The Secret Sentry

by Matthew M. Aid

  47. Newton, USS Pueblo, p. 12; historical fact sheet, USS Banner (AGER-1), Ships Histories Division, Naval Historical Center, Washington, DC. For a description of the Sod Hut, see Dan Hearn, “A Career Built on SIGINT,” American Intelligence Journal, Spring/Summer 1994: p. 68. “Least unsuitable” quote from Armbrister, Matter of Accountability, pp. 85–86.

  48. Commander-in-Chief, Pacific, CINCPAC Command History 1966, vol. 1, pp. 89–90; Commander-in-Chief, Pacific, CINCPAC Command History 1968, vol. 4, pp. 230–31, sanitized copies of both at U.S. Army Center of Military History, Washington, DC; Packard, U.S. Naval Intelligence, p. 115; Vice Admiral Edwin B. Hooper, USN (Ret.), Mobility, Support, Endurance: A Story of Naval Operational Logistics in the Vietnam War, 1965–1968 (Washington, DC: Naval History Division, 1972), pp. 220–21; Joseph F. Bouchard, “Use of Naval Force in Crises: A Theory of Stratified Crisis Interaction,” vol. 1 (Ph. D. diss., Stamford University, 1989), p. 331.

  49. U.S. House of Representatives, Armed Services Committee, Hearings Regarding Inquiry into the U.S.S. Pueblo and EC-121 Incidents, 91st Congress, 1st session, 1969, pp. 636–38; U.S. House of Representatives, Armed Services Committee, H.A.S.C. No. 91-12, Report of Inquiry into the U.S.S. Pueblo and EC-121 Plane Incidents, 91st Congress, 1st session, 1969, pp. 1646– 49; Hooper, Mobility, Support, Endurance, pp. 222–25.

  50. The most detailed description of all aspects of the USS Pueblo’s mission and seizure by the North Koreans can be found in Newton, USS Pueblo, p. 3. See also Commander-in-Chief, Pacific, CINCPAC Command History 1968, vol. 4, p. 229, Operational Archives, Naval Historical Center, Washington, DC; Central Intelligence Bulletin, January 23, 1968, p. 4, CIA Electronic FOIA Reading Room, Document No. 0000265983, http://www.foia.cia.gov.

  51. U.S. House of Representatives, Armed Services Committee, Hearings Regarding Inquiry into the U.S.S. Pueblo and EC-121 Incidents, 91st Congress, 1st session, 1969, pp. 692, 698; U.S. House of Representatives, Armed Services Committee, Report No. 91-12, Report of the Special Subcommittee on the U.S.S. Pueblo: Inquiry into the U.S.S. Pueblo and EC-121 Incidents, 91st Congress, 1st session, 1969, pp. 1654–56. CIA memo quote from memorandum, Smith to Director of Central Intelligence, JRC Monthly Reconnaissance Schedule for January 1968, January 2, 1968, CIA Electronic FOIA Reading Room, Document No. 0001458144, http://www.foia.cia.gov.

  52. CIA, The Pueblo Incident: Briefing Materials for Ambassador Ball’s Committee, February 5, 1968, p. 1, CIA Electronic FOIA Reading Room, Document No. 0000267787, http://www.foia.cia.gov.

  53. Letter, Goldberg to President of U.N. Security Council, January 25, 1968, in Department of State Bulletin, February 12, 1968, pp. 195–96.

  54. Johnson, American Cryptology, bk. 2, p. 439.

  55. For TV pictures of the NSA documents, see Newton, pp. 122–23; Johnson, American Cryptology, bk. 2, p. 448. For the North Korean book containing NSA documents, see Les actes d’agression declares de l’imperialisme U.S. contre le peuple coreen (Pyongyang: Éditions en Langues Étrangères, 1968).

  56. CIA, Directorate of Intelligence, intelligence memorandum, Pueblo Sitrep No. 14, January 28, 1968, p. 3, CIA Electronic FOIA Reading Room, Document No. 0000230614, http://www.foia.cia.gov; SC 13455/69, memorandum, Clarke to Assistant Deputy Director for Intelligence, Senator Russell’s Remarks on Soviet Exploitation of USS Pueblo, January 3, 1969, p. 3, CREST Collection, Document No. CIA-RDP79B00972A000100430001-3, NA, CP; confidential interview.

  57. For SIGINT sources drying up, see final draft, SIGINT 101 Seminar Course Module, 2002, NSA FOIA. For NSA damage assessment, see “Notes of Meeting,” January 24, 1968, in U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964–1968, vol. 29, Korea (Washington, DC: GPO, 1999).

  58. U.S. Army Military History Institute, Oral History 73-2, Interview with General Charles H. Bonesteel III, USA Retired, vol. 1, 1973, pp. 345–46, U.S. Army Center of Military History, Washington, DC.

  59. Johnson, American Cryptology, bk. 2, pp. 455–57; HQ ASA, Historical Summary of the U.S. Army Security Agency, FY 1968–1970, pp. 73–74, INSCOM FOIA; CIA, memorandum, DCI Briefing for Congressional Leaders: Soviet Troop Movements, August 23, 1968, p. Troops-1, CIA Electronic FOIA Reading Room, Document No. 0000677561, http://www.foia.cia.gov; memorandum, Hendrick-son to Chairman, Strategic Warning Working Group, Rapid Readout and Reporting of Imagery for Warning and Indications Intelligence Purposes, September 26, 1969, p. 1, CREST Collection, Document No. CIA-RDP79B01709A002200100006-2, NA, CP; CIA, Directorate of Intelligence, intelligence memorandum, ESAU XLIV, Czechoslovakia: The Problem of Soviet Control, January 16, 1970, p. 14, CIA Electronic FOIA Reading Room, http://www.foia.cia.gov/cpe.asp; James H. Polk, “Reflections on the Czech oslovakian Invasion, 1968,” Strategic Review, vol. 5, no. 5: p. 31; interview, James H. Polk.

  60. Confidential interviews. For an early example of the material being produced by the Moscow listening post, see CIA, The President’s Intelligence Checklist, October 18, 1962, p. 8, JFKL, Boston, MA.

  61. Johnson, American Cryptology, bk. 2, p. 473; oral history, Interview with David J. Fischer, March 6, 1998, Foreign Affairs Oral History Collection, Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

  62. Memorandum, Taylor to Deputy Director for Intelligence, Indications of Soviet Intent to Invade Czechoslovakia, August 22, 1968, CREST Collection, Document No. CIA-RDP79B00972A0 00100240004-1, NA, CP; Memorandum, Karl to Smith, DDCI Memo on Handling of Indications Traffic, August 23, 1968, CREST Collection, Document No. CIA-RDP79B00972A000 100240003-2, NA, CP; memorandum, Hendrickson to Chairman, Strategic Warning Working Group, Rapid Readout and Reporting of Imagery for Warning and Indications Intelligence Purposes, September 26, 1969, p. 1, CREST Collection, Document No. CIA-RDP79B01709A002200 100006-2, NA, CP; Johnson, American Cryptology, bk. 2, p. 458.

  63. Johnson, American Cryptology, bk. 2, p. 459; Polk, “Reflections on the Czech oslovaki an Invasion, 1968,” p. 32; interview, General James H. Polk.

  64. Robert J. Hanyok, Spartans in Darkness: American SIGINT and the Indochina War, 1945–1975, U.S. Cryptologic History, series 6, vol. 7 (Fort Meade, MD: Center for Cryptologic History, 2002), pp. 156–60.

  65. In April 1972, Washington Post columnist Jack Anderson revealed that NSA had been able to read the most sensitive South Vietnamese military and diplomatic communications for a number of years, for which see Anderson, “U.S. Is Forced to Spy on Saigon,” Washington Post, April 30, 1972; Seymour M. Hersh, The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House (New York: Summit Books, 1983), p. 183n.

  66. U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964–1968, vol. 7, Vietnam: September 1968–January 1969 (Washington, DC: GPO, 2003); Daniel Schorr, “The Secret Nixon-LBJ War,” Washington Post, May 28, 1995. See also Bui Diem with David Chanoff, In the Jaws of History (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987), p. 244.

  67. Oral history, Interview with Arthur B. Krim, April 7, 1983, p. 22, Austin, TX.

  68. For CIA taps on Thieu’s office, see Frank Snepp, Decent Interval (New York: Random House, 1977), pp. 15, 294; Thomas Powers, The Man Who Kept the Secrets: Richard Helms and the CIA (New York: Pocket Books, 1979), p. 252.

  69. Memorandum, CIA to Rostow and Rusk, President Thieu’s Views Regarding the Issues Involved in Agreeing to a Bombing Halt, October 26, 1968, p. 1, CIA Electronic FOIA Reading Room, Document No. 0000576096, http://www.foia.cia.gov.

  70. Memorandum, Rostow to President, October 29, 1968, p. 1, National Security File: Walt Ros-tow Files, File: Richard Nixon—Vietnam, LBJL, Austin, TX.

  71. H. R. Haldeman, The Haldeman Diaries: Inside the Nixon White House (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1994), p. 567; Douglas Watson, “Houston Says NSA Urged Break-Ins,” Washington Post, March 3, 1975; transcript, Cartha D. “Deke” DeLoach Oral History Interview 1, January 11, 1991, pp. 19–20, LBJL, Austin, TX.

  9: Tragedy and Triumph

  1. Dr. Thomas R. Johnson, American Cryptology During the Cold War, 1945–198
9 (Fort Meade, MD: Center for Cryptologic History, 1995), bk. 2, Centralization Wins, 1960–1972, pp. 293, 297, NSA FOIA.

  2. DCI Remarks to PFIAB, January 13, 1982, p. 1, CREST Collection, Document No. CIA-RDP84B00049R001102660009-2, NA, CP; Dr. Thomas R. Johnson, American Cryptology During the Cold War, 1945–1989 (Fort Meade, MD: Center for Cryptologic History, 1995), bk. 3, Retrenchment and Reform, 1972–1980, p. 21, NSA FOIA.

  3. HQ ASA, Annual Historical Summary of the U.S. Army Security Agency, FY 1971, p. 61, INSCOM FOIA; HQ ASA, Annual Historical Summary of the U.S. Army Security Agency, FY 1972, p. 47, INSCOM FOIA; “U.S. Electronic Espionage: A Memoir,” Ramparts, August 1972, p. 50; Tad Szulc, “The NSA— America’s $10 Billion Frankenstein,” Penthouse, November 1975, p. 194.

  4. Johnson, American Cryptology, bk. 3, p. vii.

  5. U.S. House of Representatives, Select Committee on Intelligence, U.S. Intelligence Agencies and Activities: The Performance of the Intelligence Community, 94th Congress, 2nd session, part 2, 1975, p. 646; Seymour M. Hersh, The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House (New York: Summit Books, 1983), p. 207.

  6. Johnson, American Cryptology, bk. 3, p. 487.

  7. The official NSA history of this incident can be found in Thomas P. Ziehm, The National Security Agency and the EC-121 Shootdown, vol. 3, Special Series, Crisis Collection (Fort Meade: Center for Cryptologic History, 1989), NSA FOIA. See also Fleet Air Reconnaissance Squadron One, Fleet Air Reconnaissance Squadron One 1969 Command History, 1970, p. 7, Navy FOIA; Capt. Don East, USN, “A History of U.S. Navy Fleet Air Reconnaissance: Part One, the Pacific and VQ-1,” Hook, Spring 1987: pp. 29–30; CTMCM Jay R. Brown, “Kamiseya Update P-2,” NCVA Cryptolog, Spring 1995: p. 23; “ELINT Techniques ‘Pirate’ Radar Data,” Aviation Week &Space Technology, February 21, 1972, p. 40.

  8. U.S. House of Representatives, Armed Services Committee, HASC No. 91-12, Report of the Special Subcommittee on the USS Pueblo: Inquiry into the U.S.S. Pueblo and EC-121 Plane Incidents, 91st Congress, 1st session, July 28, 1969, pp. 1675, 1680.

  9. Johnson, American Cryptology, bk. 2, p. 466.

  10. James E. Pierson, USAFSS Response to World Crises, 1949–1969 (San Antonio, TX: USAFSS Historical Office, 1970), p. 35, AIA FOIA; Johnson, American Cryptology, bk. 2, p. 466.

  11. Seymour M. Hersh, The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House (New York: Summit Books, 1983), pp. 69–70, 73–74; confidential interview.

  12. Johnson, American Cryptology, bk. 2, p. 477.

  13. Memorandum with attachments, Hughes to President, July 16, 1969, p. 1, Nixon Presidential Materials, White House Central Files/Subject Files, box 7, file FG 13-11/A NSA (7/16/69), NA, CP; “Vice Admiral Noel Gayler, USN Becomes Agency’s New Director,” NSA Newsletter, August 1969, p. 3, NSA FOIA.

  14. Hersh, Price of Power, p. 208.

  15. Johnson, American Cryptology, bk. 2, p. 478.

  16. Confidential interviews.

  17. Loch K. Johnson, A Season of Inquiry: Congress and Intelligence (Chicago: Dorsey Press, 1988), p. 83.

  18. Mike Frost and Michel Gratton, Spyworld (Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 1994), pp. 45–76.

  19. See, for example, CIA, Directorate of Intelligence, intelligence report, The Politburo and Soviet Decision Making, April 1972, CIA Electronic FOIA Reading Room, Document No. 0001024724, http:// www.foia.cia.gov; CIA, Directorate of Intelligence, The SALT I Agreements and Future Soviet Weapons Programs: A Framework for Analyzing Soviet Decisionmaking, October 1972, CIA Electronic FOIA Reading Room, Document No. 0000969878, http:// www.foia.cia.gov.

  20. John M. McConnell, “The Evolution of Intelligence and the Public Policy Debate on Encryption,” p. 151, Seminar on Intelligence, Command and Control, Center for Information Policy Research, Harvard University School of Government, January 1997.

  21. Jack Anderson, “CIA Eavesdrops on Kremlin Chiefs,” Washington Post, September 16, 1971; McConnell, “The Evolution of Intelligence and the Public Policy Debate on Encryption.”

  22. Memorandum, Kissinger to President, Moscow Politics and Brezhnev’s Position, May 22, 1972, Secret/Sensitive, Nixon Presidential Materials, NA, CP.

  23. Hersh, Price of Power, p. 547; David Kahn, “Big Ear or Big Brother?,” New York Times Magazine, May 16, 1976, p. 62; “Eavesdropping on the World’s Secrets,” U.S. News & World Report, June 26, 1978, p. 47; Walter Andrews, “Kissinger Allegedly Withheld Soviet Plan to Violate SALT I,” Washington Times, April 6, 1984; Bill Gertz, “CIA Upset Because Perle Detailed Eavesdropping,” Washington Times, April 19, 1987.

  24. NIO IIM 76-030J, interagency intelligence memorandum, Implications for US-Soviet Relations of Certain Soviet Activities, June 1976, p. 7, CIA Electronic FOIA Reading Room, Document No. 0000283807, http://www.foia.cia.gov. See also “The Microwave Furor,” Time, March 22, 1976.

  25. Memorandum with attachments, Scowcroft to President, Nixon Presidential Materials, White House Central Files/Subject Files, box 7, file FG 13-11/A NSA (7/24/72), NA, CP; “Lt. Gen. Samuel C. Phillips, USAF Becomes Agency’s Seventh Director,” NSA Newsletter, June 1972, p. 4, NSA FOIA.

  26. Johnson, American Cryptology, bk. 3, p. 89, NSA FOIA.

  27. Interviews with Walter G. Deeley and Charles R. Lord; NSA OH-09-97, oral history, Interview with Bobby Ray Inman, June 18, 1997, p. 12, NSA FOIA.

  28. Allen background from biographical data sheet, Lt. General Lew Allen, Jr., U.S. Air Force Office of Public Affairs.

  29. Poker-face comments from confidential interview. Snider quote from L. Britt Snider, “Unlucky Shamrock: Recollections from the Church Committee’s Investigation of NSA,” Studies in Intelligence, Winter 1999–2000, unclassified ed.: p. 44.

  30. U.S. Senate, Hearings Before the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, 94th Congress, 1st session, vol. 6, pp. 4–46.

  31. For details of the missions and capabilities of these SIGINT satellite systems, see Christopher Anson Pike, “Canyon, Rhyolite and Aquacade: U.S. Signals Intelligence Satellites in the 1970s,” Spaceflight, vol. 37 (November 1995): p. 381; Jonathan McDowell, “U.S. Reconnaissance Satellite Programs, Part 2, Beyond Imaging,” Quest, vol. 4, no. 4 (1995): p. 42; Major A. Andronov, “American Geosynchronous SIGINT Satellites,” Zarubezhnoye Voyennoye Obozreniye, no. 12 (1993): pp. 37–43. For NSA’s emphasis on SIGINT collection from space in the 1970s, see William E. Odom, Fixing Intelligence for a More Secure America (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), p. 120; Loch K. Johnson, Secret Agencies: U.S. Intelligence in a Hostile World (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996), p. 178.

  32. William Drozdiak, “A Suspicious Eye on U.S. ‘Big Ears’: Euro pe ans Fear Listening Posts Eavesdrop on Their Businesses,” Washington Post, July 24, 2000.

  33. A description of the mission and capabilities of the Rhyolite satellite can be found in Pike, “Canyon, Rhyolite and Aquacade,” pp. 381–82; McDowell, “U.S. Reconnaissance Satellite Programs, Part 2,” 1995, p. 42; Angelo Codevilla, Informing Statecraft: Intelligence for a New Century (New York: Free Press, 1992), pp. 115–16. Wheelon quote from Albert D. Wheelon, “Technology and Intelligence,” Technology and Society, January 2004, pp. 4–5.

  34. U.S. Pacific Fleet, Command History of the Commander in Chief U.S. Pacific Fleet: CY 1979, 1980, p. 32, CINCPACFLT FOIA; Jeffrey T. Richelson, The U.S. Intelligence Community, 3rd ed. (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1995), pp. 204–05; Ivan Amato, Pushing the Horizon (Washington, DC: GPO, 1998), p. 202; Anthony Kenden, “U.S. Reconnaissance Satellite Programs,” Space-flight, vol. 20, no. 7 (1978): pp. 257–58; Philip J. Klass, “Aircraft Ocean Surveillance Role Studied,” Aviation Week & Space Technology, May 8, 1972, p. 26; “Navy Ocean Surveillance Satellite Depicted,” Aviation Week & Space Technology, May 24, 1976, p. 25; “Expanded Ocean Surveillance Effort Set,” Aviation Week & Space Technology, July 10, 1978, pp. 22–23; “NASA Souvenir Spills Navy Satellite Secrets,” Aviation Week & Space Technology, October 22, 1984, p. 20; Major A. Andronov, “The U.S. Navy�
�s ‘White Cloud’ Spaceborne ELINT System,” Zarubezhnoye Voyen-noye Obozreniye, no. 7, 1993: pp. 57–60.

  35. Christopher Ford and David Rosenberg, The Admiral’s Advantage: U.S. Navy Operational Intelligence in World War II and the Cold War (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2005), p. 62.

  36. U.S. Senate, Final Report of the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, 94th Congress, 2nd session, bk. 1, 1976, p. 85; CIA: The Pike Report (London: Spokesman Books, 1977), p. 141.

  37. United States European Command, Historical Report 1973, 1974, p. 295, National Security Archive, Washington, DC; U.S. House of Representatives, Select Committee on Intelligence, U.S. Intelligence Agencies and Activities: The Per formance of the Intelligence Community, 94th Congress, 2nd session, part 2, 1975, pp. 678–81; William Colby and Peter Forbath, Honorable Men (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978), pp. 434–35; confidential interviews.

  38. TS 204127, memorandum, Proficiency of Egyptian Air Force and Air Defense Personnel, July 13, 1973, CREST Collection, Document No. CIA-RDP75B00380R000200050087-4, NA, CP.

  39. Memorandum, National Security Council Staff to Kissinger, Indications of Arab Intentions to Initiate Hostilities, circa May 1973, Nixon Presidential Materials Project, Henry Kissinger Office Files, box 135, file Rabin/Kissinger (Dinitz) 1973 Jan–July (2 of 3), NA, CP; Intelligence Community Staff, The Per formance of the Intelligence Community Before the Arab-Israeli War of October 1973: A Preliminary Post-Mortem Report, December 1973, CIA Electronic FOIA Reading Room, Document No. 0001331429, http://www.foia.cia.gov; U.S. House of Representatives, Select Committee on Intelligence, U.S. Intelligence Agencies and Activities: The Performance of the Intelligence Community, 94th Congress, 1st session, part 2, 1975, pp. 658–59, 680–81; Pike Report, pp. 143, 147; Marvin L. Kalb and Bernard Kalb, Kissinger (Boston: Little, Brown, 1974), p. 454; Henry Kissinger, Years of Upheaval (Boston: Little, Brown, 1982), p. 475; Daniel O. Graham, Confessions of a Cold Warrior (Fairfax, VA: Preview Press, 1995), p. 77; “Eavesdropping,” U.S. News & World Report, p. 47.