stealth communications

A couple of days before Christmas, 1993, I was sitting in my parent’s living room watching a football game when I got a call from my uncle in Baghdad. After a very quick hello, he jumped right into asking if my father was home. I told him no, so he very quickly gave me a flight number for a plane that was coming into Dallas the next day. After twice telling me that it was very important to be at the airport tomorrow, he told me to give his love to my mom and hung up. The next day we went to the airport and met my cousin and his wife, who had just spent the last several weeks sneaking out of a war decimated Iraq.

When Sadaam Hussein ruled Baghdad, his government kept very close tabs on the people. In order to make an overseas phone call, one had to go to the post office and wait in line. Why? Because the government had agents who listened to all outgoing phone calls.

Whenever my family would call, all hell could be going on around them, but they said nothing: “Oh, everything is just fine! Nothing to report here. How are you?” So intimidated by this reality, my father would never even say anything about Iraq or family during phone calls that took place entirely in the United States.

*******

When I created this blog I attached a site meter, which basically tells me how many people visit my blog. One of the features of the site meter is that it will tell you what city, state and country a visit originated. It does not tell you the IP address of the computer, just the location and company of the server the visit was routed from.

For example, whenever my mom checks out the site, it registers:

Verizon.com: Carrollton, Texas.

Since we moved, whenever Jenn or I log in, the site meter registers:

Cox.net: Fayetteville, Arkansas.

A couple of weeks ago, at the start of the Muslim fast of Ramadan, I sent a very small email to my family all over the world. In three sentences I told them that the move had gone well, gave them our new address, and signed the message with “Happy Ramadan.”

The next day I noticed a change in the site meter. Whenever Jenn or I logged into the blog, it no longer came up as being routed through Fayetteville, Arkansas. Instead, our internet traffic is being routed through:

Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana.

Huh?

So I ran a little experiment. I took my laptop up to the chapel office, and logged in using the router there. It registered Cox.net: Fayetteville, Arkansas. I went back home and logged in using our neighbor’s router. Again, it registered Cox.net: Fayetteville, Arkansas. But sure enough, when I logged back in using our router, it let us know that we were being routed through Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana. I tried the same experiment again, but this time with Jenn’s laptop. Same result.

I called Cox. The first guy I talked to laughed uncomfortably and said, “I don’t know why it is routing through an Air Force base, but I have a pretty good idea.” He sent me up the chain of command, but they also could not tell me why everyone in my apartment complex was being routed through their local server, but I was being routed through an Air Force base.

Finally, a little Google search informed us that Barksdale is the home of the Air Force’s communications and listening center. Well, that makes perfect sense.

*******

Last Saturday Jenn and I scalped tickets to the Kentucky – Arkansas game. The singing of the National Anthem was punctuated with a flyover by an Air Force B-2 Stealth Bomber. As the black sliver approached from the north, the crowd began to whip itself up into a frenzy. But over the cheers I heard the public address announcer state that this very bomber was part of the initial invasion of Baghdad during Operation “Iraqi Freedom.”

The flyover was impressive. I have never seen a Stealth Bomber in person. Those suckers are big, loud and very intimidating. And as the plane passed right above us, with its roaring engines completely drowning out the roaring crowd, I couldn’t help but think of the irony:

This very Air Force plane dropped bombs over Baghdad to “liberate” the Iraqis from an oppressive government that listened to their own citizen’s communications. And now that very same Air Force is listening to mine.

The USAF Stealth Bomber as it approaches Razorback Stadium.

Click here for another First Born story of football game flyovers.