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ACCLAIM FOR JAMES BAMFORD'S BODY OF SECRETS "James Bamford, who wrote one of the really good books about American intelligence twenty years ago, has now done it again. Body of Secrets has something interesting and important to add to many episodes of cold war history . [and] has much to say about recent events." —The New York Review of Books "Body of Secrets is one fascinating book. Chock-full of juicy stuff. Interesting to read, well-written and scrupulously documented." —Salon "An engaging and informed history. Bamford weaves a narrative about the NSA that includes . many heretofore undisclosed tidbits of information." —The Nation "At times surprising, often quite troubling but always fascinating. Writing with a flair and clarity that rivals those of the best spy novelists, Bamford has created a masterpiece of investigative reporting." —Publishers Weekly (starred review) "'Body of Secrets adds fresh material about the world's nosiest and most secret body. This revised edition will fascinate anyone interested in the shadow war." —The Economist JAMES BAMFORD BODY OF SECRETS James Bamford is the author of The Puzzle Palace, an award-winning national bestseller when it was first published and now regarded as a classic. He has taught at the University of California's Goldman School of Public Policy, spent nearly a decade as the Washington Investigative Producer for ABC's World News Tonight with Peter Jennings, and has written extensively on national security issues, including investigative cover stories for The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post Magazine, and the Los Angeles Times Magazine. He lives in Washington, D.C. Also by James Bamford 1 The Puzzle Palace FIRST ANCHOR BOOKS EDITION, APRIL 2002 Copyright © 2001, 2002 by James Bamford All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Anchor Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in slightly different form in the United States by Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 2001. Anchor Rooks and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc. The Library of Congress has cataloged the Doubleday edition as follows: Bamford, James. Body of secrets: anatomy of the ultra-secret National Security Agency: from the Cold War through the dawn of a new century / James Bamford.—1st ed. p. cm. ISBN 0-385-49907-8 Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. United States. National Security Agency—History. 2. Electronic intelligence—United States—History. 3. Cryptography—United States—History. I. Title. UB256.U6 B36 2001 327.1275—dc21 00-058920 Anchor ISBN: 0-385-49908-6 Book design by Maria Carella www.anchorbooks.com Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 To Mary Ann And to my father, Vincent And in memory of my mother, Katherine ACKNOWLEDGMENTS My most sincere thanks to the many people who helped bring Body of Secrets to life. Lieutenant General Michael V. Hayden, NSA's director, had the courage to open the agency's door a crack. Major General John E. Morrison (Retired), the dean of the U.S. intelligence community, was always gracious and accommodating in pointing me in the right directions. Deborah Price suffered through my endless Freedom of Information Act requests with professionalism and good humor. Judith Emmel and Colleen Garrett helped guide me through the labyrinths of Crypto City. Jack Ingram, Dr. David Hatch, Jennifer Wilcox, and Rowena Clough of NSA's National Cryptologic Museum provided endless help in researching the agency's past. Critical was the help of those who fought on the front lines of the cryptologic wars, including George A. Cassidy, Richard G. Schmucker, Marvin Nowicki, John Arnold, Harry O. Rakfeldt, David Parks, John Mastro, Wayne Madsen, Aubrey Brown, John R. DeChene, Bryce Lock- wood, Richard McCarthy, Don McClarren, Stuart Russell, Richard E. 2 Kerr, Jr., James Miller, and many others. My grateful appreciation to all those named and unnamed. Thanks also to David J. Haight and Dwight E. Strandberg of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library and to Thomas E. Samoluk of the U.S. Assassinations Records Review Board. Finally I would like to thank those who helped give birth to Body of Secrets, including Kris Dahl, my agent at International Creative Management; Shawn Coyne, my editor at Doubleday; and Bill Thomas, Bette Alexander, Jolanta Benal, Lauren Field, Chris Min, Timothy Hsu, and Sean Desmond. CONTENTS Acknowledgments ix 1 Memory 1 2 Sweat 7 3 Nerves 32 4 Fists 64 5 Eyes 92 6 Ears 139 7 Blood 185 8 Spine 240 9 Adrenaline 283 10 Fat 354 11 Muscle 406 12 Heart 481 13 Soul 528 14 Brain 578 Afterword 614 Appendixes 652 Notes 660 Index 746 "In God we trust, all others we monitor." —Intercept operator's motto NSA study, Deadly Transmissions, December 1970 "The public has a duty to watch its Government closely and keep it on the right track." Lieutenant General Kenneth A.. Minihan, USAF 3 Director, National Security Agency NSA Newsletter, June 1997 "The American people have to trust us and in order to trust us they have to know about us." Lieutenant General Michael V. Hayden, USAF Director, National Security Agency Address on October 19, 2000 "Behind closed doors, there is no guarantee that the most basic of individual freedoms will be preserved. And as we enter the 21st Century, the great fear we have for our democracy is the enveloping culture of government secrecy and the corresponding distrust of government that follows." Senators Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Rob Wyden U.S. Senate Report, Secrecy in International and Domestic Policy Making: The Case for More Sunshine, October 2000 CHAPTER ONE MEMORY KVZIEBCEN CKYIECDVG DBCOOVK HN CKYCFEUFJ ECZHIKUCF MIBEVG FHOHFD NQXVWXIV NWQFWQG HG IMF FH EOF AB EWHB XI GAEEXD WJP JZPWC ABCADL WP TYA RIW 'DYPJ YPWBOYS' XL AXLB APYTIOWL ENTOJXGCM FVMMCD ND ENJBMD FGXMD VGXM OG BMDO RPI EKFSKRPJV OXUVAZPJ QXSHJXSAVP HJXHXVKE LXJ Z.Q. JPLXJSV His step had an unusual urgency to it. Not fast, but anxious, like a child heading out to recess who had been warned not to run. It was late morning and the warm, still air had turned heavy with moisture, causing others on the long hallway to walk with a slow shuffle, a sort of somber march. In June 1930, the boxy, sprawling Munitions Building, near the Washington Monument, was a study in monotony. Endless corridors connecting to endless corridors. Walls a shade of green common to bad cheese and fruit. Forests of oak desks separated down the middle by rows of tall columns, like concrete redwoods, each with a number designating a particular workspace. Oddly, he made a sudden left turn into a nearly deserted wing. It was lined with closed doors containing dim, opaque windows and empty name holders. Where was he going, they wondered, attempting to keep up with him as beads of perspiration wetted their brows. At thirty-eight years old, the Russian-born William Frederick Friedman had spent most 4 of his adult life studying, practicing, defining the black art of code breaking. The year before, he had been appointed the chief and sole employee of a secret new Army organization responsible for analyzing and cracking foreign codes and ciphers. Now, at last, his one-man Signal Intelligence Service actually had employees, three of them, who were attempting to keep pace close behind. Halfway down the hall Friedman turned right into Room 3416, ; small office containing a massive black vault, the kind found in large banks. Reaching into his inside coat pocket, he removed a small card. Then, standing in front of the thick round combination dial to block the view, he began twisting the dial back and forth. Seconds later he yanked up the silver bolt and slowly pulled open the heavy door, only to reveal another wall of steel behind it. This time he removed a key from his trouser pocket and turned it in the lock, swinging aside the second door to reveal an interior as dark as a midnight lunar eclipse. Disappearing into the void, he drew out a small box of matches and lit one. The gentle flame seemed to soften the hard lines of his face: the bony cheeks; the pursed, pencil-thin lips; the narrow mustache, as straight as a ruler; and the wisps of receding hair combed back tight against his scalp. Standing outside the vault were his three young hires. Now it was time to tell them the secret. Friedman yanked on the dangling cord attached to an overhead lightbulb, switched on a nearby fan to circulate the hot, stale air, and invited them in. "Welcome, gentlemen," he said solemnly, "to the secret archives of the American Black Chamber." Until a few weeks before, none of the new recruits had had even the slightest idea what codebreaking was. Frank B. Rowlett stood next to a filing cabinet in full plumage: blue serge jacket, white pinstriped trousers, and a virgin pair of white suede shoes. Beefy and round-faced, with rimless glasses, he felt proud that he had luckily decided to wear his new wardrobe on this day. A high school teacher from rural southern Virginia, he received a degree in math the year earlier from Emory and Henry College, a small Virginia school. The two men standing near Rowlett were a vision of contrasts. Short, bespectacled Abraham Sinkov; Brooklynite Solomon Kullback, tall and husky. Both were high school teachers from New York, both were graduates of City College in New York, and both had received master's degrees from Columbia.