vault backup: 2026-09-22 16:48:54

60 - PLACES/MILITARY_INSTALLATIONS/Los Alamos.md

@@ -33,7 +33,12 @@ Several figures who appear in this vault worked at or had connections to Los Ala
 - [[Harold M. Agnew]], Los Alamos director from 1970 to 1979, served on the Nuclear Intelligence Panel and was critical of the suppression of findings from the [[Vela Incident]] satellite detection of an apparent nuclear test off [[South Africa]]
 - [[Carl E. Duckett]], CIA Deputy Director for Science and Technology, received intelligence contributed from Los Alamos through the CIA's Office of Science and Technology on nuclear matters[^2]
 
+### PROMIS
+
+The laboratory enters the [[PROMIS Software Scandal|PROMIS]] literature twice. [[John A. Belton]], a former Canadian stockbroker, told the Justice Department's reviewers in 1994 that "Trans World Arms in Montreal and ORA," the [[Ora Group]] of [[Ari Ben-Menashe]]'s account, had sold PROMIS in 1983 to "a Nuclear Regulatory Commission facility in New Mexico" that he believed was Los Alamos, on the word of an unnamed source and without producing any document; the reviewers found him "unbelievable." The [[Royal Canadian Mounted Police|RCMP]] investigator [[Sean McDade]] said in 2000 that a meeting of allied intelligence chiefs on the year-2000 computer problem had been held at the laboratory in December 1999, and that a source had suggested [[Mossad]] might have a two-way back door into the shared system reaching "top U.S. weapons secrets at Los Alamos and other installations." Neither the House Judiciary Committee's 1992 report nor the 1993 Bua report mentions the laboratory.[^3]
+
 ### Footnotes
 
 [^1]: "Los Alamos National Laboratory," *Encyclopaedia Britannica.* https://www.britannica.com/topic/Los-Alamos-National-Laboratory
 [^2]: Herken, Gregg. *Brotherhood of the Bomb: The Tangled Lives and Loyalties of Robert Oppenheimer, Ernest Lawrence, and Edward Teller.* Henry Holt, 2002.
+[^3]: U.S. Department of Justice, *Report on the Review of Special Counsel Nicholas J. Bua's Report on the Allegations of INSLAW, Inc.,* September 27, 1994, interview of John A. Belton; Seymour, Cheri, *The Last Circle,* TrineDay, 2010, as cited on [[Sean McDade]].

60 - PLACES/MILITARY_INSTALLATIONS/Menwith Hill.md

@@ -0,0 +1,30 @@
+---
+category: "Military Installation"
+tags:
+  - Place
+  - MenwithHill
+  - NSA
+  - GCHQ
+  - ECHELON
+  - SIGINT
+  - UnitedKingdom
+alias:
+  - RAF Menwith Hill
+  - Menwith Hill Station
+summary: "The NSA's largest field station, on the Yorkshire moors near Harrogate, ground station for the CHALET and VORTEX signals satellites and a node of ECHELON, where the Lockheed software manager Margaret Newsham said she listened to intercepted telephone calls in the early 1980s."
+location: "North Yorkshire, England"
+created: 2026-09-22
+updated: 2026-09-22
+---
+
+Menwith Hill, in North Yorkshire near Harrogate, is "NSA's largest field station in the world," in the words of Duncan Campbell's 1999 report to the European Parliament, "responsible for operating over 250 classified projects" under three directorates. It became the ground station for the CHALET, VORTEX and MERCURY series of signals intelligence satellites, chosen "under NSA project P-285" and launched in June 1978 and October 1979, with the STEEPLEBUSH operations centre built to process their take; after 1985 its mission expanded to the [[Middle East]], it was commended for support to naval operations in the Gulf in 1987 and 1988 and to Desert Shield and Desert Storm in 1991, and by the late 1990s it was, in Campbell's account, "the major US site for Comint collection against its major ally, [[Israel]]," staffed with Hebrew, Arabic and Farsi linguists; ground links for a new satellite class, RUTLEY, were added in 1994 and 1995. "A senior UK Liaison Officer and staff from [[GCHQ]] work at Menwith Hill NSA station and assist in tasking and operating the satellites." Nicky Hager, who counted 22 satellite terminals and over two hectares of buildings, called it "undoubtedly the largest station" of its kind in the [[ECHELON]] network, alongside [[Pine Gap]] and Bad Aibling.[^1][^2]
+
+### Newsham
+
+[[Margaret Newsham]], a Lockheed Space and Missiles contract employee who was "software manager for more than a dozen VAX computers at Menwith Hill which operate as part of the ECHELON system" until the mid-1980s, told congressional staff that she had listened through earphones to monitored telephone calls at the station; her account followed a July 1988 story in the Cleveland Plain Dealer alleging that the calls of Senator Strom Thurmond had been intercepted. [[Sean McDade]], the Canadian investigator of the [[PROMIS]] affair, said he was a target of ECHELON while working in the United States in 2000.[^2][^3]
+
+### Footnotes
+
+[^1]: Campbell, Duncan. *Interception Capabilities 2000,* report to the European Parliament's STOA panel, April 1999, paras. 8, 38-39, 42, 44. https://irp.fas.org/eprint/ic2000/ic2000.htm
+[^2]: Hager, Nicky. *Secret Power: New Zealand's Role in the International Spy Network,* Craig Potton, 1996, chs. 2-3. https://archive.org/details/hager-nicky-secret-power_202012
+[^3]: House Report 102-857 (1992) and the Bua report (1993), searched in full, contain no reference to the station; Seymour, Cheri, *The Last Circle,* TrineDay, 2010, as cited on [[Sean McDade]].

60 - PLACES/MILITARY_INSTALLATIONS/Morwenstow.md

@@ -0,0 +1,28 @@
+---
+category: "Military Installation"
+tags:
+  - Place
+  - Morwenstow
+  - GCHQ
+  - NSA
+  - ECHELON
+  - SIGINT
+  - UnitedKingdom
+alias:
+  - GCHQ Bude
+  - GCHQ Composite Signals Organisation Station Morwenstow
+summary: "GCHQ's satellite interception station on the Cornish cliffs north of Bude, built in 1971 with two 30-metre dishes against the Atlantic and Indian Ocean Intelsats, the first ground station of the ECHELON system."
+location: "Cornwall, England"
+created: 2026-09-22
+updated: 2026-09-22
+---
+
+Morwenstow, on the north Cornish coast fifteen kilometres up the cliffs from the town of Bude, from which it takes its informal name, was the first station built for the systematic interception of international commercial satellite traffic. "Systematic collection of COMSAT ILC communications began in 1971," Duncan Campbell wrote in his 1999 report to the European Parliament. "Two ground stations were built for this purpose. The first at Morwenstow, Cornwall, England had two 30-metre antennae. One intercepted communications from the Atlantic Ocean Intelsat; the other the Indian Ocean Intelsat." The station, run by [[GCHQ]] and worked jointly with the [[National Security Agency|NSA]], expanded with the rest of the [[ECHELON]] network between 1985 and 1995. Nicky Hager's gazetteer of 1996 counted nine or ten dishes and "extensive operations buildings," visible from the road at Morwenstow or from the cliff path of the South West Peninsula walkway.[^1][^2]
+
+Its sister stations in the network are [[Menwith Hill]] and [[Pine Gap]].[^3]
+
+### Footnotes
+
+[^1]: Campbell, Duncan. *Interception Capabilities 2000,* report to the European Parliament's STOA panel, April 1999, paras. 45-46. https://irp.fas.org/eprint/ic2000/ic2000.htm
+[^2]: Hager, Nicky. *Secret Power: New Zealand's Role in the International Spy Network,* Craig Potton, 1996, gazetteer entry. https://archive.org/details/hager-nicky-secret-power_202012
+[^3]: House Report 102-857 (1992) and the Bua report (1993), searched in full.

60 - PLACES/MILITARY_INSTALLATIONS/Pine Gap.md

@@ -0,0 +1,27 @@
+---
+category: "Military Installation"
+tags:
+  - Place
+  - PineGap
+  - CIA
+  - NSA
+  - ECHELON
+  - SIGINT
+  - Australia
+alias:
+  - Joint Defence Facility Pine Gap
+summary: "The CIA's satellite ground station in central Australia near Alice Springs, controlling the RHYOLITE, AQUACADE, MAGNUM and ORION signals satellites, and one of the four main stations of the ECHELON network."
+location: "Northern Territory, Australia"
+created: 2026-09-22
+updated: 2026-09-22
+---
+
+Pine Gap, a "remote ground station in central [[Australia]]" near Alice Springs, was built to operate the second class of American signals intelligence satellite, developed by the [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] and "initially known as RHYOLITE and later AQUACADE," whose successors were named MAGNUM and then ORION; their targets, in Duncan Campbell's 1999 account to the European Parliament, "include telemetry, VHF radio, cellular mobile phones, paging signals, and mobile data links." Campbell listed it with Buckley Field in Colorado, [[Menwith Hill]] in England and Bad Aibling in Germany as one of the four principal ground stations for American signals satellites; Nicky Hager, writing from New Zealand in 1996, described "the controversial Pine Gap base in central Australia" as "a major ground station for spy satellites" feeding, with Menwith Hill and Bad Aibling, "into the global network" of [[ECHELON]].[^1][^2]
+
+The allegation carried by [[Sean McDade]]'s Canadian inquiry into [[PROMIS]] of a shared allied system with a "two-way" back door concerned a meeting at [[Los Alamos]], not the Australian station.[^3]
+
+### Footnotes
+
+[^1]: Campbell, Duncan. *Interception Capabilities 2000,* report to the European Parliament's STOA panel, April 1999, paras. 40, 42. https://irp.fas.org/eprint/ic2000/ic2000.htm
+[^2]: Hager, Nicky. *Secret Power: New Zealand's Role in the International Spy Network,* Craig Potton, 1996, chs. 2-3. https://archive.org/details/hager-nicky-secret-power_202012
+[^3]: House Report 102-857 (1992) and the Bua report (1993), searched in full; Seymour, Cheri, *The Last Circle,* TrineDay, 2010, as cited on [[Sean McDade]].