C05642694 g E0 13526 3 5 0 in Public Literature - 9 13526 The Secret Sen try The Untold History of the National Security Agency Matthew M 'Aid New York Bloomsbury Press 2009 309 pp plus acknowledgements glossary and foot- notes Paoveo FOR RELEASE 05-Jun-2012 Thomas R Jamison In 1982 James Bamford published The Puzzie Palace Billed as the rst com- - prehensive account of the history of the National Security Agency NSA it badly missed the mark in its facts and was unbalanced in its assessments But the book made Bamford a media star and The Puzzle Palace became the unchallenged de nitive book on NSA Whenever the subject is NSA Bamford is trotted out for TV interviews where he continues his ident criticism of the agency as if caught in the time warp of the 19705 There has never been a dISpassionate academic treatment of the subject until now that is Matthew Aid brings us a far more balanced account thoroughly researched and heavily footnoted 11' Bamford is the poison Aid is the antidote His name is almost eponymous Here is the full spectrum of modern American operations its failures and successes If you are looking for one book on NSA this is the one to invest The Make an mistake abom it Till is a good book Ali statements'oftact opinion or analysis evprened in this articie are those afthe audios Nothing In the article shouid be construed as asserting or implying US government endorsement ants factual stetemmcs and interns- tations - Studies in intelligence VOL 54 No 1 March 2010 c05642694 SE Book Review The best part of the book is'the first 150 pages Here Aid is on very solid ground relying on documents including my own four-volume history of NSA much of which was declassi ed before Secret Sonny went to press He recounts the various famous and infamous SIGINT incidents such as the attack on the Libel-gr during the 1967 Six-Day War the Pueblo incident in 1968 the Soviet Ewen of gaging- e and many others His description of SIGINT in Vietnam is the best section in the book partly because of the wealth of declassi ed material especially former NSA historian Bob Hanyok s declassi ed books and articles His conclusion that SIGINT even- tually became the best and almost the only -reliable intelligence in'the country is straight on According to Aid By 1967 dependence on SIGINT Was so high that an American intelligence officer vvho servedin Vietnam said they were 'getting SIGINT with their orange juice every morning and have now come to expect it everywhere 115 He also underlines the perils of reliance on a single source lost the art of playing one source against another and paid the price when the Tet offensive exploded without warning 3 Airborne radio direction nd- ing ARDF became the principal targeting tool in the war overwhelming other sources and US air strikes plowed up miles of Jungle sometimes to no effect based on ARDF fixes Field commanders never having been exposed to this sen- sitive source didn't know how to use it and frittered away countless opportuni- ties The United States came away from Vietnam Without a clear victory so the inability to properly use intelligence comes in for its rightful share of the blame Part of that bl comes down to overclassi cation and compartmentation as Aid-points outjm L The The book takes on an unnecessarily negative cast as if it is expected that any history of American intelligence will be a negative one Aid goes through count- less pages of SIGINT successes only to conclude with a negative note The over- all importance of SIGINT within the US intelligence community continued to decline in the 19705 particularly with regard to the 164 I I lLater when discussing SIGINT support to Operation Desert Storm he - I Aid commented thin many of them had come from interviews with former NSA of cers far above your pay grade I don't know how he found out what my pay smdewas 3 The lack are clear war-rung bell for Tet recalled a similar Incident in World War II when SIGINT did not have clearly predictive information at the Ardennes offensive of December 1944 and Intelligence officers were not digging for other sources intelligence Val 54 No 1 March 2010 Studies in Intelligence Vol 54 No 1 March 2010 71 3% - Book Review states that Iraq's Saddam Hussein caught the US intelligence community by surprise on'ce again Yet at the end of the paragraph he quotes Gen Lee Butler of Strategic Air Command as saying We had the warning from the intelligence community we refused to acknowledge it 192 So which will it be there was warning or there was no warning And yet again Since there have been so few success stories in American intelligence 168 This follows many pages of success stories unbroken by any mention of failures and regresents the age- old fallacy of presenting unsupported by fact 3 He describes the SIGINT breakthrough of the Vinh Window which been negligible permitted SA to predict and catalogue traffic on the Ho'Chi Minh Trail and thus to forecast North Vietnamese offensives Having said that he wrongly- 'states that-the Vinh Window had no effect In fact it had an enormous effect on strategic war-p Enough the effect on tactical operations might have Hi's discussion about the Tonkin Gulf crisis of 1964 is off the mark as are all other similar accounts At least he understands as few others do that President Johnson and Secretary McNamara truly belieyed that US vessels had been attacked in the gulf and having already warned the North Vietnamese that there would be consequences felt it necessary to deliver'a blow The administra- tion was hasty sitting back and waiting for NSA to' analyze the databefore loos- ing the ghter bombers on Hanoi would have been the prudent course But the atmosphere of the time dictated haste and the need for speed almost predeter- mined the outcome It was a consequence of constructing a SIGINT system that Id ended on speed first and accuracy later That was where the real failure lay And the Ugly The book is skewed toward recent events a consequence Aid claims-of his editors wanting something topical something that would sell The draft was chopped from 600 pages to 300 and theperiod after the fall of the Soviet Union occupies an inordinate amount of space Further there are few declassified sources for this portion of the hook and 1615 based almost entirely on newspaper accounts which are in turn based on con dential interviews Many if the inter views are biased and the last third of the' book is badly out-of balance Informa- tion c'annot be sourced and reliability is often suSpect 'The best parts of the book are in the earlier chapters The later portions are more Journalism than scholar- sh'ip - A'classic failure in this area is'his assessment of SIGINT during Operations Desert Shield and Desert Sto he states that and not _E mail to the author from AldEl 005642694 SE Book Re I I 72 9 5%er perform particularly well 195 This assessment appears to have been deduced from con dential interviews from various mostly military sources at various command levels each with a special pleading or an ax to grind The longer range assessment has yet to be made Emmet be made based on the information available in open sources today This is the rst scholarly treatment of the history of NSA and 94 pages or one-fourth of the book are footnotes So if you want a pedigree that is one way to look at its value He also has an index There a bibliography but none is needed owing to the very detailed footnoting i Aid is a former 'Air Force Ithe story is I Will the public read this Will Aid become a media star Will people come to accept his account It is the fate of scholars to communicate principally with other scholars and they rarely break into the realm of the media Barbara Tuch- man Stephen ME and Arthur Schlesinger r are three who did We'll see if well structuredl I Aid Joins the listl 09 Studies in intelligence Vol 54 No 1 March 2010 This document is from the holdings of The National Security Archive Suite 701 Gelman Library The George Washington University 2130 H Street NW Washington D C 20037 Phone 202 994-7000 Fax 202 994-7005 nsarchiv@gwu edu