Short Wave Numbers Stations: Spies Talking to Spies

It was a Zenith floor-model radio in a wood cabinet, that was almost as tall as I was, that had a 78 player and one general coverage short wave band.

On this radio I discovered the BBC and the Armed Forces Network and CHU from Canada that gave the time each minute in English and French, and Radio Sweden's North American service that played rock music on Sunday afternoon.

There were also stations that transmitted nothing but numbers in groups of five, in Spanish. They seemed to appear out of nowhere, and just as mysteriously disappear.

The school library had Popular Electronics, whose short wave monitoring column told me they were stations that transmitted coded instructions to secret agents. So James Bond, when he wasn't after the bad guys or hanging out with beautiful women, was listening to the radio like me. I was hooked.

With the world now virtually one big conspiracy theory, there still exists a fascination with coded messages sent via short wave, especially numbers stations, and what information they might contain.

HISTORY

By the mid-1930s, radio became more of an everyday item than a tech toy in American homes. War clouds in Europe began to form. Italy occupied Ethiopia, and Germany annexed portions of Czechoslovakia. Speeches by British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and German Chancellor Adolf Hitler were broadcast on short wave and could easily be heard in North America.

It was also believed then that spies for both sides communicated with other on the same short wave bands. We now know that the BBC dropped coded messages to the Resistance into programs on its French service, and that two lines from a Paul Verlaine poem, broadcast on June 5, 1944, told them the Allied invasion of occupied France would take place the next day.

Ordinary Americans became captured by the possibility that they could hear stuff like this in their living rooms.

Through the Cuban revolution, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of communism, and two wars in the Middle East, information has always been sent somewhere, to someone, via either coded text or numbers.

The Cubans who were convicted of espionage in the United States in 2001, who are known as The Cuban Five, received instructions in Florida via the well-known Atención numbers station.

WHY SW?

Phone calls and e-mails can be traced to their sources. Transmitting groups of numbers on a short wave station that can be easily heard on a small radio by spies who might be hiding, is a more secure, practical, way.

Attempts have been made to locate numbers stations by triangulation. Two listeners in different parts of the world turn their radios until the signal is strongest, and draw straight lines on a map in that direction. The station's approximate location is where the lines meet. But then what? Transmitter sites can be in remote areas. Transmitting antennas can be hidden. The roofs of embassy buildings throughout the world, including those in Washington DC, can resemble a forest of antennas. They might be for receiving, transmitting, or dummies connected to nothing.

Then -- if a listener did trace a numbers transmission to its source and could prove it -- who could he tell who would believe him?

THE CONET PROJECT

Akin Fernandez compiled recordings of numbers stations made by SW listeners on a four CD set, The Conet Project (named for a mis-hearing of the Czech word konec, "end," used to close transmissions on the Czech Republic's numbers station).

On it are recordings in several languages, samples of the station whose voice is a child's and whose attention signal has earned it the name "The Swedish Rhapsody," and the one known as "The Lincolnshire Poacher" for the snip of an English traditional song it uses to open and close transmissions.

The first limited edition on the Irdial label sold out. Modern rock band Wilco sampled the Conet Project on its CD "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot." Irdial sued, they and the band settled out of court, and the label received enough cash for a second edition which also sold out.

In 2004, the Washington Post published an interview with Akin Fernandez.

All tracks from all four discs of the Conet Project can still be heard at Archive.org and the Irdial Discs open-source web site.

WHERE TO FIND THEM

Clandestine stations that send instructions to spies by nature don't maintain regular broadcast schedules. They're found on random searches of the short wave bands at any time of the day or night. One can assume, then, that part of the message is the time and frequency of the next transmission.

One day last fall, I came in from raking leaves, casually tuned through the 31 meter band, and heard numbers in Spanish, probably from the Cuban Atención station, at local quality strength in Michigan in the early afternoon. The radio is now the size of a hardcover book, with digital tuning and a keypad. Someone was still telling someone else something. Go to a certain bar in Miami. Look for blonde in green dress. Ask her if she like Chinese food. She will say only on Monday. Buy her drink. Go with her. Wait for orders by radio . . . Then the numbers lady said "final - final - final" and that was it. But there were still lots more leaves to bag.