Tag Archives: echelon

Margaret Newsham: Echelon Whistle-blower, Hero

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I’ve blogged before about Margaret Newsham, who was dismissed in 1984 (30 years ago) from Lockheed Martin, where she was working on the Echelon global espionage system, a project kept secret even from the US government, since it was completely unconstitutional.  In other words, it was a project of the corporate overlords of the government and the intelligence services, a product of the “shadow state” as it were, not of the day-light government.

While Mr. Greenwald and Mr. Snowden and Mr. Napolitano hold forth with no mention of thirty years of whistle-blowers,  I would like to salute Margaret Newsham, for her enormous personal sacrifices for the sake of the truth and the common good. Here is an excerpt from a 1999 interview she gave to a Danish newspaper:

From “I sold my life to Big Brother”:

” The government didn’t really know what was happening or what the many billions were actually being used for. And I felt very loyal both to the government and to the American Constitution, which was constantly being infringed. The world of espionage was also called ‘The Black World’ because most of the operations were carried out in secrecy, beyond any control.”

Since her dismissal, Margaret Newsham has been under heavy pressure, because her case against Lockheed Martin could mean that an open court case would shed light on the NSA’s ‘black projects’. Among other things, the case deals with swindling for more than 10 billion DKK (ca. 1.4 billion USD), and for the time being, her lawyer has provided her with legal assistance that is the equivalent of 140 million DKK (ca. 20 million USD).

PREMATURE DEATHS The case has had a fatal effect on her health. Since ’84 she has had seizure that left her  totally paralyzed, survived a cardiac arrest, and on top of everything else is suffering from cancer. Today, she lives on borrowed time and suffers from high blood pressure.

“It didn’t help any when my husband asked for a divorce after I had survived my cardiac arrest. He is chief of security at Lockheed Martin and has also been under a lot of pressure. He was grossly harassed because of his affiliation with me,” Newsham says.

She lives alone now and has struggled to maintain contact with her three children and six grandchildren. Today, she lives in a quiet Las Vegas suburb. Not even her neighbors know about her past.

“NSA’s activities have not only affected me, but also my former espionage colleagues at Lockheed. Nearly half of the people I worked with on clandestine projects are either dead or mortally ill today. For example, my former boss on the Echelon project, Robert Looper, died prematurely of heart failure, and Kay Nickerson, who worked on developing the Stealth bomber, died of brain damage.”

Echelon: The Global Spy System

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An article by Nicky Hager at Cryptome.org from Covert Action Quarterly (1998) about Echelon. Hager’s book on the subject, “Secret Power: New Zealand’s Role In the International Spy Network,” is dated 1996, so I’m a little confused by the dating of the article. Echelon is/was a global espionage and interception system coordinated by the US/UK with the aid of Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. In NZ, writes Hager, it was implemented without the assent of the public and most public officials.

Here’s a timeline for the development of the system. Per Cryptome, the earliest public report on Echelon is in 1972.

The first reporter to write on it is British intelligence reporter, Duncan Campbell: “They’ve Got It Taped,” New Statesman, August 12, 1988 (republished at Cryptome.org). Campbell testified before Congress on the subject in 1999 and prepared a report for the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) that was refused by EPIC’s director Marc Rotenberg, on the grounds that much of the information hadn’t been substantiated (see this correspondence between Rotenberg and Young). After that, there was debate between Campbell and Bamford over what the main focus of the espionage was. I will expand on that and link it later…

“IN THE LATE 1980’S, IN A DECISION IT PROBABLY REGRETS, THE U.S. PROMPTED NEW ZEALAND TO JOIN A NEW AND HIGHLY SECRET GLOBAL INTELLIGENCE SYSTEM. HAGER’S INVESTIGATION INTO IT AND HIS DISCOVERY OF THE ECHELON DICTIONARY HAS REVEALED ONE OF THE WORLD’S BIGGEST, MOST CLOSELY HELD INTELLIGENCE PROJECTS. THE SYSTEM ALLOWS SPY AGENCIES TO MONITOR MOST OF THE WORLD’S TELEPHONE, E-MAIL, AND TELEX COMMUNICATIONS. Continue reading →