CEWAP - Mark Thomas and his little pranks

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One day, Mark was investigating a US listening station near Harrogate in Yorkshire when he found that the airspace over the base wasn't restricted, despite it being an RAF base on permanent lease to the Americans. So a hot air balloon trip was organised! Subsequently, a "Mass comedic spy-in" was held on the US embassy hosted on a double decker bus driving round and round Grosvenor Square.

Are you listening carefully?

RAF Menwith Hill is on a virtually permanent lease to the US Air Force and is fully tooled up as a "listening station". Obviously set up for military purposes, the operation there is capable of monitoring all email, mobile phone calls, radio and satellite transmissions and a whole lot more to provide "near real-time intelligence" on anyone! They have a system called ECHELON that spots keywords in transmissions (and probably this web site) and highlights them to the staff there. Goodness knows what they do with this information, but they can find out a lot about you and me so let's be careful out there!

Mark nabbed the Menwith Hill domain name and put up a website (well he didn't do it himself, he's a bit crap when it comes to technology, Netscape version 1.0 indeed!) where you can find out all about the place and sign up for the planned Balloon Tours which will take place on a suitable date, hopefully this summer.

Unfortunately ownership the Menwith Hill website has now expired and has been taken over by a rather odd practitioner in an unusual art of organ maintenance. You go there if you like, but it's not for the squeamish or easily offended! I can't bring myself to include a link to the old site here, I wouldn't want to offend any of you nice people. You might find a copy here, though.

He had a ballooon trip over there himself when he nearly got nicked, but the police weren't too sure of their facts about whether it was legal or not to fly a balloon over the base (Mark was sure, he'd checked beforehand and the airspace is not restricted. I wonder how long it will stay that way?). The police made their own video of the event, but wouldn't give Mark a copy (even though they are supposed to).

The Spy-in

As a stunt to accompany the item on Menwith Hill, Mark organised a "Mass comedic spy-in" at the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square, London in February 1999.

About a hundred people (including a member of staff from "Bizarre" magazine) turned up dressed in long overcoats/raincoats, hats and sunglasses and sporting various items of surveillance equipment (some of which were hardly "covert"). Driven around and around the square in a double decker bus, small groups were dropped off at various strategic points to monitor the embassy.

Small groups (so that the police couldn't move us on) of highly suspicious people loitering outside the US Embassy brought fairly rapid response from the police who were highly amused. I remember killing myself laughing at the sight of one gentlemen in trenchcoat and hat leaning on a lampost on the corner of the street (cue for a song?), reading a newspaper with two carefully cut out holes in it for him to peer through.

Mark had a nice chat with the press officer at the US Embassy and got involved in some discussion with which bits of pavement belonged to the US or the UK before sympathising with them that it was a real pain when other people were squatting on your land!

Some facts (most of which I don't understand!)

Menwith Hill in the UK is the principal NATO theater ground segment node for high altitude signals intelligence satellites (16). Although this facility is jointly operated with the UK's General Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), GCHQ is not privy to the intelligence down-linked to Menwith Hill, since tapes containing the data are returned via air to the United States for analysis.

Menwith Hill Station was established in 1956 by the US Army Security Agency (ASA). Inside the closely-guarded 560 acre base are two large operations blocks and many satellite tracking dishes and domes. Initial operations focused on monitoring international cable and microwave communications passing through Britain. In the early 1960s Menwith Hill was one of the first sites in the world to receive sophisticated early IBM computers, with which NSA automated the labor-intensive watch-list scrutiny of intercepted but unenciphered telex messages. Since then, Menwith Hill has sifted the international messages, telegrams, and telephone calls of citizens, corporations or governments to select information of political, military or economic value to the United States.

Every detail of Menwith Hill's operations has been kept an absolute secret. The official cover story is that the all-civilian base is a Department of Defense communications station. The British Ministry of Defence describe Menwith Hill as a "communications relay centre." Like all good cover stories, this has a strong element of truth to it. Until 1974, Menwith Hill's Sigint specialty was evidently the interception of International Leased Carrier signals, the communications links run by civil agencies -- the Post, Telegraph and Telephone ministries of eastern and western European countries. The National Security Agency took over Menwith Hill in 1966. Interception of satellite communications began at Menwith Hill as early as 1974, when the first of more than eight large satellite communications dishes were installed.

In 1984, British Telecom and MoD staff completed a $25 million extension to Menwith Hill Station known as STEEPLEBUSH. The British government constructed new communications facilities and buildings for STEEPLEBUSH, worth £7.4 million. The expansion plan includes a 50,000 square foot extension to the Operations Building and new generators to provide 5 Megawatts of electrical power. The purpose of the new construction was to boost and cater for an 'expanded mission' of satellite surveillance. It also provides a new (satellite) earth terminal system to support the classified systems at the site. With another $17.2 million being spent on special monitoring equipment, this section of the Menwith Hill base alone cost almost $160 million dollars.

Your Menwith Hill tour guides (ask for them by name)

Col Joseph Brand, base commander (US Army INSCOM) Lt Col Honeycutt. deputy base commander (US army) Squadron Leader Humphrey Vincent, RAF liason officer MOD police senior officer Ch Inspector Graeme Drummond Deputy Insp Williams-Brown Sergeant John Quinn, MOD police A.J.Johnson, Navy storekeeper Kevin Lewis, US Navy seaman, naval intelligence C.M.McGrath, US navy, security group activities Petty Officer P.H.Madigan, security group activities G.J.Lambatsos, Chief Petty Officer Sergeant C.S.Gacia, US videographer Harry Ray Kreiner, base photographer; Colonel Clyde D Harthcock, base commander (new)

By the way if anyone from Menwith Hill is reading this, please don't look at the source HTML for this page. And don't click here, either.


Home CEWAP Mark Thomas 18:30 Club GM Food Car Cats Links		Menwith Hill

		One day, Mark was investigating a US listening station near Harrogate in Yorkshire when he found that the airspace over the base wasn't restricted, despite it being an RAF base on permanent lease to the Americans. So a hot air balloon trip was organised! Subsequently, a "Mass comedic spy-in" was held on the US embassy hosted on a double decker bus driving round and round Grosvenor Square.

Are you listening carefully?

RAF Menwith Hill is on a virtually permanent lease to the US Air Force and is fully tooled up as a "listening station". Obviously set up for military purposes, the operation there is capable of monitoring all email, mobile phone calls, radio and satellite transmissions and a whole lot more to provide "near real-time intelligence" on anyone! They have a system called ECHELON that spots keywords in transmissions (and probably this web site) and highlights them to the staff there. Goodness knows what they do with this information, but they can find out a lot about you and me so let's be careful out there! Mark nabbed the Menwith Hill domain name and put up a website (well he didn't do it himself, he's a bit crap when it comes to technology, Netscape version 1.0 indeed!) where you can find out all about the place and sign up for the planned Balloon Tours which will take place on a suitable date, hopefully this summer. Unfortunately ownership the Menwith Hill website has now expired and has been taken over by a rather odd practitioner in an unusual art of organ maintenance. You go there if you like, but it's not for the squeamish or easily offended! I can't bring myself to include a link to the old site here, I wouldn't want to offend any of you nice people. You might find a copy here, though. He had a ballooon trip over there himself when he nearly got nicked, but the police weren't too sure of their facts about whether it was legal or not to fly a balloon over the base (Mark was sure, he'd checked beforehand and the airspace is not restricted. I wonder how long it will stay that way?). The police made their own video of the event, but wouldn't give Mark a copy (even though they are supposed to).

The Spy-in

As a stunt to accompany the item on Menwith Hill, Mark organised a "Mass comedic spy-in" at the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square, London in February 1999. About a hundred people (including a member of staff from "Bizarre" magazine) turned up dressed in long overcoats/raincoats, hats and sunglasses and sporting various items of surveillance equipment (some of which were hardly "covert"). Driven around and around the square in a double decker bus, small groups were dropped off at various strategic points to monitor the embassy. Small groups (so that the police couldn't move us on) of highly suspicious people loitering outside the US Embassy brought fairly rapid response from the police who were highly amused. I remember killing myself laughing at the sight of one gentlemen in trenchcoat and hat leaning on a lampost on the corner of the street (cue for a song?), reading a newspaper with two carefully cut out holes in it for him to peer through. Mark had a nice chat with the press officer at the US Embassy and got involved in some discussion with which bits of pavement belonged to the US or the UK before sympathising with them that it was a real pain when other people were squatting on your land!

Some facts (most of which I don't understand!)

Menwith Hill in the UK is the principal NATO theater ground segment node for high altitude signals intelligence satellites (16). Although this facility is jointly operated with the UK's General Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), GCHQ is not privy to the intelligence down-linked to Menwith Hill, since tapes containing the data are returned via air to the United States for analysis. Menwith Hill Station was established in 1956 by the US Army Security Agency (ASA). Inside the closely-guarded 560 acre base are two large operations blocks and many satellite tracking dishes and domes. Initial operations focused on monitoring international cable and microwave communications passing through Britain. In the early 1960s Menwith Hill was one of the first sites in the world to receive sophisticated early IBM computers, with which NSA automated the labor-intensive watch-list scrutiny of intercepted but unenciphered telex messages. Since then, Menwith Hill has sifted the international messages, telegrams, and telephone calls of citizens, corporations or governments to select information of political, military or economic value to the United States. Every detail of Menwith Hill's operations has been kept an absolute secret. The official cover story is that the all-civilian base is a Department of Defense communications station. The British Ministry of Defence describe Menwith Hill as a "communications relay centre." Like all good cover stories, this has a strong element of truth to it. Until 1974, Menwith Hill's Sigint specialty was evidently the interception of International Leased Carrier signals, the communications links run by civil agencies -- the Post, Telegraph and Telephone ministries of eastern and western European countries. The National Security Agency took over Menwith Hill in 1966. Interception of satellite communications began at Menwith Hill as early as 1974, when the first of more than eight large satellite communications dishes were installed. In 1984, British Telecom and MoD staff completed a $25 million extension to Menwith Hill Station known as STEEPLEBUSH. The British government constructed new communications facilities and buildings for STEEPLEBUSH, worth £7.4 million. The expansion plan includes a 50,000 square foot extension to the Operations Building and new generators to provide 5 Megawatts of electrical power. The purpose of the new construction was to boost and cater for an 'expanded mission' of satellite surveillance. It also provides a new (satellite) earth terminal system to support the classified systems at the site. With another $17.2 million being spent on special monitoring equipment, this section of the Menwith Hill base alone cost almost $160 million dollars.

Your Menwith Hill tour guides (ask for them by name)

Col Joseph Brand, base commander (US Army INSCOM) Lt Col Honeycutt. deputy base commander (US army) Squadron Leader Humphrey Vincent, RAF liason officer MOD police senior officer Ch Inspector Graeme Drummond Deputy Insp Williams-Brown Sergeant John Quinn, MOD police A.J.Johnson, Navy storekeeper Kevin Lewis, US Navy seaman, naval intelligence C.M.McGrath, US navy, security group activities Petty Officer P.H.Madigan, security group activities G.J.Lambatsos, Chief Petty Officer Sergeant C.S.Gacia, US videographer Harry Ray Kreiner, base photographer; Colonel Clyde D Harthcock, base commander (new) By the way if anyone from Menwith Hill is reading this, please don't look at the source HTML for this page. And don't click here, either.