The Shadow Factory : The Ultra-Secret NSA From 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America

cf. [his 2012 *Wired* article on the Utah Data Center](https://www.wired.com/2012/03/ff-nsadatacenter/) (which mentions that "Bluffdale[, UT,] is home to one of the nation's largest sects of polygamists, the Apostolic United Brethren") * * * James Bamford has been the preeminent expert on the National Security Agency since his reporting revealed the agency's existence in the 1980s. Now Bamford describes the transformation of the NSA since 9/11, as the agency increasingly turns its high-tech ears on the American public. *The Shadow Factory* reconstructs how the NSA missed a chance to thwart the 9/11 hijackers and details how this mistake has led to a heightening of domestic surveillance. In disturbing detail, Bamford describes exactly how every American's data is being mined and what is being done with it. Any reader who thinks America's liberties are being protected by Congress will be shocked and appalled at what is revealed here. *From the Trade Paperback edition.* Journalist Bamford exposed the existence of the top-secret National Security Agency in The Puzzle Palace and continued to probe into its workings in his follow-up Body of Secrets. Now Bamford discloses inside, often shocking information about the transformation of the NSA in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of 2001. He shows how the NSA's failure to detect the presence of two of the 9/11 hijackers inside the United States led the NSA to abandon its long-held policy of spying only on enemies outside the country. Instead, after 9/11 it turned its almost limitless ability to listen in on friend and foe alike over to the Bush Administration to use as a weapon in the war on terror. Bamford details how the agency has conducted domestic surveillance without court approval, and he frames it in the context of the NSA's ongoing hunt for information about today's elusive enemies.--From publisher description