The Rise of the NSA

CHAPTER 19 The Rise of the NSA There are many things we do in intelligence that, if revealed, would have the potential for all kinds of blowback. —JAMES CLAPPER, director of national intelligence, 2013 [ THE GAME OF NATIONS, which often is not visible to public scrutiny, the great prize is state secrets that reveal the hidden weaknesses of a nation’s potential adversaries. The most impor- tant of these in peacetime is communication intercepts. It was just such state secrets that Edward Snowden took from the NSA in the spring of 2013. Before that breach, America’s paramount advantage in this subterranean competition was its undisputed dominance in the business of obtaining and deciphering the communications of other nations. The NSA was the instrument by which the United States both protected its own secret communications and stole the secrets of foreign nations. The NSA, however, has an Achilles’s heel: It is dependent on civilian computer technicians who do not neces- sarily share its values to operate its complex system. Because of this dependence, it was not able in 2013, as it turned out, to protect its crucial sources and methods. Snowden exposed this vulnerability when he walked away with the aforementioned descriptions of the gaps in America’s coverage | | Epst_9780451494566_2p_all_r1.indd 197 ® 9/30/16 8:13AM | | HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_019685