National Security Agency

The U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), established by a memorandum dated October 24, 1952, by President Harry S. Truman, is "the organization within the U.S. Government responsible for communications intelligence (COMINT) activities." [1]

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Bush's Domestic Spies

Only months after the events of September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush signed a presidential order in 2002 which "secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government officials," James Risen and Eric Lichtblau reported in the December 16, 2005, New York Times.

The NSA "has monitored the international telephone calls and international e-mail messages of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people inside the United States without warrants over the past three years in an effort to track possible 'dirty numbers' linked to Al Qaeda, the officials said. The agency, they said, still seeks warrants to monitor entirely domestic communications." [2]

"While many details about the program remain secret, officials familiar with it say the N.S.A. eavesdrops without warrants on up to 500 people in the United States at any given time. The list changes as some names are added and others dropped, so the number monitored in this country may have reached into the thousands since the program began, several officials said. Overseas, about 5,000 to 7,000 people suspected of terrorist ties are monitored at one time, according to those officials." [3]

"The NSA activities were justified by a classified Justice Department legal opinion authored by John C. Yoo, a former deputy in the Office of Legal Counsel who argued that congressional approval of the war on al Qaeda gave broad authority to the president, according to the Times," Dan Eggen wrote in the December 16, 2005, Washington Post.

"That legal argument was similar to another 2002 memo authored primarily by Yoo, which outlined an extremely narrow definition of torture. That opinion, which was signed by another Justice official, was formally disavowed after it was disclosed by the Washington Post," Eggen wrote.

Related Links

• James Risen and Eric Lichtblau, "Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts," New York Times, December 16, 2005; (Common Dreams).
• Dan Eggen, "Bush Authorized Domestic Spying. Post-9/11 Order Bypassed Special Court," Washington Post, December 16, 2005.
• Larry Johnson, "Spying on Americans and John Bolton," TPM Cafe, December 16, 2005: "During the confirmation hearings of John Bolton as the U.S. representative to the United Nations, it came to light that the NSA had freely revealed intercepted conversations of U.S. citizens to Bolton while he served at the State Department. ... More generally, Newsweek reports that from January 2004 to May 2005, the NSA supplied intercepts and names of 10,000 U.S. citizens to policy-makers at many departments, other U.S. intelligence services, and law enforcement agencies."
• Larry Abramson, "Bush Said to Approve Post-Sept. 11 Eavesdropping," NPR, December 16, 2005.
• "Domestic Spying and a Delayed Report," NPR, December 16, 2005.
• "Politics with Juan Williams: Spying and the Patriot Act," NPR, December 16, 2005.
• jesselee, "George Miller on Domestic Spying," The Stakeholder, December 16, 2005.
• Morton H. Halperin, "President Bush and Domestic Spying by NSA," Center for American Progress, December 16, 2005.
• Will Bunch, "The Big Stall: How Bush gamed the media to get re-elected in 2004," Attytood, December 16, 2005.
• Rob, "Action Alerts: Tell Congress to kill the Patriot Act until we get answers about Bush's illegal domestic spying," AMERICAblog, December 16, 2005.
• John Aravosis, "If Bush thought eavesdropping laws were too onerous post 9/11, he was required to ask Congress to CHANGE THE LAW, not just violate it for 3 years," AMERICAblog, December 16, 2005.
• Hilzoy, " ... This is against the law," Washington Monthly, December 16, 2005.

NSA Overview

The NSA is "the Nation's cryptologic organization. It coordinates, directs, and performs highly specialized activities to protect U.S. information systems and produce foreign intelligence information. A high technology organization, NSA is on the frontiers of communications and data processing. It is also one of the most important centers of foreign language analysis and research within the Government."

• Signals Intelligence (SIGINT)
• Information Systems Security (INFOSEC) - "protecting all classified and sensitive information that is stored or sent through U.S. Government equipment."
• R&D - Research and development programs: "cryptanalytic research led to the first large-scale computer and the first solid-state computer, predecessors to the modern computer."
• NSA "employs the country's premier codemakers and codebreakers."

"Most NSA/CSS employees, both civilian and military, are headquartered at Fort Meade, Maryland, centrally located between Baltimore and Washington, DC. Its workforce represents an unusual combination of specialties: analysts, engineers, physicists, mathematicians, linguists, computer scientists, researchers, as well as customer relations specialists, security officers, data flow experts, managers, administrative and clerical assistants."[4]

Contact Information

Website: http://www.nsa.gov/

• Director: Lieutenant General Michael V. Hayden

SourceWatch Resources

• Central Intelligence Agency
• Department of Homeland Security
• homeland defense
• homeland security
• National Security Council
• Operations Coordinating Board
• psyops

External Links

Profiles

• Wikipedia: National Security Agency.
• BBC Profile of National Security Agency.
• Defense Daily Biographies.
• National Security Agency at intelligence.gov.
• National Security Agency: "The largest and most secret of the intelligence agencies of the U.S. government, the National Security Agency (NSA), with headquarters at Fort Meade, Maryland, has two main functions: to protect U.S. government communications and to intercept foreign communications."
• Original Charter for the NSA.
• "A Half-Century of Surveillance," New York Times, December 16, 2005.