National Security Agency

The National Security Agency (NSA), formally the National Security Agency/Central Security Service is part of the United States Department of Defense and also the United States intelligence community. Its headquarters are at Fort Meade, Maryland, although it has worldwide installations.

View of part of headquarters complex

The headquarters, which consists of several large buidings, an impressive fence, and acres of parking lots, is reputed to have the most computers of any place on earth.

The agency has dual responsibilities:

1. As a member of the United States intelligence community, it has the principal responsibility for collecting and processing signals intelligence.
2. As the agency responsible for the "Information Assurance mission [to provide] the solutions, products, and services, and [conduct] defensive information operations, to achieve information assurance for information infrastructures critical to U.S. national security interests"

Immediately outside one of the security gates is the National Cryptologic Museum and the National Vigilance Park, the latter holding three aircraft, one from each service, and of a type that was lost during SIGINT operations.

NSA National Vigilance Park, memorializing aircraft lost on SIGINT missions

Memorial, inside the headquarters building, to all personnel who died on SIGINT duty

SIGINT personnel not only died on duty in aircraft. The first U.S. soldier killed in Vietnam belonged to an Army SIGINT unit. A large number of personnel were killed in the Israeli attack on the SIGINT ship, USS Liberty.

Executive organization

The Director, National Security Agency(DIRNSA)/Chief, Central Security Service is an active-duty, three-star officer from one of the military services. The Deputy Director, National Security Agency is a career civilian. Two senior officials are the #the Signals Intelligence Director (SID) and the Information Assurance Director (IAD). There are usually some very senior staff specialists bearing titles such as Chief Cryptologist.

As mentioned, NSA is part of the United States intelligence community. There is usually a government-wide communications security committee just below the National Security Council level. NSA also is the lead agency for Operations Security (OPSEC), a counterintelligence function within government that goes beyond communications security/

NSA and its predecessors have had a very close relationship with its British Counterpart, the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ). The resident U.S. representative there, the Senior U.S. Liaison Officer (SUSLO) holds what is considered a key position.

While the exact organizaation is classified, and has varied over time, it will generally contain functions including:

• National level SIGINT-collection management and operations
• Coordination of tactical SIGINT
• Advanced research and development. NSA is reputed to be the world's largest employer of mathematicians.
• SIGINT processing organizations, generally organized on a regional basis depending on national priorities. NSA is not considered to be an analytic agency that produces "finished intelligence", although, by all indications, it will report on the patterns of COMINT and ELINT information, rather than the content, for example, of messages read through COMINT.
• Defensive information operations, including creating, either in-house or on contract, U.S. COMSEC equipment for classified communications, and cryptographic keying material for classified and certain other types of sensitive but unclassified government communications.

Formation

See also: SIGINT in the Second World War

During the Second World War, the Army and Navy had separate signals intelligence and communications security organization, which coordinated only informally. Depending on the service, tactical SIGINT, cryptologic development, strategic SIGINT, and cryptologic operations might be performed by autonomous organizations within a service department.

The Army and Navy formed a "Joint Operating Plan" to cover 1946-1949, but this had its disadvantages. The situation became a good deal more complex with the passage of the National Security Act of 1947, which created a separate Air Force and Central Intelligence Agency, as well as unifying the military services under a Secretary of Defense. While the CIA remained primarily a consumer, the Air Force wanted its own SIGINT organization, responsive to its tactical and strategic needs, just as the Army and Navy often placed their needs beyond that of national intelligence. The Army Security Agency (ASA) had shared the national COMINT mission with the Navy's Communications Supplementary Activity (COMMSUPACT) - which became the Naval Security Group in June 1950. During and after World War II, a portion of Army COMINT assets was dedicated to support of the U.S. Army Air Corps, and, when the independent Air Force was created in 1947, these cryptologic assets were resubordinated to the new organization as the Air Force Security Service (AFSS).

U.S. Secretary of Defense James Forrestal rejected the early service COMINT unification plans. The Department of State objected to the next draft, which put the Central Intelligence Group/Central Intelligence Agency in charge of national COMINT. On 20 May 1949, Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson created the Armed Forces Security Agency.

To centralize common services, the Armed Forces Security Agency (AFSA) as a national organization. AFSA, was formed by secret executive order in 1948. Still, until NSA was formed in 1952, AFSA did not have the authority for central control of individual service COMINT and COMSEC. Policy direction of COMINT came from the U.S. Communications Intelligence Board (USCIB) which, in April 1949, requested $22 million in funds, including 1,410 additional civilian employees, to expand the COMINT effort.

NSA created

President Harry Truman, on 24 October 1952, issued a directive that set the stage for the National Security Agency, whose scope went beyond the pure military. NSA was created on 4 November 1952.

The Service Cryptologic Agencies still had their own identity, even after the formation of NSA.

In 1955, ASA took over electronic intelligence (ELINT) and electronic warfare functions previously carried out by the Signal Corps. Since its mission was no longer exclusively identified with intelligence and security, ASA was withdrawn from G-2 control and resubordinated to the Army Chief of Staff as a field operating agency.

Under the US Marines, the 1st Composite Radio Company was activated on 8 September 1959, continuing the World War II legacy.

The Cold War

Eventually, the individual service SIGINT organizations were to become Service Cryptologic Elements (SCE), with dual reporting to their local operational commands and to NSA/CSS -- and sometimes very little to the local command. The captain of the USS Pueblo, a SIGINT ship, was discouraged from entering the SIGINT compartments of the ship. Pilots of SIGINT aircraft were told where to fly, but were not informed, in detail, what the technicians on board were doing -- unless the technicians issued an urgent warning of a hostile aircraft coming close. Several U.S. SIGINT aircraft were damaged or destroyed.

While the names were to continue to change, the main SCEs reorganized into units principally serving NSA's national-level goals, although there were also tactical SIGINT units within a dual chain of command. Since most NSA system was under compartmented control systems, local military commanders might not have the appropriate clearance. The phrase "behind the green door", from a song and a pornographic movie, became the euphemism for the [[Sensitive compartment information facility}sensitive compartment information facilities (SCIF), behind whose locked and guarded doors the actual SIGINT was done.

Service	SCE
Army	Army Security Agency
Navy	Naval Security Group (Marine Radio Battalions were primarily tactical)
Air Force	Air Force Security Service

Strategic SIGINT targeting of the USSR

In the fifties, only aircraft platforms could obtain SIGINT over the USSR. A Soviet source pointed out that aircraft were of limited usefulness, due to being vulnerable to fighters and antiaircraft weapons. (Translator's estimate: in the period 1950-1969, about 15 US and NATO reconnaissance aircraft were shot down over the USSR, China, the GDR and Cuba). The US, therefore, undertook the WS-117L reconnaissance satellite project, approved by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1954, within which was a signal intercept subsystem under Project PIONEER FERRET. By 1959, WS-117L had split into three programs:

1. Discoverer, the unclassified name for the CORONA IMINT satellite
2. Satellite and Missile Observation System (SAMOS)(IMINT)
3. Missile Defense Alarm System (MIDAS), a nonimaging staring infrared MASINT system

The first experimental ELINT package would fly aboard a photoreconnaissance satellite, Discoverer-13, in August 1960. Translated from the Russian, it was equipped with "Scotop equipment was intended to record the signals of Soviet radars which were tracking the flight of American space objects."

Problems with NSA's own security

For several years, "the fact of" the existence of NSA was not acknowledged, and for many years thereafter, one of the Washington area sayings was that the initials stood for "Never Say Anything", and the physical security of the campus was far greater than that at CIA. In spite of that attitude, however, there were several severe security breaches by staff working as Soviet defectors in place, or people who defected with maximum publicity.

ASA in the post-World War II period had broken messages used by the Soviet armed forces, police and industry, and was building a remarkably complete picture of the Soviet national security posture. It was a situation that compared favorably to the successes of World War II. Then, during 1948, in rapid succession, every one of these cipher systems went dark, as a result of espionage by a Soviet agent, William Weisband. NSA suggests this may have been the most significant loss in US intelligence history.

Martin and Mitchell

William Martin and Bernon Mitchell were NSA mathematicians, regarded highly for their scientific insight, but generally have been accepted to have odd socialization. In 1960, they left on vacation, and eventually showed up in a Soviet press conference, speaking of the evils of the NSA. At the time, it was widely rumored that they were homosexual, but new evidence suggests while they may have been social misfits, there is little evidence they were gay. The Seattle Times' obtained files that said

"Beyond any doubt," the unnamed author of a then-secret NSA study on the damage done by the defection wrote in 1963, according to the recently released documents, "no other event has had, or is likely to have in the future, a greater impact on the Agency's security program."

Collection methods advance

US Submarine SIGINT begins

Under the code names HOLYSTONE, PINNACLE, BOLLARD, and BARNACLE, began in 1959, US submarines infiltrated Soviet harbors to tap communications cables and gather SIGINT. They also had a MASINT mission against Soviet submarines and missiles. The program, which went through several generations, ended when compromised, by Ronald Pelton, in 1981.

Drones evolve further and the impact of the EC-121 shootdown

Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), called "drones" at the time, were introduced quite early and served a number of purposes, although SIGINT was not the first mission. won the US Air Force competition for the Q-2 jet-propelled aerial target. Known as the Q-2A Firebee, the jet-propelled UAV, launched by a rocket and recovered by parachute, was also bought by the Navy and Army.

In 1961, the Air Force requested a reconnaissance version of what was then designated the BQM-34A, which resulted in the Firebee Model 147A, to be designated the AQM-34. This UAV looked like its target version, but carried more fuel and had a new navigation system. These reconnaissance drones were air-launched from a DC-130 modified transport. Like all subsequent versions of this UAV, it was air-launched from underneath the wing of a specially modified Lockheed DC-130 Hercules, rather than ground-launched with rocket assistance. These are thought to have been operationally for IMINT, although SIGINT was considered, as more aerial US reconnaissance platforms do SIGINT than IMINT, and most IMINT platforms, such as the U-2 and SR-71 also have SIGINT capability. Drones of this version were to be used in the Cuban Missile Crisis.

In the EC-121 shootdown incident of 15 April 1969 , an EC-121M of the U.S. Navy's Fleet Airborne Reconnaissance Squadron One (VQ-1) Vietnam, took off on a routine SIGINT patrol under the BEGGAR SHADOW program. North Korean air search radar was monitored by the USAF 6918th Security Squadron in Japan, and Detachment 1 6922nd Security Wing at Osan Air Base in Korea, and the Naval Security Group at Kamiseya, Japan. The EC-121M was not escorted. When US radar detected the takeoff of North Korean interceptors, and the ASA unit lost touch, ASA called for fighters, but the EC-121M never again appeared on radar. 31 crewmen were lost.

In response to this threat on what had been considered a low-risk mission, Ryan was tasked to develop the AQM-34Q was the SIGINT version of the AQM-34P, with antennas along the fuselage. Underwing fuel tanks were added to this model, and the AQM-34R updated the electronics and had standard underwing tanks.

Early space-based SIGINT

The first successful SIGINT satellite. known informally as "Ferrets", was the U.S. Navy's Galactic Radiation and Background (GRAB), designed by the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory. GRAB had an unclassified experiment called Solrad, and an ELINT package called Tattletale. See National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), an agency even more secretive than NSA. As the military cryptologic agencies, using ground, sea, and aircraft platforms, actually intercepted and processing raw SIGINT material to be forewarded to Fort Meade, the NRO was responsible for similar capture, but from satellites that NRO was responsible for launching and operating.

Tattletale was also known as CANES, and CANES National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) compartment control system codeword for the overall program. GRAB intercepted radar pulses as they came over the horizon, translated the frequency, and retransmitted each pulse, with no further processing, to ground receiving sites. GRAB operated from 1960 to 1962. Again examining space-based SIGINT through Soviet eyes, "The tasks of space-based SIGINT were subdivided into two groups: ELINT against antiaircraft and ABM radars (discovery of their location, operating modes and signal characteristics) and SIGINT against C3 systems. In order to carry out these tasks the US developed ... satellites of two types:

• small ELINT satellites which were launched together with photoreconnaissance satellites into initially low orbits and then raised into a polar working orbit at an altitude of 300 to 800 km using on-board engines
• heavy (1 to 2 tonne mass) "SIGINT" (possibly the translator's version of COMINT?) satellites, which were put into orbit at an altitude of around 500 km using a Thor-Agena booster. The Soviet source described the satellites of the late sixties as "Spook Bird" or CANYON , which was the predecessor to the production RHYOLITE platforms. This was not completely correct if the Soviets thought these were heavy ELINT satellites; CANYON was the first COMINT satellite series, which operated from 1968 to 1977.

According to the NRO, the incremental upgrade of GRAB's Tattletale package was POPPY. The second program, Poppy, operated from 1962 to 1977. The "fact of" the Poppy program, along with limited technical information, was declassified in 2004. At least three NRO operators did the preliminary processing of the POPPY data, one measuring the orbital elements of the satellite and the selected polarization, while the second operator identified signals of interest. The third operator did more detailed, non-real-time, analysis of the signal, and transmitted information to NSA.

Before GRAB and POPPY, US information about Soviet radar stopped about 200 miles from the coastline. After these space systems went into service, effectively all radars on the Soviet landmass became known to NSA. They informed the Strategic Air Command with the technical details and locations of air defense radars, which went into planning attack routes of the Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP), the master set of plans for nuclear warfare. They provided operational information to Navy commanders. Coupled with IMINT from CORONA, they helped CIA, DIA and other elements of the intelligence community understand the overall Soviet threat.

CIA provides additional collection approaches

While the Service Cryptologic Elements (SCE) provided intercepts from ground, air and sea platforms were U.S. overt forces could go, and NRO provided satellite basis, cooperation between NSA and CIA's clandestine operations personnel found ways to emplace, secretly, SIGINT sensors behind the Iron Curtain.

Cold War operations

The Cuban Crisis and the hotter part of the Cold War

While the start of the Cuban Missile Crisis came from IMINT showing Soviet missiles under construction, SIGINT had had an earlier role in suggesting that increased surveillance of Cuba might be appropriate. NSA had intercepted suspiciously blank shipping manifests to Cuba, and, through 1961, there was an increasing amount of radio chatter suggestive of Cuba receiving both Soviet weapons and personnel. The weapons could be used offensively as well as defensively.

In September and October 1962, SIGINT pointed to the completion of a current Soviet air defense network in Cuba, presumably to protect something. The key U-2 flight that spotted the ballistic missiles took place on October 15. While the IMINT organizations were most critical, an anecdote of the time, told by Juanita Moody, the lead SIGINT specialist for Cuba, that the newly appointed Director of NSA, LTG Gordon Blake, came by to see if he could help. "She asked him to try to get additional staff to meet a sudden need for more personnel. Shortly she heard him on the telephone talking to off-duty employees: "This is Gordon Blake calling for Mrs. Moody. Could you come in to work now?"

Two RB-47H aircraft, of the 55th Reconnaissance Wing, during the Cuban Missile Crisis were modified to work with Ryan AQM-34 SIGINT UAVs, still launched from DC-130s. The UAVs carried deceptive signal generators that made them appear to be the size of a U-2, and also carried receivers and relays for the Soviet SA-2 surface-to-air missiles on Cuba. In real time, the UAVs relayed the information to the RB-47, which was itself using ELINT sensors against the radar and SA-2 command frequencies. Essentially, the UAV was carrying out a "ferret" probe intended to provoke defensive response, but not jeopardizing the lives of pilots. This full capability was only ready in 1963, and the original scenario no longer held.

During the Crisis, after a U-2 was shot down, RB-47H's of the 55th wing began flying COMMON CAUSE missions, with other US aircraft, to identify any Cuban site that fired on a US plane. The Cubans, however, believed the US threat that such a site would immediately be attacked, and withheld their fire. Crews began calling the mission, as a result, "Lost Cause".

Tactical Naval SIGINT monitored stopped Soviet transports, when it was unknown if they would challenge the naval quarantine. Direction finding confirmed they had turned around.

External Links

Executive Order Executive Order 12333--United States intelligence activities http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/codification/executive-order/12333.html