The Secret Sentry

by Matthew M. Aid

  40. Devlin Barrett, “Security Issue Kills Domestic Spying Inquiry,” Associated Press, May 10, 2006.

  41. Confidential interviews.

  42. The Comey incident was first revealed in Eric Lichtblau and James Risen, “Justice Deputy Resisted Parts of Spy Program,” New York Times, January 1, 2006. See also David Johnston, “Pres-ident Intervened in Dispute over Eavesdropping,” New York Times, May 16, 2007; Dan Eggen and Paul Kane, “Gonzales Hospital Episode Detailed,” Washington Post, May 16, 2007.

  43. Confidential interview.

  44. Eggen, “White House Secrecy.”

  45. Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball, “Behind the Surveillance Debate,” Newsweek, August 1, 2007; Greg Miller, “Court Puts Limits on Surveillance Abroad,” Los Angeles Times, August 2, 2007.

  46. Siobhan Gorman, “NSA Has Higher Profile, New Problems,” Baltimore Sun, September 8, 2006.

  47. Confidential interviews.

  48. Gorman, “NSA Has Higher Profile.”

  49. Ariel Sabar, “Want to Be a Spy? NSA Is Hiring,” Baltimore Sun, April 10, 2004; Stephen Barr, “NSA Makes No Secret of Stepped-Up Recruitment Effort,” Washington Post, April 22, 2004; “A Good Spy Is Hard to Fund,” U.S. News & World Report, November 22, 2004; “Spy Agency to Undergo Major Changes,” Associated Press, November 12, 2005; Gorman, “NSA Has Higher Profile”; Siobhan Gorman, “Bud get Falling Short at NSA,” Baltimore Sun, January 17, 2007; confidential interviews.

  50. As of 2005, the size of the U.S. intelligence budget was forty-four billion dollars, for which see Scott Shane, “Official Reveals Budget for U.S. Intelligence,” New York Times, November 8, 2005. In May 2007, Congress approved a forty-eight-billion-dollar intelligence bud get, for which see Walter Pincus, “House Panel Approves a Record $48 billion for Spy Agencies,” Washington Post, May 4, 2007.

  51. Sheila Hotchkin, “NSA Will Let Its Dollars Do the Talking,” San Antonio Express-News, April 16, 2005; Mike Soraghan and Aldo Svaldi, “NSA Moving Some Workers, Operations to Denver Area,” Denver Post, January 24, 2006; Robert Gehrke, “Key Spy Agency Expands to Utah,” Salt Lake Tribune, February 2, 2006; Amy Choate, “NSA Seeks Linguists at BYU to Staff Utah Center,” Salt Lake City Deseret Morning News, February 24, 2006.

  52. “Emergency War Supplemental Hides Millions,” UPI, February 20, 2006.

  53. Scott Shane and Tom Bowman, “America’s Fortress of Spies,” Baltimore Sun, December 3, 1995.

  54. NSA/CSS, Transition 2001, December 2000, p. 33. The author is grateful to Dr. Jeffrey T. Richel-son for making a copy of this document available.

  55. There are twenty-two distinct Arabic dialects spoken in the Muslim countries of North Africa and the Middle East, each marked by subtle differences in vocabulary, verb usage, and pronunciation.

  56. Confidential interviews. For languages spoken by linguists at Fort Gordon, see Joseph Gunder, “Tongue Sharpening: GCL Helps Cryptologists Brush Up Before Shipping Out,” InfoDomain, Summer 2007, p. 10.

  57. Confidential interviews. For a brief description of the work performed by NSA’s TAO, see Rowan Scarborough, Sabotage: America’s Enemies Within the CIA (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 2007), p. 161; U.S. Army War College, Information Operations Primer: Fundamentals of Information Operations, November 2006, pp. 88–89. A description of the work performed by the navy’s computer network exploitation operators at Fort Meade is contained in MILPERSMAN 1306-980, Navy Interactive ON-NET (ION) Computer Network Exploitation (CNE) Operator Certification Program, May 29, 2007; MILPERSMAN 1306-981, Navy Interactive ON-NET (ION) Computer Network Exploitation (CNE) Trainer Certification Program, May 29, 2007.

  58. Technical Document 3131, SPAWAR Systems Center San Diego Command History 2001, March 2002, p. 41, http://www.spawar.navy.mil/sti/publications/pubs/td/3131/td3131.pdf.

  59. Memorandum, Zenker to Joint Tactical SIGINT Architecture (JTSA) Working Group, Quarterly Meeting Minutes–December 2001, December 31, 2001. This document has since been reclassified and removed from the Internet site where the author originally found it.

  60. NSA/CSS, Transition 2001, December 2000, p. 19. Shane Harris, “Internet Devices Threaten NSA’s Ability to Gather Intelligence Legally,” National Journal, April 10, 2006; Richard Willing, “Growing Cellphone Use a Problem for Spy Agencies,” USA Today, August 2, 2007; confidential interview.

  61. Loren B. Thompson, PowerPoint presentation, “ISR Lessons of Iraq,” Defense News ISR Integration Conference, November 18, 2003, http://www.lexingtoninstitute.org/docs/435.pdf.

  62. Confidential interviews.

  63. Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction, Report to the President of the United States (Washington, DC: GPO, March 31, 2005), p. 16.

  64. U.S. House of Representatives, Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, IC21: Intelligence Community in the 21st Century, 104th Congress, 1st session, 1996, p. 189; U.S. House of Representatives, Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Report 104-578, Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1998, 105th Congress, 1st session, June 18, 1997, p. 18; Philip H. J. Davies, “Information Warfare and the Future of the Spy,” Information Communication and Society, vol. 2, no. 2 (Summer 1999); Warren P. Strobel, “The Sound of Silence?,” U.S. News & World Report, February 14, 2000; John Deutch and Jeffrey H. Smith, “Smarter Intelligence,” Foreign Policy, January–February 2002.

  65. Colum Lynch, “US Used UN to Spy on Iraq, Aides Say,” Boston Globe, January 6, 1999; Barton Gellman, “Annan Suspicious of UNSCOM Probe,” Washington Post, January 6, 1999; Bruce W. Nelan, “Bugging Saddam,” Time, January 18, 1999; Seymour M. Hersh, “Saddam’s Best Friend,” New Yorker, April 5, 1999, pp. 32, 35; David Wise, “Fall Guy,” Washingtonian, July 1999, pp. 42–43.

  66. John Pomfret, “China Finds Bugs on Jet Equipped in U.S.,” Washington Post, January 19, 2002.

  67. Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough, “Inside the Ring,” Washington Times, January 12, 2007.

  68. Loch K. Johnson, Secret Agencies: U.S. Intelligence in a Hostile World (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996), p. 21; Robert D. Steele, Improving National Intelligence Support to Marine Corps Operational Forces: Forty Specific Recommendations, September 3, 1991, p. 5, http:// www.oss.net/ Papers/ reform. Quote from interview, Herbert Levin, March 5, 1994, Foreign Affairs Oral History Collection, Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, Arlington, VA.

  69. David E. Sanger, “What Are Koreans Up To? U.S. Agencies Can’t Agree,” New York Times, May 12, 2005.

  70. Parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee, CM 5837, Annual Report 2002–2003, June 2003, p. 20.

  71. Confidential interviews.

  72. Confidential interviews.

  73. NSA’s loss of “centrality of command” was reflected for the first time in the 1994 edition of the agency’s principal SIGINT operating policy document, U.S. Signals Intelligence Directive 1, which states, “Certain SIGINT collection and processing activities, specifically designated by the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) as essential and integral to activities conducted under the authority of NSCID No. 5 [U.S. Espionage and Counterintelligence Activities Abroad], are specifically exempted by NSCID No. 6 [Signals Intelligence] from the control of DIRNSA/Chief, CSS (DIRNSA.CHCSS).” NSA/CSS, United States Signals Intelligence Directive 1 (USSID 1), SIGINT Operating Policy, June 13, 1994, p. 4, NSA FOIA.

  74. Rowan Scarborough, “Lack of Fluency in Islamic Languages Impedes U.S.,” Washington Times, July 2, 2007.

  75. Confidential interviews. See also Lt. Colonel Stephen K. Iwicki, “CSA’s Focus Area 16: Actionable Intelligence,” Military Intelligence Professional Bulletin, January–March 2005, p. 51.

  76. Confidential interviews.

  77. 1LT Brian Noble, “SIGINT,” Dagger News, February 2006, p. 2, http://www.506infantry.org/pdf/506rct/feb_dagger_news.pdf.

  78. Major General Barbara Fast, Commander, USAIC&FH, US Army Geospatial Intelligence, PowerPoint presentation, p
resented at Geospatial Intelligence Defense Conference, May 15, 2006.

  79. NSA/CSS, director’s message, “Media Scrutiny on TURBULENCE,” February 19, 2007, NSA FOIA; Siobhan Gorman, “Costly NSA Initiative Has Shaky Takeoff,” Baltimore Sun, February 11, 2007; Siobhan Gorman, “NSA Program Draws Congress’ Ire,” Baltimore Sun, March 28, 2007; Alice Lipowicz, “Hard Sell: NSA’s Tech Reorg Faces Uphill Road to Win Over Critics,” Washington Technology, June 11, 2007.

  80. NSA’s twenty-one-million-dollar electricity bill in 2000 from Dana Roscoe, “NSA Hosts Special Partnership Breakfast,” NSA Newsletter, p. 4, NSA FOIA. For thirty-million-dollar electricity bill in 2007, confidential interview.

  81. Siobhan Gorman, “NSA Electricity Crisis Gets Senate Scrutiny,” Baltimore Sun, January 26, 2007; Siobhan Gorman, “Power Supply Still a Vexation for the NSA,” Baltimore Sun, June 24, 2007.

  82. Gorman, “NSA Has Higher Profile.”

  83. Gorman, “Bud get Falling Short.”

  84. Confidential interview.

  A Note on the Author

  Matthew M. Aid is a leading intelligence historian, and visiting fellow at the National Security Archive in Washington, D.C. An expert on the National Security Agency, he is a regular commentator on intelligence matters for the New York Times, the Financial Times, the National Journal, the Associated Press, CBS News, NPR, and many other media outlets. He lives in Washington, D.C.