Czech youngsters stand atop an overturned truck as the Soviet-led invasion by the Warsaw Pact armies crushes the so-called Prague Spring reform in former Czechoslovakia, in Prague on Aug. 21, 1968. Photo: Libor Hajsky/AFP/Getty Images

NSA Weather Reporting on the Soviet Union Back in the late 1960s, Charlie Meals, the deputy director of SID, worked in the Soviet “weather shop.” The only way the U.S. could track weather in the Soviet Union was by listening to Soviet communications. The Soviets knew the U.S. was listening and so it encrypted the locations of weather reports. U.S. Strategic Air Command “needed to have weather reports in case bombers ever had to fly into Soviet air space,” and the weather reporting could also be an indicator of impending military action. For example, before the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia, the Soviets started including Czech weather reports in military broadcasts. (The intricacies of collecting weather data as intelligence is also described in this article by Jeffrey Richelson of National Security Archive.) The “weather effort” had at least 250 people at NSA and people at bases around the world. This desk was still in operation in 2004. NSA’s FBI Relations FBI field office staff made little use of signals intelligence and many didn’t know how to access the information for themselves on the Intelligence Community’s Intelink system, according to an NSA intern, describing assignments at the bureau. The FBI field offices had little or no Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility space, which made it difficult to share the higher levels of intelligence between the agencies. The intern had higher regard for FBI headquarters. With data from the NSA, “FBI analysts can now immediately tell if an individual in the U.S. has any foreign terrorism-related contacts.”

A rebel is blessed during a Voodoo ceremony of the Gonaives Resistance Front, during a march in Gonaives, Haiti, on Feb. 13, 2004. Photo: Walter Astrada/AP

Eavesdropping in Haiti After 2004 Coup The NSA tracked “High Value Targets” in Haiti following the 2004 coup, according to an article classified “Top Secret.” An NSA staffer reports that a task force on HVTs traveled to the central highlands of Haiti where they met with rebel leaders. “During this trip they had collected several telephone numbers of these leaders and their associates,” the staffer wrote. Soon thereafter, the NSA “began to see multi-page reports of conversations between one important rebel leader and his wife which provided insight into his negotiating position and plans for control of the central highlands.” Those private conversations proved useful. “I received several emails from people who were incredulous that a conversation between an HVT target and his girlfriend was of any importance,” the staffer went on. “The truth is that a lot of SIGINT ‘leavings’ that never make it into normal SIGINT reporting are actually valuable intelligence items for tactical warfighters.” NSA’s Setup in Pakistan NSA interns see the sights, even in Pakistan. An intelligence analysis intern working in SID’s Pakistan branch was deployed to assignments in Islamabad and Lahore. At the embassy, the intern focused on signals intelligence related to the non-tribal “Settled Areas” and coordinated communications among NSA, CIA and the “local counterpart” i.e. Pakistani partners, in tracking and targeting terrorists. The Settled Areas Office along with their local counterparts was responsible for the arrests of more than 600 alleged terrorists from September 11, 2001 to 2004. Outside of working hours, the blonde American attracted a “constant stream of stares and curious looks” as she ventured out to tourist sites. Station Islamabad, which has been fictionalized in “Homeland” and “Zero Dark Thirty,” was to this staffer “one of the most exciting, challenging, and fast-paced locations to work in the world.” SIGINT Travels Beyond the Intelligence Community “Q: What do SIGINT and mad cows have in common? A: Both are of critical interest to the U.S. Department of Agriculture” SIGINT isn’t just for intelligence or military agencies. NSA’s two-person Washington Liaison Office responds to signals intelligence requests from Departments of Agriculture, Health and Human Services, Interior, Transportation, the Environmental Protection Agency, Export-Import Bank, Federal Aviation Administration, Federal Communications Commission, Federal Reserve System, and National Aeronautics and Space Administration. With such a wide range of subject matter and competing priorities, the liaison officers have to balance “topics from bovine spongiform encephalopathy to space launch vehicle capabilities; from narcotics interdiction techniques to wine labeling regulations; from toxin delivery technologies to secure communications options, and much, much more.”

A protestor holding a portrait of Osama bin Laden shouts “Allahu Akbar” during a protest in front of Baiturrahman mosque, Banda Aceh, Indonesia, on Oct. 10, 2001. Photo: AFP/Getty Images

NSA Couldn’t Search Arabic PDFs Imagine if the NSA missed warning signs of an attack for no other reason than it couldn’t search Arabic words in PDF format. “If you were looking for Osama bin Laden,” wrote an NSA employee in SIDtoday, “and you had entered every Arabic word known to mankind in every possible encoding and Osama were doing nothing more than using PDF and writing in Arabic, you’d never get a hit. Quite reassuring, isn’t it?” Near the end of 2004, SIDtoday began publishing a technical advice column written by an experienced Digital Network Intelligence analyst under the pseudonym “Raul.” One article describes a gaping intelligence hole that NSA had at the time, three years after the 9/11 attacks. Though analysts at NSA understood exactly how foreign-language PDFs were encoded, they lacked the technology to untangle them in real-time in order to search them for keywords. Apparently, this article “hit a few nerves.” Raul’s subsequent column responded to a flood of complaints he had received. In the subsequent column, he outlined requirements for a hypothetical solution to the foreign-language PDF problem, and concluded with a bit of snark: “Bin Laden is still safe and we, to the best of my knowledge, still have no reasonable solution to the PDF problem.” When NSA Agents Go Undercover For some sensitive missions, NSA personnel need cover identities while working in the field. An article from October 2004 describes how agents “go about making NSA personnel look like they actually work for an entity other than NSA.” The Special Operational Support office is responsible for NSA’s “cover and sensitive personnel support programs.” In addition to ensuring that cover operations comply with Department of Defense regulations, SOS provides “logistics, transportation, personnel and medical support.” The office also provides undercover operatives with “DoD Common Access Cards (CAC), travel documents, state driver’s licenses, credit cards, post office boxes, social security cards, pocket litter and telecommunications.” Finding Genetic Sequences in SIGINT The NSA, it turns out, likes to stay on top of the latest scientific developments. Writing at the end of 2004, an NSA cryptanalyst described her experience working as an intern, and using her cryptography skills, on looking for information about genetic sequencing in the signals intelligence collected by the NSA. “The ultimate goals of this project are to gain general knowledge about genetic engineering research activity by foreign entities,” she wrote, “and to identify laboratories and/or individuals who may be involved in nefarious use of genetic research.”

Chairman Thomas Kean speaks during a news conference to release the 9/11 Commission’s report in Washington on July 22, 2004. Photo: Mark Wilson/Getty Images