WHY UNCLE SAM'S EARS ARE BURNING

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000807500035-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 24, 2012
• Sequence Number: 35
• Publication Date: October 3, 1982
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sl Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/24: CIA-RDP90-00965R000807500035-7
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Why Uncle Sam's Fars Are tsurmng
THE PUZZLE PALACE: A Report on America's Most
Secret Agency; By James Bamford. Houghton Mifflin.
465 pp. $16.95 -
By DAVID WISE
I T MAY COME as a sfiock, but the National Security
Agency has even been listening in on the pay phones at,
Grand Central Station. "Hello, honey? Yeah, I'm sorry it
got.so late, but I missed the 5:42, and I went into the Oyster
Bar to have a martini, and then ..." .
One can easily imagine conversations like these clacking:,
out in six-ply, multicolored paper on those crypto machines i
in the basement at Fort Meade, Maryland, being rushed to I
DAVID WISE often writes about intelligence. His most re-
cent bookis Spectrum, aspy novel:':'.: .
the analysts in W Group, run through Cray-1, NSA's mon-
ster computer, and carefully studied for hidden meanings
Have the Russians invented a new code? Should the presi-
dent be informed through the CRITICOM network? Or is it
just another hapless commuter in.trouble with his wife?
Of course, he might not be safe from eavesdropping even
inside the Oyster Bar. A few years ago, it was revealed at a
congressional hearing that government agents could bug the
olive in a martini, hiding a tiny transmitter where the pi-
mento should be. Just don't bite down too hard.
The news about Grand Central is only one small nugget
buried in the gold mine that James Bamford's astonishing
book on what is correctly subtitled "America's most secret
agency." It is also a frightening book, because as Bamford
points out, the biggest of America's secret intelligence agen-
ciec--with the technology to intrude not only into the pay
phone, but the bedroom, the boardroom, and any Place it
wants to listen-was not even created by law. It was born,
swaddled in secrecy, by an executive order signed by Presi-
dent Truman in 1952 that itself remains top secret three de-
cades later.
There has always been a certain ostrich-like, head-in-the-
sand quality to NSA's cult of secrecy. Anyone who has read
the newspapers, or books, or watched television
since Harry Truman signed that order is cer-
tainly aware that NSA makes U.S. codes and
breaks the codes of foe and friend, vacuuming
electronic signals out of the ether with its over- -
head satellites, and its dish antennae at listening
posts girdling the globe. And most folks who
drive along the Baltimore-Washington Parkway
have probably noticed the signs for Fort George
Gordon Meade, where NSA has been headquar-
tered since the late 1950s. Yet the mere mention
of the words COMINT (communications intelli-
gence) or SIGINT (signals intelligence), the twin
grist of NSA's mill, sends normally talkative
government officials into a kind of prayerful,
mystical silence. NSA, which some say stands
for No Such Agency, successfully preserved its
aura of secrecy.
Until now. There is a marvelous scene in one
of the late Peter Sellers' Pink Panther movies in
which Sellers, as the bumbling Inspector Clou-
seau, inadvertently demolishes a magnificent-
Steinway. "But that's a priceless piano," some-1
one protests.
"Nut eny more," Sellers intones in his mock-
Gallic accent
So it is with NSA's secrecy now that James
Bamford, a lawyer turned investigative reporter
and writer, has given us The Puzzle Palace.
NSA will never be the same.
Unlike Peter Sellers, Bamford has not de-
stroyed the grand piano. He has merely shined
his brilliant spotlight into. some murky, neg-
lected corners of our government. His critics
will charge.that in the process be has harmed
U.S. security, it can be safely assumed that
self-appointed patriots will denounce Bam-
ford's daring book. But the Soviets (not to
mention our allies, whose communications
NSA also intercepts) are well aware that the
United States is listening. So are they. Only
the American public, which pays for NSA with
its taxes, has been kept in the dark.
NSA is a vital agency, but it cannot expect
to operate in total, monastic secrecy in a
democracy. Nor should it-a point that re-
quires emphasis, because,'in the past, at least,
NSA has turned its big ear inward and vio-
lated the constitutional rights of Americans.
The Puzzle Palace was a book waiting to be
written. In 1964, Thomas B. Ross and I in-
cluded a chapter on NSA in our book, The In-
visible Government. Three years later, David
Kahn, in his comprehensive work, The Code-
breakers, provided the first 'detailed account
In the congressional and other investigations
that followed Seymour M. Hersh's 1974 reve-
lations of CIA domestic spying, NSA officials
for the first time had to testify in public, and
the agency came under increased scrutiny. The
Senate Intelligence Committee under Frank
Church revealed that NSA, with the coopera-
tion of three cable companies, had been read-
ing international cable traffic in and out of the
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/24: CIA-RDP90-00965R000807500035-7