A
BYTE OUT OF HISTORY
Not So Public Radio: Gathering Intelligence Over the Airwaves in WWII
10/13/04
As far as the war
effort went, 1942 was a big year for radio. The "Voice of America" began
broadcasting American-based news of the war throughout Europe. Armed
Forces Radio was launched to boost the morale of soldiers around the
world.
And, on October
9, on a small farm outside Clinton, Maryland--some 25 miles southeast
of the nation's capitol--the FBI launched its first major radio station.
An FBI radio
station? That's right. But it didn't play the hits of Glenn
Miller, Harry James, and other top recording artists of the day. It
covertly monitored and intercepted Nazi radio traffic, gathering vital
bits of intelligence that supported the Allied cause.
We'd actually been
using radio monitoring stations to intercept signals from secret Nazi
radio networks for more than a year, including at the Clinton site. But
with enemy radio traffic growing by leaps and bounds (the Clinton station
alone had intercepted nearly a thousand espionage messages by March 1942),
more engineering and personnel firepower were needed.
By October
1942, the revamped station was complete. A larger complement
of FBI radio operators--both men and women--began working 24/7 to intercept
any and all enemy transmissions coming from inside and outside the
U.S.
How did the
Nazis transmit these messages? Usually via Morse Code over "covert" Nazi
stations discovered by the FBI or other agencies. Other times by embedding
secret messages in popular German radio programs.
Once intercepted,
though, the messages were handled the same way: they were
quickly sent via teletype to the FBI Lab, which analyzed and decoded
the intercepts.
It was a two-way
street. Beyond picking up transmissions, our operators also
sent messages of their own: to FBI employees connected via radio networks,
of course. But also to Nazi agents. Thinking they were talking to fellow
spies, these agents were actually being used to spread disinformation.
Once, with the help of a German double agent, we sent the Nazis over
140 bogus messages, many of which were then forwarded to the Japanese
government.
With the success
of the Clinton operation, the Bureau built more radio facilities. By
February 1943, our radio circuits stretched from Juneau, Alaska, to
Santiago, Chile, with more than a dozen stations in between. Ultimately,
nearly 30 of these radio stations were operating in the western hemisphere.
The wartime
dividends? Outing many Nazi agents in the U.S., across South
and Central America, and even in Europe; throwing the Axis powers off
course with disinformation; and providing key bits of intelligence
that were shared with the military, the State Department, and some
foreign intelligence agencies.
Links: FBI
History
Related Story: Long
Island Double Agent
