Nexus - 0227 - New Times Magazine-pages

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PARTNERS SILENT - The UKUSA Agreement Born in secrecy, it will continue to operate in secrecy, linking the USA, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Japan, Korea and NATO nations in a peak security agreement. n July this year, the UKUSA Agreement ‘celebrates’ 48 years of operation. But there will be no fanfare, no ceremonies and no media attention marking the event. Born in secrecy, it will continue to operate in secrecy, linking the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Japan, Korea and NATO nations in a peak security agreement. The United Kingdom United States of America Agreement is one of the most important treaties ever entered into by the English-speaking world, and one of the least well-known. Desmond Ball (1990) has described the UKUSA pact as "the ties that bind", a treaty which obligates Australia to cooperate with the other UKUSA partners. To this date, it has never been officially acknowledged by any country. This article examines some of the significant organisations and projects that operate under the UKUSA pact. Despite the secrecy surrounding the agreement, quite a considerable amount of techni- cal information has been made available through the work of researchers such as Desmond Ball and James Bamford. They have, however, been at pains to ensure that “there is no single mention of the subject of UFOs" (Good, 1987, p. 412). While the exact day and month of the UKUSA pact continue to be debated, the year itself, 1947, bears significance as the year of the alleged Roswell UFO crash in New Mexico and heightened UFO activity. (Incidentally, the first A-bomb test was in New Mexico [Cathie, 1990, p. 239].) According to Cooper (1991, p. 196), between January 1947 and December 1952 at least 16 crashed or downed alien craft, 65 bodies and one live alien were recovered. Of these, 13 occurred within the borders of the United States. Researcher Ronald R. Russell report- ed that the British Deputy Directorate of Intelligence had 15,000 UFO reports on file from 1947 to 1954 (Good, 1989, p. 31). The nature of the UKUSA Agreement has provided its organs with a unique autonomy and ability to pry into any avenue that proves interesting. Top-secret military bases such as Pine Gap, Nurrungar and Menwith Hill operate under the UKUSA pact. So, too, does the clandestine National Security Agency (NSA). Research conducted for the "Star Wars" project, now linked with the deaths of 22 defence scientists, is also conducted under the auspices of the UKUSA Agreement. The initial idea of the agreement was to carve up the globe into spheres of cryptological influence. Each country was assigned specific targets according to its potential for maxi- mum intercept coverage. UKUSA brought together, under a single umbrella, the SIGINT (signals intelligence) organisations of the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. In recent years, Japan, Korea and NATO nations have joined the pact. Prior to the UKUSA Agreement, an arrangement known as BRUSA existed. BRUSA formalised cooperation between British and US COMINT (communications intelligence) agencies. Although top secret, news of the UKUSA Agreement leaked quickly to Moscow through Kim Philby. As one American intelligence officer put it, the UKUSA Agreement was "like opening up a party line to Moscow centre" (Costello, 1988, p. 516). Signatories to the UKUSA Agreement conceded to standardise terminology, code- words, intercept handling procedures and indoctrination oaths. Today, cooperation among pact members occurs in areas such as monitoring radio broadcasts, undertaking covert action and assassinations, overhead reconnaissance, human intelligence, estimates, securi- ty intelligence, counter-intelligence, training, seconding and equipment (Bamford, 1982, p. 308). by Susan Bryce, © 1995 Susan Bryce is a freelance researcher and investigative journalist based in south-east Queensland, Australia. NEXUS ¢ 11 by Susan Bryce, © 1995 AUGUST - SEPTEMBER 1995