National Security Agency

The National Security Council Intelligence Directive (NSCID) No. 9, signed by U.S. president Harry S. Truman on October 24, 1952, established the National Security Agency (NSA). A separate and extremely secretive agency within the Department of Defense, headquartered at Fort George G. Meade, Maryland, the NSA is a cryptologic organization, the world's best at making and breaking codes and ciphers, as well as one of the leading centers of foreign-language analysis within the U.S. government. Neither the number of employees nor the agency's budget can be publicly disclosed, but some analysts estimate that its yearly budget is as high as $10 billion. The NSA does not disclose sources or methods of intelligence and never comments on media speculations about actual or possible intelligence issues.

The agency's civilian and military employees include physicists, engineers, mathematicians, analysts, computer scientists, and linguists. They are charged with two sensitive activities within the U.S. intelligence community: foreign signals intelligence, that is, interception and analysis of foreign adversaries' communication signals (SIGINT), and information systems security, that is, computer security of classified materials (INFOSEC). The NSA uses bomber planes, sea vessels, submarines, and satellites to gather information, operating a global network of ground stations to intercept diplomatic, military, scientific, and commercial satellite communications. It also monitors nuclear-related tests and movements.

SIGINT is used for gathering foreign intelligence as well as for counterintelligence, including the detection of espionage, sabotage, terrorism, and related hostile activities of foreign powers. The NSA supplies SIGINT, which are raw data, to U.S. military commands and government officials for use in making decisions. The use of SIGINT and the breaking of the Japanese naval code are believed to have directly contributed to shortening World War II by at least one year. One of the most successful NSA operations was the VENONA Project—collection and decryption of Soviet KGB and GRU messages from the 1940s—that provided extraordinary insight into Soviet attempts to infiltrate the highest levels of the U.S. government. During the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, SIGINT provided the only in-depth information about the Cuban military buildup to senior policy makers and military officials. The NSA has had Osama bin Laden's electronic communications under constant surveillance since 1995.

Revelations in the 1970s about NSA interception of the communications of political activists (operations SHAMROCK and MINARET) led to new rules for U.S. intelligence agencies. Foreign surveillance operations are regulated by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978 (Pub. L. No. 95-511) and by the Executive Order 12333 (1981) with full consideration for the privacy rights of U.S. citizens.

After the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon near Washington, D.C., the intelligence community was criticized for security failures. The NSA admitted that its electronic intelligence and cryptologic tools picked up massive amounts of information; however, little human intelligence (HUMINT) had been deployed to provide insight into the social and cultural tools of the terrorists.

In the post-Cold War era, the United States has become highly dependent on networked information systems to conduct essential activities, including military operations and government business; thus INFOSEC has come to the fore. NSA is concentrating resources in areas such as network security, vulnerability analysis, data and fiber-optic communications, biometrics, and the like in an effort to protect the national communications, transportation and transportation infrastructures, and financial transactions from disruption by a physical or electronic attack.

The NSA supports strict export rules for encryption technologies to preserve the cryptologic capability of the agency and minimize potential threats to national security.

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