Numbers Stations: Not all Spy Tools are Neat Gadgets
Anyone who is familiar with the hobby of short wave listening knows that spy tools don’t have to come in the form of pocket gadgets. Numbers stations are technically usually from an unknown origin, but a large number of people assume that they are used as spy tools. For those who aren’t familiar, short wave radio refers to broadcasts and services that take place from approximately the end of the medium wave AM broadcast band to the beginning of the VHF region of the electromagnetic spectrum. Signals at these frequencies can travel all over the world, which makes them perfect spy tools, though there are countless legitimate users of the spectrum.
Instead of transmitting an international broadcast or time and date information, numbers stations usually use artificially generated voices to read streams of numbers. Sometimes words, letters, music and even the international Morse code gets mixed into their information streams. They don’t identify in the same way that regular stations do, and there hasn’t been an official public acknowledgement by any government that they operate a numbers station.
There are a few court cases involving Cuban numbers stations and espionage that suggest that these stations are indeed spy tools that send coded messages to agents. It is quite possible that spies who work in a field could use a one-time pad to decrypt the messages. This would mean that they listen for a message, decode it, and that particular method of encrypting the message is never used again. This system can be extremely difficult to crack.
Many of the stations throughout history have followed a similar format, with plenty of variations. The broadcast usually begins with some sort of an identifier, and hobbyists often give these stations nicknames based on the identifier signals. There might be characteristic phrases, a bit of music or electronic sounds, or some sort of code. There is then generally a mention of how many number groups will be in the message, and then the numbers are usually read off by an artificial voice. There is usually some sort of ending symbol as well, such as a phrase or another bit of music.
Some numbers stations have enjoyed a great deal of popularity among hobbyists and armchair detectives. This is perhaps interesting, considering that spy tools should probably be kept underground. Nevertheless, the public is fascinated with the secret world of espionage, and anyone can buy a short wave receiver in many countries. Indeed, a simple short wave receiver is probably the tool that agents in the field use since it isn’t suspicious by itself, nor is it expensive.
The Lincolnshire Poacher was a famous station that identified itself with a bit from a British folk tune entitled the Lincolnshire Poacher. The station used an artificial woman’s voice with an English accent to read off groups of five numbers. The station was apparently located on the island of Cyprus, where there is a Royal Air Force presence. Many armchair detectives assume the station was operated by MI6. Naturally, many numbers stations went off the air after the Cold War. However, the Lincolnshire Poacher stuck around for some time after. In July 2008, it suddenly seemed to go off the air. Interestingly enough, that isn’t the end of the story.
There was another powerful numbers station that was thought to be sending information to British agents, and it seemed to be connected to the Lincolnshire Poacher. Cherry Ripe is another English folk song, and a station that seems to have been broadcast from Australia used it as an interval signal. Naturally, this became a namesake for the station. The format and the synthesized English voice were identical, despite the different choice of folk tune. Cherry Ripe finally ceased transmissions in December 2009.
One of the more peculiar chapters in the story of this class of spy tools involves a station that was nicknamed Yosemite Sam. In December 2004, short wave listeners started to hear a burst of digital data code before the voice of the cartoon character Yosemite Sam came on. The clip of his voice seems to have been lifted from a 1949 cartoon. The transmission begins on one frequency, and then jumps to a higher one every ten seconds. Reception reports of the station seem to suggest that it comes from a transmitter site somewhere in New Mexico. This is perhaps interesting when one considers that Bugs Bunny often complained about Albuquerque. It is truly a strange and almost mischievous example of the underground information war. Naturally, the official purpose of the station has never surfaced.
