Margaret Newsham : Original Source For 1988 Echelon Report

Making History: The Original Source For The 1988 First
Echelon Report Steps Forward

By Duncan Campbell

London, Friday 25 February, 2000

In the circumstances of the extensive worldwide political
and media attention that is currently focussed on the
Echelon communications surveillance network, I wish to pay
tribute to the person who first alerted the United States
legislature and the world to the existence of Echelon.

Following the presentation of my report on Echelon and
related Sigint systems to the European Parliament in
Brussels earlier this week, my principal original source has
said that she may be identified.

I published the first-ever report about Echelon in the
British political weekly New Statesman on 12 August 1988.
The information about Echelon in that report came
principally from Margaret Newsham, a computer systems
manager who is now in retirement.

Margaret Newsham, better known as Peg, was formerly employed
by a contractor at the National Security Agency Field
Station at Menwith Hill, Yorkshire, England. From August
1978 onwards, she worked at Menwith Hill as a software
system support co-ordinator. In this capacity, she helped
managed a number of Sigint computer databases, including
"Echelon 2". She and others also helped establish the
"Silkworth" system at Menwith Hill. Silkworth is the ground
processing system for the series of signals intelligence
satellites initially known as Chalet, Vortex and Mercury.

Later, on transferring to Sunnyvale, California, Peg Newsham
worked for Lockheed Space and Missiles Corporation. In that
capacity, she became aware of the plans drawn up for the
massive expansion of the Echelon network, a project
identified internally as P-415.

During her employment by Lockheed, she became concerned
about corruption, fraud and abuse within the organisations
planning and operating electronic surveillance systems such
as Echelon. She drew these matters to the attention of the
House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence early in
1988.

While working at Menwith Hill, she witnessed the
interception of a telephone call made by US Senator Strom
Thurmond. Although this incident was reported to the House
Committee, no substantive investigation took place, and no
report was made to Congress.

The incident involving Senator Thurmond was first reported
by Keith C Epstein and John S Long in the Ohio Plain Dealer
in July 1988. I reported the existence and expansion of the
Echelon network in the New Statesman one month later.
Neither the media nor the Congress took the matter further.
There were no Washington Post, New York Times or Sixty
Minutes reports. Now - finally - 12 years late, CBS has
invited her to repeat the information we first published in
1988 on their programme Sixty Minutes, to be shown on Sunday
evening, 27 February.

BACK IN 1988, however, the US and world press was
uninterested in her reports, and did not cover Peg Newsham's
revelations. ABC News interviewed her for television in
1992, but editors at that network chose not to broadcast the
report.

The full details of Echelon would probably never have come
to serious public attention but for 6 years of careful work
by New Zealand writer Nicky Hager, who assiduously
researched the new Echelon station that started operating in
his country in 1989. His 1996 book Secret Power is based on
extensive interviews with and help from a group of members
of the New Zealand signals intelligence organisation. It
remains the best informed and most detailed account of how
Echelon works.

In 1998 and 1999, the intelligence specialist Dr Jeff
Richelson of the Washington, DC National Security Archive
used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain a series of
modern official US Navy and Air Force documents which
confirmed the continued existence, scale and expansion of
the Echelon system. His initial findings were included in my
April 1999 report to the European Parliament. Since then,
his research has uncovered new and previously unknown
Echelon units. These were reported to the European
Parliament this week. Because of these workers, there is now
no room for doubt about the substance of Peg Newsham's 1988
revelations.

HISTORY can therefore now fully record how the Echelon
network first came to light and how both the media and US
congressional oversight bodies failed to respond for more
than a decade. It should also record the courage of Ms
Newsham in speaking out 12 years ago, and should address the
need to provide better and timelier support to those who,
like her, have had to stand in the shadows, and perhaps in
fear, while they blow the whistle in the public interest.

I am sad that Peg Newsham now must draw on the same reserves
of courage to fight a serious illness. But I am heartened
that she now feels free to be recognised as the person who
first opened these serious and important issues to public
scrutiny. I hope that others too will salute her
contribution to the public interest of the United States and
other nations.

Duncan Campbell

Making History: The Original Source For The 1988 First Echelon Report Steps Forward

Making History: The Original Source For The 1988 First
Echelon Report Steps Forward