CIA or NSA which one is the Bigger Agency & Most Secretive?
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The Bush administration’s wiretapping program has come under new scrutiny this week. Two influential congressional committees have opened probes into allegations US intelligence spied on the phone calls of American military personnel, journalists and aid workers in Iraq. We speak to James Bamford about the NSA’s spying on Americans, the agency’s failings pre-9/11 and the ties between NSA and the nation’s telecommunications companies.
AMY GOODMAN: James Bamford is our guest for the hour, investigative reporter and author of three books on the National Security Agency, his newest book just out today, The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America.
Jim Bamford, explain exactly what the NSA is. I don’t think most people realize that it is many times larger than, for example, the CIA.
JAMES BAMFORD: And many times more secret. That’s why there’s been hundreds of books on the CIA, and there’s only been three books on NSA, and I wrote all three. So it’s an agency that’s very, very, very secret.
And the distinction between NSA and the CIA is that the CIA specializes in the type of espionage that most people are familiar with from reading James Bond books and so forth, the human spy, where the agent goes out and hides documents under a tree or tries to develop sources in a foreign country. That’s human intelligence, known in the trade as HUMINT. NSA specializes in SIGINT, which is signals intelligence. And what that is is eavesdropping. And that’s actually where the US gets most of its intelligence. It doesn’t really get most of its intelligence from human spies, because they’re fairly unreliable and they’re very rare to find. But it gets most of its intelligence from eavesdropping on communications, whether it’s telephone calls or email or faxes, computer transfers of information between computers, any kind of information like that, instant messages. It intercepts it. So NSA is the big ear.
And the way it works is, it picks up communications from satellites, it taps undersea and underground fiber-optic cables, it gets information any way it can, and then some of the information is encrypted, and it’s responsible for breaking those codes and then sending the information that it gets from these intercepts to other agencies. And that’s what Adrienne and David Murfee Faulk did. They were the actual front lines in this sort of electronic war. They were the intercept operators.
AMY GOODMAN: Jim Bamford, can you talk about how the NSA picked up the very first clues about the 9/11 attacks well before the 9/11 attacks?
JAMES BAMFORD: Well, the very first clue to the 9/11 attack occurred in late December 1999, when the NSA picked up a message from a house in Yemen. The house was being used by bin Laden as his operations center. He didn’t have much capability to operate out of Afghanistan, so all the phone calls, all the messages, email and all that would go to this house in the city of Sanaa, the capital of Yemen. NSA had been eavesdropping on that house for a number of years, and in late December 1999, it picked up a particular intercept, picked up a particular phone conversation.
And the phone conversation said that—send Khalid and Nawaf to Kuala Lumpur for a meeting. So, NSA picked that up, and they—first of all, they figured that Nawaf and Khalid had to be very important potential terrorists, because they were being assigned by bin Laden out in Afghanistan to go to a meeting in Kuala Lumpur. That seemed like a terrorist summit meeting. NSA gave that information to the other intelligence agencies, and the CIA set up a surveillance in Kuala Lumpur, and then they lost them in Kuala Lumpur.
After they lost them, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi went to California. They got in without any problem. NSA, even though they had the last name of Nawaf al-Hazmi in their computers, they never bothered to check, so they both got in without any problem into the United States. They went down, and they lived in San Diego. And they began calling back and forth to that house in Yemen, the house that NSA was eavesdropping on. So NSA is picking up their conversations to the house in Yemen, translating them and then sending out the conversations to—or summaries of the conversations to the CIA without ever telling anybody that they were in the United States. And they were in the United States for almost two years. Al-Hazmi was there from January 2000 to September 2001. And again, they’re communicating back and forth; NSA is picking up but not telling anybody that they’re in the US.
AMY GOODMAN: Explain, Jim Bamford—
JAMES BAMFORD: And it got so bad—
AMY GOODMAN: You say that they set up their final base of operations almost next door to the NSA headquarters in Laurel, Maryland?
JAMES BAMFORD: Well, that’s the ultimate irony, was they eventually travel across country from San Diego, and they set up their final base of operations—these are the—this is the crew that was about to attack the Pentagon—about a month before, they set up their base of operations in Laurel, Maryland, of all places, that happens to be the same city that NSA is headquartered. So they set up their base of operations in this Valencia Motel, and almost across the Baltimore-Washington Parkway is NSA headquarters. The director’s office is on the eighth floor, and, except for some trees, he could almost see the motel where they’re staying. So, NSA is over there trying to find terrorists, and here is the 9/11 terrorists sitting right opposite the NSA on the other side of the parkway making their final plans.
Mohamed Atta flew there for summit meetings. And they had to take three hotels at one point to put all the people there. So, as NSA is looking for them, they’re having their final summit meetings there, and they’re walking around the Safeway, they’re exercising in Gold’s Gym, they’re eating in the restaurants there, they’re mingling with NSA employees. That’s NSA’s company town. It’s just the ultimate irony that here you have the terrorists and the eavesdroppers living side by side in the month before the final attack.
NSA the forgotten and most secretive agency and how it screwed up the investigation before 9/II. An interview into how it works, what it does and how it screws up.
Give this a watch or listen into James Bamford: “The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America”
Once I messed up and made a wrong turn off the Baltimore/Washington Parkway and ended up at the gate to the NSA in Laurel MD and I have to say those gaurds had their guns unholstered and at ready. I yelled wrong turn twice they never said a word just signals to turn around.
Peace
*We CAN bomb the World to pieces, but we CAN'T bomb it into PEACE*...Michael Franti
*MUSIC IS the expression of EMOTION.....and that POLITICS IS merely the DECOY of PERCEPTION*
.....song_Music & Politics....Michael Franti
*The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite INSANE*....Nikola Tesla(a man who shaped our world of electricity with his futuristic inventions)
*MUSIC IS the expression of EMOTION.....and that POLITICS IS merely the DECOY of PERCEPTION*
.....song_Music & Politics....Michael Franti
*The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite INSANE*....Nikola Tesla(a man who shaped our world of electricity with his futuristic inventions)
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Which makes me think about that reporter who interviewed Osama Bin Laden, by just looking for him, and getting one, all the while nobody from those agencies could ever possibly find him in a million years :rolleyes: but they flew his family out ok on 9/II...so I guess that makes up for it
Seems they can find local dissension in the ranks against them in a wink, but ask them to find the very thing they are looking for (aka teerrrorrists) and it's all a big question mark that needs more time and endless money thrown at it.
Right....maybe I'll go buy some swampland now.
and reveling in it's loyalty. It's made by forming coalitions
over specific principles, goals, and policies.
http://i36.tinypic.com/66j31x.jpg
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( o.O)
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Our top secret agency NSA and the terriosts are planning 9/II are across the Balt/Wash Parkway right under their noses and they don't even know it. Worse this then leads into the warrantless wiretapping program which is pushed forward by Cheney without Bush's knowledge. What a bunch of knuckleheads, no wonder they don't mention this administration in this election.
Peace
*MUSIC IS the expression of EMOTION.....and that POLITICS IS merely the DECOY of PERCEPTION*
.....song_Music & Politics....Michael Franti
*The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite INSANE*....Nikola Tesla(a man who shaped our world of electricity with his futuristic inventions)
Peace
*MUSIC IS the expression of EMOTION.....and that POLITICS IS merely the DECOY of PERCEPTION*
.....song_Music & Politics....Michael Franti
*The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite INSANE*....Nikola Tesla(a man who shaped our world of electricity with his futuristic inventions)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/nov/01/afghanistan.terrorism
and:
Government Heard 9/11 Plans from Hijackers' Own Mouths:
http://georgewashington.blogspot.com/2007/04/government-heard-911-plans-from.html
hmm
and reveling in it's loyalty. It's made by forming coalitions
over specific principles, goals, and policies.
http://i36.tinypic.com/66j31x.jpg
(\__/)
( o.O)
(")_(")