Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency (31 page)

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For four
years NSA's
“African Queen "
lumbered inconspicuously up and down
the wild and troubled East African coast with the speed of an old sea turtle.
By the spring of 1967, the tropical waters had so encrusted her bottom with sea
life that her top speed was down to between three and five knots. With Che
Guevara long since gone back to Cuba, NSA's G Group, responsible for the
non-Communist portion of the planet, decided to finally relieve the
Valdez
and
send her back to Norfolk, where she could be beached and scraped.

It was
also decided to take maximum advantage of the situation by bringing the ship
home through the Suez Canal, mapping and charting the radio spectrum as she
crawled slowly past the Middle East and the eastern Mediterranean. "Now,
frankly," recalled Frank Raven, former chief of G Group, "we didn't
think at that point that it was highly desirable to have a ship right in the
Middle East; it would be too explosive a situation. But the
Valdez,
obviously
coming home with a foul bottom and pulling no bones about it and being a
civilian ship, could get away with it." It took the ship about six weeks
to come up through the canal and limp down the North African coast past Israel,
Egypt, and Libya.

About that
same time, the
Valdez's
African partner, the USS
Liberty,
was
arriving off West Africa, following a stormy Atlantic crossing, for the start
of its fifth patrol. Navy Commander William L. McGonagle, its newest captain,
ordered the speed reduced to four knots, the lowest speed at which the
Liberty
could easily answer its rudder, and the ship began its slow crawl south. On
May 22, the
Liberty
pulled into Abidjan, capital of the Ivory Coast, for
a four-day port call.

Half the
earth away, behind cipher-locked doors at NSA, the talk was not of possible
African coups but of potential Middle East wars. The indications had been
growing for weeks, like swells before a storm. On the Israeli-Syrian border,
what started out as potshots at tractors had quickly escalated to cannon fire
between tanks. On May 17, Egypt (then known as the United Arab Republic [UAR])
evicted UN peacekeepers and then moved troops to its Sinai border with Israel.
A few days later, Israeli tanks were reported on the Sinai frontier, and the
following day Egypt ordered mobilization of 100,000 armed reserves. On May 23,
Gamal Abdel Nasser blockaded the Strait of Tiran, thereby closing the Gulf of
Aqaba to Israeli shipping and prohibiting unescorted tankers under any flag
from reaching the Israeli port of Elat. The Israelis declared the action
"an act of aggression against Israel" and began a full-scale
mobilization.

As NSA's
ears strained for information, Israeli officials began arriving in Washington.
Nasser, they said, was about to launch a lopsided war against them and they
needed American support. It was a lie. In fact, as Menachem Begin admitted
years later, it was Israel that was planning a first strike attack on Egypt.
"We . . . had a choice," Begin said in 1982, when he was Israel's
prime minister. "The Egyptian army concentrations in the Sinai approaches
do not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with
ourselves. We decided to attack him."

Had Israel
brought the United States into a first-strike war against Egypt and the Arab
world, the results might have been calamitous. The USSR would almost certainly
have gone to the defense of its Arab friends, leading to a direct battlefield
confrontation between U.S. and Soviet forces. Such a dangerous prospect could
have touched off a nuclear war.

With the
growing possibility of U.S. involvement in a Middle East war, the Joint Chiefs
of Staff needed rapid intelligence on the ground situation in Egypt. Above all,
they wanted to know how many Soviet troops, if any, were currently in Egypt and
what kinds of weapons they had. Also, if U.S. fighter planes were to enter the
conflict, it was essential to pinpoint the locations of surface-to-air missile
batteries. If troops went in, it would be vital to know the locations and
strength of opposing forces.

Under the
gun to provide answers, officials at NSA considered their options. Land-based
stations, like the one in Cyprus, were too far away to collect the narrow
line-of-sight signals used by air defense radar, fire control radar, microwave
communications, and other targets.

Airborne
Sigint platforms—Air Force C-130s and Navy EC-121s— could collect some of this.
But after allowing for time to and from the "orbit areas," the
aircrews would only have about five hours on station—too short a time for the
sustained collection that was required. Adding aircraft was also an option but
finding extra signals intelligence planes would be very difficult. Also,
downtime and maintenance on those aircraft was greater than for any other kind of
platform.

Finally
there were the ships, which was the best option. Because they could sail
relatively close, they could pick up the most important signals. Also, unlike
the aircraft, they could remain on station for weeks at a time, eavesdropping,
locating transmitters, and analyzing the intelligence. At the time, the USS
Oxford
and
Jamestown
were in Southeast Asia; the USS
Georgetown
and
Belmont
were eavesdropping off South America; and the USNS
Muller
was
monitoring signals off Cuba. That left the USNS
Valdez
and the USS
Liberty.
The
Valdez
had just completed a long mission and was near Gibraltar
on its way back to the United States. On the other hand, the
Liberty,
which
was larger and faster, had just begun a: new mission and was relatively close,
in port in Abidjan.

Several
months before, seeing the swells forming, NSA's G Group had drawn up a
contingency plan. It would position the
Liberty
in the area of
"L0L0" (longitude 0, latitude 0) in Africa's Gulf of Guinea,
concentrating on targets in that area, but actually positioning her far enough
north that she could make a dash for the Middle East should the need arise.
Despite the advantages, not everyone agreed on the plan. Frank Raven, the G
Group chief, argued that it was too risky. "The ship will be defenseless
out there," he insisted. "If war breaks out, she'll be alone and
vulnerable. Either side might start shooting at her. ... I say the ship should
be left where it is." But he was overruled.

On May 23,
having decided to send the
Liberty
to the Middle East, G Group officials
notified John Connell, NSA's man at the Joint Reconnaissance Center. A unit
within the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the JRC was responsible for coordinating air,
sea, and undersea reconnaissance
operations. At 8:20
that spring evening, amid the noisy clatter of teletype machines, a technician
tapped out a brief Flash message to the
Liberty:

MAKE IMMEDIATE PREPARATIONS TO GET
UNDERWAY. WHEN READY FOR SEA ASAP DEPART PORT ABIDJAN AND PROCEED REST POSSIBLE
SPEED TO ROTA SPAIN TO LOAD TECHNICAL SUPPORT MATERIAL AND SUPPLIES. WHEN READY
FOR SEA PROCEED TO OPERATING AREA OFF PORT SAID. SPECIFIC AREAS WILL FOLLOW.

In the
coal-black Ivoirian night, an island of light lit up the end of the long wooden
pier where the USS
Liberty
lay docked. Beyond, in the harbor, small dots
of red and green blinked like Christmas-tree lights as hulking cargo ships
slowly twisted with the gentle tide.

It was
around 3:45 A.M. when Lieutenant Jim O'Connor woke to a knock on his stateroom
door. The duty officer squinted as he read the message in the red glow of an
emergency light. Still half asleep, he mumbled a curse and quickly threw on his
trousers. "It was a message from the Joint Chiefs of Staff," O'Connor
recalled telling his cabinmate. "Whoever heard of JCS taking direct
control of a ship?" Within minutes reveille sounded and the
Liberty
began
to shudder to life. Less than three hours later, the modern skyline of Abidjan
disappeared over the stern as the ship departed Africa for the last time.
Silhouetted against the rising sun was the large moon-bounce antenna on the
rear deck, pointing straight up as if praying.

For eight
days, at top speed, the bow cut a silvery path through 3,000 miles of choppy Atlantic
Ocean. The need for linguists was especially critical on the
Liberty,
which,
because of her West African targets, carried only French and Portuguese
language experts. Therefore, five Arabic linguists—two enlisted Marines and
three NSA civilians—were ordered to Rota to rendezvous with the
Liberty.
Although
the ship already had numerous Russian linguists, it was also decided to add one
more, a senior analytical specialist.

NSA had
originally wanted to also put Hebrew linguists on the ship, but the agency just
didn't have enough. "I mean, my God," said Frank Raven, "you're
manning a crisis; where are you going to get these linguists from? You go out
and ask the nearest synagogue? We got together every linguist we could manage
and we not only sent them to Rota but then we have to back up every military
station in the Middle East—we're sending them into Athens, we're sending them
into Turkey—by God, if you can speak Arabic and you're in NSA you're on a
plane!"

As the
Liberty
steamed northward, Marine Sergeant Bryce Lockwood was strapped in a signals
intelligence plane flying 30,000 feet above the frigid Norwegian Sea off
Iceland. Lockwood was an experienced signals intelligence intercept operator
and Russian linguist; he and his crewmembers were shadowing the Russian
Northern Fleet as it conducted summer war games. But the ferret operation had
been plagued with problems. A number of the missions had been canceled as a
result of aircraft equipment failures and the one Lockwood was on intercepted
only about three minutes of Russian voice, which was so garbled that no one
could understand it.

During the
operation, Lockwood was temporarily assigned to the U.S. Navy air base at
Keflavik, Iceland. But as the Russian exercise came to an end, he headed back
to his home base, the sprawling Navy listening post at Bremerhaven, where he
specialized in analyzing intercepted Russian communications. The plane flew
first to Rota, where he was to catch another military flight back to Germany.
However, because it was the Memorial Day weekend, few U.S. military flights
were taking off; he was forced to spend the night. That afternoon Lockwood went
to a picnic, had a few beers, and then went to bed early in his quarters.

About 2:00
A.M. he was suddenly woken up by some loud pounding on his door. Assuming it
was just a few of his fellow Marines wanting to party, he pulled the cover over
his head and ignored it. But the banging only got louder. Now angry, Lockwood
finally threw open the door. Standing in front of him in the dim light was a
sailor from the duty office. "I have a message with your name on it from
the Joint Chiefs of Staff," he said somewhat quizzically. "You're
assigned to join the USS
Liberty
at 0600 hours. You better get up and
pack your seabag." It was a highly unusual order, a personal message from
the JCS at two in the morning; Lockwood had little time to ponder it.

It was
just an hour or so after dawn on the first of June when the
Liberty
slid
alongside a pier in Rota. Already waiting for them were Lockwood and the five
Arabic linguists. A short time later, thick black hoses, like boa constrictors,
disgorged 380,000 gallons of fuel into the ship's tanks while perspiring
sailors in dungarees struggled to load crates of vegetables and other food.
Several technicians also retrieved boxes of double-wrapped packages and brought
them aboard. The packages contained supersensitive signals intelligence data
left for them by the
Valdez
as she passed through Rota on the way back
to Norfolk. Included were critical details on Middle East communication
patterns picked up as the
Valdez
transited the area: "who was
communicating on what links—Teletype, telephone, microwave, you name it,"
said Raven.

As she
steamed west across the Mediterranean to Rota, the
Valdez
had also
conducted "hearability studies" for NSA in order to help determine
the best places from which to eavesdrop. Off the eastern end of Crete, the
Valdez
discovered what amounted to a "duct" in the air, a sort of aural
pipeline that led straight to the Middle East. "You can sit in Crete and
watch the Cairo television shows," said Raven. "If you're over flat
water, basically calm water, the communications are wonderful." He decided
to park the
Liberty
there.

But the
Joint Chiefs of Staff had other ideas. In Rota, Commander McGonagle received
orders to deploy just off the coasts of Israel and Egypt but not to approach
closer than twelve and a half nautical miles to Egypt or six and a half to
Israel. Following some repairs to the troublesome dish antenna, the
Liberty
cast
off from Rota just after noon on June 2.

Sailing at
seventeen knots, its top speed, the
Liberty
overtook and passed three
Soviet ships during its transit of the Strait of Gibraltar. From there it
followed the North African coastline, keeping at least thirteen miles from
shore. Three days after departing Rota, on June 5, as the
Liberty
was
passing south of Sicily, Israel began its long-planned strike against its
neighbors and the Arab-Israeli war began.