Spy agency disruption reaches Fort Meade
America's "ear" on terrorism war wracked by poor morale, management failures
By Wayne Madsen
Online Journal Contributing Writer
April 12, 2005—Up to now, little has been reported on how the Bush administration's disastrous intelligence policies have affected the super secret National Security Agency (NSA).
According to NSA insiders, the chief U.S. signals intelligence (SIGINT) collection agency has been wracked by much of the same internal feuding, senior management failures, and external political pressure that have plagued other U.S. intelligence agencies, including the CIA, FBI, Defense Intelligence Agency, National Geo-spatial Intelligence Agency, and National Reconnaissance Office.
NSA insiders lay blame for the problems at NSA's Fort Meade, Maryland, headquarters squarely on the shoulders of agency director Air Force General Michael V. Hayden and his small coterie of close advisers, a few of whom have no substantive intelligence background. Hayden has been NSA director since March 1999, the longest tour for any NSA director. Not only did the White House extend Hayden's NSA tour, but also nominated him to be the first deputy director of National Intelligence, where he will serve under John Negroponte.
Hayden's reign at NSA has been marked by the emaciation of the career civilian corps through forced retirements and resignations, outsourcing of government positions to contractors, intimidation, forced psychiatric and psychological examinations for "problem" employees, increased work loads for shift personnel with no personnel augmentation, unreasonable personal searches by security personnel, and withholding salary increases for career personnel. A number of NSA employees are suffering from stress and fatigue and that is adversely affecting their job performance.
One of the most pervasive operational problems at NSA stems from the fact that when newly trained civilian and military linguists, analysts, and other operational personnel arrive at NSA for duty and are integrated into various operational work centers, they are soon quickly transferred to Iraq. This puts an inordinate workload on the career civilian NSA personnel.
In other cases, critical experienced employees have been forced out of NSA because of policy differences, especially those related to the war against Iraq. One linguist who was fluent in 14 languages, including Arabic, Russian, Japanese, Hindi, Chinese, Modern Greek, and Spanish was forced into retirement over policy differences with NSA senior management. NSA concocted trumped up charges against the linguist. Another analyst, who worked closely with the CIA's satellite imagery division on Iraq and other hot spots, was repeatedly harassed by NSA's Stasi-like security personnel. In other cases, experienced NSA employees who don't fit the mold have been charged with infractions as ludicrous as stalking, gun running, and personality disorders.
When Hayden first began his civilian shake up at NSA in 2000, career professionals described it as an "internal coup." For many longtime NSA employees, the writing was on the wall and it was not a pleasant message. However, to the outsider, Hayden has represented a "kinder and gentler" NSA director. During the filming of the movie thriller about NSA, "Enemy of the State," Hayden invited lead star Will Smith to tour the National Security Operations Center (NSOC). Members of the film crew were allowed to buy NSA curios and souvenirs from the agency's gift shop. In addition, Hayden has thrown NSA's doors open to 60 Minutes, Nightline, and other news media. However, to NSA career employees, Hayden's iron fist tactics have earned him the nickname "Hitler Hayden."
Hayden also seems more concerned about public relations than NSA's mission. NSA insiders cite the presence of two female analysts in the Denial and Deception (called "D and D" in NSA parlance) branch of the NSOC who do nothing but scan the media for any stories about NSA, positive and negative. Their jobs are duplicated in Hayden's General Counsel's office.
Career NSA personnel claim that their most senior member, Deputy Director of NSA William B. Black, Jr., shows little interest in their plight. One long-time NSAer said Black often nods off at Hayden's staff meetings. In 2000, Black, a retired NSA employee with 38 years of service, was rehired by Hayden from Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) to be his deputy. Hayden's selection of Black from outside the agency was considered a slap in the faces of those line NSA officers who would have been normally considered next in line for promotion to the much-coveted post. That slight began to severely affect agency morale a little over a year before the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington.
After 9-11 and subsequent revelations that NSA had intercepted two Arabic language phone calls on September 10, 2001, ("Tomorrow is zero hour" and "The match is about to begin") that indicated an imminent attack by al Qaeda but failed to translate and analyze them in a timely manner to be effective, Hayden was looking for scapegoats. According to NSA insiders, he found one in Maureen A. Baginski, the director of NSA's Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) Directorate. According to the NSA insiders, Baginski, a 27-year NSA veteran and Russian and Spanish linguist, was set up for a fall by Hayden and his team. In 2003, Baginski was named executive assistant director of the FBI for Intelligence.
Another Hayden project, "Groundbreaker," the outsourcing of NSA functions to contractors, has also been used by Hayden's advisers to assign blame for the 911 failures at NSA.
However, the career NSA operational personnel may be getting squeezed not so much for policy differences but because of what they know about the lies of the Bush administration. In addition to the obvious lies about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD), many personnel are well aware that what occurred on the morning of 9-11 was not exactly what was reported by the White House.
For example, George W. Bush spoke of the heroic actions of the passengers and crew aboard United Flight 93 over rural Pennsylvania on the morning of 9-11. However, NSA personnel on duty at the NSOC that morning have a very different perspective. Before Flight 93 crashed in Pennsylvania, NSA operations personnel clearly heard on the intercom system monitoring military and civilian communications that the "fighters are engaged" with the doomed United aircraft. NSOC personnel were then quickly dismissed from the tactical area of the NSOC where the intercom system was located leaving only a few senior personnel in place. NSA personnel are well aware that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld did not "misspeak" when, addressing U.S. troops in Baghdad during Christmas last year, said, "the people who attacked the United States in New York, shot down the plane over Pennsylvania." They believe the White House concocted the "passengers-bring-down-plane" story for propaganda value.
Morale at NSA has plummeted from repeated cover-ups of serious breaches of security by senior officials. While rank-and-file employees are subjected to abusive psychological and psychiatric evaluations for disagreeing with summary intelligence reports provided to outside users or "consumers" and even for more mundane matters, others are given a pass. Ironically, one of the psychiatrists used by NSA to evaluate problem or disgruntled employees was recently found by police to be growing marijuana at his home in Crofton, Maryland.
In another case, after suggestive photos of a female Air Force captain, who was an aide to Hayden, were found on a pornographic website under the title Captain amErika. NSA security did nothing to discipline or seriously investigate the officer in question. The website was apparently set up by the Air Force officer's ex-husband. After NSA took legal action, the original website was taken down. The NSA contended it was concerned about the website because it contained the names of NSA field stations, including the Bad Aibling intercept station in Germany. However, a group of non-commissioned officers who object to the double standards for conduct imposed on enlisted personnel and officers have re-created much of the original Captain amErika website at www.captainamerika.us. The web administrator is based in South Bend, Indiana. The site continues to refer to Bad Aibling and the NSA communications intercept system known as "Echelon," contains the original pornographic material, and makes severe allegations about General Hayden's personal conduct. The website claims the officer known as Captain amErika has been promoted to major and is on the fast track for early promotion to lieutenant colonel.
There have been other sexual related scandals at NSA that resulted in little or no action being taken against the offenders. In 1999, a senior NSA officer, on assignment overseas, was arrested by police in his hotel room while filming a sex video with a child. The officer was forced to retire but became an NSA contractor in Florida making two to three times his NSA salary. In a more recent incident, an NSA SIGINT operator who was monitoring a targeted person's Internet activity involving access to child pornography web sites, lifted the NSA security filters to look at the pornography for himself, a violation of NSA operational procedures.
The recently-released 600-page report of the Presidential Commission on WMD intelligence failures in Iraq, co-chaired by Republican Judge Laurence Silberman and former Democratic Senator Charles Robb, concluded that there was no evidence that the Bush administration pressured U.S. intelligence agencies to "cook" or "cherry pick" the intelligence needed to justify the war against Iraq. Rather than focus on the pressure exerted on agencies by Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, and other neoconservative officials in the National Security Council, Pentagon, and State Department, the report blamed the intelligence agencies for providing "worthless or misleading" information on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction to senior Bush policymakers. Silberman, a key player in the Iran-Contra cover-up scandal while a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, told Bush at the White House briefing in which the final report was submitted, "We did not see any evidence of false intelligence being injected by any policymaker into the intelligence community."
What is happening at NSA is also occurring at the CIA and other agencies. A senior CIA official is suing the CIA for being fired last August for refusing to falsify CIA reports on Iraqi WMD in order to justify the White House's pre-emptive attack. As with the senior Arabic and Russian linguist at NSA, the CIA officer was falsely investigated for personal improprieties in retaliation for his refusal to cook intelligence for the White House. In the case of the CIA officer, the CIA's investigation was predicated on alleged financial and sexual misconduct.
The WMD Intelligence Commission's report failed to look at the underlying causes of U.S. intelligence failures: mismanagement and corruption at senior levels. That incompetence and malfeasance continues at the NSA, CIA, and other intelligence agencies. George Tenet, someone who was as damaging to CIA morale as Hayden has been for NSA's, resigned as CIA director and then was given a medal by President Bush. His successor, Porter Goss, has carried out a top-down purge directed by the neo-conservatives in the administration. Hayden, who has allowed morale at NSA to sink to an all-time low, has been promoted to the Directorate of National Intelligence as deputy.
By its failure to assign blame to the very top officials of the U.S. intelligence community and its continued harassment of career intelligence professionals, the Bush administration continues to send the message that it is okay to lie, cheat, and engage in inappropriate behavior. To challenge the administration, however, will result in firings, early retirements, harassment, and investigations on sham charges.
Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based journalist and nationally-distributed columnist. He is the author of the forthcoming book "Jaded Tasks: Big Oil, Black Ops & Brass Plates." He was assigned to the National Security Agency during the Reagan administration.
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