Shortly after WW2 the Cold War with the Soviet Union began. A key factor for the USA and other western nations in keeping abreast of what was going on in the Eastern Bloc countries was the use of very sensitive radios. These radios were used for electronic intercept (ELINT), signal intercept (SIGINT), communication intercept (COMINT), and direction finding (DF) applications. The reception of even very weak signals that could then be analyzed as to their source was a key factor in knowing what was happening behind the Iron Curtain. Very few companies had the ability to produce these highly sensitive radios. The design and production of these radios was tightly controlled by the US Department of State and other national intelligence organizations to prevent the technology from getting into enemy hands. The term “black radios” emerged indicating any access to or use of these devices was “blacked out” for the general public. A more exact definition is the red/black concept, sometimes called the red/black architecture or red/black engineering, referring to the careful segregation in cryptographic systems of signals that contain sensitive or classified plaintext information (red signals) from those that carry encrypted information, or ciphertext (black signals).
The history of these unique devices goes back to WW2 when the USA was involved in trying to intercept and un-encrypt messages being transmitted by the enemy. There were no computers then and cryptology was primitive compared to now. While the British broke the German Enigma encryption protocol at Bletchley Park the USA Signal Intelligence Service (SIS) were busy doing the same for the Japanese encryption protocol at a little known and highly secret facility near Washington, DC, where I would serve in the Army years later. Some of the activities of this facility later merged with the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
During the development of the hydrogen bomb shortly after WW2 there was a need to measure intense bursts of radio energy known as electromagnetic pulse (EMP) originating from the explosions. A robust telemetry receiver for that purpose was developed by Ralph Grimm along with fellow engineer Peter Pao. Thus the 167 receiver was born.
The design proved to be very difficult to produce as the exact placement of components without the use of printed circuit boards was critical and most production people were not able to replicate the samples.
Grimm’s hobby was photography, so he took pictures of the sample unit, and enlarged them so that at least a very talented assembly person could replicate the sample unit. He also used the tuner from the television sets of the period in his design. The uniqueness of this radio was its performance, which eclipsed all others of the period.
The acceleration of the Cold War and the missile gap saw the 167 receiver’s use move from scientific applications to medical when Dr Paul Dudley White of Harvard used it to monitor the heartbeat of a whale by using the radio as the first electrocardiogram. Dr White became world famous when he was appointed as President Eisenhower’s personal physician when President Eisenhower experienced heart problems. Later the 167 had a major role in the Florida Missile Test Range where banks of these receivers operated 24/7 recording telemetry measurements on missiles being tested there. Soviet vessels offshore began to interfere with these test activities, which led to updates of the 167 and the emergence of even more robust receivers.
By the beginning of the 1960s, later versions of the 167 were first called “surveillance radios” as they were adapted to the ever-changing world of electronic spying. In 1960 Ralph Grimm started a company in a garage in Maryland called Communication Electronic Incorporated (CEI). The company expanded so fast that it moved to a new much larger facility in Rockville MD in 1964. By then CEI had become the premier source of these unique radios and was highly respected in the world of electronic surveillance. No one would suspect that a vertically integrated radio factory was inside the building. Men and women wore business attire, like those who were going and coming from other office buildings in the office park. The sale of CEI’s radios was controlled by the US Department of State. The public had no access to buy them.
CEI was growing so fast that by 1967 they had outgrown the original building and had leased additional space in four other buildings in the office park.
A merger occurred that year with west coast Watkins-Johnson Company (W-J) who produced other systems and components critical in military equipment design and made CEI a wholly owned subsidiary of W-J. Plans were soon made to build an even larger facility.
Meanwhile the need for these unique radios continued to evolve as the Cold War progressed. Matthew M. Aid, writing in Secrets of Signal Intelligence during the Cold War and Beyond, found that the USA had built 70 SIGINT Stations by the early 60s. Later in Body of Secrets, reporter James Bamford notes that the USA had over 2,000 intercept positions around the world. “SIGINT had achieved a preeminent status within the intelligence community” according to Matthew Aid. It had supplanted what NSA Director William O. Studeman derisively called “historically less productively intelligent means.” Congress allocated millions of dollars in support of this new and more effective intelligence gathering means. By then thousands of CEI/W-J receivers were deployed on land, in the air, and at sea all over the world.
By 1969 CEI/W-J introduced the revolutionary Pan Man 160 frequency scanning system that incorporated a DEC PDP-11 computer that allowed the system to make quick scans of broad bandwidths looking for signals of interest. These revolutionary Receiving Systems whetted DoDs appetite for digital VHF-UHF receivers with microprocessor control and frequency synthesizers and in 1975 they issued an RFQ for the development of these new electronic intelligence gathering radios and a new era of intelligence gathering radios had dawned, switching from RF to digital, making these systems more agile and effective.
Between the mid-70s and the early 90s CEI/W-J produced over 7000 different versions of just one of their premier HF Receivers, the WJ8718. They were deployed all over the world on land in listening stations like the one on the death strip of the Berlin wall on a hill built on the rubble left over from WW2. This highly secret location was operated by US Air Force and British Intelligence. Another example of the use of these unique receivers was the missions of 26 ships in the Military Sealift Command’s special mission ships, which were also highly secret missions.
The US Marines also used modified WJ8718 receivers in their Mobil Electronic Support Systems (MEWSS). Jane’s Military Communications said “MEWSS provides targeting information to military commanders.” These and similar platforms used these receivers up until the year 2000.
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