bout de papier, Vol. 24, No. 4 (2009) — Winter 2009 // Hiver 2009, pp. 18–19
THE SECRET SENTRY: THE
UNTOLD HISTORY OF THE
NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY, by
Matthew M. Aid. New York: Bloomsbury
Press, 2009, 311 pp plus notes and index,
$24.75.
If you read only one book on intelligence this year, make it The Secret Sentry by Matthew M. Aid.
Unlike many books on intelligence on the shelves of the big box booksellers, this one actually is knowledgeable and insightful. It will help those in the foreign policy field to understand the capabilities and limitations of foreign intelligence, at least that which originates with Signals Intelligence, the interception and decryption of communications. It shows the strengths and weaknesses, the successes and failures.
Matthew Aid has been working on this book for more than a decade and is probably the person with the greatest historical insight on the true workings of Signals Intelligence or SIGINT, as it is known in the business. This book reflects only some of the phenomenal information which he has succeeded in uncovering. His reserve of documents contains examples which are no longer publicly accessible anywhere else since he managed to make copies before the Bush II administration reclassified the material and removed it from public access in American archives.
The strength of this book rests with the fact that it simply tries to show the role of SIGINT in American foreign policy decision-making since the eve of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, which precipitated America’s entry into World War II. And it ends, figuratively speaking, with yesterday.
Unlike so much of the popular genre on American intelligence activities this book neither eulogizes intelligence nor portrays it as the failings of incompetents bent, intentionally or otherwise, on harming democracy. Aid presents intelligence as a tool of foreign policy making. Sometimes intelligence works well and helps the process, at other times it fails miserably. Aid demonstrates the role of leadership, and the significance of good leadership, at the helm of the American National Security Agency (NSA). He points out the dangers when intelligence becomes politicized. He shows what happens when truth loses out to policy direction — and not just the recent example of Bush and his failure in Iraq.
Aid also points out another weakness in the intelligence process. And this one may have equal application to Canada. There is no doubt that SIGINT is the premier intelligence service. Overall it is of exceptional quality and quantity. SIGINT exceeds the very useful but narrowly beneficial results of foreign Human Intelligence, HUMINT, and the problematic results of Security Intelligence. In a sense, at times Aid suggests that SIGINT fails because of its successes.
The success of SIGINT has permitted those engaged in these activities to receive more and more money to maintain their genuine successes — as well as to placate the voting public which is terrified of the terrorist threat. Granted, SIGINT is terribly expensive and requires a great deal of money to function. It seems, however, that the constant effort to keep up with technology to collect SIGINT from the “bad guys,” who constantly attain new means of evading interception, has placed the emphasis on collecting rather than exploiting.
The American NSA now has a potential to collect more raw intelligence data than it can possibly exploit in a timely manner. In several examples, Aid shows that the necessary and significant intelligence had been collected but there was no one to read, interpret, assess, and disseminate the information. In most cases, of course, the volume of SIGINT is overwhelming but helpful to policy makers. Often the volume of material exceeds the capabilities of the clients to read and digest the material.
Because of being captivated and enamoured by electronic gadgetry the American focus seems to have been on buying bigger and better collection platforms to the detriment of investing in the human resources to exploit the material. For most of America’s history, this has, nevertheless, worked exceptionally well and to the benefit of American global interests. Whether it will continue to do so remains to be seen. Is this likely to be any different in Canada? Canada’s small but successful Communications Security Establishment (CSE) works in much the same manner.
Although Aid’s book deals only cursorily with Canada and the other American allies, Canadians must acknowledge that the CSE is a branch plant of the NSA. We don’t like to hear that. But it remains correct. Canada is part of a “Five Eyes” SIGINT alliance which has worked to our enormous benefit at a pittance of the cost of the material to which we have access. Reality is that Canada cannot do it alone — ever. For that reason alone, it is important for Canadian policy makers to understand the capabilities and collection context of the American NSA which, whether we like it or not, is probably the agency which has collected the intelligence on which decisions vital to Canada’s national interests are made. And there is no conspiracy where the Americans attempt to influence Canadian or other decisions by manipulating the information to which we have access. The volume of the material and the cost of maintaining such a conspiracy (with limited realistic potential achievements) would be prohibitive.
Aid’s book is immensely readable. He takes the highlights of American foreign policy decisions and explores the impact which SIGINT had on the events. In some instances the United States was at a distinct advantage from its access to the inner decisions being made by opponents. At other times there was no substantial available intelligence to influence decisions. And in some instances the intelligence had no impact because it deviated from the preferred direction of the White House.
Particularly fascinating insights are provided for the Vietnam war — where the SIGINT was largely correct but unpalatable to the US military and civilian leadership. Similarly, the SIGINT on the lead-up to the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the Americans and the decision to invade Iraq demonstrates the difficulty of making decisions where clear-cut intelligence is unavailable in the face of strong policy direction.
Aid captures the immensity of the challenges of SIGINT, and the at times mismanagement in developing personnel resources, when he reveals that during the attack on Iraq, half of the linguists for SIGINT support assigned to the 101st Airborne during the invasion only spoke Korean and the remaining Arab-speakers could not understand the Iraqi dialect. And during the Six Day War in the Middle East the key American SIGINT collector in the region included no one who spoke Hebrew.
Finally, Aid lays to rest various urban myths which have arisen. For example, the Americans have never been able to read high-level communications of significant adversaries, including the Soviet Union (and presumably now Russia, as well), North Korea, or anyone else who understood American SIGINT capabilities. Similarly, Aid states conclusively that, based on the SIGINT record, the Israelis did not consciously attack the US spy ship, USS Liberty, during the Six Day War.
Aid’s book shows the successes and weaknesses of this intelligence mode, and the role luck and proper management of resources play in achieving success.
View the original scanned pages →
Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 24, No. 4 (2009) — Winter 2009 // Hiver 2009, pp. 18–19. Read the rest of this issue →
