National Security Agency (NSA)

A cryptological agency of the U.S. government, which is responsible for the security of government communications as well as the collection and analysis of foreign communications through the Internet, radio, and other means. Part of the Department of Defense, the National Security Agency (NSA) is headquartered at Fort Meade, Maryland, and employs an estimated 35,000 staff members.

The roots of the NSA can be traced at least as far back as its predecessor, the short-lived Armed Forces [Page 499]Security Agency, founded in 1949. Although the goal of that agency was to coordinate all cryptological analysts under one organization, the agency failed in its mission because of a lack of centralization.

The United States thus entered the Cold War without a truly effective cryptology service. With the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, which took the United States by surprise, the country needed to unite its civilian and military code specialists under one roof. This led to the creation of the NSA.

The NSA was created by a classified executive order from President Harry S. Truman in June 1952. It went to work immediately, providing intelligence to the military in Korea under its first director, Army Lieutenant General Ralph Canine. In 1957, amid mounting Cold War tensions, the NSA moved to its current headquarters in Fort Meade to place it out of harm's way in case of a possible nuclear attack on the nation's capital. With the world on the brink of war in the 1961 Cuban Missile Crisis, the agency closely followed Soviet naval communications and helped avert tragedy by informing President John F. Kennedy that Moscow had turned its ships around in the face of the U.S. blockade of Cuba.

The NSA faced its next big challenge in Vietnam, where specialists were dispatched four years before the first U.S. Marines landed at Da Nang in 1965. Cryptologists were sometimes forward deployed during the 10-year U.S. campaign in Southeast Asia, risking and sometimes losing their lives to intercept enemy communications. After the last combat troops pulled out of South Vietnam in 1972, NSA specialists stayed to the end at the U.S. embassy in Hanoi to provide secure communications and intelligence on the communist North.

During the Cold War, research conducted by the NSA had considerable spillover effect into everyday civilian life. The agency's research contributed to the development of the supercomputer, cassette tapes, the microchip, semiconductors, nanotechnology, and data encryption. In 1993, the highly secretive organization offered the public a glimpse into its activities with the opening of the National Cryptologic Museum at NSA headquarters, in which memorabilia such as the World War II German Enigma machine and the recently declassified Cray computer can be viewed.

With the end of the Cold War and the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, DC, the NSA is gearing up to adapt its human and material resources to a far more agile, shadowy threat than the Soviet Union. Twenty-first century telecommunications have enabled anyone with sufficient knowhow to intercept and encode communications. Not only can terrorist organizations and insurgents in countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan fully exploit this modern technology to call others to arms, but they have also demonstrated the ability to communicate effectively by low-tech means not vulnerable to NSA eavesdropping.

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