Last month I also speculated as to why New Star would give an announcement asking for listener comments. After all, this numbers station has been active for many years now, and to read an announcement giving an email and snail mail address seems strange. The fact that the email address no longer works adds to the mystery.

Could it be possible that Taiwan intelligence lost contact with an agent, and this is a ruse to have the agent send an email to let them know he's OK? Or is it a method to get all agents to check in? This is highly unlikely, as Chinese intelligence would have intercepted the email announcement, and having one or all of your agents suddenly send email to you (which is easily traceable) would give them away. Even sending a letter to the announced address would be risky. It would even be risky for any Chinese citizen to send a letter to the station requesting a QSL. The Chinese government and the citizenry are very suspicious of everyone. Someone sending a letter to a broadcast station the government knows is used for intelligence work would surely result in an arrest & imprisonment.

Since the email address is down, we are only left with the mailing address of P.O. Box 12587, Taipei, Taiwan. So far I haven't' heard of anyone receiving any replies to mail sent to this address. This is probably your best bet to receive a QSL, if in fact they decide to issue them. I've been trying to hear New Star again in order to send them a reception report, but I haven't been able to catch them on their 8300 or 13750 frequencies. I don't know if it's due to propagation or if the station has not been active on these freqs.

Anther story that's been circulating recently is the fact that some video feeds from US reconnaissance aircraft was broadcast in the clear over communications satellites, which was picked up in Europe by viewers with satellite dishes. The video purported to show UN troops, including US military personnel, on the ground in Bosnia.

A satellite TV viewer in England, John Locker, stated that he had first picked up the live feeds in November. He had since been trying to alert the US and allied militaries, but nobody was listening. Locker finally went public with the information.

According to NATO and US military spokesmen, the video feeds are unclassified and contain no useful information to a potential enemy.

While the video may not necessarily give away any information, they do certainly give away the capabilities of the US military to spy on ground targets. The video, from P- 3 aircraft and Hunter unmanned drones, show that the US has the capability to spy on targets about 20 miles away through cloud cover at night.

You would think that the US military would be using secure, encrypted satellite links instead of an unencrypted link that could be watched all over Europe. On the other hand, intercepting this video may be as innocuous as milcom listeners listening to USAF comms on 11175. I'm sure if the media got wind of how some SWL's listen to military freqs, they'd probably be making as big a deal out of it.

The movie Windtalkers is due out soon. This movie portrays the use of the Navajo language by the US military to thwart codebreaking efforts during World War II. I haven't seen the movie yet but plan to. The Army recruited soldiers from Navajo reservations who were used to pass information in their native language. According to a documentary on the subject last year on the History Channel, the codetalkers had devised their own code within the Navajo language. Thus, when the Japanese had captured a Navajo soldier (who wasn't a code talker) in order to try to break the code, he was unable to figure out what the code talkers were saying. The method provided secure communications for the US military that were never broken during the war.

See you next month.