A top-secret document discloses the names of African states that bought hi-tech eavesdropping equipment from Armscor, reports Eddie Koch
ARMSCOR sold hi-tech “radio hopper” equipment to African states that enabled South African military intelligence officers to monitor sensitive diplomatic and military messages passed on by the governments of these countries.
A top-secret document — which describes sales procedures for electronic warfare equipment — instructs Armscor agents to sell only special “B” versions of its renowned “hopper radio” to countries south of a line that ran “from the mouth of the Congo (River) to the port of Dar-es- Salaam”. This region falls within the range of the South African military’s radio interception stations.
According to a military electronics expert, the “B” editions of the “hopper” were equipped with computer circuits that would have allowed local military intelligence to detect when the radios were in use and to unscramble any messages that were passed along their security-protected frequencies.
“This means that those countries south of the line which purchased Armscor’s hopper radios have probably compromised their security,” says the expert. “They have effectively given the South African military an exclusive line into their secret communications.”
The document forms an appendix, entitled “Policy and Procedures for the Marketing of Sensitive Telecommunications Equipment”, to the secret “Log 17” that was published in the Weekly Mail & Guardian two weeks ago. The sections dealing with electronic warfare are possibly the most damaging to Armscor because it reveals which countries were able to buy the compromising “hoppers”.
Armscor’s lawyers tried to suppress publication of Log 17 on the grounds that this would have embarrassed countries that it had dealings with in the apartheid era. They also obtained a supreme court interdict against the Cameron Commission, which is investigating clandestine arms deals by Armscor, preventing the commission from publishing the document. The interdict was withdrawn after the WM&G published details from Log 17 anyway.
According to a list in the document, the countries that were eligible to receive “B” hoppers from Armscor, and which fall within the eavesdropping range of South Africa’s Department of Military Intelligence, are: Botswana, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland, Zambia and Lesotho. According to the document, Zimbabwe, Tanzania and Angola were barred from receiving the sets.
Armscor’s radios are known to be the best form of secure communication on the battlefield and were sold all over the world. During the Falklands War in 1982, British intelligence operatives were unable to learn about the movements and defences of Argentina’s ground forces because the latter used the South African radios.
The document explains that the radios work by having two levels of security built into them. The first allows it to hop quickly between frequencies at a rapid rate — thus its name. The frequencies are generated by computer chips which are built into the set.
Secondly, they have a “user’s code” that allows two radio sets communicating with each other to jump to the same frequencies at the same time. Thus any two sets using the same code and circuitry can communicate messages without fear of being intercepted.
“But the manufacturers have the advantage of knowing how the radio is constructed. This would enable local codebreakers to be able to detect when the set is being used, to record messages transmitted across the spectrum of radio frequencies used by the sets and then to decipher the contents of the message,” says the expert.
“This would have given South African intelligence agents a double advantage. They would have been able to monitor sensitive communications in these countries while other competing intelligence agencies — even those from the United States which used satellite surveillance — would have strugggled to obtain the same information.”
The secret document stipulates that the Department of Military Intelligence, the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research and Armscor — along with with the now defunct State Security Council — had to be consulted before any electronic warfare equipment was sold abroad.
It suggests that South Africa has a limited electronic warfare capacity. “This appears to have been intended to mislead Armscor’s salesmen. South Africa has a reputation for developing the most sophisticated eavesdropping systems in the southern hemisphere,” comments the expert.
The SABC, for example, used its Auckland Park transmitter to boost Unita’s radio station while jamming Swapo and ANC broadcasts from Angola in the 1980s. The army and navy were able to decoy enemy missiles with active “electronic warfare systems” that sent out bogus signals that mislead the sensor heads in artillery shells. The technology was also able to detonate prematurely artillery shells equipped with electronic fuses.
“A private electronics company, which was subcontracted by Armscor to make the hopper radio, was also tasked with designing a network of transmission stations that could simulate bogus radio traffic and mislead foreign monitors into believing fake deployments of South African Defence Force troops and phantom units in unoccupied areas.”
Another major electronic warfare item — listed as being strictly not for sale in the document — was “radio detection finding equipment”. This technology allows operatives to detect the exact location of covert radio emissions and then to “slip into” the conversations on these. It was believed local intelligence-gathering operations would have been undermined if this equipment got into the wrong hands.