Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency (30 page)

The first
to join the Sigint navy was the USNS
Valdez,
which at 350 feet long was
considerably smaller and slower than the
Oxford.
In fact, its call sign
was "Camel Driver." Run by the civilian Military Sea Transportation
Service (MSTS) rather than the U.S. Navy, it was powered by a straight-drive,
1,750-horsepower Bush and Sulzer diesel engine, and had a six-foot screw with a
six-foot pitch.

In
December 1961, the
Valdez
sailed to Cape Town, South Africa, where it
became NSA's
"African Queen."
By the time it arrived, antennas
bristling from its deck and masts, it was a salty sailor. Built in 1944 at the
Riverside Yard in Duluth, Minnesota, it had spent most of its life as a
seagoing pickup truck, hugging coastlines as it transported barrels of nails
one way and bales of cotton another. It was named after a Medal of Honor winner
killed in action near Rosenkrantz, France, in the waning days of World War II.

"On
her maiden voyage she picked up Chinese telemetry signals, a first," said
Raven. From Cape Town, the ship also eavesdropped on Soviet missile tests. As
listening posts in Turkey and Iran collected telemetry on the launch of ICBMs
from Kapustin Yar, the
Valdez
would be in position in the South
Atlantic. There it could easily pick up the signals from the missile as it
headed for its target area southwest of what is now Namibia.

Shortly
after the
Valdez
reached Cape Town, a second ship, the USNS
Lieutenant
James E. Robinson,
also became operational. A third, the USNS
Sergeant
Joseph E. Muller,
was still undergoing conversion. More ships were planned,
but Navy officials objected, arguing that future NSA spy ships must be Navy
vessels. "They complained very bitterly about the speed of the
Valdez,"
said Frank Raven. "After all, it could make six knots if the wind were
blowing right. . . . Well, if you had a crisis in the Pacific and your ship was
in the Atlantic you couldn't get it there in time. This was the sort of
argument."

As a
result, NSA's navy switched from civilian
Valdez-
type
ships to
the U.S. Navy
Oxford-
type
ships, a decision that Raven greatly
objected to on the grounds that the civilian ships were far less conspicuous.
"The
Valdez
was my dream ship," he said. "She was the
damnedest tub. One of our stock jokes was that we had a bow wave painted on the
thing— just so it would appear she was moving."

While the
Oxford
was to be NSA's ears along South America, the
Valdez
was to be its
floating listening post along the coasts of Africa. It and its sister ships had
the advantage of being little noticed as they bobbed like corks riding the tide
along a coastline. At eight to ten knots, the coastal transports had exactly
half the speed of the
Oxford.
They also cost about half a million
dollars per year less to operate than the
Ox.
Also, being outside the
Navy and run by civilian masters, the
Valdez-
type ships could cut
through the cumbersome bureaucracy: they could operate at sea for longer
periods, and overhauls could be performed in foreign ports rather than U.S.
Navy facilities.

On the
other hand, its speed allowed the
Oxford
to react more quickly when
needed and also enabled it to conduct "shadow missions," following
suspicious foreign ships. And the larger number of signals intelligence
personnel, six officers and 110 enlisted men, versus 4 officers and 91 enlisted
for the
Valdez,
enabled the
Oxford
to target and intercept more
communications. "The bigger ships," said Marshall S. Carter,
"could carry so much more equipment, so much more sophisticated equipment,
so much better antennas."

Getting
its reams of intercepts to headquarters was a major problem for NSA's
"African
Queen."
As it eavesdropped along the East African coast, the ship
would pull into ports and a crewmember, in civilian clothes, would hand-carry
the pouches of intercepts to the nearest American embassy. The documents would
then be flown back to NSA by diplomatic courier. But some ports, such as
Mombasa, Kenya, were not near any American diplomatic facilities. A crewmember
would have to fly with the material to Nairobi, where the closest American
embassy was located. This greatly worried NSA: the crewmembers did not have
diplomatic immunity, so the pouches could be opened or seized by customs
officials, who would find copies of their own government's secret
communications. "Revelation of some sensitive material could prove
extremely embarrassing to the U.S.," said one NSA report that discussed
the problem.

During the
Valdez’s
slow crawl up and down the long African coasts, French,
Portuguese, Spanish, and Russian linguists eavesdropped on a continent in
chaos, tearing itself away from its old colonial bosses only to come under the
violent domination of new Cold War masters. In the waves and swells of the
Indian Ocean off Tanzania, intercept operators carefully twisted their dials
hoping to pick up communications between Dar es Salaam and Havana. In April
1965, the Cuban revolutionary leader Che Guevara, wearing an olive-green beret
and smoking a cigar, quietly arrived in the Congo with a force of Cuban
guerrilla fighters. They saw the struggle by supporters of the murdered Patrice
Lumumba against Joseph-Désiré Mobutu and his American and Belgian backers as a
continuation of a worldwide revolution against imperialism. They came to lend
their support and expertise in guerrilla warfare.

The
intercept operators knew that Dar es Salaam was serving as a communications
center for the fighters, receiving messages from Castro in Cuba and relaying
them on to the guerrillas deep in the bush. Guevara transmitted his progress
reports and requests for supplies back through that same channel. Every day at
8:00 A.M., 2:30 P.M., and 7:00 P.M., one of Guevara's radio operators would
also make contact with the jungle base at Kigoma.

But
Guevara knew the dangers posed by sloppy and too-frequent use of radios.
"It seems excessive to me," he cautioned one of his fighters,
"to communicate three times a day with the other side and twice a day with
Dar es Salaam. Soon you won't have anything to say, the gasoline will be used
up and codes can always be broken. This is without considering that planes can
locate the base. Apart from the technical conditions, I recommend that you
analyze the possibility of having normal daily communication with Kigoma at a
set time once a day for extraordinary news and once every two or three days
with Dar es Salaam. That will allow us to save gasoline. They should be at
night, and the radio should be protected against an air attack. I think your
idea of the shortwave is a good one, with simple codes that are changed
frequently."

Despite
his caution, the signals to and from Che Guevara were easy pickings for the
Valdez.

The
Valdez,
one small ship monitoring an enormous continent, was later joined by the
USS
Liberty,
a large floating listening post like the
Oxford.
A
veteran of World War II like the
Valdez,
the
Liberty
had also
served honorably during the Korean War, making the lonely transit across the
Pacific eighteen times to bring supplies to American forces fighting there.
Worn, its hull streaked with rust, the ship was finally retired to a naval
boneyard in 1958, but five years later it was recalled to active duty for
service in the Cold War and fitted with four .50-caliber machine guns—two
forward and two aft. Its next war would prove to be the most deadly of all.

As the
Valdez
crawled up the east coast of Africa,
Liberty
moseyed down the west
coast, its forty-five antennas tuned in to a continent convulsing. Cruising
slowly in calm seas near the entrance to the Congo River, intercept operators
kept an eye on the endless trail of debris washing into the ocean. "Those
of us aboard
Liberty
waited to see if any bodies surfaced," said
one crewmember; "loss of life was an everyday occurrence." But
separated from the deadly shoreline by a dozen miles of ocean, the sailors on
the spy ship felt relatively safe. Suddenly, however, that all changed.

As he did
every morning, Bobby Ringe went to the mess hall, quickly downed his breakfast,
and then went topside for a few minutes of fresh air and sun before lining up
for muster. Within a few hours, however, he was doubled over in excruciating
pain. The ship's doctor determined that Ringe had appendicitis and needed
immediate surgery. But before the operation, Ringe needed to be anesthetized
and the only means available was the administration of a spinal tap, a procedure
familiar to the doctor and his corpsman. As the anesthesia began to flow from
the syringe, however, Ringe began violent convolutions. Without anesthetic an
operation was out of the question.

After some
quick messages between the
Liberty
and the headquarters for the Atlantic
fleet, it was determined that there was only one way to save Ringe's life. He
had to be transported to Brazzaville, capital of the Republic of the Congo (not
to be confused with Mobutu's similarly named Congo), where a U.S. Navy plane would
be waiting to fly him to a hospital in Tripoli, Libya. But this meant a
dangerous cruise up the Congo River, deep into the violent madness they were
eavesdropping on: a forbidden voyage for a ship full of spies.

Commander
Daniel T. Wieland, the captain of the
Liberty,
turned his ship toward
the wide mouth of the Congo—"an immense snake uncoiled," wrote Joseph
Conrad, "with its head in the sea . . . and its tail lost in the depths of
the land." Although his charts of the river were very old and out-of-date,
Wieland gambled that if he held the ship close to the center of the waterway he
would not run aground. As the broad Atlantic disappeared behind, the verdant
coastline closed in ahead, like a pair of green pincers. Life slowly began
materializing from every direction as the poky gray ship, like an awkward
tourist, disappeared into the heart of Africa. Dozens of pirogues, huge
hollowed-out hardwood trees, bobbed and weaved in the current. Aboard larger,
flat-bottom boats, traders offered such goods as tortoises, bats, and baskets
of caterpillars. In the distance was a "pusher," a double-decker boat
pushing half a dozen barges teeming with humanity, a floating city of perhaps
five thousand people. The pusher was on its way to Stanleyville, twelve hundred
winding miles into the jungle.

It was
night by the time the
Liberty
reached Brazzaville. Captain Wieland cut
his engines and allowed the river's strong current to bring her to a stop. The
anchor was dropped and crewmen quickly swung the emergency ladder into place.
Ringe was carefully lowered into a boat that took him to shore and the waiting
aircraft.

As the
excitement died down, the crew quickly became aware that this was not going to
be a simple mooring. Gathering around the aft of the ship was a growing number
of small boats and barges. Soon the flotilla became a blockade. Across the
river from Brazzaville was Leopoldville, capital of the other Congo, Mobutu's
Congo. For years Brazzaville had served as home to a number of rebel factions
fighting against the Leopoldville government. The fleet of boats had been sent
from Leopoldville accompanied with a demand for an inspection visit in the
morning. Officials worried that the ship was secretly supplying arms for
guerrilla fighters in Brazzaville.

To allow
representatives of one of the ship's eavesdropping targets to come aboard for
an inspection was unthinkable, but there was little they could do about it.
Everywhere there were copies of secret intercepted messages and tapes, perhaps
even containing the words and voices of some of those on the inspection party.
Encrypted, high-priority messages were sped to the director of NSA and Atlantic
Fleet Headquarters in Norfolk, Virginia. While the Navy responded with a
message saying they had no objection to the inspection, NSA became apoplectic.
"DIRNSA [Director, NSA] responded saying there was no way an inspection
team would board
Liberty,"
said Robert Casale, one of the enlisted
cryptologists on board.

An escape
plan was quickly devised. Curtains were drawn, all unnecessary lights were
turned off, noise was kept to a minimum, and topside activity was completely
halted. "The ship, for all intents and purposes," said Casale,
"visibly disappeared." At 11:00 P.M., the ship's winch slowly began
raising the anchor. The idea was to allow the Congo River's strong current to
turn the ship away from the land and downriver. As the anchor pulled free and
the ship began to turn, moans and creaks could be heard from the old hull. When
the bow was pointing downriver, the engines were started, the gears shifted to
forward, and the ship began vibrating fore and aft. The
Liberty
lurched
ahead and began picking up speed, ramming the fragile boats and sending
Congolese men and women tumbling into the dark, dangerous river. "There
was an enormous sound of disintegrating wood and other sounds that we never
heard before," recalled Casale. "We could only imagine the boats and
barges blockading us being destroyed by the
Liberty's
bow as she sought
the sanctuary of the Atlantic Ocean."

When word
finally passed that the
Liberty
had cleared Congolese waters and had
made it to the open ocean, a cheer resounded throughout the ship. "We had
chanced fate and were successful," said Casale.