Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency,   ISBN:9780385499088

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Bought this for my Husband and he loved it. He would have rather had a kindle version, but since we only have one and it is MINE.... he settled. [g] It's not a huge book and it's the genre he likes to read. War, military, political, espionage..... It's a "keeper". He'll end up reading it several times, then put it on his library shelf to be picked up and read yet again.
D

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I started out with The Shadow Factory (SHOWY), then Body of Secrets (BOOTS), and now just finished The Puzzle Palace (ZEPLACE). Now I want a 2008-2009 4th volume.

Just hadda do it--try for those non-acronym, compound-non-acronym, acronym-looking abbreviates the military is so fond of using, which we're awash in in Bamford's books. What's ALLO? Why, All Others. We need pronunciation guidelines for these "handles," AND I think Bamford should adopt the style of appending the acronym/abbreviation/handle in parens after the first reference as in: all others (ALLO, pronounced Al Owe, or whatever. Aloe?).

Awkward sometimes, but a real help to the reader who has to go through one- or two-paragraph thumbnail biographies of the personnel listed in such profusion. (Guy starts in AWS, then 2 years later, SAWSP, then PODUNK, which was changed a month later to HOOPLE, and combined with NAVINT to become NOPE... (I'm making these up; if one could more easily keep them straight, it would be helpful. Of course probably part of the reason for all of these non-clear handles is to keep everyone guessing. But, hopefully, not the National Security Agency folks.

On the other hand, one particularly nifty line Bamford zaps us with is something like: By the end of 19NN, the NSA was at once the most secretive and the most penetrated of our US spy agencies. Whooaaa, mama!! Sounds like a lethal combo, no?

IMHO, SHOWY is the best/easiest read, BOOTS, then ZEPLACE. Bamford's modus presentus has improved over the years. Also, while he covers some of the same ground in Volume 1: ZEPLACE and Volume 2: BOOTS, volume 2 has been much augmented and has been made much easier to read. Wonder if David Kahn would post comments & emendations (Bamford quotes him a good bit--and I had to work with him for several months--he was clearly more interested in his relatively new magazine's copy (Crypto--something) than with Newsday Viewpoints copy, at least that was my experience, as I had to double-check, and sometimes re-edit. {sigh}. But I left him to Lou.

ZEPLACE was 1983, BOOTS, 2001. Bamford lived in Natick, Mass when ZEPLACE was published; Washington, DC when BOOTS was published. I don't have SHOWY--but the paperback copyright page on Amazon says © 2008. I didn't look for the author's blurb, but the dedication changes between ZEPLACE and BOOTS suggest a change in family status as well as residence. I'd put a couple of search terms into the NSA's disk-farm database (was it Total Information Awareness? Thanks In Advance for leaving us Poindexter? At least a British tube-writer made use of TIA in The Last Enemy (which is you, of course. Or me. Or folks who quote from the US Constitution too much, or emails, texts, twitters, searches, too frequently about "rights" or "We the People" + "freedom of speech" + Fourth Ame* OR + 4th." You get the pitcher. I'll mix the Flavor-Ade©.

(Does anyone remember a flyer put out by I think the FBI back in October or so of 2001, from the Arizona, or an Arizona field office that suggested reporting, as "suspicious persons" who could be "preventably detained", folks who did quote the US Constitution, or mention "rights" or "civil rights"? Is that kind of stupidity just built in to human beings in government organizations? Or is it a particularly American habit--try to label all your critics as "terrorists," as "traitors," as "unpatriotic," as "Socialists," or "Atheists"--oops, meant "Godless Death Tax Payers".

And why in the name of all the First-Mover tree-bark that exists do we ordinary folks LISTEN to that stuff? (That 1st mover & tree-bark ref. is to good ol' New England Transcendentalism (which I may have miss-described w/ that bit. No offense intended.)

Having read Body of Secrets (BOOTS) before Puzzle Palace (ZEPLACE), I had a sense of déjà vu (all over again) that hit hardest on the pages about the Israeli Defense Forces (like our own Defense Department, it seems the IDF has always been miss-named; should be the Israeli War Forces (our own DoD started out as the War Department, a much more honest designation than the current one, but people just don't get how important words are in the government game (raison d'être, may be a better phrase--reason for being) of propaganda, disinformation, misinformation, lying, etc.) deliberate attack on the NSA ship, USS Liberty, a "ferret" ship, or COMINT ship, or a ship with lots and lots of antennae, to receive and transmit (one to bounce signals off the moon--that I think that was so cool--imagine dealing with the roll, pitch and yaw of an ocean-located ship-in-perpetual-motion, the craggy surface of the moon, swathed in moon-dust--and getting ANY intelligible "intel" (broadcast signals) from sea to moon to earth--or even to another floating eavesdropping ship--so many variables there that I doubt that ship2moon2ship hop was tried.

So I went back & forth between ZEPLACE and BOOTS. There indeed was the same tale, sometimes in exactly the same words. (Bamford copyrighted his own works, so he can repurpose them all he wants, and to a fare-thee-well, should he so chose).

But I would recommend just starting with BOOTS, and skip ZEPLACE. The USS Liberty story is much augmented in BOOTS, and it hardly matters, in my view, just what all the alphabet soup in ZEPLACE, particularly, the British and US spy outfits had to wade through to get to where they are now.

On the other hand, if you can get through all of the alphabet soup (most of which added little or nothing to my understanding of what the nation's biggest and most richly-'appropriationed' spy outfit does and its impact on our lives today. SHOWY gives the up-to-date and scariest stuff--particularly as to the claim Bamford makes (unless I misread him) that virtually every one of the main fiber optic trunk lines of our US telecom companies has been saddled with a "splitter box" to duplicate every bit, every binary digit, of telecom traffic that goes through those fibers. Since early in 2002. And that it's all whirring about on a 'monongahelous' disk farm down in Texas somewhere.

All that "Intel," ripe from the field-intercept, ready to be harvested by keyword, search-word, "watch-listed" words (like names of people, places & things. As I get it, a so-called "watch list" is nothing more than what you or I type into Google to find stuff, with no doubt lots of bells & whistles from every library system ever conceived and/or built (2 chars within five spaces of..., 3 alpha plus 14 numeric plus 12 alpha strings, all of George Boole's logic operators, and so on.

I may have missed this in BOOTS, but Bamford's narration in ZEPLACE of what the NRO, National Reconnaissance Orifice, actually can do with their satellite farms, can do with them--like notice when a single airplane has veered off course in our own airspace--made me sit up and exclaim: "Aha!! so THAT's why they had to have a mock 'plane-flying-into-the-NRO headquarters on 9/11/2001' fire drill/exercise--to get them all out of the buildings so they couldn't see all those four airplanes go off-course. So much to learn, so little time.

As to who "they" are (in the "they had to" line above, I hazard no guesses. All I want for Christmas is my two-front-toothsome investigations:

1) The REAL 9/11/2001-What Happened facts, and

2) 18 USCode §2441, the US War Crimes Act (to investigate and bring charges in the cases of the 170 or so deaths of prisoners-of-war in US control, probably while undergoing torture under the direction, by daily videoconferences, of our very own National Security Committee, the POTUS, the POTEET ("petite president," or Dark Cheney, Rice, Addington, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Powell?, Libby--dunno of Dick Perle was in on the fun 'n' games), Liz Cheney?, Feith, who-all else? Anyone gotta better list?

Customer Rating: 

I read this book as a person interested in how historical events impacted contract technicians servicing forward agency installations in the early Cold War. I found it quite useful in understanding the historical causes of untreated PTSD such individuals have (I mean how many shrinks are cleared higher than the President?). Whether or not the author realizes it, his historical review highlights the stakes such individuals were playing against, and the length to which such individuals went to protect American freedom and human life; often at great personal sacrifice (not just lives, but family life and lifetimes). The questions one should ask when reading it: "in a poker playing freedom loving nation, how many of our cards should be face up when Armageddon is on the table?" "Perhaps the agency has to be secretive to prevent an Orwellian state, not to construct one? Perhaps ongoing investigations (such as say building cases to try Presidents or private companies for treason?)and the origin of the agency in an international and still partly unresolved U.N. Conflict (Korea 1950-1953) are the reason for some of the secrecy? That is, maybe other countries don't want us to let their secrets out and we're bound by treaty not desire to oblige them? The example of operational plans to disembark civilians from dummy planes before running a scam to start a war with Cuba indicate that the Agency places a high value on American life. The fact that the plans weren't implemented also suggests that while such a secretive agency has to have a plan for everything, maybe they keep these plans secret so that people don't reach the wrong conclusions about their use. Read this asking that, maybe the keepers of the keys have greater integrity than people think?

Customer Rating: 

I liked this book very much. It was informative and an exciting to read. The author, James Bamford, covered everything I ever wanted to know about the NSA from its early beginnings, a little politics long the way and some great adventures that raised the hair on the back of my neck. Things like the infamous USS Liberty incident and top-secret Cold War submarine intelligence gathering missions. If you are not familiar with those things, you should definitely read this book. And towards the end he discusses the use of ultra high-tech quantum computers. I didn't even know we had a working quantum computer. Or, what about super computers the size of a suitcase? Now that's cool. Then there's the unbelievable fast Blue Gene computer. If those neat little twenty-first century gadgets don't wet your need to know appetite, I don't know what will. They certainly wet mine. So, to me, this book has it all.

Some people have questioned the accuracy of the material contained in Body of Secrets, and others have criticized it for being too political and for not really containing all that much about the NSA. They blame the author for loading the book with side stories instead of a true and accurate expose of the agency. I wouldn't know, because I don't know that much about the Agency. That's why I rely on books like this to tell me a little about those things. I do know that the NSA is a hyper-secret organization (like they say, NSA means No Such Agency), so how could the author know that much about it anyway? I mean, please, like they're going to tell him all their secrets so that he can tell the world. Not going to happen.

The bottom line is that I thoroughly enjoyed this book and I give it a high recommendation. Read it and make up your own mind about its truthfulness and accuracy.

Customer Rating: 

Generally a fairly dry and relatively neutral history of the NSA. It should be noted there is very little in the way of description of GCHQ except for passing references to co-operation with NSA and other US agencies. As an engineer currently working with fibre-optic data systems, much of which are carried on submarine cables, I was especially interested to read about development of underwater surveillance techniques, especially in light of the unprecedented multiple subsea cable cuts in April 2008 and early 2009.

Body Of Secrets is probably now most known for its exposure of Operation Northwoods, an early 1960s plan to provoke war with Cuba by murdering US citizens in various fiendish ways and blaming Cuba. To proponents of the theory that the 9/11 attacks were the work of the US government rather than the fictional AL Qaeda, Operation Northwoods provides a stunningly similar precedent which, although not used at the time, may well have been dusted off and revised for the 21st Century. The book also has an interesting history of the development of supercomputers for security purposes in the USA; one can only imagine what kind of world we would live in if the same effort had been put into uniting, rather than dividing, mankind.

Bamford also tackles the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty in 1967. It seems most of the 1-star reviewers of this book give it 1 star simply because they do not agree with the author's take on the attack, preferring to believe instead the theory that it was a case of mistaken identity. As someone who spent 15 years in the military this excuse is simply not believable (for too many reasons to list here) and is backed up by the testimony of Ward Boston, the Counsel to the U.S. Navy Court of Inquiry's investigation into the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty:

Declaration of Ward Boston, Jr.,Captain, JAGC, USN (Ret.)
Counsel to the U.S. Navy Court of Inquiry's investigation into the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty

I, Ward Boston, Jr. do declare that the following statement is true and complete:

For more than 30 years, I have remained silent on the topic of USS Liberty. I am a military man and when orders come in from the Secretary of Defense and President of the United States, I follow them.

However, recent attempts to rewrite history compel me to share the truth.

In June of 1967, while serving as a Captain in the Judge Advocate General Corps, Department of the Navy, I was assigned as senior legal counsel for the Navy's Court of Inquiry into the brutal attack on USS Liberty, which had occurred on June 8th.

The late Admiral Isaac C. Kidd, president of the Court, and I were given only one week to gather evidence for the Navy's official investigation into the attack, despite the fact that we both had estimated that a proper Court of Inquiry into an attack of this magnitude would take at least six months to conduct.

Admiral John S. McCain, Jr., then Commander-in-chief, Naval Forces Europe (CINCUSNAVEUR), at his headquarters in London, had charged Admiral Kidd (in a letter dated June 10, 1967) to "inquire into all the pertinent facts and circumstances leading to and connected with the armed attack; damage resulting therefrom; and deaths of and injuries to Naval personnel."

Despite the short amount of time we were given, we gathered a vast amount of evidence, including hours of heartbreaking testimony from the young survivors.

The evidence was clear. Both Admiral Kidd and I believed with certainty that this attack, which killed 34 American sailors and injured 172 others, was a deliberate effort to sink an American ship and murder its entire crew. Each evening, after hearing testimony all day, we often spoke our private thoughts concerning what we had seen and heard. I recall Admiral Kidd repeatedly referring to the Israeli forces responsible for the attack as "murderous bastards." It was our shared belief, based on the documentary evidence and testimony we received first hand, that the Israeli attack was planned and deliberate, and could not possibly have been an accident.

I am certain that the Israeli pilots that undertook the attack, as well as their superiors, who had ordered the attack, were well aware that the ship was American.

I saw the flag, which had visibly identified the ship as American, riddled with bullet holes, and heard testimony that made it clear that the Israelis intended there be no survivors. 10. Not only did the Israelis attack the ship with napalm, gunfire, and missiles, Israeli torpedo boats machine-gunned three lifeboats that had been launched in an attempt by the crew to save the most seriously wounded -- a war crime.

Admiral Kidd and I both felt it necessary to travel to Israel to interview the Israelis who took part in the attack. Admiral Kidd telephoned Admiral McCain to discuss making arrangements. Admiral Kidd later told me that Admiral McCain was adamant that we were not to travel to Israel or contact the Israelis concerning this matter.

Regrettably, we did not receive into evidence and the Court did not consider any of the more than sixty witness declarations from men who had been hospitalized and were unable to testify in person.

I am outraged at the efforts of the apologists for Israel in this country to claim that this attack was a case of "mistaken identity."

In particular, the recent publication of Jay Cristol's book, The Liberty Incident, twists the facts and misrepresents the views of those of us who investigated the attack.

It is Cristol's insidious attempt to whitewash the facts that has pushed me to speak out.

I know from personal conversations I had with Admiral Kidd that President Lyndon Johnson and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara ordered him to conclude that the attack was a case of "mistaken identity" despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Admiral Kidd told me, after returning from Washington, D.C. that he had been ordered to sit down with two civilians from either the White House or the Defense Department, and rewrite portions of the court's findings.

Admiral Kidd also told me that he had been ordered to "put the lid" on everything having to do with the attack on USS Liberty. We were never to speak of it and we were to caution everyone else involved that they could never speak of it again.

I have no reason to doubt the accuracy of that statement as I know that the Court of Inquiry transcript that has been released to the public is not the same one that I certified and sent off to Washington.

I know this because it was necessary, due to the exigencies of time, to hand correct and initial a substantial number of pages. I have examined the released version of the transcript and I did not see any pages that bore my hand corrections and initials. Also, the original did not have any deliberately blank pages, as the released version does. Finally, the testimony of Lt. Painter concerning the deliberate machine gunning of the life rafts by the Israeli torpedo boat crews, which I distinctly recall being given at the Court of Inquiry and included in the original transcript, is now missing and has been excised.

Following the conclusion of the Court of Inquiry, Admiral Kidd and I remained in contact. Though we never spoke of the attack in public, we did discuss it between ourselves, on occasion. Every time we discussed the attack, Admiral Kidd was adamant that it was a deliberate, planned attack on an American ship.

In 1990, I received a telephone call from Jay Cristol, who wanted to interview me concerning the functioning of the Court of Inquiry. I told him that I would not speak to him on that subject and prepared to hang up the telephone. Cristol then began asking me about my personal background and other, non-Court of Inquiry related matters. I endeavored to answer these questions and politely extricate myself from the conversation. Cristol continued to return to the subject of the Court of Inquiry, which I refused to discuss with him. Finally, I suggested that he contact Admiral Kidd and ask him about the Court of Inquiry.

At no time did I ever hear Admiral Kidd speak of Cristol other than in highly disparaging terms. I find Cristol's claims of a "close friendship" with Admiral Kidd to be utterly incredible. I also find it impossible to believe the statements he attributes to Admiral Kidd, concerning the attack on USS Liberty.

Several years later, I received a letter from Cristol that contained what he purported to be his notes of our prior conversation. These "notes" were grossly incorrect and bore no resemblance in reality to that discussion. I find it hard to believe that these "notes" were the product of a mistake, rather than an attempt to deceive. I informed Cristol that I disagreed with his recollection of our conversation and that he was wrong. Cristol made several attempts to arrange for the two of us to meet in person and talk but I always found ways to avoid doing this. I did not wish to meet with Cristol as we had nothing in common and I did not trust him.

Contrary to the misinformation presented by Cristol and others, it is important for the American people to know that it is clear that Israel is responsible for deliberately attacking an American ship and murdering American sailors, whose bereaved shipmates have lived with this egregious conclusion for many years.

Dated: January 9, 2004
at Coronado, California.
Ward Boston, Jr., Captain, JAGC, USN (Ret.)
Senior Counsel to the USS Liberty Court of Inquiry