A LACK OF INTELLIGENCE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP84-00499R000100070001-8
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 24
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 17, 2005
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: August 20, 1972
• Content Type: NSPR

Approved W Releaser
A l4ek~f
intelligence
. By Donald R. Morris
Past News Analyst
The August Issue of R.arriparts maga-
zine - a periodical much given to at-
tacks on the intelligence community -
features an article entitled 11.8. Espion-
age: A Memoir," attributed to "Winslow
Peck."
The article claims that the National
Security Agency (NSA) has broken. ev-
ery Soviet code, and can pinpoint the lo-
cation and type of each Soviet jet and
missile submarine. It also claims the
United States is still making routine
U-2-type surveillance flights over the So-
viet Union and China.
Foil lagniappe, the author describes
how in 1967 the NSA monitored a live
TV tontact between Soviet Premier
Alexei Kosygin and Cosmonaut Viadi-
mdr Komarov, who. had just been in.
formed his braking chutes were mal-
functioning and who was facing certain
death.
"Peck" also claims that the electronic
surveillance ship Liberty, on which 74
crewmen died in an Israeli attack dur-
ing the Six-Day War in 1967, overheard
Gen. Moshe Dayan order his troops on
to Cairo and Damascus, as a result of
which then President Lyndon B. Johnson
brought intense pressure on Israel to
halt further troop movements, and on
Premier Itosygin to call off a threatened
Soviet airborne operation against Israel.
"Peck" turns out to be one Perry Fel-
Iwock, who enlisted in the Air Force in
1966 at tho.age, of 20, was assigned to
NSA for duty, served in NSA stations In
Turkey and- Indochina, and was dLs-
charged in. November, 1969 - age 23,
Ramparts claims he was a "senior
analyst," with NSA.
Feliwock claims he then turned down
a $10,000-a-year . job with the. CIA, be-
cause he wanted to "work to end the
Vietnam war." In- April, 1972, he was
arrested and. fined $5tt ta- disturbing the
peace In San Diego before the Republi-
ean party headquarters and the 11th
Naval District headquarters.
- I nainterview with the New York,
Times, Fell*ock said, "I know the FBI
knows who I am. I'd like to avoid pub-
licity but I'm willing' to go tk&ough trial,
.,and if I have t o ,to jail,"
?RDP84-00*R000100070001-8
FellwocIC and- the- Ramparts editorial
board can sleep quietly. Neither the FBI
`'nor anyone -else is liable to bother him,
NSA's "no comment" to the story does
not conceal- Official agitation but only
yawning boredom.,
,.To begin with, while NSA' does employ
multitudes of Air Force enlisted .men in
a variety of clerical and technical ca-
pacitles, it does not use such youthful
detailees with high school educations as
"analysts," s nlor or otherwise.
Ramparts could, have acquired a far
more detailed and accurate account of
the structure and activities of NSA from
an overtly published book, David Kahn's
superb "The Codebreakers," than they
got from their ego-tripping source.. His
corridor gossip is flattering, but ludi-
crously inaccurate.
Items: NSA is the seat of the major
cryptanalytic effort of the U.S. govern-
ment. It regularly reads that?portions of
the traffic of 'foreign nations which is
sent In a wide variety of low-level crypto
systems, designed only to provide pro-
tection for, a short period of time. It
does not,. alas, read the key internal
traffic of major ' powers, which these
days is sent in crypto systems using
computer-generated keys, which are Im-
pervious to attack.
There have been no U-2-type over-
flights since the early 60s, when the sat-
ellite reconnaissance programs were de-
veloped. The unmanned SAMOS capsule
houses equipment so sophisticated that
the' photographic and electronic take is
infinitely superior to that which a con-
ventional-overflight could produce. (The
T?nitert `rates does semi planes and shi')s
Approved For Release 2005/07/01 : CIA-RDP84-00499R000100070001-8
 THE NATIONAL OBSERVER
Approved Foelease 2005/dP'?IPWDP84-004900100070001-8
Former S~curit r ' 1 c .
Conscience Forced
Him to Break Oath,
Es-Sergeant Says
In Magazine Interview
Shills a ple S.Secrets
missiles, and ships at any time. Intelli-
gence-establishment authorities, however,
privately conceded that Fellwocl 's de-
scription of NSA's efforts was accurate.
The Pentagon confirmed that lie had been
stationed in Turkey, Europe, and South-
east Asia during the three years he
served as an analyst for the NSA. He
was released from active duty on Oct.
29, 1969.
Arrest Revealed
By. John Peterson
FROM BERKELEY, CALIF.
Perry Fellwock is a shy, sensitive,
troubled 26-year-old from Joplin, Mo.
When he submitted to the magazine in-
terview, he thought it should appear un-
der another name--Winslow Peck-a
name he had frequently used in his an-
tiwar activities. "I wanted to protect
friends and relatives, whom I care for
very much... . I did not want them to
become victims of the publicity I knew
my actions would inevitably invite."
Brit Perry Fellwock's cover didn't last
long.
it was stripped away by the furor
that followed last week's Ramparts mag-
azine question - and - answer interview
with the former intelligence analyst for
the National Security Agency (NSA), the
Defense Department's secret electronic-
spying organization. The interview lift-
ed the curtain a bit from the NSA's secret
operations. Of the former sergeant's de-
cision to tell some of what he knows about
NSA's operations, he says; "It has been
Fellwock revealed his identity last
week after a reporter learned that he
had been arrested in San Diego during
an antiwar demonstration and that the
district attorney there knew Fellwock and
Peck were the same man. Iie's short, be-
spectacled, reserved, and doesn't seem
geared toward taking on the secret NSA,
a huge organization . headquartered at
Ft. Meade, Md., between Baltimore and
Vashington, D.C. It employs about 100,-
000 persons and spends nearly $1 billion
ani,ually.
At a press conference at the Ramparts
office here, Fellwock said that "after the
magazine was published I just wanted
to become a private person again. But
reporters were camping on my doorstep,
and I didn't want people to think Win-
slow Peck was hiding. It has been the
most unnerving experience I've ever been
through.". i
In the Ramparts article Fellwock told
why lie decided to break the oath that
lie took when he left NSA; like other NSA
.employes, he pledged he would not di-
vulge any classified information. "I
vicerl my work at first. It'was very excit-
l
o
y
n
ems
oped re-entry pro
'lAmc.riea's Aggression' mast, Africa;' knowing all tine secrets. It
t from orbit. They couldn't get the chute
Fellwock contends that the NSA has was my whole life . , .But then I wen
broken the diplomatic and military codes to [Viet] Nam, and it wasn't a big game that slowed his, craft down in re-entry to
of all major foreign powers, and he we were playing with the Soviets any- work. They knew what the problem was
charges that his disclosures, like those of more. It was killing people. My last for about two hours before lie died and
the Pentagon Papers, reveal that the three months in Nam were very trau- were fighting to correct it. it was all in
United States has deceived the public. matie. I couldn't go on, but I wasn't able Russian, of course, but we taped it and
Says Fellwock: to just.quit. . So I faked it. ... In a listened to it a couple of times afterward.
"The American military has used the way, the war destroyed me. Kosygin called him personally. They had
myth of foreign aggression--the so-called a video-phone conversation. Kosygin was
'missile gaps' and other phrases such'as 'I'm Two People' crying. He told him he was a hero and
the Cold War-to get funds, armaments, 11 I haven't digested it all; even that lie had made the greatest achieve-
and bodies for what is in reality America's though I've been out almost three years ment in Russian history, that they were
aggression towards the people of other now, I still feel as though I'm two people proud and he'd be remembered. The
lands." .-the one who did all the things I've laid guy's wife got on too. They talked for
The Ramparts interview also contains out and another, different person who awhile. Ile told
oldat her to do how with to handle their kids some startling accounts: that the NSA's can't quit(. understand why. But. even be- affairs, and what. Towards the
th last few
electronic eavesdropping allowed the ing against the war, it's taken a long was pretty
doles he begt an fallingU vpearttgot , s tyyin g,
United States to keep the Six-Day Arab- time for me to want to say these things. minut
Israeli War from becoming a full-blown I couldn't have done it nine I oaths ago,
conflict involving the great powers, and not even three months ago. Daniel Ells- something.' Then there was just a' scream
that the U.S. listened in while a tearful berg's releasing the. Pentagon Papers as he died.'. . .
It's a burden; in
lk
t
.
a
Russian Premier Aleksei Kosygin bid fare-' made me want to
well to a cosmonaut who was facing death a way I just want to get rid of it. I don't
after his space craft's braking parachutes want to get sentimental or corny about
failed. it,' but I've made some friends who love
Officials in Washington publicly de- the Indochinese People, This is my way of
clined comment on the article but pri- loving them too."
vately denied that the United States had Fellwock says Ramparts' reputation
broken the most sophisticated codes of' as ,a fearless, muckraking magazine
- )romnted him to consult the editors. "We
S
1
the implications of the article," says Pe-
ter Collier, one of the top half-dozen edi-
tors. "We talked at great length with Nel-
son and Boudin (Charles Nesson and
Leonard Boudin, the Fllsberg case de-
fense lawyers) In Los Angeles. It is the
kind of article we feel obligated to pub-
lish and we are proud pf it, sure of its
authenticity. We'd like 'it to prompt a
congressional investigation into the NSA.
We had hoped to publish just when Mr.
Nixon was in Russia, but we couldn't get
it checked out in time."
Collier concedes that Ramparts need-
ed the exposure now. "We've had a short
but glorious history, and we had gotten a
little off the track in the late 1960s--this
puts us back where we want to be," he
says. The magazine had been a Catholic
quarterly until 1963 when Warren Kin-
ckle became editor. By 1905 it was a
monthly muckraker: In 1.967 it ran arti-
cles exposing the Central Intelligence
Agency's (CIA) infiltration of domestic
and international student organizations.
Death of a Cosmonant
In Ramparts' latest effort, Fellwock
provides gripping details of events he says
he observed or learned of while working
as an analyst with NSA. For example;
says Fellwock:
"We knew everything that went on in
their [Soviet] Cosmos program. For in-
stance, before I had gotten to Turkey,
one of their rockets had exploded on the
launching pad and two of their cosmo-
nauts were killed. One died while I was
there too. It was Soyuz 1, I believe. He
[cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov] devel-
back
his wa
o
bl
continu,;i
~,w s
F
the for n powers ~1 teat tli N
rrc f1rC_capable of locatinb` ~ 1S~1 . A`r 6gf,~a!%pe2U~.5rlrQ / lanCIA1klDPO4`604 ~U0100070001-8
 Approved For Ruse 2005/07/01 : CIA-RDP84-00499R100070001-8
The Liberty's Mission work says that the CIA and several pri-
Fellwock said in Ramparts that he had vate companies offered him jobs when he
written an intelligence analysis of the left the agency. The CIA offered him a
Israeli and Russian build-ups preceding $10,000 bonus. The shy young man, who
the six-day war between Israel and Arab seems quite self-consc.cus about the up-
states in 1967. He says the United States roar he his caused, says that he has de-
sent the intelligence ship Liberty in close cided instead to work to end the war in
to Israel because it didn't know what was Vietnam. "I just want to become one
happening and what Israel's intentions more of the anonymous millions fighting
were as Israel's armies were advancing
into Syria and Egypt. "What it found alit, for-peace, fighting to make our Govern-
among other things, was that [Israeli ment stop the bombing." He refused to
Gen. Moshe] Dayan's intentions were to say what he plans to do next, but a
push on to Damascus and Cairo. The friend of his in San Diego says that a7 eli-
streets of
Israelis shot at the Liberty, damaged it wock's next stop will be the Miami Beach during the Republican Na-
pretty badly and killed some of the crew, tional Convention.
and told it to stay away. After this it got
very tense. It became pretty clear the
white House had gotten caught with its
pants down."
Russian airborne troops were then be-
ing loaded into aircraft in Bulgaria, Fell-
wock contends, and had even taken off
for a drop into Israel. "At this point it
became pretty clear that we were ap-
proaching a situation where World War
III could get touched off at any time.
[President] Johnson got on the hot line
and told them [tile. Russians] that we
were headed for a conflict if they didn't
turn these planes around. They did."
Fellwock says the United States also con-
vinced Israel to stop short of Damascus
and Cairo.
:Monitoring the World
He says that the NSA monitors the
electronic messages of all- governments.
The 2,000 NSA stations around the world
intercept and decode practically every
message transmitted, he says. The - pic-
ture Felly: ock draws shows NSA stations
rin:,,ing Russia, analyzing its air defenses
when U.S. planes fly close enough to
cause Russian fighters to scramble as a
defensive measure. Indeed, he contends
the NSA knows where all Russian air-
craft, missiles, and ships are at any
time. "My experiences convinced me that
even nations like the Soviet Union were
not the danger I had always been led to
believe they were," he says, charging
that it's a clear policy of the Govern-
ment to overdraw the Russian menace.
Ile spent his last 13 months with the
NSA flying missions over Indochina, at-
tempting to pinpoint North Vietnamese
and Viet Cong troops and supplies. Fell-
ed the exposure now. "We've had a short
but glorious history, and we had gotten a
little off the track in the late 19G0s-this
puts us back where we want to be," he
says. The magazine had'been a Catholic
quarterly until 1963 when Warren Hin-
ckle became editor. By 1065 it was a
monthly muckraker: In 1967 it ran arti-
cles exposing; the Central Intelligence
Agency's (CIA) infiltration of domestic
anti international student orf aniza.tions.
Approved For Release 2005/07/01 : CIA-RDP84-00499R000100070001-8
 RAMPARTS
Approved For lease 2005/07/01 : CtA-RDP84-004991W0100070001-8
AUG 1972
mc
Oil
BOUT THIRTY MILE'S NORTHEAST Of CIA head-
quarters in Langley, Virginia, right off the
"' I3altirnorc-Washington expressway overlooking
the flat Maryland countryside, stands a large
three story building known informally as the "cookie fac-
tory." It's officially known as Ft. George G. Meade, head-
quarters of the National Security Agency.
Three fences surround the headquarters. The inner
and outer barriers are topped with barbed wire, the middle
one is a five-strand electrified wire. Four gatehouses span-
ning the complex at regular intervals house specially-
.trained marine guards. Those allowed access all wear irri-
descent I. D. badges - green for "top secret crypto," red
for "secret crypto." Even the janitors are cleared for secret
codeword material. Once inside, you enter the world's
longest "corridor"-980 feet long by 560 feet wide. And
all along the corridor are more marine guards, protecting
HS/HC- T
the doors of key NSA offices. At 1,400,000 square
feet, it is larger than CIA headquarters, 1,135,000
square feet. Only the State Department and the Pentagon
and the new headquarters planned for the FBI are more
spacious. But the DIRNSA. building (Director, National
Security Agency) can be further distinguished from the
headquarters buildings of these other giant bureaucracies
-it has no windows. Another palace of paranoia? No.
For DIRNSA is the command center for ,the largest, most
sensitive and far-flung intelligence gathering apparatus in
the world's history. Here, and in the nine-story Opera-
tions Building Annex, upwards of 15,000 employees work
to break the military, diplomatic and commercial codes
of every nation in the world, analyze the de-Crypted mes-
sages, and send on the results to the rest of the U.S. in-
telligence community.
Far less widely known than the CIA, whose Director
Approved For Release 2005/07/01 : CIA-RDP84-00499R000100070001-8
COntfnod
 Approved Forft elease 2005/07/01': CIA-RDP84-00499 000100070001-8
ASviantiane
/ ~ Naknon
V Phdnofn
CAS-Bangkok
Richard helms wilt occasionally grant public interviews.
NSA silently provides an estimated 80 percent of all valid
U.S. intelligence. So secret. so sensitive is the NSA mission
and so highly indoctrinated are its,personnel. that the
Agency, twenty years after its creation. remains virtually
unknown to those employees outside the intelligence com-
munity. The few times its men have been involved in
international incidents. NSA's name has been kept out of
the papers.
Nevertheless. the first American killed in Vietnam. near
what became the main NSA base at Phu Bai. was an NSA
operative. And the fact that Phu Bai remains the most
heavily guarded of all U.S. bases suggests that an NSA
man may well be the last.
shrouded in secrecy since the inception of the
Agency. Only the haziest outlines have been
J- L known, and then only on the basis of surmise.
However, Ramparts was recently able to conduct a series
of lengthy interviews with a former NSA analyst willing
to talk about his experiences. He worked for the Agency
for three and a. half years-in the cold war of Europe and
the hot one in Southeast Asia. 'The story he tells of NSA's
structure and history is not the whole story, but it is a
significant and often chilling portion of it.
Our informant served as a senior NSA analyst in the
Istanbul listening post for over two years. He was a par-
ticipant in the deadly international fencing match that
goes on daily with the Soviet Union. plotting their air
and ground forces and penetrating their defenses. He
watched the Six Day War unfold and learned of the
intentions of the major powers-Israel, the Soviet Union,
the United States. t=rance, Egypt-by reading their military
.and diplomatic radio traffic, all of it duly intercepted,
dc-coded and translated by NSA on the spot. As an ex-
pert on NSA missions- directed against the Soviet Union
and the so-called "Forward Countries"-I3ulgaria, Hung-
ary. Czechoslovakia. East Germany. Rumania and Yugo-
slavia--he briefed such visiting dignitaries as'Vice ]'resident
Iluntphrey. In Indochina he was a senior analyst, military
consultant and U.S. Air force intelligence operations di-
rector for North Vietnam. Laos, the northern-most prov-
inces of South Vietnam and China. Ile is a veteran of over
one hundred Airborne Radio Direction Finding. missions in
Indochina---making him thoroughly familiar with the "ene-
my"' military structure and its order of battle.
With the benefit of the testimony he provides, we call see
that the rcason'for the relative obscurity of NSA has less to
do with its importance within the intelligence community
than with the limits of its mission and the way it gets its
results. Unlike the CIA, whose basic functions are clearly
outlined in the 1947 law that created it. NSA, created in
1952. simply gathers intelligence. It does not formulate
policy or carry out operations. Most of the people working
for NSA are not "agents," but ordinary servicemen at-
tached to one of three semi-autonomous military crypto-
logic agencies-the Air Force Security Service, the largest;
the Naval Security Group; and the Army Security Agency,
the oldest. But while it is true that the Agency runs no
spies as in the popular myth. its systematic Signal Intel-
ligence intercept mission is clearly prohibited by the Ge-
neva Code. What we are dealing with is a highly bureau-
cratized, highly technological intelligence mission whose
breadth and technological sophistication appear remarkable
Approved For Release 2005/07/01 : CIA-RDP84-00499R000100070001-8 ~v==~=i ucsd
 Approved
For lease 2005/07/01 : CIA-RDP84-00499WM0100070001-8
even in an age of imperial responsibilities and electronic
wizardry.
So that not a sparrow or a government falls without
NSA's instantaneous kriowledge, over two thousand Agen-
cy field stations dot the five continents and the seven seas.
In Vietnam, NSA's airborne flying platforms carrying out
top secret Radio Direction Finding missions, supply U.S.
commanders with their most reliable information on the
location of communist radio transmitters--and thus on the
location of NLF units themselves. Other methods-the use
of sensors and seismic detectors-either don't work or are
used merely to supplement NSA's results. But the Agency's
tactical mission in Indochina-intelligence support for U.S.
commanders in the field-however vital to the U.S. war
effort, is subsidiary in terms of men, time and material
to its main strategic mission.
The following interview tells us a great deal about both
sides of the NSA mission-everything from how Agency
people feel about themselves and the communist "enemy"
to. the NSA electronic breakthroughs that threaten the
Soviet-American balance of terror. We learn for ex-
ample that NSA knows the call signs of every Soviet air-
plane, the numbers on the side of each plane, the name
of the pilot in command; the precise longitude and lati-
tude of every nuclear submarine; the whereabouts of
nearly every Soviet VIP; the location of every Soviet
missile base; every army division, battalion and company-
its weaponry, commander and deployment. Routinely the
NSA monitors all Soviet military, diplomatic and commer-
cial radio traffic, including Soviet Air Defense, Tactical
Air, and KGB forces. (It was the NSA that found Che
Guevara in Boliva through radio communications inter-
cept and analysis. ) NSA cryptologic experts seek to break
every Soviet code and do so with remarkable success,
Soviet scrambler and computer-generated signals being
nearly as vulnerable as ordinary voice and manual morse
radio transmissions. Interception of Soviet radar signals
enables the NSA to gauge quite precisely the effectiveness
of Soviet Air Defense units. Methods have even been de-
vised to "fingerprint" every human voice used in radio
transmissions and distinguish them from the voice of every
other operator. The Agency's Electronic Intelligence Teams
(ELINT) are capable of intercepting any electronic signal
transmitted anywhere in the world and, from an analysis of
the intercepted signal, identify the transmitter and physi-
cally reconstruct it. Finally, after having shown the size
and sensitivity of the Agency's big cars, it is almost super-
fluous to point out that NSA monitor, and records every
trans-Atlantic telephone call.
Somehow, it is understandable, given the size of the
stakes in the Cold War, that an agency like NSA would
monitor U.S. citizens' trans-Atlantic phone calls. And we
are hardly surprised that the U.S. violates the Geneva
Code to intercept communist radio transmissions. What
is surprising is that the U.S. systematically violates a treaty
of its own 'making, the UKUSA Agreements of 1947.
Under this treaty, the U.S., Canada, the United. Kingdom
and Australia erected a white-anglo-saxon-protestant na-
tion communications intelligence dictatorship over the
"Free World," The agreement distinguishes between three
categories of intelligence consumers: First, Second, and
Third Party consumers. The First Party is the U.S. intelli-
gence community. The Second Party refers to the other
white anglo-saxon nations' communications intelligence
agencies: e.g. Great Britain's GCIIQ, Canada's C1.3NRC,
etc: 'T'hese agencies exchange information routinely. Non-
WASP nations, the so-called Third Party nations, are
placed on short intelligence rations. This category in-
cludes all our NATO allies-West Germany, France, Italy,
as well as South Vietnam, Japan, Thailand and the non-
WASP allies in SEATO. But the idea of a closed club of
gentlemanly white men gets quickly dispelled when we
learn that the U.S. even intercepts the radio conumtntica-
lions of its Second Party UKUSA "allies." From the U.S.
military base at Chicksands, for example, and from the
U.S. Embassy in London, NSA operatives busily intercept
and transcribe British diplomatic traffic and send
for further analysis to DIRNSA.
E FEEL TItAT THr_ INFORMATION in this inter-
view-while perhaps not,of a "sensitive" na-
ture-is of critical importance to America for
the light it casts on the cold war and the
anti-coruntunist myths that perpetuate it. These myths about
the aggressive intentions of the- Soviet Union and China
and about North Vietnam's "invasion of a democratic
South Vietnam." can only be sustained by keeping the
American people as ignorant as possible about the actual
nature of these regimes and the great power relation-
ships that exist in the world. The peace of the world, we
are told, revolves shakily on a "balance of terror" between
the armed might of the Soviet Union and the United States.
So tenuous is this balance that if the U.S. were to let down
its guard ever so slightly, if it were, for example, to re-,
duce the ever-escalating billions allocated for "defense,"
we would immediately face the threat of destruction from
the aggressive Soviets, who are relentless in their pursuit
of military superiority.. Our informant's testimony, based
on years of dealing with hard information about the Soviet
military and its highly defense-oriented deployment, is a
powerful and authoritative rebuttal to this mythology.
But perhaps an even more compelling reason requires
that this story be told. As we write,, the devastating
stepped-up bombing of North Vietnam continues. No one
can say with certainty what the ultimate consequences
of this desperate act are likely to be. Millions of Anieri-
cans, perhaps a majority, deplore this escalation. But it
would be a mistake to ignore the other millions, those who
have grown up in fear of an entity known as "world com-
munism." For them Nixon's latest measures have a clear
rationale and a plausible purpose. It is precisely this
political rationale and this strategic purpose that the
testimony of our informant destroys.
We are told by Nixon that South Vietnam has been "in-
vaded" by the North which is trying to impose its will on
the people of the South. This latest version of why we
continue to fight in Indochina-the first version stressed the
threat of China which allegedly controlled .1-Ianoi. even as
Moscow at one time was thought to control Peking-em-
phasizes Hanoi's control over the NLF. Our evidence
shows that the intelligence Collin) Lill ity, including NSA, has
long determined that the NI.,F and the DRV are autono-
mous, independent entities. Even in Military Region I. the
northern-most province of South Vietnam', and the key
Approved For Release 2005/07/01 : CIA-RDP84-00499R000100070001-8 continued
 Approved Fo elease 2005/07/01 : CIA-RDP84-00499 000100070001-8
Cryptanalytic
& Translation
Section
Asst. Secretary
of Defense/Deputy
Director DR&E
region in the "North Vietnamese" offensive, the command
center' has always been located not in Hanoi, but some-
where in the la I)rang valley. This command center, the
originating point for all military operations in the re(lion,
is politically and militarily under the control of the PRG.
Known as Military Region Tri Ten Hue (MtRTTH), it
inteeerates both I)RV and NLF units under its command.
Hanoi has never simply "called the shots." although the
DRV and the PRG obviously have common reasons for
fighting and share common objectives. All of this infor-
mation NSA has passed on systematically to the political
authorities who, equally systematically, have ignored it.
Nixon's military objective -- halting supplies to the
South through bombing and mining of North Vietnamese
ports-turns out to be as bogus as his political rationale.
Military supplies for the DRV and the NLF are stored
along the Ho Chi slinh trail in gigantic underground stag-
ing areas known as bamtrams. These are capable of stor-
ing suplics for as long as twelve months, at normal levels
of hostilities, according to NSA estimates. Even at the
highly accelerated pace of the recent offensive, it would
take several months (assuming 100 percent effectiveness)
before our bombing and mining would have any impact
on the fighting.
Taken altogether. the experience of our informant in
Europe. in the Middle East, and in Indochina bears wit-
ness to the aggressive posture of the United States in
the late 1960s. It is hard to see anything defensive about
it. Our policy makers are well-informed by the intelligence
community of the defensive nature of our antagonists'
military operations. The NSA operations here described re-
flect the drive of a nation to control as much of the world
as possible; s%hose leaders trust no one and are forced to
spy on their closest allies 'ill violation of treaties they ini-
?eeeeeeeewe Liaison
Lines of Authority
Secretary
of State
Deputy under
Secretary for
Administration
Communications
Security
Division
.tinted themselves; leaders, moreover, for whom all nations
are, in the intelligence idiom, "targets," and who maintain
the U.S. imperium around the world in large part through
threat of actual physical annihilation.
At home. however, the favored weapon employed is
ignorance r,rther than fear. Like NSA headquarters itself.
the United States is surrounded by barriers-barriers of
ignorance that keep its citizens. prisoners of the cold war.
The first obstacle is formed by the myths propagated
about communism and about its aggressive designs on
America. The second, and dependent for its rationale on
the first, is the incredible barrier of governmental secrecy
that keeps the most questionable U.S. aggressive activities
hidden not from our "enemies," who are the knowledge-
able victims, but from the American people themselves.
The final barrier is perhaps the highest and is barbed with
the sharpest obstacles of all. It is nothing less than our
own reluctance as Americans to confront what we are
doing to the peoples of the world, ourselves included, by
organizations like the National Security Agency.
Q. Let's begin by getting a sense of the National Security
Agency and the scope of its operations.
A. O.K. At the broadest level, NSA is a part of the United
States intelligence community and a member of the USIB,
the United States Intelligence Board. It sits on the Board
with the CIA, the FBI, the State Department's RCI, and
various military intelligence bureaus. Other agencies also
have minor intelligence-gathering units, even the Depart-
ment of Interior.
All intelligence agencies are tasked with producing a par-
ticular product. NSA produces--that is, collects, analyzes.
Approved For Release 2005/07/01 : CIA-RDP84-00499R000100070001-8 oontirrued
 Approved For`liiit+lease 2005/07/01 : CIA-RDP84-004996WO100070001-8
and disseminates to its consumers-Signals intelligence,
called SIGINT. It comes from communications or other
types of signals intercepted from what we called "targeted
entities," and it amounts to about 80 percent of the viable
intelligence the U.S. government receives. There is COM-
SEC, a secondary mission. This is to produce all the com-
munications security equipment, codes, and enciphering
equipment for the United States and its allies. This function
of the NSA involves the monitoring of our own conununi-
cations to make sure they arc secure. But SIGINT is the
main responsibility.
As far as NSA's personnel is concerned, they are divided
into two groups: those that are totally civilian, and those
like me who derived from the military. As far as the collec-
tion of data is concerned, the military provides almost all
the people. They are recruited through one of the service
cryptologic agencies. The three agencies are the U.S. Air
Force Security Service (USAFSS), the Army Security
Agency (ASA), and the Navy Security Group (NSG).
These agencies may control a few intelligence functions
that are .primarily tactical in nature and directly related to
ongoing military operations. But generally, DIRNSA, the
Director of the Na'tional Security Agency, is completely in
control over all NSA's tasks, missions, and people.
The NSA; through its sites all over the world, copies-
that is, collects-intelligence from almost every conceiv-
able source. That means every radio transmission that is of
a strategic or tactical nature, or is related to some govern-
ment, or has some political significance. NSA is powerful,
and it has grown since its beginning back in 1947. The only
problem it has had has come over the last few years. Orig-
inally it had equal power with the, CIA on the USIB and
the National Security Council. But recently the CIA has
gained more of a hegemony in intelligence operations, es-
pecially since Richard Helms became director of the entire
intelligence community.
Q. Does the NSA have agents in the field?
A. Yes, but probably not in the way you mean it. It is dif-
ferent from other intelligence agencies in that it's not a
consumer of its own intelligence. That is, .it doesn't act on
the data it gathers. It. just passes it on. Generally, there's a
misconception all Americans have about spying. They think
it's all cloak ahd dagger, with hundreds of James Bonds
wandering around the world in Aston-Martins, shooting
people. It. just doesn't happen. It's all either routine or elec-
tronic. I got to know a lot of CIA people in my three and a
half years with NSA, and it became pretty clear to me that
most of them sit around doing mundane stuff. You know,
reading magazines, newspapers? technical journals. Like
some people say, they do a lot of translating of foreign
phone books. Of course I did meet a few who were out in
the jungles with'guns in their hands too.
But as far as the NSA is concerned, it is completely tech-
nological. Like I said, at least 80 percent of all viable intel-
ligence that this country receives and acts on comes from
the NS.A, and it is all from signals intelligence, strategic and
tactical. I saw it from both angles-first strategic in work-
ing against the Soviet Union in Turkey and then tactical
flying missions against the VC in Nam. Information gath-
ered by NSA is complete. It covers what foreign govern-
ments 'are doing, planning to do, have done in the past;
what armies are moving where and against whom; what air
forces are moving where, and what their capabilities are.
There really aren't any limits on NSA. Its mission goes all
the way from calling in the B-52s in Vietnam to monitoring
every aspect of the Soviet space program,
Q. In practical terms, what sort of data are collected by
NSA?
A. Before going into that, I should get into the types of
signals NSA collects, There are three basic areas. First is
what we called CLINT, electronics intelligence. This in-
volves the interception and analysis of any electronics sig-
nal. There isn't necessarily any message on that signal. It's
just the signal, and it's mainly used by technicians. The only
time I ever remember using ELINT was when we, were
tracking a Russian fighter, Some of them had a particular
type of radar system. As I remember, we called this system-
MANDRAKE. Anyhow, every time this system signalled,
a particular type of electronic emission world occur. Our
FLINT people would be looking for 'it, and whenever it
came up, it would let them positively identify this type of
fighter,
The second type of signal is related to this. It is intelli-
gence from radar, called RADINT, This also involves the
technicians. Let me give you an example. There is a partic-
ular type of Soviet radar system known in NSA by a code
name which we'll call SWAMP. SWAMP is used by the
Soviet technical air forces, by their air defense, by the
KGB and some civilian forces. It is their way of locating
any flying entity while it's in the air. It had a visual read-
out display, so that, whenever a radar technician in the
Soviet Union wanted to plot something on his map, Ire
could do it by shooting a beam of light on a scope and
then send it to whoever wanted to find out information
about that airplane. Our RADINT' people intercepted
SWAMP signals in our European listening posts. From
the data they, got, NSA analysts were able to ~o back to
the headquarters at Fort Meade and in less than eight
weeks completely reconstruct SWAMP. We duplicated it.
This meant that we were able to see exactly what the
Soviet operators were seeing when they used SWAMP. So,
as far as this radar was concerned, the upshot was that
they were doing our tracking for us. We knew everything
they knew, and we knew what they were able to track over
their airspace, and what they weren't.
Q. Does this areas we can jam their radar?
A. Yes, part of the function of ELINT and RADINT
is to develop electronic counter measures. There's a counter
measure for every type of Soviet radar.
Q. You said there were three areas. You've gone over
ELINT and RA DINT. What's the third?
A. This is by far the most important. It's communica-
tions intelligence. COMINT. It involves the collection of
the radio communications of a targeted entity. NSA inter-
cepts them, reproduces them in its equipment and breaks
down any code used to encipher that signal. I should say
that what I call a "targeted entity" could be any country-
NSA gathers data on them all-but in practical terms it's
almost synonymous with the Soviet Union.
COMINT is the important function. It's what I was in,
and it represents probably 95 percent of the relevant SIG-
INT intelligence. As a matter of fact, the entire intelligence
oout
Approved For Release 2005/07/01 : CIA-RDP84-00499R000100070001-8
 Approved Foot- lease 2005/07/01 : CIA-RDP84-0049 00100070001-8
community is also known as the COMINT community.
Q. It would probably be good to backpedal for a moment
be/ore we go into your experiences in NSA and get into the
way you joined the organization.
A. Well, I'd been in college, was bored, and wanted to do
something different. I come from the ]Midwest, and we still
believed those ads about ioining the military and seeing the
world. I enlisted in the Air Force. Like everybody else. I
was shocked by basic training, but after that, when it came
time to choose what I'd be doing for the rest of my time,
it wasn't too bad. I tried for linguist's training. but there
weren't any openings in the schools. I was then approached
by three people I later found were a part of the National
Security Agency. They interviewed me along with four
other guys and asked us if we'd like to do intelligence work.
We took a battery of tests, I.Q. and achievement tests, and
had some interviews to determine our political' and emo-
tional stability. They really didn't go into our politics very
much. I guess because we were all so obviously apathetic.
Their main concern was our sex life. They wanted to know
if we were homosexual.
At this point, it was 1966, 1 suppose I had what you
would call an analysis of the world situation. But it was
primarily based on a belief in maintaining the balance of
power. I really didn't see anything wrong with what our
government was doing. Also, the few hints about what we
might be doing in NSA were pretty exciting: world-wide
travel, working in the glamorous field of intelligence, being
able to wear civilian clothes.
After getting admitted. I was bussed to Goodfellow Air
Force base at San Angelo, Texas. Originally it was a WAC
base or something like that, but now it's entirely an intelli-
gence school for NSA. The whole basis of the training was
their attempt to make us feel we were the absolute cream of
the military. For most GIs, the first days in the military are
awful, but as soon as we arrived at school, we were given
a pass to go anywhere we wanted, just as long as we were
back in school each morning. We t;ould live off base; there
was no hierarchical thing inside the classroom.
0. What sort of things did you focus on in school?
A. At first, it was basic stuff. For about two months we
just learned primary analysis techniques, intelligence terms,
and a rough schematic of the intelligence community. We
learned a few rudimentary things about breaking codes and
intercepting messages. A lot of people were dropped out of
the program at this time because of inadequate school per-
formance, poor attitude, or because something in their
backgrounds didn't prove out. Actually, of fifteen people
with me in this class, only four made it through. We had
been given access only to information rated "confidential"
all the time, but then we got clearance and a Top Secret
cryptologic rating,
The first day of the second phase of school began when
we walked into the classroom and saw this giant map on
the wall. It was marked "Top Secret," and it was of the
Soviet Union. For the next three months, we learned about
types of communications in operations throughout the
world and also in-depth things about the political and ad-
ministrative makeup of various countries. The Soviet Union,
of course, was our primary focus. And we.learned every
one of its military functions; the entire bureaucratic struc-
tore, including who's who and where departments and head-
quarters are located; and a long history of its military and
political involvements, especially with countries like China
and the East European bloc, which we called "the forward
area."
We learned in-depth analysis-how to perform different
types of traffic analysis, cryptic analysis, strategic analysis.
A lot of the texts we used were from the Soviet Union; and
had been translated by the CIA.
I'm not especially proud of it now, but I should tell you
that I graduated at the head of the class, We had a little
ceremony inside a local movie theatre. I was called up with
two guys from other classes and given special achievement
certificates, We were given our choice of assignments any-
where in the world. I chose Istanbul. It seemed like the
most far-out and exotic place available. After that I left
San Angelo and went to Monterey to the Army's language
school for a month and a half. I learned a bit of very tech-
nical Russian--basically how to recognize the language-
and then to Fort Meade NSA headquarters for a couple
of weeks indoctrination about Istanbul, our operation there
at Karmasel, and the whole European intelligence com-
munity.
Q. When did You get to Istanbul?
A. That was January.] 967.
Q. What did you do there?
A. 1 was assigned to be one of the flight analysts work-
ing primarily against the Soviet tactical Air Forces and
Soviet long ranee Air Forces, I had about twenty-five morse
operators who were listening to morse signals for me, and
about five non-morse and voice operators. It was a pretty
boring job for them. A morse operator, for instance, just
sits there in front of a radio receiver with headphones, and
'a typewriter copying morse signals. They would "roll onto"
their target, which means that they would go. to the fre-
quency that their target was using. The lis of likely fre-
quencies and locations and the call signals that would be
used-all this information was made available by the
analyst as technical support to the operator. In' return the
operator would feed the copy to Inc; I'd perform analysis
on it and correlate it with other intelligence collected there
in Istanbul, and at the NSA installations in the rest of
Europe.
0. Where are the other NSA installations in Europe?
A. The major ones aside from Karmasel are in Berfinhof
and Darmstadt, West Germany; Chicksands, England; Brin-
disi, Italy; and also at Trabesan and Crete. Some of these
sites have the gigantic Feranine antennas, This is a circular
antenna or raw. several football fields in diameter, and it's
capable of picking up signals from 360 degrees. They're
very sensitive, We can pick up hundreds'of signals simul-
taneously. We pick up voices speaking over short-range
radio communications thousands of miles away.
The whole Air Force part of NSA, the USAFSS units,
is known as European Security region. It is headquartered
at the I. G. Farben building in Berlin. The Army ASA has
units attached to every Army installation in Europe. The
Naval NSG has its sites aboard carriers in the 6th Fleet.
But mainly it was us.
Q. What does this apparatus actually try to do?
A. Like I said, it copies-that is, intercepts for decoding
co"t 1fl j
Approved For Release 2005/07/01 : CIA-RDP84-00499R000100070001-8
 Approved For Re4,se 2005/07/01 : CIA-RDP84-00499R000100070001-8
and analysis-conmtunications from every targeted coun-
try. As far as the Soviet Union is concerned, we know the
whereabouts at any given time of all its aircraft, exclusive
of small private planes, and its naval forces, including its
missile-firing submarines. The fact is that we're able to
break every code they've got, understand every type of
communications equipment and. enciphering device they've
got. We know where their submarines are, what every one
of their VJPS is doing, and generally their capabilities and
the dispositions of all their forces. This information is con-
stantly computer correlated, updated, and the operations
go on twenty-four hours a day.
Q. Let's break it down a little. How about starting with
the aircraft. How does NSA. keep track of the Soviet air
forces?
A, First, by copying Soviet Navair, which is their equiv-
alent of the system our military has for keeping track of its
own planes. And their Civair, like our civilian airports: we
copy all of their air controllers' messages. So we have their
planes under control. Then we copy their radar plotting of
their own air defense radar, which is concerned with flights
that come near their airspace and violate it. By this I mean
the U.S. planes are constantly overflying their territory. Any-
how, all this data would be correlated with our own radar
and with the air-to-ground traffic these planes transmitted
and our operators picked up. We were able to locate them
exactly even if they weren't on our radar through RDF-
radio direction finding. We did this by instantaneously tri-
angulating reception coming through these gigantic antennas
I mentioned. As far as the Soviet aircraft are concerned, we
not only know where they are; we know what their call
signs are, what numbers are on the side of every one of
their planes, and most of the time, even which pilots are
flying which plane.
Q. You said that we overfly Soviet territory?
A. Routinely, as a matter of fact-over the Black Sea,
down to the Baltic. Our Strategic Air Force flies the planes,
and we support them. 13y that I mean that we watch them
penetrate the Soviet- airspace and then analyze the Soviet
reaction---how everything from their air defense and tac-
tical air force to the KGB reacts. It used to be that SAC
flew B-52s. As a matter of fact, one of them crashed in the
Trans-Caucasus area in 1965 - and all the Americans on
board were lost.
Q. Was it shot down?
A. That was never clear, but I don't believe so. The
Soviets know what the missions of the SAC planes are. A
lot of times they scramble up in their jets and fly wing-to-
wing with our planes. I've seen pictures of that. Their pilots
even communicate with ours. We've copied that,
Q. Do we still use U-2s for reconnaissance?
A. No, and SAC doesn't fly the B-52s anymore either.
Now the plane they use is the SR-71. It has unbelievable
speed and it can climb high enough to reach the edge of
outer space. The first time I came across the SR-71 was
when I was reading a report of Chinese reaction to its
penetration of their airspace. The report said their air
defense tracking had located the SR-71 flying a fairly
constant pattern at a fairly reasonable altitude. They
scrambled MIG-21s on Sit, and when they approached it,
the radar pattern indicated that the SR-71 had just ae-
celcrated with incredi ie speed and rose to such a height
that the MIG-21s just flew around looking at each other.
Their air-to-ground communications indicated that the
plane just disappeared in front of their eyes.
I might tell you this as ?a sort of footnote to your men-
tioning of the U-2. The intelligence community is filled
with rumor. When I got to Turkey, i. immediately ran
into rumors that Gary powers' plane had been sabotaged,
not shot down. Once I asked someone who'd been in
Istanbul for quite a while and he told me that it was re-
ported in a unit history that this had happened. The his-
tory said it had been three Turks working for the Soviets
and. that they'd put a bomb on the plane. I didn't read this
history myself, however.
Q. You have explained how we are able to monitor
Soviet air traffic to the extent you've indicated, but it's
hard to believe that we could know where all their mis-
sile submarines are at any given moment.
A. Maybe so, but that's-the way it is. There are some
Gasic ways in which we can keep track of them, for exam-
ple, through the interpretation of their sub-to-base signals
which they encode and transmit in bursts that last a fraction
of a second. First we record it on giant tape drops several
feet apart, where it is played back slowly so that we get the
signal clearly. Then the signal will be nmodulated-Ihat is,
broken down so we can understand it. Then the codes'are
broken and eve get the message, which often turns out to
contain information allowing us to tell where they are.
Another way in which we keep track of these subs is
much simpler. Often they'll surface someplace and send a
weather message.
Q. But don't submarines go for long periods without
communicating, maneuvering according to some pre-'-ar-
ranged schedule?
A. Actually, not very often. There ate times during a
war exercise or communications exercise when they might
not transmit for a week or -even longer. But we still keep
track of them. We've discovered that they're like all So-
viet ships in that they travel in patterns. By performing
a very complicated, computerized pattern analysis, we are
able to know where to look for a particular ship if it
doesn't turn up for a while. The idea is that they revert
from that pattern 'only in an extreme emergency situa-
tion; but during such a situation they'll have to be in
communication' at least once. We know how many subs
they have. And in practical terms, when one of them is
not located, NSA units tasked with submarine detection
concentrate all their energies on finding it.
Q. How do you know this? Did you ever have responsi-
bility for submarine detection?
A. No. My information comes from two sources. First,
the fact that there were analysts sitting right next to me in
Karmasel who were tasked on subs. Second, I read what we
called. TEXTA. TEXTA means "technical extracts of traf-
fic," It is a computer-generated digest of intelligence col-
lected from every communications facility in the world-
how they communicate, what they transmit, and who to.
It is the Bible of the SIGINT community. It is constantly
updated. and one of an analyst's duties is reading it. You've
got to understand that even though each analyst had his
own area to handle, he also had to be familiar with other
Approved For Release 2005/07/01 : CIA-RDP84-00499R000100070001-8
 Approved F 'release 2005/07/01 : CIA-RDP84-00499R000100070001-8
to break our advanced computer generated scrambler sys-
tem, which accounts for most of the information we trans-
mit. They do a lot of work to determine what our radar
is like, and they try to find out things by working on some
of the lower level codes used by countries like Germany
and the Scandinavian countries we deal with. Their SIG-
INT operation is run by the KGB.
The key to it is that we have a ring of bases around
them. They try to make up for the lack of bases by using
trawlers for gathering data, but it's not the same. They're
on the defensive.
problems. Quite often I would get-through my operators
--base-to-base submarine traffic and I'd have to be able
to identify it.
Q. The implications of what you're saying are veryscri-
orts. In effect, it means that based on your knowledge there
is no real "balance of terror" in they world. Theoretically,
if the know where every Soviet missile installation, nsili-
tarv aircraft and missile submarine is at any given moment,
we are much closer than anyone realized to ce first-strike
capacity that would cripple their ability to respond.
A. Check.
Q. How ntciny NSA people were there at Istanbul and in
the rest of the installations in Europe?
A. About three thousand in our operation. It would be
hard to even guess how many in the rest of Europe.
Q. What were the priorities for gathering information on
Soviet operations?
A. First of all, NSA is interested in their long-range
bombing forces. This includes heir rocket forces, but
mainly targets on their long-range bombers. This is because
the feeling is that, if there is conflict between us and them,
the bombers will be used first, as a way of taking a step
short of all-out war, Second, and very close to the bombing
capabilities, is the location of their missile submarines.
Next would be tasking generated against the Soviet scram-
bler, which is their way of communicating for all of their
services and facilities. After this would be their Cosmos
program. After that things like tasking their KGB, their air
controllers, their shipping, and all the rest of the things
tend to be on the same priority.
Q. All this time, The. Soviets Hurst be doing intelligence
against us too. What is its scope?
A. Actually, they don't get that
Q. What do you mean by that?
A. That they're on the defensive? Well, one of the things
you discover pretty early is that the whole thing'of contain-
ing the communist menace for expansion is nonsense. The
entire Soviet outlook of their military and their intelligence
was totally different from ours. They were totally geared up
for defense and to meet some kind of attack. Other than
strategic capacities relating to the ultimate nuclear balance,
their air capabilities are solidly built around defending
themselves from penetration. They've set up the "forward"
area-our term for the so-called bloc countries of eastern
Europe-less as a launching pad into Europe than as a
buffer zone. The only Soviet forces there are air defense
forces, security forces, Put it this way: their whole technol-
ogy is not of an offensive nature, simply, don't have the
kind of potential for a tactical offensive that we do. They
have no attack carriers, for instance. Soviet ships are pri-
marily oriented toward protection of their coasts. Actually
they do have carriers of a sort, but they are helicopter anti-
submarine carriers. Another thing: they have a lot of fight-
ers, but hardly any fighter-bombers. They do have a large
submarine force, but given the fact that they are completely
ringed by the U.S., this too is really of a strategic nature.
Everything we did in Turkey was in direct support of
some kind of military operation, usually something clan-
destine like overflights, infiltrations, penetrations. If all we
were interested in was what they call an "invulnerable de-
terrent," we could easily get our intelligence via satellite.
We don't need to have these gigantic siles in Europe and
Asia for this.
Q. You mentioned it few minutes ago that one of NSA's
train targets was the Soviet space program. What sort of
material were you interested in?
A. Everything, Obviously, one of the things we wanted
to know was how close they were to getting a space station
up. But we knew everything that went on in their Cosmos
program. For instance, before I had gotten to Turkey, one
of their rockets had exploded on the launching pad and two
of their cosmonauts were killed. One died while I was there
too. It was Soyuz 1, I believe. He developed re-entry prob-
lems on his way back from orbit, They couldn't get the
chute that slowed his craft clown in re-entry to work. They
knew what the problem was for about two hours before he
died, and were fighting to correct it. It was all in Russian
of course, but we taped it and listened to it a couple of
times afterward. Kosygin called him personally. They had a
video-phone conversation. Kosygin was crying. He told him
he was a hero and that he had made the greatest achieve-
ment in Russian history, that they were proud and he'd be
remembered. The guy's wife got on too. They talked for a
continued
Approved For Release 2005/07/01 : CIA-RDP84-00499R000100070001-8
 while. He told hcz2pJ"gtyAlrFl@rt'(Aft?i@s?Pgf4-7ltotb
do with the kids, It was pretty awful. Towards the last few
minutes, he began falling apart, saying, "I don't want to
die, you've got to do something." Then there was just a
scream as he died. I guess he was incinerated. The strange
thing was that we were all pretty bummed out by the whole
thing. In a lot of ways, having the sort of job we did human-
izes the Russians. You study them so much and listen to
them .for so many hours that pretty soon you come to feel
that you know more about them than about your own
people.
Q. While you were monitoring the Soviet Union what
sort of intelligence would have been considered very im-
portant or serious?
A. In a way you do this almost routinely, That is, there
are certain times that the activities of a targeted entity are
of such an important nature that a special type of report has
to be sent out. It is called a CRITIC. This is sent around the
world to a communications network called CRITICOM. The
people in this network, besides NSA, are those in other in-
telligence or diplomatic capacities who might come across
intelligence of such importance themselves that the Presi-
dent of the United States would need to be immediately
notified. When a CRITIC goes out, one analyst working
alone can't do it, There is just too great a volume of material
to correlate.
. Q. What would be an. example of something sent out as
a CRITIC?
A. Well, one of the strangest I ever read was sent out by
our base at Crete. One of the analysts there sent a CRITIC
because he had traced a Soviet bomber that landed in the
middle of Lake Baikal. He knew it hadn't crashed from
the type of communications he monitored, and he thought
they had developed a new generation of bombers able to
land on water. It turned out to be a bad mistake because
he neglected to remember that about three-fourths of the
year this lake is completely frozen over.
But actually this sort of thing is rare, Most CRITICS are
based on good reasoning and data. You work around the
clock, sometimes for 30 hours at a stretch putting things
together. These are the times that the job stops being rou-
tine. I guess it's why they have a saying about the work in
NSA: "Hours of boredom and seconds of terror."
Q. Did you ever issue a CRITIC?
A. Yes, several. During Czechoslovakia, for instance,
when it became clear the Soviets were moving their troops
up. We also issued a number of CRITICS during the Mid-
east War of 1967.
Q.. Why?
A. Well, I was part of an analysis team that was predict-
ing the war at least two months before it began. I guess we
issued our first CRITIC on this in April. We did it on the
basis of two sources. One, we and the Crete station had
both been picking up data as early as early February that
the Israelis had a massive build-up of arms, a massing of
men and materiel, war exercises, increased level of penetra-
tion of Arab territory-just everything a country does to
prepare for war. Two, there were indications that the Soviets
were convinced there was going to be a war. We knew this
from the traffic we had on, diplomatic briefings sent down
from Moscow to a commanding general of a particular
CI#ERP.P,?,4dOPy41kl %109,R79AQ1tTir VTA airborne,
their version of Special Forces paratroopers, to Bulgaria.
Normally, they're based in the Trans-Caucasus, and we
knew from their contingency plans that Bulgaria was a
launching point for the Middle, East. Plus some of these
forces were being given cram-courses in Israeli and Arabic
languages.
Q. All this leaves the sequence of events that immediate-
ly preceded the Six Day l I'ar-the various countercharges,
the UN pullout, the closing of the Straits-still pretty ob-
scure. Did NSA evidence clear this tip?
A. No. Not really, But one of the things that, confused
us at first was the fact that until the last days before the
war the Arabs weren't doing anything to prepare. They
weren't being trained how to scramble their air force.
This is why there was such total chaos when the Israelis
struck.
Q. flow did the White House react to your reports about
all this?
.A. Well, in every message we serit'out, we always put
in our comments at the end-there's a place for this in the
report form-and they'd say something like "Believe there
is some preparation for unexpected Israeli attack. Request
your comments." They didn't exactly ignore it, 1 hey'd
send back, "Believe this deserves further analysis," which
means something like, "We don't really believe you, but
keep sending us information." Actually, we all got special
citations when the whole thing was over.
Q. Why didn't they believe you?
A. I suppose because the Israelis were assuring them
that they were not going to attack and Johnson Was buy-
ing it.
Q. You remember about the "Liberty," the communica-
tions ship we sent in along the coast which was torpedoed
by'Israeli gunboats? The official word at the time was that
the whole thing was a mistake. Johnson calls it a "heart-
breaking episode" in The Vantage Point. Ifow does this
square with your information?
A. The whole idea of sending the "Liberty" in was that
at that point the U.S. simply didn't know what was going
on. We sent it in really close so that we could find out. hard
information about what the Israelis' intentions were, What
it found out, among other things, was that Dayan's inten-
tions were to push on to Damascus and to Cairo, The
Israelis shot at the "Liberty," damaged it pretty badly and
killed some of the crew, and told it to stay away. After this
it got very tense. It became pretty clear that the White
House had gotten caught with its pants down.
Q. What were the Russians doing?
A. The VTA airborne was loaded into planes. They took
off from Bulgaria and their intention was clearly to make
a troop drop on Israel. At this point it became pretty clear
that we were approaching a situation where World War III
could get touched off at any time. Johnson got on the hot
line and told then, that we were headed for a conflict if
they didn't turn these planes around. They did.
Q. Was it just these airborne units that were on the move?
A. No. There was all kinds of other action too. Some of
their naval forces had started to move, and there was in-
creased activity in their long-range bombers.
Q. What about this idea that Dayan had decided to push
Approved For Release 2005/07/01 : CIA-RDP84-00499R000100070001-8 Contirxt3tsd
 Approved For Release 2005/07/01 : CIA-RDP84-00499Rb00100070001-8
on to the cities you mentioned. What happened there?
A. He was called back, partly because of U.S. pressure,
partly by people in- the Israeli political infrastructure. lie
was somewhat chastised and never given back total con-
trol of the Army.
Q. How do you know this?
A. Like I said earlier, NSA monitors every government.
This includes Tel Aviv. All the diplomatic signals from the
capital to the front and back again were intercepted.
Also at this same time we were copying the French, who
were very much in''olved on both sides playing a sort of
diplomatic good offices between Cairo and Tel Aviv. As
far as Dayan is concerned, the information came from
informal notes from analysts at Crete who were closer to
the situation than we were. Analysts send these informal
notes from one station to another to keep each other in-
formed about what is happening. One of the notes I
got from Crete said Dayan had been called back from the
field and reprimanded. Obviously, by this time the Israelis
were getting heat from the U.S.
Q. What did the Russians do after the situation cooled
down a bit?
A. Immediately after the war-well, not even afterwards,
but towards the end-they began the most massive airlift in
the history of the world to Criro and Damascus. Supplies,
food, and some medical equipment, but mostly arms and
planes. They sent in MIG-21s fully assembled, fueled, and
ready to fly in the bellies of their big 10-10s. At landing
the doors would open, and the MIGs would roll out, ready
to go. Also there was quite a bit of political maneuvering
inside the Soviet Union right afterwards. I don't quite re-
member the details, but it was mainly in the military, not
in. the Politbureau.
Q. We routinely monitor the communications of allies
like Israel?
A. Of course.
Q. What other sorts of things do we learn?
A. Practically everything. For instance, we know that
the Israelis were preparing nuclear weapons at their de-
velopment site at Dimona. Once the U.S. Ambassador to
Israel visited there. They had been calling it a textile plant
as a cover, and when he went there they presented him
with a new suit. It was a charade, you know. They didn't
have warheads deployed then, but they were close to it.
I'm sure they must have a delivery system in operation by
now. It was said that American scientific advisors were
helping them in this development. I mean it was said on
the intelligence grapevine. I didn't know it for a fact. But
this grapevine is usually fairly accurate.
Q. All the material you've been discussing is classified?
A. Almost all of it.
Q. Who classified it?
A. I did. Analysts in NSA did. In the Agency, the lowest
classification is CONFIDENTIAL. Anything not other-
wise classified is CONFIDENTIAL. But SIGINT data
is super-classified, meaning that only those in the SIGINT
community have access to it, and then only on a "need-to-
know" basis. A lot of the stuff I'd work with was SECRET
and TOP SECRET, which is the highest classification of
all. But after awhile it occurred to me that we classified
our stuff only partly because of the enemy. It seemed like
they were almost as interested in keeping things from the
American public as from the Soviets. Hell, 1'd give top se-
cret classifications to weather reports we intercepted from
Soviet subs. Certainly the Soviets knew that data. I remeru-
ber when I was in school back at San Angelo one of the
instructors gave its a big lecture about classifying material
and he said that it was necessary because it would only
confuse the American people to be let in on this data. He
used those exact words. As a matter of fact, I used those
is
Approved For Release 2005/07/01 : CIA-RDP84-00499R000100070001-8
 words when I w9rpp>, Veil fRorIL ease?a2O&&WIQ$crCIA4e 4e0 449 QID007irQQQiIrQy even if they want
me. to. They're all working with machines we gave them.
Q. How did you relate to our allies in intelli~,ence There's no chance for them to be on par with us technolog-
matters? ically.
A. IT have to digress for a moment to answer that. The There's the illusion of cooperation, though. We used to
SIGINT community was defined by a TOP SECRET treaty go to Frankfurt occasionally for briefings. The headquarters
signed in 1947. It was called the UKUSA treaty. The Na- of NSA Europe, the European Security region, and several
tional Security Agency signed for the U.S. and became other departments in the SIGINT community are located
what's called the First Party to the Treaty. Great Britain's there, inside the I.G. Farbcu building. We'd run into peo-
GCHQ signed for them, the CI3NRC for Canada, and pie from GCIIQ there, and from the other countries. It
DSD for Australia/New Zealand. They're all called Se- was all fairly cordial. As a matter of a fact, I got to respect
coed Parties. In addition, several countries have signed on the English analysts very highly. They're real profes-
-ranging from West Germany to Japan-over the years as sionals in GCHQ, and some are master analysts. They'll
Third Parties, Among the First and Second Parties there stay on the job for twenty-five or thirty years and learn a
is supposed to be a general agreement not to restrict data. lot. The CGG is also located in the I.G. Farben building.
Of course it doesn't work out this way in practice. The That's the West German COMINT agency. Most of them
third Party countries receive absolutely no material from are ex-Nazis. We used to harass them by sieg heil-ing
its, while we get anything they have, although generally it's - them whenever we saw them.
of pretty low quality. We also worked with so-called neu- Once I briefed I-Iubert Humphrey at the I.G. Farben
trals who weren't parties to the UKUSA treaty. They'd sell building. It was in 1967, when he was vice-president. The
us intelligence. For instance, the Finns were selling its briefing concerned the Soviet tactical air force and what it
everything they could collect over radar on their Russian was capable of doing. It was all quite routine. Ile asked a
border. couple of pretty dumb questions that showed he didn't
As it works oui, the treaty is a one-way street. We violate have the foggiest notion of what NSA was and what it did,
it even with our Second Party allies by monitoring their Q. But you said that you often sent reports directly to
communications constantly. the White house.
Q, Do they know this? A. Yes, I did. But the material that goes there is cleaned
A. Probably. In part, we're allowed to do it for COMSEC of any reference as to where the intelligence comes from.
purposes under NATO. COMSEC, that's communications Every morning the President gets a daily intelligence sum-
security.. The-re's supposed to be a random checking of se- mart' compiled by the CIA. This information will probably
curity procedures. But I know we also monitor their diplo- contain a good deal from the NSA in it, but it won't say
matic stuff constantly. In England, for instance, 'our where it cane from and the means used to collect. it. That's
Chicksands installation monitors all their con in) tin ications; how a nian like the vice-president could be totally ignorant
and the NSA unit in our embassy in London monitors the of the way intelligence is generated.
lower-level stuff from Whitehall. Again, technology is the Q. So far we've been talking about various kinds of so-
Intelligence .chip U.S.S. Pueblo
Approved For Release 2005/07/01 : CIA-RDP84-00499R000100070001-8
 Approved For R lease 2005/07/01
phisticated electronic intelligence gathering. What about
tapping of ground communications?
A. I'm not sure on. the extent of this, but I know that
the NSA mission in the Moscow embassy has done some
tapping there. Of course ill trans-Atlantic and trans-Pacific
telephone calls to or from the U.S. are tapped.
Every conversation-personal, commercial, whatever-is
.automatically intercepted and recorded on tapes. Most of
these no one ever listens to and, after being held available
for a few weeks, are erased. They'll run a random sort
through all the tapes, listening to a certain number to deter-
mine if there is anything in them of interest to our govern-
nment worth holding on to and transcribing. Also, certain
telephone conversations are routinely listened to as soon as
possible. These will be the ones that are made by people
doing an inordinate amount of calling overseas, or are
otherwise flagged for special interest.
Q. What about Africa? Does the NSA have installations
there?
A. Yes, one in Ethiopia on the East Coast and in Mo-
rocco on the West Coast. These cover northern Africa,
parts of the Mediterranean, and parts of the Mideast.
Q. Do. they ever gather intelligence on African insur-
gents?
A. I went to Africa once for a vacation. I understood
that there were DSUs, that's direct support units, working
against Mozambique, Tanzania, Angola, those countries.
These DSUs are in naval units off the coast. They are
tasked with two problems: first, they copy the indigenous
Portuguese forces; and second, they copy the liberation
forces.
Q. Is the information used in any way against theguerri-
hrs?
A. I don't know for sure. But I'd be surprised if it
wasn't. There is information being gathered. This intelli-
gence is fed back to NSA-Europe, of course. It has no
strategic value to irs, so it's passed on to NATO-orre of
our consumers. Portugal is part of NATO. so it gets the
information. I know that U.S. naval units were DEing the
liberation forces. That's direction finding. The way it
worked was that the ship would get a signal, people on
hoard would analyze it to see if it came from guerrillas,
say, in Angola. Then they'd correlate with our installation
in Ethiopia, which had also intercepted it, and pinpoint
the source. Ft. George Meade
Ak
CIA-RDP84-00499R000100070001-8
Q. Did you ever have any doubts about what you were
doing?
A. Not really, not at this time. It was a good job. I was
just 21 years old; I had a lot of operators working under
me; I got to travel a lot-to Frankfurt, for instance, at least
twice a month for briefings. I was considered a sort of whiz
kid, and had been since I'd been in school back in San
Angelo. I guess you could say that I had internalized all
the stuff about being a member of an elite that they had
given us. I was advancing very rapidly, partly because of
is turnover in personnel that happened to hit at the time
I came to Turkey, and partly because I liked what I was
doing and. worked like crazy and always took more than
other analysts. But, like I said earlier, I had developed a
different attitude toward the Soviet Union. I didn't see
them as an enemy or anything like that. Everyone I worked
with felt pretty much the same. We were both protagonists
in a b-g game-that's the view we had. We felt very su-
perior to the CIA people we'd occasionally come in, contact
with. We had a lot of friction with them, and we guarded
our information from them very carefully.
Q. Was there a lot of what you'd call esprit de corps
among the NSA people there?
A. In some ways, yes; in other ways, no. Yes, in the
sense that there were a lot who were like me-eating, drink-
ing, sleeping NSA. The very fact that you have the highest
security clearance there is makes you think a certain way.
You're set off from the rest of humanity. Like one of the
rules was-and this was first set out when we were back at
San Angelo---that we couldn't have drugs like sodium
pentothol used on us in medical emergencies, at least not
in the way they're used on most people. You know, truth-
type drugs. I remember once one, of our analysts cracked
up his, car in Turkey and banged himself up pretty' good.
He was semi-conscious and in the hospital. They had one
doctor and one nurse, both with security clearances, who
tended trim, And one of us was always in the room with
him to make sure that while he was delirious he didn't
talk too loud. Let me say again that all the material you
deal with, the code words and all, becomes part of you.
I'd find myself dreaming in code. And to this day when
I hear certain TOP SECRET code words something in
me snaps.
But in spite of all this, there's a lot of corruption too.
Quite a few-people in NSA are into illegal activities of one
kind or another. It's taken to be one of the fringe bene-
fits of the job. You know, enhancing your poc'l~etbook.
Practically everybody is into some kind of smuggling. I
didn't see any heroin dealings or anything like that, like I
later saw among CIA people when 1 got to Nam, but most
of its, we included, did some kind of smuggling on the side.
Everything from small-time black marketeering of cig-
arettes or currency all the way up to the transportation of
vehicles, refrigerators, that sort of thing. One time in
Europe I knew of a couple of people inside NSA who
were stationed in Frankfurt and got involved in the white
slave trade. Can you believe that? They were transporting
women who'd been kidnapped from Europe to Mideast
sheikdoms aboard security airplanes. It was perfect for any
kind of activity of that kind. There's no customs or any-
thing like that for NSA people. Myself, I was5 involved in
12
Approved For Release 2005/07/01 : CIA-RDP84-00499R000100070001-8
 13
Approved For tease 2005/07/01 : CIA-RDP84-00499W0100070001-8
the transportation of money. A lot of us would pool our
cash; buy up various restricted currencies on our travels,
and then exchange it at it favorable rate. I'd make it couple
of thousand dollars each time. It was it lark. My base
pay was $600 it month, and looking back I figure that I
made at least double that by what you'd call 111anipulat ing
currency. It sounds pretty gross, I know, but the feeling
was, "What the hell, nobody's getting hurt." It's hard for
me to relate to the whole thing now. Looking back, it's
like that was another person doing those things and feeling
those feelings.
Q. All this sounds like a pretty good deal-the job, whai
you call the fringe benefits, and all that. Why did you go
to Vietnam?
A. \Vell, I'd been in Istanbul for over two years. that's
one thing. And second, well, Vietnam was the big thing
that was happening. I wasn't for the war, exactly, but I
wasn't against it either. A lot of people in Lurope were
going there, and I wanted to go to see what was happen-
ing. It doesn't sound like much of it reason now, but that
was it.'
Q. You volunteered? -
A. Right. For Vietnam and for flying. They turned me
down for both.
Q. Why?
A. Because of my classification. What I knew was too
delicate to have the wandering around in a war zone. If 1
got captured, I'd know too much. That sort of thing. But
I pulled. some strings. I'd made what you'd call high-
ranking friends, you know. Finally 1 got to go. First I
had a long vacation-went to Paris for awhile and. that
sort of thing. Then I was sent back to the U.S. for school-
ing.
Q. What sort of schooling?
Defense Afini.sle!' Aloshe l)aratu
A. It was in Texas, near Brownsville. I learned it little
Vietnamese and it lot about Al;DF---that's airborne, radio
direction finding. It was totally different from what I'd
been doing. It was totally practical. No more strategic
stuff, just practical analysis. I had to shift my whole sway
of thinking around. I was going to be in these big 13C-47s-
airborne platforins they were called-locating the enemy's
ground forces.
After this first phase in Texas, .1 went to it couple of
Air Force bases here in' California and learned how to
.jump out of planes, and then tip to Washington state to
survival school. This was three weeks and no fun at all. It
was cold as lie]], I guess so we could learn to survive in
the jungle. Never did figure that one out. We did things
like getting dropped up in the mountains in defense teams
and learn E&E---that's the process of escape and evasion.
You divide the three-man team up into certain functions
-one guy scrounges for food, the other tries to learn the
lay of the land, that sort of thing. We were out for two
days with half a parachute and a knife between its. Strange-
ly enough, we did manage to build it snare and catch a
rabbit. We cooked it over a fire we built with some
matches we'd smuggled. It was awful. We'd also smug-
gled five candy bars, though, and they were pretty good.
Then we got captured by some soldiers wearing black
pajamas. They put us in cells and tried to break us. It was
it game, but they played it serious even though we didn't.
It had its ludicrous moments. They played Joan Baez
peacenik songs over the loudspeaker. This was supposed
to make its think that the people back home didn't sup-
port its anymore and we'd better defect.. We dug the music,
of course. After this, I shipped out.
Q. Flow long were you in Vietnam?
A. Thirteen months, from 1969 to 1969.
Continued
Approved For Release 2005/07/01 : CIA-RDP84-00499R000100070001-8
 Approved ForK'elease 2005/07/01: CIA-RDP84-004998000100070001-8
Q. Where were you stationed?
A. In Pleiku most of the time.
Q. Is that where the major intelligence work is done?
A. No, there's a unit in Da Nang that does most of the
longer-range work, and the major unit is at Phu Bai. It's
the most secure base in Vietnam. An old French base,
just below Hue and completely surrounded by a mine
field. It's under attack right now. The people based
there-a couple thousand of them-will probably he the
last ones out of Vietnam. I don't know if you know of this
or not, but the first American killed in Vietnam was at
Phu Bai. Ile was in NSA, working on short-range direction
finding out of an armored personnel carrier,--you know,
one of those vans with an antenna on top. It was in 1954.
We were told this to build up our esprit de corps.
Q. So what kinds of things did you do there?
A. Like I said, radio direction finding is the big thing,
the primary mission. There are several collection tech-
niques used there. Almost all of them are involved with
the airborne platforms I mentioned, They are C-47s,
"gooney birds," with an E in front of tine C-47 because
they're involved in electronic warfare. The missions go
by different names. Our program was Combat Cougar.
We had two or three operators on board and an analyst,
which was' nie. The plane was filled with electronic gear,
radios and special DF-ing equipment, about $4 million
worth of it. all computerized and very sophisticated. The
technology seemed to turn over about every five months.
As a sideline, I might tell you that an earlier version of
this equipment was used in Bolivia. along with infrared de-
tectors, to help track clown Che Guevara.
0. So what would be your specific nricvion?
A. Combat Cougar planes would take off
and fly a
particular orbit in a particular part of Indochina.-We were
primarily tasked for low-level information. 'I hat is, we'd
be looking for enemy ground units fighting or about to be
fighting. This was our A-1 priority. As soon as we located
one of these units through our direction finding, we'd
fix it. This fix would be triangulated with fixes made by
other airborne platforms, a medium-range direction finding
outfit on the ground, or even from ships. Then we'd send
the fix to the DSUs on the ground - that's direct support
units--at Phu Bai or Pleiku. They'd run it through their
computers and call in B-52s- or artillery strikes.
Q. iloty high did you fly?
A. It was supposed to be 8000 feet, but we
close enough. so we went down to 3000.
Q. You hear a lot about seismic and acoustic sensors and
that sort of thing being used. How did this fit into what
you were doing?
A. Not at all. They aren't that effective. A lot of them
get damaged when they land; sonic of them start sending
signals and get stuck; others are picked up by the Viet-
namese and tampered with. Those that come through
intact can't tell civilian from military movements. What-
ever data is collected from sensors on the trail and at the
DMZ is never acted on until correlated with our data.
Q. How did the NVA and NLF troops communicate
their battle orders? They seem to take us by surprise, while
front, what you said earlier, the Soviet Union can't. .
A. l hat's because there are no grand battle orders except
in a few cases. Almost everything is decided at a low level
in the field. That's why most of our intelligence was di-
rected toward these low-level communications I've been
talking about. NSA operations in Vietnam are entirely
tactical, supporting military operations. Even the long-
range stuff, on North Vietnamese air defense and diplo-
macy, on shipping in and out of flaiphorig-the data col-
lected at Da Nang, Clark Air Force Base in the Philip-
pines and somewhat in Thailand-is used in a tactical sense
only. It's for our bombers going into North Vietnam.
They aren't engaged'in probing or testing the defenses of
a targeted entity like in Europe. It's all geared around the
location of enemy forces. -
Q. What would be the effect if the U.S. had to vacate
ground instal lalions like the ones you've mentioned?
A. Well, we wouldn't have that good intelligence about
the capabilities of the North Vietnamese to shoot our
planes . down. We wouldn't know what their radar was
doing or could do, where their ground.-to-air missile sites
were, when their NIIGs were going to scramble. We'd still
he able to DF their troops in the field of course. That
won't change until our air forces, including the airborne
platforms I flew on, go out too.
Q. NVA and NLF troops must have sonic sort of
Colin- to use against operations like the one you
were in. Ot/terivise they wouldn't be as effective its they
tire.
A. Basically you're right, although you shouldn't under-
estimate the kind of damage done by the strikes we
celled in as a result of our direction finding. To a certain
extent, though, the Vietnamese have developed a way to
counteract ou techniques. Their headquarters in the North
is known as \IRTTH--Military Region Tri Tin Hue. It
is located on the other side of the Valley, somewhere
just into Laos. i`.IRTTH has a vast complex of antennas
strung all over the jungle. When they're transmitting or-
ders, they play with the switchboard, and the signal goes
out over a several-mile area from these different anten-
nas. When you're up in one of these airborne platforms,
the effect is like this: you get a signal and fix it. First it
will be nine miles in one direction and then, say, twelve
miles in another, and fifteen in another. We never found
JNrI1 VIIH. It's one of the high priorities.
0. But you'd say that the sort of data you collected
through DF-jng had some effect?
A. Right, generally. At least in locating field units. It
also leads to some large actions. For instance, the first
bombing that ever occurred from ARDF data occurred
in 1968. There was an area about 19 kilometers south-
west of Hue that we'd been flying over. Some of the com-
munications we collected and a pattern analysis that was
performed on it indicated that there were quite a few NVA
or VC units concentrated in a small area, about a mile in
diameter. General Abrams personally ordered the largest
B-52 raid that had ever taken place in Vietnam at the time.
There was one sortie an hour for thirty-six hours, thirty
tons dropped by each sortie on the area. Afterwards it was
just devastated. I mean it was wasted. It was a long time
before they could even send helicopters into the area to
evaluate the strike because of tile stench of burning flesh.
On the perimeter of the area there were Vietnamese that
had died just from the concussion. The thing of it was,
14
Approved For Release 2005/07/01 : CIA-RDP84-00499R000100070001-8 czontirrued
 15
though, there wasn'tA~~v~t~blr~fsic1~1/~sj~1
military and which % re civilian. It ~ as'pretty notorious.
Afterwards it was called Abrams Acres. It was one of the
things that began to turn me off to the war.
Q. You've said that your A-1 priority was locating ene-
my units on the ground. What were the other targets?
A. Mainly supplies. We tried, not too successfully, to
pinpoint their supply capabilities. All along the Trail the
Vietnamese have these gigantic underground warehouses
known as "bantrams," where either men or supplies are
housed. The idea is that in case of an offensive like the
one that's going on now, they don't have to go north for
supplies. They've got them right there in these bantrams,
enough to last for a long time at a fairly high level of
military activity. They had about. 11 bantrams when I was
there. We knew where they were within twenty-five or
thirty miles, but no closer. I remember the first Dewey Can-
yon invasion of. Laos. I flew support. for it. It happened
because the 9th Marines went in there to locate a couple
of bantrams. Their general was convinced he was going
to end the war. It was a real macho trip. He got called
back by the White House pretty quick, though, when his
command got slaughtered.
Q. What about.the idea of an invasion from the north.-
How does this equate with what you collected?
A. It doesn't. There's no invasion. The entire Vietna-
mese operation against Saigon and the U.S. is one unified
military command throughout Indochina. Really, it's al-
most one country. They don't recognize borders: that's
seen in their whole way of looking at things, their whole,
way of fighting.
Q, But you. made a distinction between VC and NVA
forces, didn't you?
A. There are forces we'd classify as VC and others as
NVA, yes. But it was for identification, like the call signs
on Soviet planes. The VC forces tended to merge, break
apart, then regroup, often composed differently from what
they' were before. As far as the 'NVA is concerned, we'd
use the same names they, were called back home, like the
20th regiment. Hanoi controls infiltration, some troops and
supplies coming down the Trail. But once they get to a cer-
tain area, MRTTH takes over. And practically speaking,
MRTTH is controlled by the NLF-PRG.
Q. How did you know that?
A. We broke their messages all the time. We knew the
political infrastructure.
Q. You mean that your intelligence would haye in its
official report that this MRTTH base, which was on the
other side of the Ashau Valley, was controlled by the NLF?
A.. Of course. Hanoi didn't control that area operation-
ally. MRTTH controls the whole DMZ area. Everything
above Da Nang to Vinh. The people in control are in the
NLF. MRTTH makes the decisions for its area. Put it
this way: it is an autonomous political and military entity.
Q. What you're saying is that in order to gather intelli-
gence and operate militarily, you go on the assumption
that there is one enemy? That the NLF is not subordinate
to the North Vietnamese Command?
A. Right. That's the way it is. This is one thing I wish
we could bring out. Intelligence operates in a totally dif-
ferent way from politics. The intelligence community
.generally states things like they ate. The political com-
A-F2D13_$4 004300f 6b 70d0T-8`
. . General Creighton Iii. Abrams
munity interprets this information, changes it, deletes some
facts and adds others. Take the CIA report that bombing
in Vietnam never really worked. That was common knowl-
edge over there. Our reports indicated it. Infiltration al-
ways continued at a steady rate. But of course nobody
back at the military command or in Washington ever paid
any attention.
Q. What were some of the other high intelligence pri-
orities besides locating ground units, MRTTII, and the
ban trams? -
A. One of the strange ones came from intelligence re-
ports we got from the field and copies from North Viet-
nam. These reports indicated that the NLF had two Ameri-
cans fighting for them in the South. We slid special tasking
on that. We were on the lookout for ground messages con-
taining any reference to these Americans. Never found
them, though.
Q. When you were there in Vietnam did you' get an idea
of the scope of U.S. operations in Southeast Asia, or were
you just involved with these airborne platforms exclusively?
A. I was pretty busy. But I took leaves, of course, and
I saw a lot of things. One thing that never came out, for'
example, was that there was a small war in Thailand in
1969. Some of the Meo tribesmen were organized and at-
tacked the Royal Thai troops for control of their own area.
Q. What happened to them?
Approved For Release 2005/07/01 : CIA-RDP84-00499R000100070001-8
 Approved Foi- Release 2005/07/01: CIA-RDP84-004900100070001-8
A. Well as you know, Thailand is pretty important to
us. A stable Thailand, I mean. CAS-Vientiane and CAS-
Bangkok were assigned to put down the uprisings.
0. What does CAS mean?
A. That's the CIA's designation. Three of our NSA
planes were taken to. Udorn, where the CIA is based in
Thailand, and flew direct support for CIA operations a-
gainst the Meas. We located where they were through
direction finding so the CIA planes could go in and bomb
them.
Q. You mean CIA advisors in Thai Air Force planes?
A. No. The CIA's own planes. They had their own
attack bombers, flown by their own spookies.
Q. Pilots?
A. Yes. The CIA has its own planes. Not Air America-
those are commercial-type planes used just for logistics
support. I'm talking about CIA military planes., They were
unmarked attack bombers.
Q. What other covert CIA operations in the area did
you run into?
A. From the reports I saw, I knew there were CIA
people in Southern China, for instance, operating as ad-
visors and comi.ianders of. Nationalist Chinese commando
forces. It wasn't anything real big. They'd go in and burn
sonic villages, and generally raise hell. The Chinese al-
ways called these "bandit raids."
Q. What would be the objectives of these raids besides
harassment?
-A. There's some intelligence probing. And quite a bit
if it is for control of the opium trade over there. Nation-
alist Chinese regular officers are occasionally called in to
lead these manuevers. For that matter, there are 'also
CIA-run Nationalist Chinese forces that operate in Laos
and even in North Vietnam.
Q. Drd you ever meet any of these CIA people?
A. Sure. Like I've said, I flew support for their little
_war in Thailand. I remember one of the guys there in
Vientiane that we were doing communications for, said
Ihe'd been into Southern China a couple of times.
Q. You got disillusioned with the whole Vietnam busi-
ness?
A. Yes.
Q. Why?
A. Well, practically everybody hated it. Everybody ex-
cept the lifers who were in the military before Vietnam.
liven after that wasting of the area called Abrams Acres
that ;< told you about before, everybody else was really
sick about it, but these lifers kept talking about all the
commies. we had killed.
For me, part of it was when we crashed in our EC-47.
We'd just taken off and were at about 300 feet and it just
carne down. We crash-lauded in a river. We walked out
of it, but I decided that there was no easy way to get me
into an airplane after that.. We got drunk that night, and
afterwards I spent two weeks on leave in Bangkok. When
I got back to Saigon I got another three days vacation
in Na Trang. The whole thing was getting under my skin.
I told them that I wasn't going to fly any more. And mainly
they left me alone. They figured that I'd snap out of it.
But finally they asked me what my reasons, for refusing to
fly were. I told them that it was crazy. I wasn't going to
crash anymore, I wasn't going to get shot at anymore, I
was afraid. I told the flight operations director that I wasn't
going to do it anymore, I didn't care what was done to
me. Strangely enough, they let me alone. They decided
after a few clays to make me Air Force liaison man up at
Phu Bai. So I spent the last three months up there correlat-
ing data coming in from airborne platforms like the one
I'd flown in and sending DSU reports to the B-52s. It hap-
pened all of a sudden, my feeling that the whole war was
rotten. I remember that up at Phu Bai there were a couple
of other analysts working with me.- We never talked
about it, but we all wound up sending the bombers to
strange places-mountain tops, you know, where there
weren't any people. We were just biding our.time till we
got 'out. We were ignoring priorities on our reports, that
sort of thing.
It's strange. When I first got to Nam, everybody was still
high about the war. But by the time I left at the end of
1969, morale had broken down all over the place. Pot had
become a very big thing. We were even smoking it on
board the EC-47s when we were supposed to be doing
direction finding. And we were the cream of the military,
remember.
.1 loved my work at first. It was very exciting-travelling
in Europe, the Middle East, Africa; knowing all the se-
crets. It was my whole life, which probably explains why
1 was better than others at my job. But then I went to
Nam, and it wasn't a big game we were playing with the
Soviets anymore. It was killing people. My last three
months in Nam were very traumatic. I couldn't go on, but
I wasn't able to just quit. Not then. So I faked it. It was
all I could do. Now I wish I had just quit. If I had stayed
in Europe, .l might still be in NSA, I might have re-en-
listed. In a way, the war destroyed me.
Q. What happened when your )nustered out?
A. Well, having the sort of credentials I had, I had my
pick of a lot of jobs. Some ex-NSA people get jobs with
private corporations. A lot of them run their own SIGINT
operations. For instance, oil companies will have SIGIN'l'
against Middle East. sheikdoms that have pretty -primitive
intelligence operations. But I didn't want to do this sort
of thing. NSA offered me a nice civilian job. The CIA
said they'd pay me a $10,000 bonus in two installments it
I'd come to work with them-$5000 on signing rip, and
$5000 at the chid of two years, They said they'd give me a
GS-9 rating-that's about $10,000 a year-and promote me
to GS-11 in a year. But 1 didn't want any of it.
Q. Why is it you wanted to tell all this?
A. It's hard for me to say. I haven't digested it all; even
though I've been out almost two years now, I stilt feel as
though I'm two people-the one who did all the things I've
laid out and another, different person who can't quite un-
derstand why. But even being against the war, it's taken
a long time for me to want to say these things. I couldn't
have done it nine months ago, not even three months ago.
Daniel Ellsbcrg's releasing the Pentagon papers made me
want to talk. It's a burden; in a way I just want' to get rid
of it. I don't want to get sentimental or corny about it,
but I've made some friends who love the Indochinese
people. This is my way of loving them too.
- - -~..~.~::~ :.:tea
Approved For Release 2005/07/01 : CIA-RDP84-00499R000100070001-8
 9 JUL 1972
Approved Foielease 2005/07/01 : CIA-RDP84-0049 000100070001-8
EXPERT ON CODES
EXPLAINS HIS AIM
Hopes Magazine Article Will
Bar 'More Vietnams'
BERKELEY, Calif., July 18'
(AP) -- A 26-year-old antiwar
activist credited by Ramparts
Magazine as the source for an
article on National Security
Agency intelligence-gathering
said today that he had spoken
out to "make sure there are no
more Vietnams."
Perry Fellwock of San Diego,
identified in the article as Win-
slow Peck, appeared at a news
conference with two editors of
the magazine, Peter Collier and
David Horowitz.
Mr. Fellwock read from a
statement but refused to answe
questions.
"My experience with the
United States Government and
its global mission has con-
vinced me that the most dan-
gerous threat to me, my family
and to world peace itself, is the
American military," he said.
"My experiences convinced
me that even nations like the
Soviet Union were not the dan-
ger I had always been led to
believe they were," he said.
Cites People's 'Need to Know'
Mr. Fellwock asserted that to
bring security and peace to
Associated Press
Percy Fellwock, who iden-
tified himself yesterday
as the man who wrote
the Ramparts article. it
said the U.S. had broken
all Soviet codes.
America, "We must take steps
.to insure there are no more
Vietnams. I believe I have
taken such a step. I have done
it for neither money nor glory,
but to bring to the American
people knowledge which they
have a "need to know."'
The article said the agency,
which has its headquarters ate
Fort Meade, Md., could crack;
all Soviet codes and enable the
United States to pinpoint to
e;ations of Soviet military and
space craft. The article ap-
peared in the August issue of
the liberal magazine, which
went on sale yesterday.
[A dispatch from Wash-
ington Sunday in The New
York Times on the Ramparts
article reported that intelli-
gence sources both in and
out of the Government had
corraborated much of Mr.
Fellwock's story. The sources,
strongly denied, however,
that the United States had
broken the sophisticated
codes of the Soviet Union or
other major powers.]
Mr. Peck was described as a.
former communications analyst
who worked for the agency in
Istanbul and in Indochina be-
fore leaving because of dis-
ilhrsionment.
"We documented the article
with sources available to us
who were cognizant of the
situation and were able to
check out a large part of the
story,"" Mr. Horowitz said.
But Mr. Collier said that
Ramparts had "nothing on
paper'" to substantiate the
claims.
Approved For Release 2005/07/01 :CIA-RDP84-004998000100070001-8
 ApprovedyFortease 200767/0"1 : CIA-RDP84-004990100070001-8
U. S. Said to Break All of Soviet's Codes
By BENJAMIN WELLES
Special to The New York Times
WASHINGTON, July 15-The
United States is reported to
have refined its electronics in-
telligence techniques to the
point where it can break Soviet
codes, listen to and understand
Soviet communications and
coding systems and keep track!
of virtually every Soviet jet
!plane or missile-carrying sub-
marine around the world.
"We're able to break every
code they've, got," a former
analyst in the National Secu-,
city. Agency, one of the mosti
secret of the Government's
many intelligence agencies, is
quoted as saying in the August
%sue of Ramparts magazine,
fwhich_is published by Noah's
the United States has encircled the Communist world with at least 2,000 electronic listening posts on land or on naval ves- sels or aircraft. United States electronically
Soyuz 1 crashed on Soviet
territory on April 25, 1967, and,
Mr. Komarov was killed. He
was posthumously granted a
second Order of Hero of the
Soviet Unoin and is buried in
the Kremlin walls.
Mr. Peck also said that dur-
ing the 1967 Arab-Israeli war,
the United States electronic in-
telligence ship, ' the Liberty,
was ordered near the Israeli
coast to intercept details of
Israeli military intentions.
The shin was attacked on
Neither the N.S.A. 'nor the
C.T.A. would comment today.
Senior Government intelli-
gence officials who were shown
transcripts of the Peck inter-
view discounted parts of it but
corroborated others.
David Kahn, author of "The
Codcbreakers," (published by
Macmillan in 1967) and a lead-
ing authority on cryptoanalysis,
said in a telephone interview
that the Ramparts article "rep-
resents much new information
that rings true to me and seemsi
equipped aircraft, according to
the article, are constantly pene
trating the air space of the:
Soviet Union, China and other,
Communist countries to pro-I
yoke and record their radar,
and signal techniques to de-
velop countermeasures against
them.
This claim has been chal-
lenged here by independent
Government intelligence ex-
perts, who said that there have
been no authorized, as distinct
from inadvertent, violation of,
Soviet or Chinese airspace by
the United States since the U-2
flights of the early ninteen-
sixties. The experts said that
satellite photography has re-
placed aerial overflights, con-
( Ark, Inc., 2054 University Ave States, elhowever, ectronic that intelligence
nue, Berkeley, Calif. planes often fly along Commun-
The former analyst, whose ist borders to provoke reaction
name was not given in the artier and collect signals.
cle, was an Air Force staff 'ser- In the California Interview,
leant who was discharged from which was recorded on tape,
military service in 1969 after Mr. Peck described his early
life in Joplin, Mo., his enlist-
three years of overseas duty as ment in the Air Force in 1966
a communications traffic ana- when he was 20 years old,
lyst for the agency in Turkey, his subsequent recruitment by
June 8, 1967, by Israeli jet air-, !correct." However, he char-!
craft and torpedo boats-an, engd some points, specifically incident dead that
and cost 75 34 United i AgMr. ency's experts are able to,
every Soviet code with
and which President Lyndon B. wounded l
I
Johnson later described in his remarkable success."
Top-grade Soviet Foreign
book, "The Vintage oPint," as Ministry code systems "have
a "heart-breaking episode." Be- been unbreakable y since the
Li fore the attack, he said, the nineteen thirties" Mr. Kahn
Moshe learned that General said. He added that it was
Moshe Dayan, the Israeli De- "highly unlikely that they have
orddeeer his Minister, forces on to Daintendedri,tas- switched to breakable codes"
order
and Cairo. < Mr. Peck's contention that
information gathered by N.S.A.
Tells of Johnson Pressure Is complete" implies a false
Mr. Peck stated that Presi- importance, Mr. Kahn said. The
dent Johnson then brought in- N.S.A. does, he said, "solve"
tense pressure on Israel to halt many nations' diplomatic codes;
further 'troop movement and but 'these are countries of the
warned Premier Kosygin on the third rank and provide only
"hot line" against what ap- "indirect clues to Communist
peared to be an imminent So- intentions."
viet airborne operation from Mr. Kahn noted that "what
bases in Bulgaria against Israel. we are doing in this field the
West Germany and Indochina. the security agent, his special- i Intelligence sources here said
He uses the pseudonym of ized training, his promotions"they were unable to recall these
d h' 1 AA ?1 b f 30
t
t
f d
Winslow Peck in the article
Some Corroboration round
Mr. Peck, who is 25 years
old, was recently interviewed
by a correspondent of The New
York Times in California. Ex-
tensive independent checking
ars u
a vu ce an o
an rs t lree years o
uty
overseas. He was discharged years service in intelligence
in California in November,i said of Mr. Peck: '
1969, and says he turned down: "He's obviously. familiar with
a $10,000-a-year job offer byN.S,A: its organization, opera
the Central Intelligence Agen- tions and many of its tech-
cy. He decided. instead, he says, piques, But no sergeant in his
to work to end the Vietnam early twenties would know how
war. intelligence is handled at the
`in Washington with sources in - Tells of TV Monitoring White House level, what N.S.A.
and out of the Government who material is used or discarded
were familiar with intelligence A highlight of by the President or more than
closures include e a a report that the fringes about C.I.A.
matters has resulted in t]xe_cor- in 1967 during his duty in just
roboration of manyof his reve-
lations. But experts strongly
denied that the United States
had broken the sophisticated
codes of the Soviet Union or of
'other foreign powers.
The national security agency
headquarters is at Fort Meade,
near Baltimore. It has nearly
a live Soviet television contact
between Premier Aleksei N.
Kosygin, who was in tears bid-
ding an emotional farewell to
the astronauts Vladimir M.
Komarov.
Mr. Komarov was then in
orbit in the spacecraft Soyuz
I, which was still two hours
from re-entry into the earth's
atmosphere. According to Mr.
operations.
During his year of duty in
Vietnam, from November, 1968,
to October, 1969, Mr. Peck,
said, he participated in airborne
electronic sweeps in Thailand
in support of C.I.A. operations.
The C.I.A., lie said, was using
unmarked attack bombers
flown by C.I.A. "spookies" and
based at Udorn to punish Moo
tribesmen who had clashed
them military personnel - and Peck's account the astronaut, with Thai Government troops
spends slightly less than $1- bad just been informed by, over control of their traditional
areas
S
i
.
ov
et ground control thatt he
billion a year. Unlike the Cen- braking parachutes designed to, The United States depended
t
l I
lli
t
Russians are doing and, con-
trary tot he Rampart's state-
ment, they are very good."
He pointed out finally that
the "thrust of the article, that
the N.S.A. threatens peace, is
incorrect."
"I believe that in the existing
world of two armed camps,"
Mr. Kahn said, "N.S.A. can pro-
vide more light, more truth-
and this can lead to better
evaluation of situations and so
to more realistic responses.
N.S.A. is not like the C.I.A.,
which can foment revolutions
and can indeed threaten peace."
The interview contains a
lengthy question-and-answer
passage that Mr. Peck con-
ceded, In his interview with
The Times, was hurriedly pre-
pared at a time when he was
"extremely rattled."
details of hitherto suspected
but obscure details of elec-
tronic eavesdropping around
the globe resulted, he said,
ra
nte
gence Agency, the I Ion a friendly Thai Governmen
(from opposition to the Vietnam
N.S.A.'s primary purpose is thellbring his spacecraft safely War and from a hope that
'
of it through advanced tech-
Vietnam war, Mr. Peck noted,
tries to evaluate the importance to help the Thai Government
of the information or analyze. suppress internal disorders.
it
ARvared For Release 2005/07/01 : CIA-RDP84-00499R00
.T'lzeP.arltParwarticlea a
.earth were malfunctioning and
that there was no hope of
others doing similar clandes-
tine Government work would
"come forward and say what
they know. "He concedes that
his disclosures about the
agency may involve him in
1T000t'o Ioi -8
k70nt ir;u4 ,;
 Approved Fof (ease 2005/07/01 : CIA-RDP84-00400100070001-8
"I know the FBI knows who
I am," he said recently. "I'd
like to avoid publicity but I'm
willing to go through trial and,
if I have to, I'll go to jail. I
don't like the idea of going,
to jail. It scares me. But I no
longer feel the oath that Il
made when I was released
from duty to never say any-
thing about what I did is bind-
ing ing on me."
No Comment From Admiral
Senior agency officials, in-'
chiding Vice Adm. Noel Gayler,
the director, are reportedly
highly disturbed by Mr. Peck's
interview. The agency is part
of the Defense Department.
Admiral Gayler, who has been
named commander in chief of
the Pacific Fleet after three
years as director of the agency,
is to be succeeded in a month
by Lieut. Gen. Samuel C. Phil-
lips, an Air Force space spe-
cialist. Direction of the agency
is normally rotated among the
three armed 'services.
Neither Admiral Gayler nor
Defense Department officials
could be induced to comment
for publication. However, other
!intelligence sources agreed that
the Ramparts material con-
:tamed nothing that would en-i
danger national - or crypto-
graphic-security.
Approved For Release 2005/07/01 : CIA-RDP84-00499R000100070001-8
 25X1 Approved For Release 2005/07/01 : CIA-RDP84-00499R000100070001-8
Approved For Release 2005/07/01 : CIA-RDP84-00499R000100070001-8
 CASE FILE CHARGE-OUT CARD
FORM NO. 119 REPLACES FORM.35.152
1 AUG 54 119 WHICH MAY BE USED.
X090190 d01i18retur;
-RDP81IEO 99RB
red
ged out folder.
file folder.
DATE
Approved For Release 2005/07/01 : CIA-RDP84-00499R000100070001-8