Listening on your shortwave radio you come across the following transmission“0096 2251 2110 8105 0096…” The voice of a woman continues to recite the numbers over and over, and then the transmission ends. You’ve just found a spy numbers station. The origin is unknown and the recipient is unknown, but the eerie feeling that you get up your spine lets you know that it has an ominous meaning.

When I was about 14 or 15 I got a shortwave radio for Christmas. It was one of the good ones at the time. It was a Radio Shack model. I would sit wake at night listening to radio broadcast, and news from all over the world. One night I came across one of the counting stations, I had no idea what it was, but it fascinated me and frightened me. I talked to my dad, who was an officer in the Navy, and used to work at the Readiness Command Center, now Central Command, at Macdill AFB, and numerous friends who were also radio geeks like me to see if they knew what they were. No one did.

When I was 17 I enlisted into the Navy, and was an Operation Specialist. Because of my job I spent many days and nights in the Combat Information Center on board my ship talking to ships, aircraft and shore stations on high frequency radio stations. One night when the radiomen were tuning in a HF tactical frequency for me to control an aircraft that was coming in they past one of the counting stations. I called the radioman to ask them if they heard it. They said they had, and that they hear them all the time. That’s when they told me it was a spy station. My interest / obsession with spy stations began.

I have spent years reading as much about the stations as I could find. There is little that is known about them, but the information is out there. “Counting stations” as they are also called come in many different languages and types. They are transmissions sending instructions to spies and operatives in countries everywhere including inside the U.S.. So who is actually sending them? Terrorist? Al-Qaeda? the CIA? MI-5? Mossad? The answer is simple. All of them.

The Systems

Why in this age of cellular telephones and computers would someone send a code over a radio broadcast that can be heard by billions you may ask. The answer to that is also simple, shortwave radios are easy to obtain, they are easy to carry, they are easy to use and most importantly unless you have the decoder key, they are just random numbers. Up until recently there has only been one case where a Russian spy was found to have been one of the recipient of the transmissions. It was during the Cold War when he was captured by MI-5 in Britain. In his possession was a small portable shortwave radio, a long length of wire (for an antenna) and a tiny book filled with numbers. The infamous one-time pad.

The simplest explanation of the one-time pad I could find comes from ProTechnix.com. They define it as follows:

In 1917 during the First World War the American scientist Gilbert Vernam was given the task of inventing an encryption method the Germans could not break by AT&T. What was devised was the only provably unbreakable encryption scheme known to this day. Compared with most cryptosystems it is a very simple. To use a one-time pad, you need 2 copies of the “pad” ( also known as the key ) which is a block of truly random data at least as long as the message you wish to encode. If the data on the pad is not truly random, the security of the pad is compromised.

One-time pads are used in pairs. The more copies of a given pad, the greater the likelihood is that one may be captured, in which case the system is completely broken. One copy of the pad is kept by each user, and pads must be exchanged via a secure channel (e.g. face to face on floppy disks). Pads must only be used once.

There is also another method that involves the use of a regular book. Retired FBI Counter-Intelligence Agent Joe Navarro explained that the use of books for the five digit numbers stations is believed to go as follows. The first part of the transmission is the page number the rest of the string is grid positions on a book page. The word is in the center of where the grid lines intersect.

The Transmissions
There are numerous types of transmissions and originators as well as languages and types of messages. One of the most famous is called the Lincolnshire Poacher. It is believed to be a transmission that was originally broadcast by MI-6 to British spies perhaps in the ranks of the IRA or other paramilitary organizations in Ireland and Northern Ireland during The Troubles. Now it is believed to be transmitted out of Cyprus to the Middle East. It begins at the top of the hour. The transmission starts with the song Lincolnshire Poacher, a popular folk song in England, and then the message begins. It ends with the Lincolnshire Poacher song. Here is the audio:

The sister station called Cherry Ripe is believed to originate in Guam and transmit to ageents in the Far East. It follows the same principle except it plays Cherry Ripe before and at the end of transmission.

Another interesting one is from Mossad designated E10 by Enigma. Mossad is the Israeli intelligence agency. The broadcast are very frequent during times of trouble in the Middle East:

and being jammed:

This is the only numbers station (E10) encoded message that was easily decoded. No one knows why Mossad did it. KPA is the call sign and there are numbers and letters that follow. Take out the numbers and you get a hidden message. If you figure it out, send me a comment with the answer. Very cool:
Click HERE to listen

Here is a mystery station designated E11, the source and country of origin are unknown. It is also called oblique for obvious reasons.
Click HERE to listen!

Then there is the “Spanish lady” or “Atencion”. It is a Cuban transmission, and with me living in Florida it is easily heard. This is by far the most commonly heard type of numbers station in North America. A typical transmission starts with “atencion”, then a three digit block and a two digit block, such as “atencion 932 86″. The three digit block is believed to be the recipient. This preamble is sent for several minutes, followed by two two-digit numbers, the second of which is the message length. Then the actual message is sent, as a series of five digit blocks. The transmission ends with the words “final, final”. Sometimes three finals are sent.
Listen HERE to it!

Here is the transmission being jammed:

Here the guys recording it heard something really strange. The transmission ends and you can hear background noises in the room. A mans voice, a cough, a squeaky shoe and a door close:

This is S10d as it is called or the “Czech Lady”:

Most of these recordings were obtained from Mike and Sniffy’s Spynumbers page in the UK. They have a lot more recordings in various languages including the “Arabic Man” so stop on by and check out their awesome site. To learn more about the ENIGMA designators go HERE.

There is a new trend starting that is really distrurbing. It is done over VoIP. It is unknown what the source is. Of course since the NSA found out about it through bloggers they believe it is eith a hoax or two cryptoanalyst sending love letters. I have listened to numbers station too much to disregard them as hype.

Apparently a personal classified ad showed up on Craigslist that read:

For mein fraulein

Mein Fraulein, I haven’t heard from you in a while. Won’t you
call me? 212 //// 796 //// 0735

When the number was called the following message was heard:

Group 415
01305 60510 12079 04606 50100
93000 08203 90130 94069 01207
81080 17028 01706 90220 73038
01401 70150 15073 00402 00680
12013 12510 00540 04091 01401
30150 86022 09608 10660 02082
05507 00020 00000 02208 30290
08022 01200 40710 13065 02709
40190 29014 02200 80020 11083
07300 30260 19000 00700 00000
86

You can hear the actual audio and about the other phone numbers On Homeland Stupidity’s blog HERE.

I know that some people still believe that the world isn’t a scary place, but it is. I hope that by listening to these stations you will see the world maybe the way it really is. While we sleep at night and work during the day there are spies with little shortwave radios and wires hanging out of windows or answering classified ads with VoIP numbers listening for their next set of instructions or for a go order. I will keep listening and will be keeping my eyes open. I hope you will too.

To learn more about spynumbers and stations check out these links:
Spynumbers
Izumix
NSNL1
South Gate Arc
NPR Story

If you don’t have a shortwave radio, but would like to listen you can find radios you can tune and listen to online. DXZONE is the best place to find them.