To: Spooks <spooks@qth.net> Subject: [Spooks] Letter from a CIA officer with a gripe From: Bob Margolis <rttyman@wwa.com> Date: Sat, 03 Oct 1998 22:30:07 -0500 Reply-To: Bob Margolis <rttyman@wwa.com> Sender: owner-spooks@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 --- Submissions should be sent to spooks@qth.net To unsubscribe, send "unsubscribe spooks" to majordomo@qth.net