 8^th by KopfE2Kde.

In mid-October, HendrickE2Kde near Aschaffenburg reported to make a discovery with the E03 freqs. He heard an evening transmission on 6900 kHz. His report came from October 17^th, and he was sure about the freq. So we have to monitor this freq further. As he reports, in the SpyDB there were E03 logs from this freq, which were older dated.

Movies and events in October

October 3^rd is Germany’s re-unification’s day. This was the reason for 2 TV stations to transmit special programs about espionage. As our correspondent DanielE2Kde from Muenster reports, they were very interesting. Here is his report, which he kindly translated into English for us:

At October 3 the German TV station 3sat showed two programmes dealing with espionage.

The first programme was the feature film ”Romeo” (with documentary background) showing how the HVA (Hauptverwaltung Aufklaerung, foreign intelligence office of the GDR) recruited West German women; they put special leading agents (”Fuehrungsoffiziere”), so-called ”Romeos”, on them to start a (pretended) love relation with the potential spy. The movie dramatizes (with many flashbacks) the relation of a West German female agent to her ”Romeo” and to her daughter and how she comes to terms with that time on the occasion of her trial for high treason.

Again, number stations were used here as a ”decoration” in three scenes:

In one scene, she sits in front of the radio and transmits 5FG amid tears.

(Quite questionable IMHO since AFAIK numbers were rarely transmitted live and a spy would not use an easily locatable transmitter... See below for more on how they really did it.)

Another short scene shows him sitting in front of the radio receiving a 5FG transmission. Again, it seems to be a ”mock-up” numbers station with a live male voice, to me it did not sound like a known real numbers station, but might resemble to G6.

One scene shows her again receiving (fake) numbers and she mumbles whilst still receiving the plaintext of the message! One Time Pad decryption on the fly, quite a performance! :->

The second programme that evening was a documentation about Klaus Kuron (”Klaus Kuron – Spion in eigener Sache”).

Klaus Kuron joined the Bundesgrenzschutz (BGS, frontier police) in 1954, was an expert for radio and deciphering in the police headquarters radio station in Bonn, worked for the Verfassungsschutz in Cologne in 1962 (domestic security, political police), in 1967 executive (inspector) there and responsible for the surveillance of leftist political parties.

He was talented in converting foreign agents to make them work as so-called Counter Men (CM) for the West German Verfassungsschutz.

He later came to the opinion that the GDR was not necessarily of disapprove and gradually gained sympathy for the political order there, finally making contact to the HVA (Hauptverwaltung Aufklaerung) and becoming their collaborator, i.e. a double agent for the Verfassungsschutz and the HVA.

In that programme, there were some interesting sentences:

(Comment, off:) ”... After a few days time he receives the encrypted request via A3-radio to take part in a meeting in Brussels at an appointed weekend.”

(Is the term ”A3-radio” (”A3-Funk”) HVA jargon or do they mean the CCIR designator "A3" for AM Modulation?)

Further quotations from Kuron:

”... received the message via radio ...”
”... I was familiar with encryption and radio techniques from my times at the BGS ... normal text was converted into rows of numbers and compressed via a software supplied by the HVA. This text then was copied onto a dictaphone. With this dictaphone I then went to a telephone box and dubbed this row of numbers, which now only was a buzzing noise of two to three seconds [duration], to a certain phone number in the central office in [East-] Berlin.”

[Source: historical, teletext news of the German TV station ARD, June 06, 2000]

"German news magazine "Focus": Siemens maintained Stasi computer

Technicians of the Munich sited Siemens group obviously maintained the central computer of the GDR foreign espionage organization for years without their knowledge.

The news magazine "Focus" reported with reference to the head of the Hauptverwaltung Aufklaerung (HVA), Oberst [colonel] Feuchtenberger, that the Siemens computer "S 4000" had regularly been maintained and supplied with spare parts until 1985.

Sensitive data had been stored in the computer. The technicians were ordered to East Berlin several times a year by the GDR's procurer of foreign currencies, Schalck-Golodkowski.

Thanks for this report and the historical background information. At the end of October he reported further, that there was another spy program on October 22th, which came from the station “Phoenix”, titeled: “The wall – a German history: secret services and spies”. DanielE2Kde reports, that there were some “old well-known persons”, like Günter Bohnsack and Gabriele Gast, who we know from the DLF feature about numbers stations one year ago, and also again Klaus Kuron. Daniel recorded the transmission and saw it partially, but there seemed to be nothing about numbers stations. Nevertheless, thanks to DanielE2Kde also for this info. Perhaps we’ll know more about this in the next report.

Days of acoustic media in Boltenhagen/East Germany

From October 28^th till 31^st, in Boltenhagen at Germany’s east cost, there were the “Days of acoustic media”, which were presented in the so called Aura-Hotel for blind and partially sighted people. It was an interesting and mixed program. On October 29th, I gave my report about the numbers stations. The group, which was there, is a group of old friends and almost all these people know each other. This report was not very spectacularly for our numbers stations movement, because many of the listeners of my report don’t deal with numbers stations any more, and they did it in their childhood. Only one guy from Hamburg will send me a few G14 and G15 recordings, which we all know, because they are from the end of the 80s. But I think, it was good to report about our topic also in this group. Simon Mason shall get an exemplar of it, because I presented very rare recordings.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t in contact any more with “Radioaktiv”, the mailing list for blind and partially sighted people, which I mentioned in the last NL. But I hope, that we can grow-up in the next future. Now the German Branch counts up to 20 members.

“Auf Wiedersehen” and good-bye

Jochen Schäfer, the “Kopf“ of E2K’s German Branch

[Tnx Jochen and all your correspondents – excellent stuff]