The Secret Coded Shortwave Messages Of The MOSSAD

I love your information Lewis, but could you get your wife/partner to do the voice- overs? Sounding like Gary Nevillle dropping off a 36 hour speed rush is just... well crap actually and detracts from the research you conducted. Most international readers would have no idea of the GN remark anyway, but you get it... Boost your ratings = cash Lewis! 😊

In 2002, I was deployed in Kosovo as part of the NATO mission. To pass the time, I brought my Ten Tec RX-320 and spent hours scanning between bands. One night, I stumbled upon a female voice with a vaguely British accent reading letters in the standard phonetic alphabet. As the chief of plans operations and security for Area Support Group Falcon, I recorded the transmission on a mini-CD and checked in with the G2 of the MNB-East headquarters, which was led by the British. However, he had no idea what it meant and assured me that a British number station wouldn't have a British-sounding voice reading the code. He even suggested it could be the Mossad. Listening to your recordings, I realized that the transmission sounded almost exactly the same. The voice would interject administrative instructions like "Message begins" or "Message repeats." It later dawned on me that Kosovo was a hub of spying activity at that time, which made this experience one of the most surreal moments I had during my time in the Army. It was strange to realize that there was a secret and clandestine world operating around us while I listened to this peculiar transmission in a Seahut.

Never forget the USS Liberty and the brave men and women who served on it.

About 20 years ago I was sitting at home in my quiet apartment, had my computer off but speakers were still on. About 4am local time a very faint message starts going through my speakers, was able to make it a little louder by turning up the volume. Something about a guy had just arrived in town and was on his way to drop something off. Then another guy came on and said come on by right now. It was as if something in the frequency of my speakers had intercepted a radio transmission from the mob. Never had anything strange like that happen since and its something I wont forget. This video kinda reminds me of that.

This is my favorite numbers station of all time!

Very informative video of the MOSSAD message stations. One thing to point out which I observed in its final years of transmission on short wave. They were constantly targeted by jamming presumed to be from Iran. The most common type I noticed was the bubble type jammer which was also used to target other stations from outside Iran transmitting in the national Farsi language. I think the constant jamming was too much for the recipients to get a clear signal for decoding messages which might be why the shortwave transmissions eventually ended.

Thats is the cutest sounding numbers station I've ever heard.

Lewis, I love your work!! I'm from Michigan. You started my path to getting my tech license. I love the accent and don't ever change!!

As a former IDF soldier, I have many friends who have worked on collecting information from foreign number stations during SIGINT operations on a Beechcraft type aircraft. They don’t know anything about E05 but they were military intelligence and not Mossad.

I was at Ft. Bragg in the mid 90s. I have a small table top shortwave radio and I heard a similar voice to E10. The difference was the group contained a numeral and was an EXTREMELY strong signal. IIRC, "Kilo Papa Alpha Two" was often and strong.

Fascinating subject, I have a small SW Radio, haven’t listened in a minute, but this so cool to me. The Cold War spy operations were just awesome to hear how it was operated, and what they had to do to receive messages in a phone booth, a dead rat, etc. They had to drive in a maze in a city to make sure that they weren’t followed. Just awesome!

Fun fact: E10 sounds like "Eitan" which is a common Hebrew name meaning "Strong", "Powerful", "Substantial", "Meaningful". I suspect E10A is called that way because in Hebrew, adding the -a suffix to names sometimes makes them feminine, "Eitana" is not a name but "Etna" is.

Test, test? More like Text, text in my ears. Love your work!

Possibly one of the most famous stations, of course, after Wilco used the "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" transmission in the song "Poor Places," and as the inspiration for the title of the album.

Goodnight, and thank you.

Well done. Used to hear them a lot in the 1980's and 1990's...

fascintating as ever - thoroughly enjoy these videos !

Excellent video, Lewis, that is some fascinating stuff! I didn't even know Mossad was in the numbers game, but I guess why wouldn't they be? You're making me want to start scanning the bands again, cheers!

I think most Mossad messages could actually be rashei teivot (1st letter of each word in a phrase) using NATO alphabet. Hebrew uses it a lot. It can get quite confusing as it is in Hebrew, and can get even worse if you take it to Latin script.

I would venture that false-starting the message some minutes before the planned time may have been a way to wake-up any operative that might have dozed off while waiting for his assignment.