In a notice posted Thursday on the NSA's Web site, the agency gave no reason for closing the facility 40 miles southeast of Munich but said it would be returned to the German government in 2003.
During the Cold War, the Bad Aibling station's giant parabolic antennas were among the NSA's most important assets for intercepting Soviet military communications. But with the Soviet military threat long gone and the world moving to digital communications, the NSA has been busy consolidating its overseas operations.
James Bamford, an authority on NSA operations who chronicles the closure of overseas bases in his new book on the agency, "Body of Secrets," said yesterday that operations conducted at Bad Aibling would most likely be consolidated at the NSA's Menwith Hill station in Britain.
A continuing controversy in Europe over the NSA's global eavesdropping capabilities, Bamford said, could have contributed to the decision to close Bad Aibling and abandon its base in Germany.
A temporary investigative committee of the European Parliament concluded last month in a draft report that a worldwide intercept system called Echelon, run by the NSA and its partners in Australia, Britain, Canada and New Zealand, is not adequately monitored by member nations of the European Union and could be violating the privacy rights of Europeans.
"Echelon probably wasn't the deciding factor," Bamford said. "But it probably was a factor that helped push them over the line."
NSA Plans To Close Listening Station
The National Security Agency announced last week that it plans to close a huge eavesdropping station in Bad Aibling, Germany, by September 2002 and transfer all military personnel working there to other facilities.
Washington Post / Vernon Loeb - June 3 2001
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