6 Bases during the Cold War

wire retaliation strike plan. The network extends from northern Norway andthrough Central Europe to Eastern Turkey.39All of the U.S. NATO allies hosted numerous troposcatter relay links – therewere some 40 in West Germany, six in Belgium, eight in Greece, 16 in Italy, 15in Turkey, and so on. (Earlier there were some 30 such links in France.)40 Thesetypes of link also ran from the continental U.S. via Greenland, Iceland, theFaeroes and the U.K. to Europe; indeed, they were originally designed as onelink in the Ballistic Missile Early Warning System (BMEWs). In Iceland, it isreported that each such North Atlantic Relay System (NARS) installation consistedof four large “billboard” troposcatter antennas.41 Parts of the troposcatternetwork were modernized as the Digital European Backbone System (DEBS).The transmission, relay and reception of strictly military and diplomatic messagesdoes not exhaust the uses to which overseas facilities were put within thebroad domain of communications. Basing diplomacy also entered the news inconnection with broadcast communications. This took any of several forms, forinstance, the major powers’ use of foreign territories for clandestine radio118 Bases during the Cold WarTable 6 Location of the main switching centers for the AUTOVON networkCountryLocationJapanFuchu, AS, Camp Drake (moved to Yokota)OkinawaGrass Mountain or Ft BucknerPhilippinesClark AFBPanamaCorozalSpainHumosaU.K.Martlesham Heath, Hilingdon, RAF CroughtonFDR GermanySchoenfield; Fieldberg, Donnersberg, Pirmasens,LangerkopfItalyColtano, Mt. VergineGuamFinnegayanSource: Defense Communications Agency, “Defense Communications System/European CommunicationSystems: Interoperability Baseline,” Washington, DC, 1 February 1981; and Jane’s MilitaryCommunications (Macdonald: London, 1981).İ 2007 Robert E. Harkavytransmitters, particularly adjacent to rivals’ territories or those where civil warswere in progress. (In the 1987 U.S. Congressional Iran/“Contragate” hearings,information emerged about the CIA-run clandestine transmitters in CentralAmerica and in the Caribbean directed against Nicaragua and Cuba.) On a moreovert basis, this involved, at least as pertained to the U.S. side, the global transmissionnetwork of the government’s Voice of America (VOA). There wereSoviet, French and British counterparts.Access for VOA transmitters, even despite the absence of obvious militaryimplications, was not always a simple matter. Soviet and other nations’ sensitivitiesto radio-broadcast intrusion were such that a nation hosting a VOA facilityrisked a degree of displeasure.42For its short-wave broadcasts, the VOA had six main 500-kilowatt transmitters;additionally, a variety of some 100 antennas and relay stations in Asia, Africa andCentral America. The VOA had overseas radio stations in Antigua, Thailand,Botswana, Greece (two), West Germany, the Philippines (two), Costa Rica, SriLanka, Morocco, Belize and the U.K. (and later in Israel). In 1984–1985, as theCentral American crisis intensified, it was reported that Costa Rica and Belize hadagreed to host VOA broadcast relay stations – in addition, VOA had obtainedagreements to construct relay stations in Sri Lanka, Israel, Morocco and Thailand.Intelligence43During the Cold War the U.S. relied on a variety of technical methods for intelligencecollection (i.e., other than HUMINT) which involved the use of overseasfacilities. These involved the domains of imaging or photographic reconnaissance,signals intelligence, ocean surveillance, space surveillance and nucleardetonation and monitoring.44 Variously, cutting across these categories, thisinvolved fixed land-based facilities, air bases and naval facilities. In some cases,the utilization of foreign facilities for specific purposes was well-known, asPage 26