Until 2007, motorists in Britain driving along the A5 trunk road or the M1 motorway past Hillmorton near Rugby would probably have noticed a large field containing a selection of extremely tall vertical masts linked by cables, and may even have wondered if they were passing a site used for the transmission of commercial radio and television channels. If they did, they were wrong.
From January 1926, the site was used to telegraph messages to the Commonwealth, and formed a part of what was known as the Imperial Wireless Chain. But from the 1950s onwards, using the VLF frequency of 15.975 kHz, the station was the principal means of communicating with submerged British submarines, with Criggion Radio Station in Powys, Wales, acting as a back-up.
The Rugby VLF station functioned until 2004, the last of the tall masts being demolished in August 2007, and its functions were taken over by the Skelton Transmitting Station located near Penrith in Cumbria. The principal aerial there is the tallest structure anywhere in the United Kingdom, a steel lattice mast 365 metres high that began operating in 2001. Skelton continues to act as the principal communications station in Britain for Royal Navy submarines.
SOSUS and submarine detection by laser
The acronym SOSUS stands for Sound Surveillance System and was an important antisubmarine tool during the Cold War. It comprised lines of passive seabed acoustic listening posts located in the natural choke points of the oceans of the world, places like the area between Greenland, Iceland and United Kingdom, known as the GIUK Gap, and elsewhere in the Atlantic Ocean. The intention was to provide a way of detecting Soviet submarines after they had left their bases in the far north of Russia and as they moved out into the open Atlantic Ocean. Originally even the name SOSUS was classified, but both the name and the technology soon became something of an open secret, and the programme was finally declassified in 1991. SOSUS still exists today, but is used more for academic study of the deep ocean than for monitoring Russian submarines.
In the South China Sea, what is known as the Underwater Great Wall is operated by the Chinese to monitor submarine movements in the area, and since 2016 two specific underwater sensors have been positioned in the Challenger Deep and near the Micronesian island of Yap, apparently to monitor American naval and especially submarine activity on and around the island of Guam.
The use of lasers in submarine detection has a long history, beginning in the 1960s with infrared lasers tailored to detect a phenomenon known as the Bernoulli hump, water displaced by a submarine proceeding at a shallow depth, and Kelvin waves, the V-shaped wakes produced by submerged moving objects. But the main breakthroughs involved the use of blue-green lasers that can penetrate saltwater to a significant depth, and these began in the 1970s. The pulsed beam of the laser can penetrate at least as deep as the thermocline, the transition layer between the warmer surface water and the deeper and colder water of the ocean. The thermocline is important in submarine hunting, because it tends to reflect acoustic signals, such as active sonar pulses, meaning that submarine hiding below the thermocline will be invisible to a sonar transducer above that level, and vice versa. This is the main reason for the importance of variable depth and dunking sonar equipment.
Laser detection of a submarine is possible because turbulence is created as the boat moves through the water, and this disturbance can be discovered by monitoring the subsurface water temperature. Specifically, what are known as Brillouin and Rayleigh backscatter components can be analysed to produce a temperature-depth profile of the water, allowing the submarine waves present at or near the thermocline to be detected, and the location of the boat to be determined from this information.
SEAL Team Six/DEVGRU and SOG
DEVGRU
DEVGRU is an acronym for another acronym – NSWDG – that’s a part of yet another acronym, JSOC. NSWDG stands for the United States Naval Special Warfare Development Group, and DEVGRU is an abbreviation for the last two words of that title. JSOC is the Joint Special Operations Command, and DEVGRU, better known to the public as SEAL Team Six (though this unit was officially dissolved in 1987) is the component of JSOC provided by the US Navy. And DEVGRU has yet another nickname, because within JSOC it’s often referred to as Task Force Blue. Almost everything about DEVGRU is classified and there is almost never any official comment upon it or its operations by the White House or the Department of Defense.
Along with Delta Force, the analogous unit formed from US Army personnel, DEVGRU functions as one of America’s principal counter-terrorist units, originally with the primary intention of working in maritime environments, but has expanded to include expertise in a wide range of specialized tasks including hostage rescue, reconnaissance, security and direct action of a number of types.
Operation Eagle Claw was the startlingly unsuccessful operation to try to resolve the Iran hostage crisis by force in 1979, and SEAL Team Six was formed as a full-time counter-terrorist unit intended to specialise in operations of this sort in the aftermath of this embarrassing failure. Like all similar special forces units, the selection process is rigorous and lengthy, the failure rate is extremely high and accidents and injuries often occur during training. Candidates must already be qualified SEALs – Sea, Air and Land Teams, the US Navy’s principal special operations force – and must have served at least two combat tours before even being considered for DEVGRU. Specialist training includes skills in land warfare, advanced defensive and offensive driving, battle training, diving, communications, unarmed combat and the like. They are also given instruction on lock-picking skills for everything from car doors to safes.
Successful candidates are assigned to one of four assault squadrons – Blue, Gold, Red or Silver – or to one of three specialized squadrons. These are Black Squadron, specializing in intelligence, reconnaissance and surveillance, Gray Squadron, which provides specialized divers, mobility teams and transportation, or Green Team, which handles selection and training for DEVGRU. Each assault squadron comprises three troops, and these troops are also divided into smaller teams, the entire squadron being supported by a wide range of support personnel, from dog handlers to airmen and cryptologists, and the number of personnel working within DEVGRU is surprisingly large, averaging about 1,500 military and around 500 civilians, though these numbers fluctuate considerably from year to year.
DEVGRU is probably best known for Operation Neptune Spear, the location and assassination of the al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden on 2 May 2011. The operation was led by the CIA, with the activities of the DEVGRU SEALs being coordinated by JSOC. The ‘Night Stalkers,’ the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (Airborne) and personnel from the Special Activities Division of the CIA were also involved. The raid on bin Laden’s compound on the outskirts of Abbottabad in Pakistan was launched from Afghanistan, and the Pakistani authorities were not informed.
Intelligence sources suggest that the Pakistanis either knew exactly where bin Laden was living and did nothing about it, or they should have known where he was. It is reasonably certain that if the Americans had advised the Pakistanis about the raid in advance, bin Laden would have been somewhere else when the helicopters landed.
Special Operations Group (SOG)
Another acronym, the SOG is the Special Operations Group. Nothing to do with the armed forces of America, the SOG is one of the most secretive and elite of all the arms operated by the CIA, the Central Intelligence Agency. Although the SOG is a permanent entity, most of its members are not, being recruited from the various SEAL Teams as and when required for joint operations. This association began as long ago as the Vietnam War, and involved yet another acronym, MACV-SOG, the title meaning Military Assistance Command Vietnam – Studies and Observations Group.
Military Assistance Command Vietnam – Studies and Observations Group (MACV-SOG)
Benign though the unit’s title may have sounded – it could almost have been some kind of administrative unit tasked with observing the daily routines of the Vietnamese – the reality was very different. In fact, MAC
V-SOG was both highly classified and multiservice, a dedicated special operations unit charged with waging unconventional warfare against the Vietnamese both prior to and during hostilities.
It was created on 24 January 1964 and initially carried out strategic reconnaissance in four countries: South Vietnam (properly the Republic of Vietnam), North Vietnam (the Democratic Republic of Vietnam), Cambodia and Laos. It captured and interrogated enemy prisoners, ran rescue operations behind the front line to find and recover crashed pilots and prisoners of war, and carried out a wide range of covert operations against the communist forces. It was involved in the majority of the significant campaigns during the conflict, from the Gulf of Tonkin incident, through the 1968 Tet Offensive and the Easter Offensive of 1972, one of the last and most significant campaigns of the war.
Joint operations directed by the CIA and primarily run by SEAL Team personnel are still being conducted today, as has been confirmed by a number of recent military operations in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
N379P
This was the North American (the letter ‘N’ indicates this) registration of a Gulfstream V executive jet known to have been used to fly suspected terrorists to various CIA black sites either for torture to extract confessions and information – these locations were usually in Jordan or Poland – or simply to execution sites in Egypt or Syria.
The aircraft was owned by a brass plate Delaware company named Premier Executive Transport Services, Inc. and the numerous extraordinary rendition flights the aircraft was involved in, many of which were extensively reported in the British media, all started at an airfield in North Carolina, near Smithfield. It was presumed, though it could not be established as fact, that the aircraft was on almost permanent contract to the American Department of Defense, or in reality to the CIA, throughout the duration of the so-called ‘War on Terror.’
These operations began no later than six weeks after the 9/11 attacks, on 23 October 2001, when the Gulfstream appeared at Jinnah International Airport in Pakistan where security officers forced a Yemeni citizen on board, after which it departed for an unknown destination. That set the pattern, and there were numerous subsequent sightings of the aircraft as it criss-crossed the world, being repeatedly seen at Washington Dulles International Airport, its invariable departure airport from mainland America, at Frankfurt, at Tashkent in Uzbekistan, in Poland, in Afghanistan and, very worryingly, in Glasgow, suggesting British complicity in, or at the very least knowledge of, what was going on – the process of so-called extraordinary rendition. In all, it was established that over a two-year period the aircraft flew to at least 49 destinations outside the USA, including Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, Afghanistan, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Libya, Morocco and Uzbekistan.
The Swedish television channel TV4 aired a documentary entitled Det brutna löftet – ‘The Broken Promise’ – on 17 May 2004 that described in considerable detail what happened to two asylum seekers, Ahmed Hussein Mustafa Kamil Agiza and Muhammad Suleman Ibrahim al-Zery in December 2001. Both men were Egyptian nationals who had been accused of membership of Islamist terrorist organizations and subjected to arrest and harassment by the Egyptian security forces. They had been detained in the country and allegedly tortured whilst in custody, and had fled from their homeland, seeking a safer place to live. They had eventually arrived in Sweden and formally applied for asylum there, on the basis that if they returned to Egypt they faced almost certain detention, probable torture and even possible execution. Ahmed Agiza had been tried in absentia on a charge of terrorism by an Egyptian court, found guilty and sentenced to 25 years in prison.
Their application for asylum was rejected on the afternoon of 18 December 2001, and the Swedish government ordered their arrest and immediate expulsion. The men’s lawyers were not informed of the decision and the two men were refused permission to challenge their expulsion before an independent body.
They were arrested that afternoon and transported to Bromma Airport in Stockholm by officers of SÄPO, the Swedish Security Police, arriving at about 20.30. The ‘Guantánamo Bay Express’ arrived about half an hour later, and the two men were handed over to unidentified American agents who were wearing masks to conceal their identity.
They were already wearing hand- and ankle-cuffs, and without releasing them the American agents used scissors to cut their clothes from their bodies, stripping them naked. Each man then endured a full body cavity search, and a suppository containing unknown drugs or chemicals was inserted into his anus, presumably some kind of sedative or relaxant. They had adult nappies put on them, were forcibly dressed in dark overalls, and they were then chained to a specially designed harness in the aircraft and hooded. Then the aircraft took off for Egypt, the known location of a CIA black site.
Agiza was imprisoned in Egypt and subjected to repeated torture that meant he confessed to whatever the interrogators wanted him to. He was denied legal representation and three years later, at a manifestly unfair trial, he was convicted and sentenced to 25 years in jail for membership of a banned organization. He was eventually released on 2 August 2011.
Al-Zery was luckier. He was held in Tora prison, kept blindfolded for months, subjected to similar torture to Agiza, including repeated electric shocks to his genitals and nipples. He, too, confessed to offences he had not committed. Late in 2002 he finally learned that he was alleged to have been one of some 250 members of a banned organization, and that many of the other accused individuals had already been sentenced and executed. Finally, on 27 October 2003, he was released without charge.
First published in the United Kingdom in 2018 by Canelo
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Copyright © James Barrington, 2018
The moral right of James Barrington to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
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ISBN 9781911420507
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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