James Bamford - Body of Secrets

Table of Contents

To Mary Ann
And to my father, Vincent
And in memory of my mother, Katherine

ACCLAIM FOR JAMES BAMFORDS

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 worlds nosiest and most secret body.... This revised edition will fascinate anyone interested in the shadow war.

The Economist

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My most sincere thanks to the many people who helped bring Body of Secrets to life. Lieutenant General Michael V. Hayden, NSAs director, had the courage to open the agencys 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 NSAs National Cryptologic Museum provided endless help in researching the agencys 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 Lockwood, Richard McCarthy, Don McClarren, Stuart Russell, Richard E. 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 Bodyof 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.

In God we trust, all others we monitor.

Intercept operators 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
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

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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 of his adult life studying, practicing, defining the black art of codebreaking. 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, a 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.