You're talking to your wife on the phone. You use the word “bomb,” “president,” “Allah,” any of a hundred key words, computer recognizes it, it automatically records it, red flags it for analysis; that was 20 years ago," says Gene Hackman in the role of a reclusive undercover federal operative in the 1998 movie Enemy of the State. He is lecturing a character played by Will Smith, whose life has been derailed by a rogue espionage organization after an incriminating tape was slipped into his shopping bag. "They've got over a hundred spy satellites looking down at us," the lecture continues, "That's classified. In the old days we actually had to tap a wire into your phone line. Now the calls are bouncing off of satellites. They snatch them right out of the air!"
Once again, Hollywood has succeeded in hitting the sweet spot where ignorance, gullibility, and paranoia overlap, where fantasy needn't compete with reality. In this instance, it is not the FBI or the CIA as Big Brother, but a branch of the government so secretive that few know of its existence—the National Security Agency. It is also the subject of Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency, which is author James Bamford's second investigation into the mysterious NSA. Embargoed until its April 24 release from Doubleday, Body of Secrets takes up where his first book, The Puzzle Palace: A Report on America's Most Secret Agency, left off in 1982. A national bestseller, The Puzzle Palace was the only book ever written about the NSA.
The timing of Body of Secrets couldn't have been better from the publisher's point of view. With the indictment of alleged Russian mole Bob Hanssen, and the seizure of an $80-million Navy reconnaissance plane by the Chinese government, the intelligence community is very much in the spotlight of current events. Even though the book has been embargoed, the author has been a hot commodity. Bamford did a piece for the New York Times Magazine on Hanssen called "My Friend the Spy" in March, and earlier this month, wrote about spy planes for the op-ed pages of the same paper. When the book hits the stores this Tuesday, he'll be in the news again. Nightline will feature him that evening and the author will appear on NPR's Fresh Air and the Today show later this week. Both Time and Newsweek are running features on Body of Secrets.
Part of the book's appeal for the media is that so few people have tried to crack the NSA, something that doesn't surprise the author. "The NSA has all kinds of ways to protect themselves from people trying to get information, so it was a fairly daunting challenge," he told PW in a telephone interview from his home in Washington, D.C. Bamford recalled a rather tense situation over a Freedom of Information Act request for documents about an investigation of the NSA that involved illegal eavesdropping. The Justice Department complied, which riled the NSA. The agency responded by re-classifying the material and demanding that the Justice Department get it back.
"The Justice Department had just released it to me, so they didn't pay very much attention," Bamford told PW. "But when the Reagan administration came in, there was an attorney general who did go along with what the NSA was asking for, and they tried several times to get the documents back from me." Although the information was declassified when he received it, Bamford was still concerned. "It was worrisome because you've got the entire NSA and the Justice Department trying to prevent your writing from coming out, and threatening prosecution and everything else," he explained.
NSA's tactics proved insufficient to scare him away. After a nine-year stint in the capital as the investigative producer for World News Tonight with Peter Jennings, Bamford returned to his favorite subject in 1998. At first he encountered the same old resistance, but halfway through his research, previously locked doors mysteriously opened for him. Bamford attributed NSA's sudden reversal to the end of the Cold War (and, consequently, a step-down of paranoia), a change in leadership and the necessity for NSA to compete for its budget (as opposed to the Reagan years, when money was pouring into the intelligence community).
Bamford considered NSA's spooky public image to be another factor. "There have been a number of movies portraying NSA employees as assassins who just get on the phone and call for a satellite to look into someone's hotel room," he said, alluding to a scene from Enemy of the State. "One of the reasons to open the door a crack was to help change that image and present the public with a more realistic view of what the agency is all about. I think it also helped that The Puzzle Palace was received as a highly respected work of history."
The NSA might have been miffed about The Puzzle Palace but other government departments appreciated the results of Bamford's efforts. He was invited to address senior officials at the Secretary of State Forum, and The Puzzle Palace was used as a textbook at the Defense Intelligence College. "So you had most of the government liking my book, and NSA taking the opposite view and trying to come after me," Bamford told PW.
For Body of Secrets, the NSA's door opened more than a crack. This time, NSA director Lieutenant General Hayden eased Bamford's research efforts by authorizing tours of the agency, interviews with senior officials and access to internal documents that were at the time classified. Bamford was even invited for dinner at Hayden's home. "Pretty much, it's been the opposite of the what it was last time," he said.
Talk about an about-face. Whereas the NSA once threatened Bamford with prosecution, now it invited him to sign copies of Body of Secrets and give a brief talk to its employees later this week.
And while the NSA was infinitely more cooperative while Bamford worked on Body of Secrets, he said the agency has not even asked for an advance look at the book. "And if they had, I would have refused," he added. (For more details about what's in the book, see PW's starred review in this week's Forecasts.) "What Bamford discovers is at times surprising, often quite troubling, but always fascinating. In his conclusion, he is at once awed and deeply troubled by what NSA can now do."
As for the NSA, Bamford said, "If the agency is not watched closely, if the laws aren't followed, the technology exists to allow the kind of eavesdropping on our lives that George Orwell could never have imagined."
