Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency (7 page)

It was a
time and a place where spy wars were fought with armor-piercing bullets and
heat-seeking missiles rather than with whispered words over cocktails or bulky
envelopes deposited under dead tree trunks. Unlike the U-2 spy planes, the
converted bombers flew low— well within the range of Russian missiles and
warplanes.

In 1954,
two years before Project Homerun, three RB-47 reconnaissance planes took off
from England and headed toward Russia's northern Kola Peninsula, which borders
the Barents Sea. It was an area of extreme secrecy, and considered the most
likely spot from which the Soviets would launch a nuclear attack. At the time,
the United States was desperate to obtain intelligence on the number and
location of the new Soviet jet-turbine-powered long-range bombers, codenamed
Bison.

At about
one hundred miles from the heavily defended port city of Murmansk, two of the
aircraft turned back as planned. The third, however, continued straight for the
coastline. With no wingman to supply cover, the air crystal-clear, and the sun
directly overhead, Captain Harold Austin, a tall, thin Texan, aimed the black
nose of his converted bomber directly for Murmansk and pushed hard on the
throttles. "The weather was gorgeous," he recalled. "We could
see forever." He sped high over the Russian coastline at just over 500
miles an hour. But within minutes of turning on the cameras and eavesdropping
equipment, MiGs were scrambling skyward.

Above and
below, Austin could see the tracer bullets, and he yelled at his copilot to
return fire. Air Force captain Carl Holt had swiveled his narrow seat 180
degrees to the rear and was pressing hard on the fire control button for his
twin cannons. In the cloudless sky he stopped counting at about ten MiGs.
"The guns won't work," he shouted above the roar of the six powerful
turbojets. "Well, you'd better kick something back there and get the damn
things to work a
little bit anyway, or we may be a dead duck here!"
Austin roared in a deep Texas drawl. Austin quickly banked toward Finland. But
a fighter from above put a shell through the top of his port wing, destroying
the intercom and knocking a hole in the fuel tank. By the time they crossed
into friendly territory, their plane was dangerously low on fuel, but a lucky
rendezvous with a tanker saved Austin, his crew, and the mission tapes.

Largely
secret until now, the bomber overflights and ferret missions were the dark
underside of the Cold War, an invisible hot war in which the lives of more than
two hundred silent warriors were lost and more
than forty
American aircraft were shot down.

As
American spy planes were drawing protests from Russia, a major crisis was
developing in Europe and the Middle East. During the president's morning
briefings, aides with maps were beginning to run out of pins to mark the hot
spots. On July 26, 1956, following a fiery speech, Egyptian president Gamal
Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal. The action would lead to a mini-war
with England, France, and Israel and a cooling of relations with the European
allies of the United States. It would also, according to a highly secret NSA
report, become "the first major test of the National Security Agency
during a short-term, 'brush-fire' crisis."

Sitting in
the director's office was Lieutenant General Ralph Julian Canine, of the Army,
the agency's first director, whom many considered the father of NSA. Portly and
white-haired, the fifty-five-year-old general had spent most of his career as
an infantry soldier, with little experience in intelligence. He often reminded
those around him that what most qualified him to be the director of NSA was his
long experience with pack mules.

"People
were scared of him," said Air Force colonel Frank L. Herrelko, a burly
one-time coal miner who worked for Canine as his director of communications
security, the codemaking side of the business. "But deep down he had a
heart of gold." Once onboard, Herrelko made the serious mistake of
pronouncing Canine like the dog, "Kay-Nine." "I paid for that
for the next eight months," said Herrelko. "After that he called me
boy. He would only call me Colonel in front of somebody else. He called me
boy."

The
seizure of the Suez Canal came as the last move in a bitter game of Cold War
poker. For months, the United States and Russia had been subtly bidding against
each other for the costly right to help Egypt pay for an important dam across
the Nile. Nasser was a key leader of the Arab world and he controlled a
strategic piece of real estate; his friendship was an alluring prize. The price
was the Aswan High Dam. Knowing his value and hoping to up the bids, Nasser
awkwardly attempted to play one side off the other. Instead, the United States
folded its cards and Russia, now without competition, began hedging its bet.
Frustrated, Nasser declared martial law along the canal and ordered shipping
companies to pay Egypt rather than the Canal Company.

Although
Nasser never indicated any desire to close the canal or restrict shipping, the
British and French governments, part owners of the Canal Company, nevertheless
feared their passage might be blocked.  Like a plasma tube, the canal allowed
vital oil shipments to pass from refineries in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere to
storage tanks in England and France.

Soon after
Nasser nationalized the canal, Britain joined France in an ambitious plot to
take back the canal by force. Rather than appear as an aggressor, however,
France secretly enlisted the help of Israel. The intrigue involved Israel
launching a war against Egypt. Then, once Egypt began defending itself, England
and France would go in as "peacekeepers." As part of the
"peace," the canal would be taken from Egypt and kept by Britain and
France. Israel would capture the Sinai from Egypt. It was a deceitful plan,
which smacked of a return to the worst days of colonialism. Nevertheless, it
was fully agreed to by Israeli prime minister David Ben-Gurion, defense
minister Shimon Peres, and armed forces chief Moshe Dayan. Britain's prime
minister, Anthony Eden, informed of Israel's planned key role, likewise gave
his country's approval. For all involved in the cabal, it was essential to keep
the precise details of the elaborate conspiracy hidden from Washington. At the
same time, however, it was also essential to win Washington's support once the
hostilities began.

As the
crisis quietly grew, the American intelligence community began turning its eyes
and ears on the Middle East. On Monday, August 6, Secretary of State John
Foster Dulles sat alongside the president's desk and brought to Eisenhower's
attention NSA's latest intercepts from Spain and Syria, revealing their
attitudes and intentions following the seizure. From Israel, however, there was
nothing.

NSA's
expensive machine was not working. It had only two settings: Communist Europe
and Communist Asia. Under the postwar United Kingdom—USA (UKUSA) Communications
Intelligence Agreement, the world had been divided into spheres of interest.
Through its listening posts in England and on Cyprus, GCHQ, NSA's longtime
British partner, was to monitor much of Western Europe and the Middle East. But
now, to hide from Washington its invasion plans, GCHQ was passing on only
selected intercepts.

Deceived
by its partner, NSA could do little by itself. The agency had few Arabic or
Hebrew linguists and it was not equipped to eavesdrop on British, French, or
Israeli military communications. All NSA knew was that traffic analysis
indicated that "communications between Paris and Tel Aviv were extremely
heavy," as were those between Britain and France.

To make
matters worse, the agency was in the middle of moving from Washington to a new
headquarters twenty-five miles north, at Fort Meade in Maryland. Files, people,
and equipment were scattered among Arlington Hall in Virginia, where the main
codebreaking and analysis were done; the Naval Security Station in Washington,
which served as headquarters and was responsible for codemaking; and the new
building at Fort Meade where operations were to be consolidated. Communications
among the various areas were jury-rigged and couriers were required to move
intercepted traffic between locations four times a day. Adding to the
confusion, General Canine was clearing his desk and getting ready to retire. As
one NSA analysis later acknowledged, "1956 was a bad time for NSA to get
involved in a crisis."

As the
full extent of the elaborate French-Israeli-British plot became clear,
Eisenhower grew outraged. He told Britain and France that they should expect no
American assistance with their adventure. Over the phone, Dulles told
Eisenhower the action was "about as crude and brutal as anything [I] have
ever seen" and called the Anglo-French ultimatum "unacceptable."
"Expect the Russians to be in on this," Eisenhower said. Allen
Dulles, at the CIA, called his brother. "It was the gravest situation
between our countries in years," Allen said.

The issue
of what action to take against Israel was hotly debated. "It would be a
complete mistake for this country to continue with any kind of aid to
Israel," Eisenhower argued, "which was an aggressor." Harold
Stassen objected but John Foster Dulles answered, "One thing at least was
clear: We do not approve of murder. We have simply got to refrain from
resorting to force in settling international disputes. ... If we stand by in
this crisis, the whole United Nations will go down the drain." Eisenhower
agreed.

In London,
the heavy pressures exerted by the United States, Russia, and the international
community had become too great. A cease-fire was agreed to, thus ending one of
the most serious confrontations America had faced since the end of World War
II.

The Suez
crisis had a profound effect on NSA. It marked a dismal entry into the world of
crisis intelligence. An internal analysis of the agency's performance was
harshly critical: "As for crisis response, all was chaos. The cryptologic
community proved incapable of marshalling its forces in a flexible fashion to
deal with developing trouble spots. The events of the year did not demonstrate
success—they simply provided a case study to learn from."

In a
highly unusual move, Canine enlisted the help of an outside management firm to
examine the agency's problems. Suddenly consultants from McKinsey and Company
began crisscrossing NSA's hallways, going over NSA's highly secret
organizational charts, and studying the flow of intercepts from NSA's worldwide
network of listening posts. Canine's key concern was whether the agency would
function more effectively if its organization was based primarily on
function—traffic analysis, cryptanalysis, and so on—or on geography. And how
centralized should NSA become?

The
consultants recommended a complete change. The repercussions, according to a
later NSA report, lasted more than thirty years. Soon after he arrived, Canine
had reorganized the new agency along functional lines. Now McKinsey proposed a
"modified geographical concept." Signals intelligence would be
organized according to target—the Soviet Union and its satellite countries;
China and Communist Asia; and so on. Each of those sections would include specific
disciplines, such as cryptanalysis and traffic analysis.

Thus
NSA-70, which was responsible for all high-level cryptanalysis, was replaced by
ADVA ("Advanced Soviet"), which focused exclusively on new ways to
attack high-level Soviet cipher problems. GENS ("General Soviet")
concentrated mainly on mid- and lower-level Russian crypto systems, as well as
on analysis of content. ACOM (Asian Communist) attempted to exploit the systems
of China, North Korea, and the rest of Communist Asia. Finally, ALLO ("All
Others") analyzed the systems belonging to the nations making up the rest
of the world, including America's allies. ALLO-34, for example, was responsible
for Middle East traffic analysis. Three other divisions were primarily for
support: MPRO ("Machine Processing") was responsible for computer
number crunching; TCOM ("Telecommunications") controlled the
worldwide flow of signals; and Collection managed the NSA's far-flung network
of listening posts.

On
November 23, 1956, Ralph Canine walked out of NSA for the last time as
director. "Canine . . . stands out as the guy who everybody respected in
the agency," recalled Howard Campaigne. "I was surprised to learn
later that the people above him didn't think nearly as much [of him] as we did.
He made a tremendous impression."

In a
restricted corner of a remote air base in Peshawar, Pakistan, Francis Gary
Powers sat shoehorned into the narrow cockpit of U-2 Number 360. At twenty
minutes past six on the morning of May 1, 1960, the scorching sun had already
pushed above the tallest peaks of the western Himalayas. In the low, fertile
plain known as the Vale of Peshawar, rippling heat waves created the impression
of an endless lake. Powers was locked in a white space helmet and a tightly
tailored pressure suit. Beads of sweat flowed down from his short brown hair
and passed across his broad forehead and cheekbones in thin streams. His long
underwear was soaked with perspiration.

The first
U-2 had been launched from West Germany four years earlier, on Independence Day
of 1956. Shortly before, NSA had detected a possible mobilization by Moscow in
response to a series of riots in East Germany, thus making the mission more
urgent. But hope that the U-2 would be able to slip across the Soviet Union
undetected was dashed by the eavesdroppers at Fort Meade. "NSA picked up
the [Soviet] transmission of their [the U-2's] track so we knew that they had
been tracked a good deal of the time," said Richard M. Bissell, Jr., the
CIA official who ran the program. Nevertheless, seeing where the Russians were
able to pick up the plane and where they weren't gave NSA an indication of just
where the holes were in Soviet radar coverage.