πόλλ' οἶδ' ἀλώπηξ,ἀλλ' ἐχῖνος ἓν μέγα πόλλ' οἶδ' ἀλώπηξ,ἀλλ' ἐχῖνος ἓν μέγα
written by James Bamford (The puzzle palace), 1982
pp.298-299
The real problem was actually one of casuistry. The NSA has always maintained that eavesdropping occurs only when a person is “targeted,” not merely when his or her communications are intercepted, even though that same nontargeted intercept may eventually be recorded, transcribed, and disseminated to other agencies.
Despite his debut before the Pike Committee, Allen knew that the real test would be in the tug of war the Agency was waging with the Senate Intelligence Committee and its chairman, Senator Frank Church. During the summer and early fall, the Church Committee had been hearing testimony in executive session from both current and former Agency officials, and the mood was growing less and less cordial. Of the witnesses to be called, probably the most sensitive was to be the chief of G Group, the organization that ran most of the Agency's domestic operations. But the current chief of G Group had been on the job for barely six months, and the Agency, feeling that he lacked the background to field the committee's tough questioning, sent him on a “panic” trip to Europe.
Six months earlier Frank Raven had retired from the Agency after heading G Group since its inception almost fifteen (15) years before. Now Director Allen needed him back. “We have a real problem with our testimony for the Church Committee,” he told Raven in a telephone call, and then asked him to appear as the witness for the questions about G Group's activities. Raven reluctantly agreed.
Throughout his thirty-five-year (35-year) career in NSA and its predecessors, Frank Raven had suffered from a syndrome that remains endemic in the Puzzle Palace ── a reluctance to comment on world events out of fear of inadvertently revealing information picked up through SIGINT. When conversations at social events turned to the Middle East or the latest coup in South America, he would suddenly clam up ── which would inevitably provoke his wife, who called him by a family nickname, to issue the gentle admonition: “Philly, talk!”
Now, as he was getting out of his car to begin his first day before the closed Church Committee hearings, his wife issued a new admonition: “Philly, keep your damned mouth shut!”
Throughout the first day, as he sat in the rear of the hearing room waiting to be called, Raven had a chance to listen to the testimony of other NSA officials, and he was growing increasingly perturbed. “They were hanging NSA,” he recalled. “NSA was getting deeper and deeper in trouble, and NSA didn't deserve it. They were on the defensive. Instead of trying to cooperate with the committee, and trying to find out what had happened, and who had done what, they had a chip on their shoulder and they were fighting the committee every inch of the way.”
Seated at the witness table as each official was called to testify were Roy Banner and Juanita Moody, who was responsible for liaison with the rest of the intelligence community as well as the distribution of all SIGINT. “Now, as I sat there that afternoon,” Raven recalled, “the guy who was the witness knew the answers to the questions that they were asking. Roy Banner and Juanita Moody didn't. If the guy had been permitted to give the answers ── the truth ── there wouldn't have been any problems . . . but the two of them [were] putting in all kinds of . . . asinine legal objections and questions and quibbling over the questions and quibbling over answers, and they didn't know what they were talking about.”
Frustrated by the Agency's attempt to muzzle the witnesses, Raven, who was due to take the stand the next day, called General Allen's office and issued an ultimatum: if the Agency wanted his testimony, it first would have to issue a direct order from General Allen forbidding anyone else from NSA from speaking unless he ── Raven ── asked him or her for advice. He would answer all direct questions from the committee, and if he needed help or a legal opinion, he would ask for it. “I wasn't going to have staff types,” said Raven, “who didn't know what my answer was going to be, cutting in and quibbling over the legal technicalities of the NSA charter and the CIA charter and such, when they had no idea of what I was going to say.”
Raven got his order, and the next day neither Banner nor Moody appeared; rather, they sent assistants, who remained silent during the former G Group chief's testimony. The result, apparently, was unexpected candor. At one point, Senator Walter F. Mondale asked Raven how long he had been familiar with Operation Shamrock. “Well, you might consider me a Johnny-come-lately,” he responded. “I was on the problem in 1940, and I had been off and on it since 1940.” Later Raven recalled, “I thought Mondale would choke! . . . He said I was the first person he had met who would admit they had known any of these problems over five years.”
In looking back on the experience, Raven believed that NSA had been wounded badly in the committee hearing primarily because it had “too defensive an attitude and [was] trying to fight the committee rather than get the truth on the table.”
── Senator Walter F. Mondale
── Operation Shamrock.
── they had known any of these problems over five years.
p.209
According to Frank Raven, chief of G Group until 1975, the major reason for the NSA's taking charge was the failure of the Army to allocate sufficient intercept spaces and resources for the much-needed strategic intelligence, such as diplomatic and economic targets. “The Army fought like hell to avoid intercepting it,” said Raven. Until NSA moved in, the Army had been using the station primarily for tactical coverage. Also, NSA was upset because no resources had been devoted to intercepting the newer forms of communications, like satellite microwave.
── strategic intelligence, such as diplomatic and economic targets.
p.209
Most of the signals intercepted are too sophisticated to be attacked at the station and are therefore forwarded by satellite back to Fort Meade for analysis.
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πόλλ' οἶδ' ἀλώπηξ,ἀλλ' ἐχῖνος ἓν μέγα πόλλ' οἶδ' ἀλώπηξ,ἀλλ' ἐχῖνος ἓν μέγα
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