How to recognize radio spies and revolutionaires

Dear M. A.: While running the dial through the shortwave band, I tripped over something curious. I don’t remember the frequency, but at one spot on the band I heard a female voice endlessly reciting numbers in Spanish in sets of five digits each with about a one- or two-second pause between each set. I jotted down the numbers for maybe 30 seconds, and when I looked it over, I didn’t see any rhyme or reason to the sequence. Can you solve this mysterious transmission and thereby enhance my listening enjoyment? — Closet Radiohead, Normal Heights

Nuestra Sehora de los Numeros is a spy. Or maybe a revolutionary. Or perhaps one of those robotvoiced tape loops put together by spies and revolutionaries. What you’re hearing is a message from a transmitting station in some secret location, probably outside the U.S., but not necessarily. Somewhere out there is a fellow spook with a code book and a shortwave receiver tuned to that frequency. The message usually begins and ends with a series of tones or a song or some version of “Attention! Attention!” and “End! End!” Spy guy copies down the number sets, then matches them up with corresponding words or phrases in the code book. Without the book, the numbers themselves are meaningless. The stations change times, days, and frequencies, so they’re sometimes hard to locate.

If you spoke the languages, you might also recognize numbers stations transmitting in Russian, Bulgarian, German, or Chinese. U.S. government spook groups operate stations in English, and the feds, of course, get off on repeatedly denying it.

For more info, check the Net newsgroup rec.radio.shortwave or the clandestine radio home page (), or try books by “Havana Moon” or Harry Helms; or join the Association of Clandestine Radio Enthusiasts (P.O. Box 11201, Shawnee Mission, KS 66207) for their newsletter covering clandestine and pirate radio, an illegal form of maverick, homegrown shortwave broadcast, usually by white supremacists or stoned college guys with cheap ham radio transmitters and bad record collections.