To: Spooks <spooks(a)qth.net>
Subject: [Spooks] Letter from a CIA officer with a gripe
From: Bob Margolis <rttyman(a)wwa.com>
Date: Sat, 03 Oct 1998 22:30:07 -0500
Reply-To: Bob Margolis <rttyman(a)wwa.com>
Sender: owner-spooks(a)qth.net
February 26, 1998
Senator Lauch Faircloth
317 Hard Senate Office Building
United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510
Senator Faircloth:
I am very concerned with recently published reports, which conclude
that the Central Intelligence Agency was not involved in drug activity
in connection with their activities in Latin America.
As a former Central Intelligence Agency officer I had direct knowledge
of matters which may be relevant in this matter.
During the period of January 1986 until July 1990 I was assigned as the
lead Computer Systems Analyst Programmer to a facility which was
initially called Project Koral during the building phase in 1985, but
upon activation was known as BYJURY within the Office of Communications
(DA/OC) although this designation was later changed to OC/MIAMI. Our
callsign was KKN39 and our routing indicators was RUEG and RUEGMI.
Because it operated under the guise of being a U.S. Army facility it
was also known as the United States Army Regional Communication
Agency/National Communications System and telegraphically as RRF MIAMI.
However, at no time did the facility ever support any DOD efforts. The
primary mission of this facility was to support the activities of the
Continuity of Government project which was identified by project
cryptonyms as CHALLIS, FESTIVE, FENCER, FEDDER, PEGASUS and ZEUS and in
this role the name of the facility was Atlantic Relay Facility I (ARF-
1). The overall umbrella organization for this effort was initially
known as NEISS, later as NEISO and finally as SIO and at one point had
space located in the basement of the Tysons Corner mall in Vienna,
Virginia.
The facility itself was located on U.S. Government property, which was
known locally as the Richmond Naval Air Station. This same property was
also the location of a University of Miami Primate Research Center, a
Marine Corps Reserve unit, the Central Intelligence Facility and
another NEISO activity which was identified as a unit of the U.S. Army
7th Signal Corps but which was known with NEISO as CPIC-East.
The OC/MIAMI facility was staffed with approximately 15 people. A
facility manager, a senior watch officer, a station engineer, a
programmer analyst, three electronic technicians, an administrative
assistant and 7 communications officers. Because the activities in
support of the NEISO operations was minimal in peacetime, the facility
was used by the Office of Communications as a major relay to provide
linkages between several CIA facilities in Southern Florida (LA/MIAMI,
FR/MIAMI, Miatech, FBIS Key West) and several other sites in the
Caribbean and South America. In addition we also periodically provided
telecommunications service to other CIA facilities whose primary relay
was the Office of Communications relay facility near Culpepper,
Virginia which was known for years as YOGURT but was later known as
BYJAMS and still later as OC/BRANDY with a callsign of KKN50 and a
routing indicator of RUES.
By now I hope you realize that I did have access to the information
which I am about to convey. The information given above can be verified
by the CIA, although they will be extremely reluctant to do so since
the extent of the NEISO project was withheld from Congress
About a 18 months after my arrival at the facility we were informed
that we would be the primary relay facility for a small station which
was established on Swan Island in support of a variety of operations
which were being conducted as part of our support for the CIA's efforts
in Nicaragua. This facility was centered on an airstrip, which was used
as a base of operations for pilots who were dropping supplies to the
rebels, which the CIA was supporting.
The communications setup for this facility was something that we called
a flyaway package. Basically it consisted of a HF transmitter/receiver
a PC-based communications terminal and a KG-84 encryption device.
The KG-84 was considered to be one of the most secure cryptographic
devices in use at that time. It came into universal use by the CIA
after it became known that the Walker's had compromised the KW-7 in
1985. When the encrypted signal was received at BYJURY, it was
decrypted through one of our KG-84 devices and from there the signal
was passed to the SPARS message switch in unencrypted form. However,
much of the traffic, which was transmitted on this circuit, was super-
enciphered with One-Time-Tape (OTT). This was extremely unusual under
the circumstances since electronic encryption was considered quite
adequate for secure CIA communications. I know from personal experience
as a communications officer prior to becoming a computer programmer
that except for annual exercises to maintain proficiency in one-time-
tape techniques, there was essentially no usage of one-time-tape for
circuits which had secure communications circuitry. The fact that this
particular station was using one-time-tape over a secure circuit was
noted by all of the communicators at BYJURY and while we did not have
any means whereby to decipher the messages further, it was broadly
speculated that there was something happening on Swan Island which was
so sensitive that it could not be entrusted to normal electronic
encryption. When you consider that most Talent Keyhole and Rapport data
was only afforded normal encryption, the volume of one-time-tape usage
by this station can only be viewed as extremely noteworthy.
If Congress decides to investigate this matter further, I also need to
add that the CIA will probably state that the messages, which were
transmitted to and receive from this station are no longer held. This
is totally inaccurate. All message traffic into and out of CIA
Headquarters is held in local storage for several weeks and after that
time is no longer routinely available. However, for many years now
there have been backup copies of the traffic which are transmitted on a
daily basis to an off-site storage facility at Station A of the
Warrenton Training Center where it is transferred to magnetic tape for
permanent archives. It is highly likely that the CIA will deny that
this archiving takes place because even the head of the Office of
Communications probably does not realize that this is occurring since
this is considered a low-level routine administrative task and quite
often CIA managers above the GS-14 level simply do not have any
understanding or knowledge of the actual working of the communications
network. If the CIA does deny that the archiving occurs you may wish to
use the power of congress to pursue the matter until they admit that
the records do exist. While the actual magnetic tapes may have been
replaced by more permanent storage such as CDROMS, I can pretty much
assure you that the storage does exist.
I am providing this information because after the extremely harsh and
discriminatory treatment, which I experienced during the period of
1989-1992, I no longer feel any sense of loyalty to the CIA nor do I
feel that I have any obligations to them. They were wrong in treating
me the way that they did and demonstrated that they preferred to take
the word of a senior manager who habitually drank alcohol while
performing in his position and they preferred to protect those who were
engaged in sexual improprieties. On top of that they also manipulated
the federal court system to ensure that they received decisions which
favored their point of view. There are apparently several federal
judges and U.S. Attorney's who have profited enormously by making
decisions, which prevented my case from ever being adequately heard in
court.
If congress is interested I could also provide information which would
tend to indicate that senior officials within the Office of
Communications engaged in misuse of government funds and in which
official books were manipulated to make it look as if money was being
spent for official purposes when, in fact, it was being spent for the
benefit of senior managers in a fraudulent and wasteful manner.
After all of these years I still remain angry over the treatment I
received. When I became a government employee I fully intended to serve
an entire career in government service, but when I was faced with
treatment which was so harsh, punitive and discriminatory and when all
recourse was denied to me by the so-called statutory Inspector-General
of the CIA and his minions, I was placed in a position in which I had
to leave government service for my own protection since I could no
longer predict the capricious actions by those who held the power to
make the live of an employee miserable. They were wrong in what they
did and there is simply no excuse for permitting managers to have such
power to destroy a human being. I can never forgive their actions and
at this point the only way that I can deal with my anger is to
communicate exact details of matters which I experienced as an employee
in hopes that I can bring shame to the Agency. As a human being I
deserved a certain level of dignity and I received none. Government
agencies should be held to a standard whereby no employee is
discriminated against for any reason.
Please contact me if any additional information is needed on this
subject. All information in this letter is in the public domain and may
be disseminated freely.
Kenneth C Stahl
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