Havana Moon

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William T. Godbey, KB2OOR, aka "Havana Moon" (SK)

Havana Moon was the pseudonym used by William (Bill) Thomas Godbey, KB2OOR, who passed away in 1996. Godbey was a former NSA intelligence officer. After leaving the NSA in the early 1960s he worked in commercial radio and as a reporter and freelance journalist. He lived for many years in the West Palm Beach area, moving later to Briarcliff Manor, Ossining, NY. Godbey started investigating the mysterious Spy Numbers Stations in 1976 and over the years published the results of his activities in a number of books and magazines targeting the shortwave listeners market. In the 1980s he travelled in South Florida and used radio direction finding equipment to trace numbers broadcasts to antenna setups at the West Palm Beach airport, in nearby Tequesta and at the Homestead Air Force Base. According to Godbey, all these transmissions were aimed at the Caribbean.

Godbey was a regular contributor to Popular Communications and authored the books "Los Numeros" and "Uno, Dos, Quatro - A Guide to the Numbers Stations", published by Tiare Publications. He also contributed to "The ACE", the monthly bulletin of the Association of Clandestine Radio Enthusiasts, from 1989 to 1993. Around 1989 Godbey also distributed a list of Spy Numbers Stations and associated frequencies, both in printed format and as a Commodore 64 computer file. His pen name was based on a 1983 music album by Carlos Santana, hinting that at least some numbers stations were transmitting from Cuba.

Publications

• Havana Moon: "Los Numeros", Tiare Publications, Lake Geneva
• Havana Moon: "Uno, Dos, Cuatro - A Guide to the Numbers Stations", Tiare Publications, Lake Geneva, ISBN 0-936653-06-X, 1987
• Havana Moon: "Stylistic Ramblings - Mysterious voices, forked tongues, Elvis and dictionary codes", Popular Communications, July 1988
• Havana Moon: "Spy Numbers Anomalies - conjecture on overmodulation and distortion", Popular Communications, August 1988
• Havana Moon: "Bad Moon Rising, or, We've got your number", Popular Communications, March 1989
• Havana Moon: "The Ghost of County Line Road", Popular Communications, October 1988, p. 14-17
• Havana Moon: "Tequesta (almost) gives up her secrets", Popular Communications, November 1988, p. 30-32
• Havana Moon: "Racing with the Moon", Popular Communications, April 1989, p. 33
• Havana Moon: "KKN39: A magical mystery tour", Popular Communications, February 1990, p. 20-22
• William T. Godbey: "Cloack and daggering", Popular Mechanics, November 1976, p. 8

Godbey's view on numbers stations

Spy Numbers Transmissions' are a shortwave oddity which have been around for the last 30 years. They are commonly heard in English, German, Spanish and the Slavic languages and take the form of four and five digit groups of numbers which are preceded by a three digit "identifier" and a "group count" which corresponds to the number of number groups transmitted in the crypt. They are generally broadcast by a mechanical-sounding YL, although Morse code (CW) "cut number" transmissions are also frequently reported, as are phonetic alphabet transmissions. Several distinctly different formats have been noted.

The who and why aspects of these transmissions are, for the most part, unknown. Their mysterious nature has resulted in their common characterization as 'spy' transmissions. The spy theory has been enhanced over the years by the FCC's inconsistent position in response to numerous inquiries by the Shortwave Listening community. If you've never heard a numbers transmission, tune your radio to one of the frequencies on the log-list. You'll almost certainly hear a 'classic' numbers transmission which will run from 15-30 minutes. In regards the "where" - a number of sites have been identified in recent years, notably in Warrenton and Remington, VA and Miami, FL. In addition, with the aid of sophisticated RDF (radio direction finding) equipment and the invaluable assistance of highly authoritative and professional resources, several new transmission sites have been posi- tively identified over the past years, including sites in Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Cuba and Cozumel.

One particularly dangerous station has been interfering with air to ground traffic on 6577 kHz, a frequency allocated to international aeronautical communications in the busy Caribbean sector. On at least one monitored transmission, the air traffic controller at ARINC moved the pilot to an alternate frequency as the numbers transmission was totally blocking the frequency from effective use. An identified Cuban site (Guineo) is believed to be a major transmitter site used by DGI (Cuban Intelligence). There has been some suggestion that the numbers are a form of 'one-time- pad' - a crude but unbreakable form of encryption (unless you've got the key, that is) - if that's the case, it's very curious to note that the same five-digit groups are often seen to repeat over and over again in the very same crypt - and that the same transmissions are seen to repeat from week to week, and from month to month - so often, in fact, that tape breaks are sometimes noted. When spliced back together, the sloppy handling sometimes results in truncated 5-digit groups - the end result being amixture of 4 and 5 digit groups in the very same transmission!

These facts would tend to point one away from the one-time-pad concept and support a couple of other theories - suggesting that the numbers are NOT a cipher, but rather a code unto themselves, and that much of this traffic is 'dummy' in nature - broadcast simply to keep a frequency open over a long period of time. In addition, most five-digit Spanish numbers transmissions are very badly over-modulated, resulting in numerous spurs up and down frequency. When broadcast under such conditions, the numbers (6) seis and (7) siete are almost indistinguishable, making it impossible to copy a crypt without numerous errors. It is worth noting that the four-digit Spanish and English transmissions do not reflect this same technical ineptitude.

References

• Spy Numbers Station Bibliography
• Jerome S. Berg: "Listening on the short waves, 1945 to today", McFarland, 2008, p. 106-107
• Brett Sokol: Espionage Is in the Air, Miami New Times, February 8, 2001.
• Ary Boender: "Numbers and Oddities", Issue 100, November 6, 2005 [1].