C05642694 seeaes DECLASSIFIED UNDER AUTHORITY OF THE INTERAGENCY SECURITY CLASSIFICATION APPEALS PANEL no 13526 SECTION seams ISCAP APPEAL NO 2013-114 document no 1 DECLASSIFICATION DATE uly 8 2015 Intelligence in Public Literature The Secret Sentry The were History of the National Security Agency Matthew M Aid New Press 2099 309 pp plus acknowledgements glossary and foot- notes I Thomas R Johnson In 1982 James Bami'ord published 77w Puzzle Palace Billed as the rst com - prehensive account of the history of the National Security Agency NBA 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 strident criticism of the agency as if caught in the time warp of the 19705 IE 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 IfBami'ord 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 in - The Make no mistake about it This is a good book In fact it is too good Matthew - Aid has dug 'up some astoundingly sensitive facts some of which are among the deepest secrets in the cupboard And they did not all come from his- assiduous gleaning of documents obtamed through the Freedom of Information Act Some of his most breathtaking revelations come from con dential inter- views 13 0 13526 section 1 4 c This was arguably the most devastating counterinteliigence disaster of the entire - Cold War and it has never before come to the attention of the American public - no 13526 section 1 4 c All state an effect opmlop or analysis expressed in this article are those arch author Nothing in the article should be moved as asserting or hurrying USgovmimmr endarsunmt oflts factual stat-elvean sodium-pre- muons Studios in intelligence Vol 54 No 1 March 20in WI 9 59 Withheld under-statutory authority of the Central Intelligence Agency Act of 1949 50 U S C section 403g 005642694 Bo 01 Review E 0 13526 section 1 4m ISome of these revelations come from media accounts at the time others come from more con dential interviews - 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 Sea-er Seh ywent to press He recounts the various famous and-infamous SIGINT Incidents such as the attale on the Uberty during the 1967 Six-Day War the Pueblo incident in 1968 the Soviet invasion of Czechosla and many others His descriptions are accurate and well documented His description of SIGINT in Vietnam is the best section in the book partly because of the wealth of declassified material especially former NSA historian Bob Hanyok's declassi ed books and articles His conclusion that 8101th even- tually became the best and ahnost 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 of cer who served in Vietnam said they were 'getting SIGINT with their orange Juice ever 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 interning I Airborne radio direction lind 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 or its rightful share of the blame Part of that blame comes down to and compartmentation as Aid'points out 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 E 0 13526 section 1 40 Later when dismissing SIGINT su port to Operation Desert Storm he II I section 1 4m I 7 I When 1 expressed amazement at the revelations in the book Aid conunented that many of them had come from interviews with runner NSA of cers i'ar above your pay grade l'don't know how he found out what my pay grade was 3 The lack oi'a clear wanting bell for Tet recalled a incident in World War II when SIGINT did-not have clearly predictivo information about the Ardennes offensive of December 1944 and intelligence officers were not digging for other sods-cos - ah I Studiosln intelligence Vol serve-1mm 2010 Withheld under statutory authority of the Central Intelligence Agency Act of 1949 50 U S C section 403g c05642694 Withheld under statutory authority of the - 8EeRE'l'-l - Central Intelligence Agency Act of 1949 50 I Book Review U S C section 403g states that Iraq's Saddam Hussein caught the US intelligence community by surprisa once 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 re resents the age- old fallacy of presenting concluslohs unsupported by fact Errors of fact and interpretation inevitably creep into a book like this He states that the pilot who shot down did not know that he was shooting down a commercial airliner In fact the pilot did know as NSA learned through intercepts He describes the SIGINT breakthrough of the Window which permitted'NSA to predict and catalogue traffic on the Minh Trail and thus to forecast North VletnameSe offensives Having said that he wrongly 'states that-the Vinh Window had no effect In fact it had an enormous'effect pn strategic war-plannin although the effect on tactical operations might have boon negligible - His discussion about the Tonltin Gulf crisis of 1964 is off the mark 'as are all other similar accounts fit least he understands as few others do that President ohnson and Secretary McNamara truly believed 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 data before loos- ing the fighter 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 ld eylziended on speed rst and accuracy-later That was where the real failure lay And the Ugly The book is skewed toward recent events a conseduence Aid claims - of his editors wanting something topical something that would sell The draft was chopped from 600 pages to 300 and thevperiod after the fall of the Soviet Union occupies an inordinate amount of space l- g urtherI there are few declassi ed sources for this portion of the book and this based almost entirely on newspaper accounts which are in turn based on confidential interviews Many if the inter- views are biased and the last third ofthe' book is badly out-of balance Infome- tion cannot be sourced and reliability is often best parts of the book are in e earlier chapters The later portions are more journalism thai'i cholar- sh ipA'classl'c failure in this area is- his assessment of SIGINT diiring Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm After documentingsome'df'the considerable suc I ceases of the system he states that an'd not E-maii to the author from Nil - Studies in intelligence Voi 54 No 1 idarch 2010 seesaw 1 71 Withheld under statutory authority of the Central Intelligence Agency Act ot -1949 50 U S C section 403g -c05642 94 Withheld under statutory authority of the Central Intelligence Agency Act of 1949 50 Ll- Be at Review -U S C section 403 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 longerrange assessment has yet to be made and cannot be made based on the information available in open sources todayThis is the rst scholarly treatment of the history of NBA 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 is no bibliography but none' is needed owing to the veiydetailed footnoting Aid is a former 'Air Force and his insights and tactile sense for what is true and what is not come partly from his SIGINT experience He had no clas- si ed sources but with his background he read between lines and came to some remarkably accurate conclusions This also contributed to the book's balance Despite occasionally srraylng into un rranted negative conclusions the storyis well structured and mostly reliable - 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 Anj brose and Arthur Schlesinger Jr are three who did We'll see if Aldjoins the listIntelligence Vol 54 No Mart 2010 Withheld under statutory authority of the Centr'al Intelligence Agency Act of 1949 50 use section 403g 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