I have set up a spy numbers discussion forum on the internet. The URL is http://www.delphi.com/spynumbers. The site is a place to discuss current issues regarding numbers stations and related information. There is also a chat room where you can discuss what you're hearing with other monitors. You have to become a Delphi member to post information or chat, but you can sign in as a guest to just read what has been posted. All you have to do to sign up as a member is pick a nickname and give some information. I have included a "newbies" section for people to ask questions about numbers stations, and a loggings section to include loggings of numbers stations. I have also been thinking of including each month's "Covert Comms" column on the forum. I hope you will visit the forum often.

I have recently finished a book called Spyworld written by Mike Frost. Mr. Frost worked for the Communications Security Establishment (CSE), the Canadian version of the NSA. Mr. Frost was tasked with setting up listening posts in various Canadian embassies around the world. According to the book, the American and British embassies already contained listening post, and the NSA was pressuring the CSE to get involved in embassy collection. Mr. Frost and the CSE worked closely with the NSA, who supplied them with technical support & equipment. The CSE gathered intelligence by monitoring microwave links and cellular telephone signals, which is still occurring today. Spyworld also describes some of the facilities of the NSA. For example, the NSA has a room that simulates the radio traffic in any city in the world. This room was designed to give agents a feel for what radio signals they will come across when conducting SIGINT activities in any given city. Overall, this book is a fascinating read. The book was published in 1994 and is well worth getting if you can find it.

John Maky writes: "Last night on the regular 10970//13921 E10 MIW broadcast at 0315, a strange incident occurred... Faintly in the background on 13921, I could hear a 4XZ marker. When the MIW2 broadcast concluded at 0318, the 4XZ marker disappeared. This wasn't audible on 10970. Obviously they were mixing. A possible connection???"

This wouldn't surprise me one bit. 4XZ is listed as Haifa Naval, Israel. However, most monitors believe that it has a different purpose. 4XZ normally sends 5L messages, and sometimes plaintext. One of the biggest arguments against 4XZ being used by the Israeli navy is the high volume of coded messages. The Israeli Navy is not as large as the traffic would have you believe. Unless most of this traffic is dummy traffic, there doesn't seem to be any reason for the high volume. Another argument is that 4XZ operates in broadcast mode only, on various frequencies all over the HF band. If it were really used for naval purposes, it would most likely be used for two-way communications. The selection of various HF frequencies implies that they want coverage for various parts of the world. This makes sense from a naval point of view, but how often does the Israeli Navy travel to different parts of the world? I would imagine that Mossad agents are more scattered around the world than the Israeli Navy.

4XZ is an interesting station which can be heard in the US evenings on 10046 and 18481 kHz. As I said, messages normally consist of 5L groups. The message number and group count in the preamble are always sent backwards. This is because Hebrew is read from right to left. Sometimes plaintext messages are sent in (I'm assuming) Hebrew. However I'm not familiar with the language so I don't know what kind of information is passed. Since it's plaintext, I would have to say it is low-level unclassified information. Hardly the kind of traffic a Mossad agent would need, which may indicate that 4XZ has other users.

Lastly, I managed to catch a transmission of the V7 "Spanish Man" on 17434 kHz at 2040 UTC. This one took me quite by surprise as I hadn't heard it before. It consisted of an OM/SS in USB repeating 544 544 544 1 for several minutes, then into 5F groups. The station finally signed down with 000 000. This station is rarely heard in North America, so I was glad to catch it.

That's all for this month. Please check out the spy numbers forum and let me know what you think.