Is this mysterious coded radio message CIA directions for brokers in Iran? Listen for your self
An amateur radio operator believes mysterious radio broadcasts could be instructions being sent to CIA agents in Iran.
When 47-year-old Roberto, from Milan, switched on his shortwave radio on Tuesday, he heard a ghostly voice reciting a string of numbers in Persian.
‘A fellow shortwave enthusiast had told me about the signal, which started the same day the US attacked Iran,’ Roberto, who posts news of his radio scanning under the name ‘Shortwave Observer’, said.
‘It did not exist before, and it looked to me like someone, possibly the CIA, was transmitting coded messages to agents inside Iran.’
Roberto is one of thousands of amateur radio enthusiasts who track so-called numbers stations, long linked to spy agencies using coded sequences to send instructions to operatives with codebooks.
In an age of cyber spying, burner phones and digital surveillance, coded radio broadcasts may sound like a relic of the Cold War.
But they still offer one major advantage. While computers and phones leave a trail, codebooks can simply be burned.
‘There is no way of tracing the recipient of a signal, they could be anyone with a radio, anywhere in the world,’ Roberto told The Times.
An amateur radio operator believes mysterious radio broadcasts in Persian could be instructions being sent to CIA agents in Iran
When Roberto, from Milan, switched on his shortwave radio on Tuesday, he heard a ghostly voice reciting a string of numbers in Persian
Smoke rises from an explosion in the direction of Ali Al Salem Air Base, amid the U.S.-Israeli conflict with Iran
And while the contents of the broadcasts may be top secret, that has not stopped thousands of enthusiasts from listening in.
He said the Farsi-language transmission appeared to originate in the Middle East and had been airing every day at 6pm and 2am UK time, sometimes for as long as an hour.
He added that listeners had debated whether the signal was being sent into Iran for agents at risk of having their phones intercepted, or whether it could instead be Iran broadcasting to its own operatives overseas.
Numbers stations first emerged during the First World War but became most closely associated with the Cold War when intelligence agencies used strange strings of numbers to pass messages to operatives.
Some broadcasts opened with phrases such as ‘Ready? Ready?’, while others used electronic sounds or short bursts of music.
One of the best-known exemples was the Lincolnshire Poacher station, widely believed to have been run by British intelligence, which played the opening bars of the folk song of the same name before the numbers began.
It continued broadcasting until 2008, two years after being jammed by North Korea’s foreign-language service, Voice of Korea.
Since the end of the Cold War, the US has also alleged that Cuban spies arrested on American soil relied on numbers stations broadcasting from Havana.
