The Puzzle Palace : A Report on NSA, America's Most Secret Agency

The first book ever written on the National Security Agency from the New York Times bestselling author of Body of Secrets and The Shadow Factory . In this groundbreaking, award-winning book, James Bamford traces the NSA's origins, details its inner workings, and explores its far-flung operations. He describes the city of fifty thousand people and nearly twenty buildings that is the Fort Meade headquarters of the NSA—where there are close to a dozen underground acres of computers, where a significant part of the world's communications are monitored, and where reports from a number of super-sophisticated satellite eavesdropping systems are analyzed. He also gives a detailed account of NSA's complex network of listening posts—both in the United States and throughout much of the rest of the world. When a Soviet general picks up his car telephone to call headquarters, when a New York businessman wires his branch in London, when a Chinese trade official makes an overseas call, when the British Admiralty urgently wants to know the plans and movements of Argentina's fleet in the South Atlantic—all of these messages become NSA targets. James Bamford's illuminating book reveals how NSA's mission of Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) has made the human espionage agent almost a romantic figure of the past. Winner Best Investigative Book of the Year Award from Investigative Reporters & Editors " The Puzzle Palace has the feel of an artifact, the darkly revealing kind. Though published during the Reagan years, the book is coolly subversive and powerfully prescient."— The New Yorker "Mr. Bamford has emerged with everything except the combination to the director's safe."— The New York Times Book Review **The first book ever written on the National Security Agency from the __New York Times__ bestselling author of __Body of Secrets__ and __The Shadow Factory__.** In this groundbreaking, award-winning book, James Bamford traces the NSA's origins, details its inner workings, and explores its far-flung operations. He describes the city of fifty thousand people and nearly twenty buildings that is the Fort Meade headquarters of the NSA—where there are close to a dozen underground acres of computers, where a significant part of the world's communications are monitored, and where reports from a number of super-sophisticated satellite eavesdropping systems are analyzed. He also gives a detailed account of NSA's complex network of listening posts—both in the United States and throughout much of the rest of the world. When a Soviet general picks up his car telephone to call headquarters, when a New York businessman wires his branch in London, when a Chinese trade official makes an overseas call, when the British Admiralty urgently wants to know the plans and movements of Argentina's fleet in the South Atlantic—all of these messages become NSA targets. James Bamford's illuminating book reveals how NSA's mission of Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) has made the human espionage agent almost a romantic figure of the past.**Winner Best Investigative Book of the Year Award from Investigative Reporters & Editors** " has the feel of an artifact, the darkly revealing kind. Though published during the Reagan years, the book is coolly subversive and powerfully prescient."— "Mr. Bamford has emerged with everything except the combination to the director's safe."— The book the NSA tried to suppress -- with a startling new afterword on the Geoffrey Arthur Prime spy case. The National Security Agency is the largest, most secretive, and potentially most intrusive American intelligence agency. It dwarfs the CIA in budget, manpower, and influence. In the three decades it has existed, the NSA has demonstrated a shocking disregard for the law. Until now, the inner workings of this agency have eluded public scrutiny. In this remarkable tour de force of investigative reporting, however, James Bamford penetrates the NSA's vast network of power -- the acres of computers, the electronic listening posts worldwide, the intelligence-gathering satellites, and the people who control them. The Puzzle Palace is a brilliant account of the use and abuse of technological espionage and of the frightening Orwellian potential of today's intelligence communites. - Back cover. It is the most secret agency within the United States Government. For many years, the government denied that it even existed (and, according to a Washington joke, the initials NSA stood for ""No Such Agency""). It was established not by law but by a top secret presidential memorandum that has been seen by only a very few officials. Yet it is many times larger than the CIA, spends many billions of dollars more per year, and its director is possibly the most powerful official in the American intelligence community. It is the National Security Agency. In the three decades since President Truman s Behind the scenes at the National Security Agency, which is many times larger than the CIA and spends many billions more per year, is the most secret agency within the U.S. government James Bamford. Includes Bibliographical References And Index.