Customer Reviews

The Secret Sentry: The Untold History of the National Security Agency

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The Secret Sentry is an extraordinary book, providing much more information about the activities of the National Security Agency (NSA) then was previously available. Some people will know that the NSA history unit has recently released volumes of material on aspects of the history of the agency. In some measure these releases were due to Matthew Aid, the author of the book. Matthew served in the old Air Force Security Service, one of the service arms of NSA. He has experience inside the system but has done extraordinary research in the records held by the National Archives and Records Administration facility at College Park. The quality of his efforts have been so good that other people, once they became aware of his endeavors, who worked in the NSA world have shared experiences with him. Matthew discovered that the people who were supposed to cull records before they were transfered to College Park missed a lot of documents. He also learned to effectively use the Freedom of Information Act to nudge documents out of NSA and other intelligence organizations. The net result is a work that provides more insight into the operations of the Signal Intelligence (SIGINT) community than has been available before. It is an up and down story with both successes and failures. But the important insight that emerges is that SIGINT often has provided the greatest volume of material used by the services, other intelligence agencies, and the White House. During the Vietnam War much of the intelligence that the military and political structure used to fight the conflict came from SIGINT. Also, there were times when NSA broke into Russian communications, although not often enough. Matthew provides an surprising amount of information on the use and misuse of SIGINT from the Gulf War to the present. His history also makes clear, that as was the case with Pearl Harbor, SIGINT information can be so volumonous that important facts can lost or overlooked until it is too late. He also reminds us that when polititians become their own intelligence officers the result is often dismal, if not to say distorted.

For the sake of ethical accountability, I wish to disclose that I know Matthew Aid and have been after him for years to publish his research. I also was a member of the NSA family, having served in the old Army Security Agency, with two tours of Vietnam (his depiction of SIGINT use in Vietnam is the best I have seen). It should also be understood that many of the chapters in the book could individually be expanded into book-length studies. Matthew has much more data than he was able to use in the book. Actually, the publisher, Bloomsbury, is to be acknowledge to allow almost a quarter of the book to be footnotes. It is unusual for a book on intelligence, particularly one from a commercial publisher, to be so heavily documented. A final note: the book is quite accessible and a fast read because of the way it is organized. The book could have used a bigger acronym list,perhaps a brief explaination of the SIGINT cycle as well as how the individual service SIGINT organizations functioned in the NSA system. But, no matter, you come away from this book knowing a lot more than you ever did before.

This is the most comprehensive history I've read about the NSA, but if it has a fault, it is what seems to be a slight tendency to overplay the agency's failures and underplay its many successes. However, the agency, faced with a Herculean -- arguably impossible -- task comports itself pretty well throughout the book. Also, the author seems to suffer from the same problem the agency does: far more information than he can process in a book of some 400 pages, almost a hundred pages of which are footnotes. But, I found it mostly interesting -- riveting in a few spots -- but Aid tried to do too much here. For instance, I think he would have had a better book if he had cut way back on the details about NSA's tactical role in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. I wish he had gone into more detail about how the agency processes the enormous amounts of information it takes in, especially since he cites that as one of the major problem areas facing the NSA and, in fact, may be the one problem that may doom it. I always get a sense of dread when journalists write about our intelligence organizations because the articles or books often turn into political diatribes or they give away too much information that could be useful to our foes. I must say that Aid, unlike some others who write about NSA and seem to have a political agenda, mostly resists this unacceptable trend. "Mostly," I said. But, all in all, it's a pretty good book.

Aid's Secret Sentry is a remarkable effort of research, persistence, writing, and most important: timing. His footnoting is impressive and he was prudent enough to wait until Tom Johnson's authoritative four volume classified history of NSA was (partially) declassified and posted by the National Security Archive to finish his own volume. His debt to Johnson shows in his footnotes. For years, Jim Bamford's "Puzzle Palace" and "Body of Secrets" were the only real public sources on NSA, but Matthew Aid has now surpassed him in all areas but one: the evolution of technology and NSA's role in creating the modern electronic and computer world. For that you still need "Body of Secret's" chapter fourteen. Unlike Bamford's breezier works, this is not a "popular" book, but for anyone genuinely interested in the real story of this essential component of national security, Aid's account of the United States codebreaking and communications intelligence effort is essential and will not soon be bested.

The National Security Agency (NSA) wears one of the thicker cloaks of secrecy among the agencies of the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC). For this reason any book that purports to be "The Untold History of" the NSA ought to be viewed with suspicion. In this case however Matthew Aid has actually produced an accurate and compelling history of NSA. Perhaps equally important his book does not compromise any of NSA's sensitive sources and methods. This book can serve to provide the context for better understanding James Bamford's series of books on NSA and indeed to understand NSA itself.
That being said this book by necessity is very much a surface treatment of a very complex institution. For example it is focused entirely on the Signals Intelligence Directorate (SID) to the exclusion of NSA's equally important Information Assurance Directorate (IAD).
Also Aid is much too kind in his discussion of NSA management over the years. For example although he mentions the NSA unplanned three day outage, but fails to mention that NSA management had been repeatedly warned that this was exactly going to happen by folks both within the agency and by outside consultants for at least two years before the event (which was a lot more the "main processing computer"). As for General Hayden's fabled "100 Days of Change", it did not hit NSA "like a tidal wave", but more like another round of meaningless rhetoric. The only tangible result was the implementation of the disastrous `Trailblazer' initiative which succeeded in squandering millions of dollars and whatever goodwill NSA had left with the congress.
So a good book within limitations that provides probably the most solid unclassified history of NSA that has yet been written.

Matthew Aid's "The Secret Sentry" promises to be an interesting read, and he does in fact provide a new startling perspective on the National Security Agency (NSA). But it is badly written, gets too easily bogged down on familiar terrain, and ultimately disappoints.

Thanks to Hollywood depictions and its anonymity, the NSA awes and scares people. At the very mention of NSA, images from Hollywood thrillers come into mind: satellites zooming into a lonely lane, security cameras tracking a couplefs restaurant conversation, and computers recording anyone's mobile chit-chat. The power and the pervasiveness that is the NSA, which ever since its existence has been directed at America's allies and enemies, was brought home against America itself with the signing of the Patriot Act. After that, Americans too easily became paranoid, and in their minds the NSA was no longer the protector of American liberties against foreign aggressors, and became the threat itself.

"The Secret Sentry" will first and foremost calm people's fears of the NSA. The NSA is, in Mr. Aid's rendering, just another bloated bureaucracy that is incompetently run and unmanageable because it's engaged in the impossible task of trying to spy on everyone who could be a possible threat against America (which in the American intelligence community means at least half the people on this planet). The NSA may be recording every phone conversation and tracking every electronic movement, but at the end of the day humans need to prioritize targets, distill and refine this information into actionable intelligence, and be able to co-operate amongst themselves. (A dominant theme running through the book is that ever since its inception the NSA, as is natural of a large bloated bureaucracy among many large bloated bureaucracies, has been trying to assert its independence and indeed hegemony over the entire American intelligence community.) It is this need for the co-operation between technological supremacy and human common sense that has made the NSA the most prevalent but trivial organization in the American intelligence community. The paradox seems to be that as machines become mightier the humans using these mighty machines become dumber: a plucky reporter with a pencil and notepad and who trusts his own brain will be a much better gauge of Al-Qaedafs intentions than a lieutenant general with a staff of thousands of cryptologists and billion dollars worth of electronic surveillance equipment. The NSA failed to penetrate the Iron Curtain, failed to foresee the Chinese entry into the Korean War, failed to see the collapse of the Berlin Wall, failed to see the coming of global terrorism, and failed to have much impact in the war against terrorism. The NSA proves that having too much information is often worse than having no information.

But after we realize this vital point about the NSA there is no other need to read "The Secret Sentry." Mr. Aid may have spent years in the National Security Archives and he may be one of America's foremost experts on the NSA, but he is also dealing with highly sensitive material. He may have "confidential" interviews with dozens of NSA and intelligence interviews, but how could he have been told anything useful considering he was interviewing spies whose first instinct is to misdirect, misinform, and deceive. And because he had so much access to the National Security Archives, Mr. Aid undoubtedly had to write this book with its general counsel looking constantly over his shoulder.

There is neither energy nor punch in this book, and reads too much like a neat cataloguing of press clippings about the NSA.

I hope few fighting depression or suffering suicidal tendencies will read this depressing account. And I've only read half the book. Beyond that, I've waited more than 40 years to learn who knew what about the 1968 Tet Offensive, a question unanswered when I wrote my own book about how we were surprised to find South Vietnam shaken to the core during Tet '68. (The Lost Battalion of Tet). My guess was that some had an inkling but with few specific details to point my infantry battalion in the right direction, as confirmed by Secret Sentry.

As other have pointed out, this is not a book for technicians. But from a policy perspective, Aid does a masterful job dissecting how some intercepts were embraced and others ignored, depending on the client's predisposition. Take, for example, our invasion of Iraq in 2003. Now we know the evidence was wholly vaporous, truly an embarrassment of unheroic proportions.

Between Matthew Aid and James Bamford, you'll read everything that's publicly known about the NSA. Fascinating look at the people who keep their ears to the ground and keep the country safe. Superb.
Mathew Aid differs from James Bamford in that, unlike Bamford, Aid's personal political point of view doesn't come across in his writing. Don't get me wrong. I think James Bamford is great, too. Just differing styles, I guess.

I must say it is a very serious and objective study about NSA and SIGINT activities in general. It starts from the end of WW II and finishes in Afghanistan around 2007. Very interesting facts about NSA activities during Cold War. Easy to read, with good photos, the book it is divided in chapters corresponding with certain periods during Cold War and after. A really helpful book.

The book is interesting, but the quality of print is the worst I have seen on a Kindle. Words with no spaces between and indiviudual words with many spaces that should not have them as in "E u r o pean". It takes away from the quality of the book.

A fascinating book full of realism but tainted by some inaccuracies. I suspect it could be due to a rush to get to press. However, it contains some good accounts of history formerly relegated to being known to a few -- those indoctrinated into the arts. This book can help fill some squares historians may have found (to be) difficult to do. It is worth reading, and a good buy.