Wednesday 27th of November 2024
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the case for shutting down both waihopai and the GCSB — and pine gap...

Waihopai is a Secret U.S. Spy Base in New Zealand Designed for War-fighting

The news that the Waihopai spy base was going to be built led to the birth of the Anti-Bases Campaign (ABC) in 1987. ABC has campaigned for the closure of Waihopai ever since (our most recent protest there was in 2023).

 

By

 Murray Horton

 

We have consistently said that it is a U.S. spy base in all but name, i.e., that the New Zealand Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB, NZ’s spy agency in the Five Eyes international spy alliance) works as directed by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA). We have also consistently said that it is a war-fighting base, not just a spy base. The powers that be in New Zealand’s covert state, and their political mouthpieces, have always denied this and/or asked for evidence?

Soothing Reassurances from GCSB Bosses

For example, this from The New Zealand Herald, (April 9, 2010), with the eye-catching title “It’s ours and it’s not evil, say spy-base masters”:

“New Zealand’s secret spies emerged from the shadows yesterday to deny their Waihopai station is an American spy base contributing to torture and war. Present and past Directors of the Government Communications Security Bureau took the unusual step of commenting publicly on allegations made during and after last month’s trial in which a jury acquitted teacher Adrian Leason, 45, Dominican friar Peter Murnane, 69, and farmer Sam Land, 26, of charges of burglary and willful damage after they broke into the base in Marlborough.”

“Father Murnane said after the verdict: ‘We have shown New Zealanders there is a U.S. spy base in our midst.’ In court, he said the trio felt strongly about the evil caused by activities of spy bases, such as torture, war and use of weapons of mass destruction such as depleted uranium. Air Marshal Sir Bruce Ferguson, the Bureau’s Director, and his predecessor, Dr. Warren Tucker, said the allegations demanded a response because they brought into question the integrity of New Zealand’s security and intelligence apparatus. ‘The Waihopai station is not a U.S.-run spy base,’ they said. ‘It is totally operated and controlled by New Zealand, through the GCSB as an arm of the New Zealand Government.’”

“‘This has been formally investigated and reported upon by the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security, for example, at the request of then Prime Minister [Jim] Bolger, in response to claims made by peace movement activists at the time. ‘The Waihopai Station was not—and is not—being used to contribute to ‘torture, war, and the use of weapons of mass destruction such as depleted uranium’ as claimed. It was not—and is not—contributing to ‘unspeakable evil.’ Quite the reverse.”

Waihopai Hosted U.S. NSA Spying/War-Fighting System for Nearly a Decade

Case closed? Not so fast. The year 2024 has unearthed fresh revelations. According to RNZ News, “The operation—that the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) did not tell government ministers about—ran from 2013-20, but was only exposed by an official watchdog last month [March 2024)]. Intelligence documents strongly suggest the bureau hosted—but exercised virtually no oversight over—a system run by the U.S. National Security Agency [NSA] to help acquire targets classified as terrorists for killer drones, bombs and raids using GCSB data.”

The article continued: “An important aspect of the deal document—called a memorandum of understanding (MOU)—was that it dealt with concerns that arose within the GCSB about the system’s military capabilities. The Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security (IGIS) said the system was ‘largely controlled by the partner agency,’ even though the bureau could have vetoed operations it did not like under the MOU. It chose instead not to keep track of them, the inspector-general’s report last month showed.”

“The public report did not identify the foreign agency, and the inspector-general later told RNZ he did not ask if the system was used for military operations. His report revealed the MOU was signed with the foreign agency in March 2012 by a GCSB deputy director. An internal GCSB document from 2012 showed it signed an MOU with the NSA that year to host the APPARITION system.”

“‘The decision to host the capability on the terms set out in the MOU was significant, particularly given the potential uses of the capability to support military operations,’ said the inspector-general report. The MOU was poorly implemented, it said. A subsequent policy requires the bureau to get ministerial approval for an international agreement that deals with new policy. The inspector-general said this should be triggered if the bureau looked at a hosting deal like this again.”

Nicky Hager Explains APPARITION

So, what was this all about? Fortunately, we could rely on Nicky Hager to flesh out the details. Here’s what he wrote: “The IGIS [Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security] report said the GCSB decision to host a foreign system from 2012-2020 was ‘improper’ and that the GCSB ‘could not be sure the tasking of the capability was always in accordance with…New Zealand law.’ The Inspector-General said: ‘I have found some of the GCSB’s explanations about how the capability operated and was tasked to be incongruous with information in GCSB records at the time.’”

Hager continued: “But the Inspector-General could not reveal details of the system to the public because they are ‘highly classified.’ The name and function of the foreign spy spying equipment, the identity of the ‘foreign partner agency’ and the location of the ‘GCSB facility’ where foreign equipment was hosted all remained secret.”

“The mystery spy equipment appears strongly to be a top-secret U.S. surveillance system that was installed at the GCSB’s Waihopai base at the same time as the equipment in the IGIS investigation was installed at a ‘GCSB facility.’ The top-secret NSA spy equipment had the ghostly codename ‘APPARITION’ and fits with all the details presented in the IGIS report.”

“APPARITION was owned by and controlled by the U.S. National Security Agency—the world’s largest intelligence gathering agency and head of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance that includes the GCSB. A[n] NSA internal report, written after the launch of the APPARITION system in 2008, said that it ‘builds on the success of the GHOSTHUNTER prototype…a tool that enabled a significant number of capture-kill operations against terrorists.’”

“Capture-kill operations involve lethal attacks on targeted people using drones, bombs and special forces raids. Human rights organisations have documented numerous deaths of civilians during capture-kill operations—many of them ‘algorithmically targeted’ by electronic surveillance systems such as APPARITION. They are also criticised as being ‘extra-judicial killings.’”

“This is what the IGIS report appeared to be referring to when it said the foreign capability ‘clearly had the potential to be used, in conjunction with other intelligence sources, to support military action against targets.’ It referred to the equipment finding ‘remote targets’ and said that GCSB staff had raised ‘legal and moral issues.’”

“The 2008 NSA report explained how APPARITION targeting is done. ‘APPARITION is a precision geolocation capability for targeting foreign very small aperture satellite terminals (VSAT)’ it said. VSAT refers to small satellite communication systems used to access the Internet in remote places away from major Internet connections. Precision geolocation means working out the exact location of a target person. VSAT is ‘an important target,’ it said, ‘because VSATs are often used by Internet cafes and foreign governments in the Middle East.’”

To quote Hager further: “The report said the APPARITION system at Misawa—a major NSA base in northern Japan—was ‘currently targeting VSAT terminals believed to be servicing Internet cafés used by high-value counterterrorism (CT) targets in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Indonesia, as well as non-CT targets in China.’ The NSA report is dated December 2008, shortly after the first operational version of APPARITION was installed at Misawa. It said: ‘Plans are well advanced to install APPARITIONs…[at] FORNSAT [foreign satellite interception]…sites worldwide, including Second Party locations, in the next two years.’”

“‘Second Party’ refers to the Five Eyes intelligence allies: the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand (the First Party is the United States). The IGIS report says the GCSB was approached in 2009, the following year, as a potential site for the foreign signals intelligence system. A March 2012 internal ‘GCSB Update’ records that an MOU had been signed between NSA and GCSB for hosting of the APPARITION equipment and that installation was planned for June 2012. The IGIS report uses almost exactly the same words. The location for the APPARITION equipment was the Waihopai satellite interception base.”

“The system works by combining two different types in intelligence: ground stations like Waihopai intercepting the satellites that relay the VSAT satellite communications for remote users; and ‘Overhead’ spy satellites that locate the targets from far above the Earth. When combined, the report said, the intelligence systems could estimate the precise geolocations of VSAT Internet cafes and other target locations with an ‘average error of probability of only 0.07 nautical miles’ (130 metres)—not actually very precise in a built-up area.”

“Another NSA report, called ‘APPARITION/GHOSTHUNTER TASKING INFO,’ describes the purpose of APPARITION as ‘Directed Target Development.’ It ‘provides global access for VSAT geolocation requirements initially and incorporates the use of OH [Overhead spy satellites], comsat [Waihopai-type station], SCS [secret eavesdropping units within embassies] and other access hubs.’ It said: ‘Requests are acknowledged by Denver and scheduled via mission planning for execution.’”

Waihopai Domes Gone But It Continues Spying

RNZ News reported that “[t]he various NSA and GCSB reports quoted were part of the trove of top secret reports released by the U.S. whistleblower Edward Snowden in 2013. The APPARITION documents do not say what the NSA used the Waihopai-based APPARITION equipment to target. However GCSB used the equipment for its own targeting as well.”

“Another 2012 Snowden document suggests that the Waihopai base was intercepting VSAT communications in the Pacific by targeting the NSS-9 satellite, which was located at 183 degrees east. The 2012 report discusses technology changes affecting Waihopai’s ‘South Pacific mission’ including the ‘ViaSat Skylink VSAT links,’ the NSS-9 satellite. It’s unclear whether this VSAT surveillance involved APPARITION.”

“The Waihopai station also had a system in 2012 called FALLOWHAUNT, used for collection (eavesdropping) and processing of VSAT communications. It was installed at Waihopai in November 2010. This may also be one of the surveillance systems mentioned (without naming the systems) in the IGIS report.”

“In 2022 the GCSB announced ‘Removal of Waihōpai spy base surveillance domes begins’ and media reported that the ‘virtually obsolete’ Waihopai spy domes were being dismantled.” “Some people, including journalists, assumed that the Waihopai station was ceasing to be an intelligence base. However Waihopai continues to intercept a range of satellites with more modern antennas and processing equipment as part of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance.”

New Zealand Has Blood on Its Hands. Shut Waihopai and GCSB

So, there we have it. While the GCSB spy bosses have been making reassuring noises all along, the reality is that, for nearly a decade (and a very recent decade at that), the GCSB was hosting, at Waihopai, a U.S. NSA system over which the GCSB had no control—by choice—and which was not known to the various Ministers who were nominally “in charge” of the GCSB. This period spanned both the Key National government and the Ardern Labour government, so both major parties were equally ignorant and culpable.

Furthermore, this NSA system was not only for spying but for capturing and/or killing targets via drones, missiles, bombs or attacks by special forces in countries far removed from New Zealand. Such military strikes inevitably kill family members, neighbors, bystanders and innocent civilians in general. This means that New Zealand very much has blood on its hands.

As the ABC has said from the outset, Waihopai is a U.S. spy base and a war-fighting one. The GCSB is a willingly complicit junior partner of the NSA. This is the proof. And it makes even more urgent the case for shutting down both Waihopai and the GCSB.

https://covertactionmagazine.com/2024/08/24/waihopai-is-a-secret-u-s-spy-base-in-new-zealand-designed-for-war-fighting/

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In Central Australia, there's a place of stunning beauty that's also shrouded in mystery; Pine Gap. Hidden in ranges around eighteen kilometres south of Alice Springs, Pine Gap is Australia's most secretive spy base. For almost sixty years, it has operated in silence and been protected by extreme secrecy. But why is it there? Why that location, and what goes on there? ABC journalist Alex Barwick explains the story of this secret spy base, and the process of investigating for her new ABC podcast, released today. Guest: Alice Springs journalist and 'Spies in the Outback' host Alex Barwick

 

https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/australia-wide/australia-wide/103645088

 


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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

a hippo....

The United States is one of the most politically polarized countries in the world.

Because effective lawmaking requires bipartisanship and members of Congress are, like their constituents, at their most ideologically divided point in a half century, cooperation is in increasingly short supply. As a result or, more precisely non-result, the U.S. Congress passes fewer bills every year.

 

Cut the Defense Budget by 97.5%BY Ted Rall

 

There is, however, one consistent area of agreement on Capitol Hill: defense spending. Each year for the past six decades, the massive National Defense Authorization Act—Washington-speak for the federal defense spending bill has passed with overwhelming bipartisan support. Defense appropriations are so sacrosanct that the press often describes the NDAA as “must pass”; it is routine for Congress to add in hundreds of millions of dollars of extraneous spending that the Pentagon does not want or request.

In the U.S. Congress, even “antiwar” voices support the military. Obama’s 2008 campaign was primarily predicated on his opposition to the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq. Yet even his GOP opponent John McCain didn’t care call out Obama on the fact that when he had six chances to vote on the Iraq War—he wasn’t in the Senate yet when it voted on the measure authorizing President George W. Bush to attack the government of Saddam Hussein—he voted to send the cash each time. Bernie Sanders has repeatedly voted to fund the military and sending weapons for wars being waged by U.S. proxies like Israel and Ukraine.

Vice President Kamala Harris, whom Republicans describe as Marxist, socialist and communist, is thoroughly committed to the cult of American militarism. “As Commander-in-Chief, I will ensure America always has the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world,” she said in Thursday’s nomination acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention.

 

The idea that military expenditures are “must pass” relies on the assumption that the U.S. faces existential threats to its safety and/or sovereignty. This is crap.

As Statfor’s classic 2011 assessment of the United States and its geopolitical position noted: “The American geography is an impressive one.”

Consider Russia. It has thousands of miles of land borders, most of it without significant natural barriers like mountain ranges or large bodies of water to deter a potential invader, millions of square miles of fairly flat lands that can quickly and easily be traversed, with numerous neighbors that are hostile and have posed a historical threat. Given its situation, Russia’s rulers have traditionally relied on friendly buffer and vassal states around its perimeter.

 

 

“The U.S. Atlantic Coast possesses more major ports than the rest of the Western Hemisphere combined,” Stratfor observed. “Two vast oceans insulated the United States from

 

Asian and European powers, deserts separate the United States from Mexico to the south, while lakes and forests separate the population centers in Canada from those in the United States. The United States has capital, food surpluses and physical insulation in excess of every other country in the world by an exceedingly large margin.” Canada and Mexico are friendly vassal states.

“Red Dawn” was just a movie. Gun nuts who think they’ll need AR-15s to arm a Resistance against alien invaders are deluded. No one wants to invade us. No one wants to take away our freedoms.

No one can.

We are acting like the hippopotamus. Hippos are the most dangerous land animal on the planet, killing 500 human beings every year. They’re nervous and high-strung because they rapidly evolved from a much smaller creature that made easy prey. Poor things! They don’t realize that they’ve become huge, grown fearsome teeth and no longer need to be aggressive and territorial. Like the hippo, the U.S. started out small and vulnerable to aggressors like England, which re-invaded in 1812. But things have changed for both the hippo and us. Can’t we be smarter than a hippo?

The U.S. has, like other countries, faced raids like the Pearl Harbor attack and cross-border incursions from Mexico in the 19th century. In a now largely-forgotten episode, two of the Aleutian islands were occupied by Japanduring World War II, before Alaska became a state. Non-state terrorists have struck the contiguous 48 states, as on 9/11. But none of those incidents, though violent and disturbing, represented anything close to an existential threat. Most other countries, faced with attacks on such a small scale, would not feel traumatized as much as merely annoyed.

We have not faced a substantial risk of territorial invasion by an enemy army or navy since the War of 1812.

In the 21st century, the U.S. faces two main threats to national security: terrorism and cyber attacks. These are addressed by, respectively, the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI. We don’t need a fleet of ships lining our coastlines or a perimeter of military bases to fend off the Germans or the Japanese or the Chinese or the Russians. And we don’t have them. The “Defense” Department doesn’t defend the U.S.; it attacks and disrupts other countries and non-state entities abroad and, far less frequently, defends U.S. allies against internal uprisings, rival factions and hostile neighbors.

Given our remarkably enviable security situation is not inconceivable that the U.S. could get by eliminating its military budget entirely, as have countries like Costa Rica, Panama and Iceland, all of which have abolished their army, navy and air force and yet have been invaded since. Could it be that, much as you are likelier to be shot by a gun if you own one, that an unarmed nation is less likely to be attacked because its neighbors no longer view it as a potential threat?

Alternatively, we could decide not to continue the current practice of constantly adding new and fancier technology to our existing arsenal. We could make do with the equipment and materiel we have now, while spending enough to maintain it.

Defense should be about defense, i.e. defending our own borders. Brazil, bigger than the contiguous 48 U.S. states, and by far the dominant military power on the South American continent, has a military budget of $20 billion. That’s equivalent to 2.5% of the U.S., which currently wastes $1.6 trillion a year—more than half of discretionary federal spending.

Let’s start there.

(Ted Rall (Twitter: @tedrall), the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist)

 

https://sputnikglobe.com/20240827/cut-the-defense-budget-by-975-1119923120.html

 

Ted Rall is a syndicated editorial cartoonist, opinion columnist, graphic novelist, author, and occasional war correspondent. A graduate of Columbia University with honours in history, Rall is a Pulitzer Prize finalist and two-time winner of the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for outstanding coverage of problems faced by the disadvantaged. His notable books include the Gen X manifesto “Revenge of the Latchkey Kids,“ the first book about the United States invasion of Afghanistan, “To Afghanistan and Back,“ and the New York Times best-selling biography “Bernie.” His upcoming graphic novel, “The Stringer,” comes out in April.

 

 

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.