The Secret Sentry (31 page)

The worst threat to NSA’s fragile code-breaking capabilities came not from abroad but from a tiny computer software company
in northern California called RSA Data Security, headed by Jim Bidzos. NSA was aware by the late 1980s that new encryption
technologies being developed by private companies meant, according to a declassified internal NSA publication, that NSA’s
code breakers were falling behind: “The underlying rate of cryptologic development throughout the world is faster than ever
before and getting faster. Cryptologic literature in the public domain concerning advanced analytic techniques is proliferating.
Inexpensive high-grade cryptographic equipment is readily accessible on the open market.”
²⁹
The agency was still able to break the cipher systems used by a small number of key countries around the world, such as Libya
and Iran, but this could change quickly as target nations began using commercially available and rapidly evolving encryption
software packages. It would have a catastrophic impact on the agency’s code-breaking efforts.
³⁰

In April 1992, Studeman stepped down as director of NSA to take the post of deputy director of the CIA. His last memorandum
to the agency warned that given NSA’s continually shrinking resources, “target technology will be tough, and many outsiders
will want to rationalize a reduced threat dimension in order to further decrement intelligence for alternative agendas. There
will be a trend to de-emphasize technical intelligence in favor of cheaper and historically less productive intelligence means.”
Studeman urged the agency to focus on “technical and operational innovation to deal with a changing and changed world . .
. We cannot be layered, inefficient, bureaucratic, top heavy, isolated, or turf minded.” Sadly, Studeman’s warnings went largely
unheeded, and his recommendations were not implemented by his successors. Six years after his departure, NSA was on the verge
of going deaf, dumb, and blind.

The McConnell Years at NSA: 1992–1996

Admiral Studeman’s replacement as NSA’s director was another career navy intelligence officer, forty-eight-year-old Vice Admiral
John “Mike” Mc-Connell. Born in Greenville, South Carolina, on July 26, 1943, McConnell joined the navy in 1966 after graduating
from Furman College in Greenville with a bachelor’s degree in economics. Over the next twenty-five years, he held a succession
of increasingly important positions in naval intelligence, including deputy director of the DIA for joint staff support from
1990 until being nominated for the top job at NSA in 1992.
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McConnell was chosen not because of his intelligence background, but rather for his superior communications skills, which
he demonstrated while serving as the Joint Chiefs of Staff intelligence briefer during Operation Desert Storm. The chairman
of the JCS, General Colin Powell, lobbied vigorously for McConnell’s appointment.
³²

In a
New Yorker
article, Lawrence Wright describes McConnell as a man with “pale, thin, sandy hair, blue eyes, and skin as pink as a baby’s.
His back troubles him, and he walks with a slight stoop, which becomes more pronounced as the day wears on. His friends describe
him as quick-minded and crafty, with an unusual ability to synthesize large amounts of information. A workaholic, he regularly
lugged two briefcases home each night.”
³³

McConnell was determined to give the U.S. military more and better intelligence and maintain NSA’s access to the global communications
infrastructure, as well as making the agency “leaner and more effective,” despite shrinking bud gets and declining manpower.
³⁴
In September 1992, McConnell, aware that the Bush White House intended to impose more bud get cuts on NSA, ordered a preemptive
overhaul and reorganization of the entire agency coupled with deep personnel cuts. He knew that the “reduction in force” was
going to hurt his agency badly, but he was convinced that reducing the size of NSA’s huge and very expensive bureaucracy was
the only way to find the money to develop and buy the new and very expensive SIGINT collection technology NSA desperately
needed. McConnell dryly noted some years later, “The message that I took to the NSA bureaucracy was not warmly embraced.”
³⁵

Between 1990 and 1995, the U.S. intelligence community’s bud get had been cut by 16 percent, and 20 percent of the community’s
workforce (20,559 men and women) had been forced into early retirement or laid off. NSA’s bud -get was slashed by one third,
which forced the agency to cut the size of its workforce by an equal amount and impose a freeze on hiring and pay raises.

A declassified congressional study concluded, “One of the side effects of NSA’s downsizing, outsourcing and transformation
has been the loss of critical program management expertise, systems engineering, and requirements definition skills.” Research
and development on new collection and process-ing systems and technologies came to a near-completestandstill as NSA’s money
was diverted to keeping ongoing operations alive and producing intelligence.
³⁶

One Damn Crisis After Another

In November 1992, President Bush ordered American troops into Somalia to restore order and feed millions of starving Somalis
in the famine-stricken, war-torn country. The intelligence that was available was so bad that General Anthony Zinni, the U.S.
military’s chief of operations there, was quoted as saying, “I don’t know Somalis from salami.”
³⁷

NSA played virtually no role in the U.S. military intervention because there was no Somali government and thus no diplomatic
or military communications for it to monitor. The first army combat unit sent in, the Tenth Mountain Division, brought no
SIGINT intercept gear with it. Because of this oversight, it was unable to “exploit the lucrative long-range radio communications
between the warring factions” after discovering that the militia forces commanded by General Mohammed Farrah Aideed indeed
used radios and walkie-talkies. The U.S. Marine Corps, however, sent a small SIGINT detachment to support the first marine
combat units to land. So effective was the detachment’s gathering of critically important intelligence that it was awarded
the NSA’s 1993 Director’s Trophy.
³⁸

SIGINT played a relatively small but nonetheless important role during the U.S. invasion of Haiti, in September 1994. Prior
to and during the invasion, NSA listening posts provided strategic SIGINT support for American forces by monitoring the shortwave
communications traffic of the Haitian armed forces and intercepting the telephone calls of the Haitian strongman Lieutenant
General Raoul Cédras as he negotiated his resignation and safe passage from the country with foreign intermediaries. NSA also
monitored the communications of the Haitian exile leader and future president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, as he waited in a hotel
suite in Washington and provided insights into his intentions that were useful to the White House and State Department.
³⁹

Once U.S. Army ground troops had taken control of the country, army SIGINT intercept personnel (including a small number of
newly recruited Creole linguists) were flown in from the United States to monitor the citizens’ band radio communications
and walkie-talkie traffic of what was left of the former regime’s army and police forces, using portable radio scanners purchased
from Radio Shack and other commercial vendors.
⁴⁰

But by far, the crisis that taxed NSA the most was the civil wars in the former Yugoslavia, especially the civil war in Bosnia.
NSA had begun paying serious attention to Yugo slavia in 1990–1991 as the country disintegrated into six in dependent states,
which became engulfed in an orgy of bloodshed and ethnic cleansing.

The best intelligence came from SIGINT, especially from the joint CIA-NSA listening post inside the U.S. embassy in Belgrade.
Unfortunately, according to the late Warren Zimmermann, the U.S. ambassador to Yugoslavia from 1989 to 1992, in 1991 he was
not provided with these “real time intercepts involving Serbian politicians, Yugoslav army, people we had a tremendous amount
of interest in. It was information that would have been extremely useful to us in our dealings then.”
⁴¹

SIGINT coverage of the bitter civil war in Bosnia between Croatian, Serbian, and Bosnian Muslim militaries was intensified
shortly after President Bill Clinton was inaugurated in January 1993. The newly reconstituted NSA Operations Analysis Group
A, headed from 1992 to 1996 by William Black Jr., focused on identifying and tracking the command-and-control nets, the air
defense networks, and the logistics structures supporting the Serbian-backed Bosnian Serbs, the Croatians, and the Bosnian
Muslims as they struggled for control of Bosnia.
⁴²

NSA’s SIGINT satellites were able to intercept much of the communications traffic coming in and out of the Bosnian Serb general
staff headquarters, which was translated and processed in real time by NSA and military SIGINT personnel at NSA’s Bad Aibling
Station listening post, in southern Germany, then passed to consumers within the U.S. intelligence community. The information
contained in these intercepts yielded vital intelligence about Serb military activities in Bosnia, as well as insights into
the somewhat twisted personality of the Bosnian Serb military commander, General Ratko Mladic.
⁴³
NSA’s coverage of the telecommunications traffic of the Muslim Bosnian government in Sarajevo was also excellent. In 1996,
SIGINT intercepts of Bosnian government communications traffic revealed that hundreds of Irani an Revolutionary Guard military
personnel were still operating throughout the territory controlled by the Bosnian government, despite the government’s promise
to throw them out of the country under the terms of the 1995 Dayton Peace Accords.
⁴⁴

SIGINT played a key role in ensuring the effectiveness of the U.S. and NATO air strikes on Bosnian Serb military units and
their air defensenetwork in August and September 1995. Before the strikes, NSA’s SIGINT assets allowed U.S. intelligence analysts
to thoroughly map the Yugoslav and Bosnian Serb air defense systems in Bosnia. SIGINT also showed that Yugoslavian early-warning
radars positioned inside Bosnian Serb territory were monitoring NATO air activity over Bosnia, and that the data from these
radars was being fed in near real time to Bosnian Serb army commanders in northeastern Bosnia.
⁴⁵

After the Dayton Peace Accords were signed on November 21, 1995, American ground troops belonging to the First Armored Division
were sent into Bosnia in early 1996 as part of a multinational peacekeeping force. They were accompanied by a host of American
SIGINT collection assets, whose mission it was to warn the American forces of any threat from the former warring parties.
Unfortunately, there was little to monitor since most of the communications and air defense infrastructure had been destroyed
or, according to a U.S. Army SIGINT officer, “intimidated into silence during NATO-sanctioned air strikes conducted in May
and August 1995 . . . The loss of access to many of these intelligence sources created a difficult problem for continued monitoring
of compliance by the former belligerent parties in the Dayton Peace Accords.” By mid-1996, SIGINT in Bosnia had come to an
almost completestandstill, since Serbian radio traffic decreased markedly after military operations ended.
⁴⁶

Still, senior Clinton administration officials marveled at the agency’s ability to garner one “hot” intelligence scoop after
another. For example, SIGINT was instrumental in cracking the communications network of the Medellín cartel, revealing the
hiding place of its leader, Pablo Escobar, who was killed in December 1993 by the Colombian National Police. In the mid-1990s,
NSA produced some incredibly important intelligence about what was transpiring inside the government of Saudi Arabia, including
cell phone conversations of senior members of the Saudi royal family talking about high-level government policy.
⁴⁷
Then on February 24, 1996, NSA intercepted the radio chatter of Cuban fighter pilots as they shot down two unarmed Cessna
aircraft, flown by Cuban American pilots belonging to the Miami-based organization Brothers to the Rescue, off the coast of
Cuba. The incident led President Clinton to sign the so-called Helms-Burton Act, which made permanent the economic embargo
against Cuba, which had been in place unofficially since 1962.
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Bad and Worse Choices

Based on NSA’s less than stellar performance in Somalia, Haiti, and Bosnia, senior military intelligence officials were demanding
immediate improvements in the intelligence support they got from NSA. In all three crises, it turned out that NSA had very
little information in its files about the enemy forces facing the U.S. military. During the actual operations, as noted earlier,
it was quickly discovered that much of the high-tech SIGINT equipment that NSA and the military brought with them to these
less developed countries was poorly suited for the “low-tech” surroundings they were operating in.

And in those cases where there were some communications to intercept, once the enemy fighters in Somalia and Bosnia discovered
that NSA and the U.S. military were monitoring their communications, they turned off their radios and reverted to human couriers
and intercept-proof telephone landlines.
⁴⁹
Particularly galling for NSA officials was the fact that in all three operations, HUMINT collected by the CIA and U.S. military
intelligence was the primary intelligence source for the U.S. military forces— not SIGINT.
⁵⁰

Many senior Pentagon officials, rightly or wrongly, believed that NSA was not giving commanders in the field the intelligence
they needed. One reason for this problem was that the older and more experienced NSA analysts who knew more about the needs
of these customers had been let go or had resigned as part of the agency’s “reduction in force” in the early 1990s.
⁵¹