Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency (82 page)

DEFSMAC
would then have flashed the intelligence to one of the specially designed
Boeing 707s that on such missions are codenamed Cobra Ball. Fitted with a wide
array of receiving equipment, the RC-135 aircraft would immediately have begun
eavesdropping on the missile's telemetry as it reentered the atmosphere near
its target zone on the Kamchatka peninsula. Through its super-wide windows,
Cobra Ball would also have photographed the missile in flight, using high-speed
and multispectral photography. Also receiving DEFSMAC intelligence, whenever
enough warning time was received, would be the USNS
Observation Island,
which
is packed with antennas and satellite dishes that would monitor and photograph
the final stage and splashdown of the missile. Such preparations would have
been of little use during the October 1998 test, however. The rocket, of a type
that is the centerpiece of Russia's shrinking nuclear shield, exploded shortly
after launch.

Working
closely with DEFSMAC is NSA's National Telemetry Processing Center, the final
destination of intercept tapes from missile tests. Here analysts study the
various measurements on the magnetic tapes, identify the transducers, and
develop performance estimates for the missiles and spacecraft. In 1969, the
center took delivery of its first large-scale telemetry processor—twenty-two
racks of whirring equipment codenamed Tellman. In the early 1980s, Tellman was
replaced by Rissman, which had just fifteen racks of equipment and at the same
time could process a greater variety of signals. Rissman was a busy machine—often
processing tapes around the clock—from the day of its delivery until the end of
the Cold War. By the 1990s, it had been retired and in its place was a
relatively compact telemetry processing system codenamed Outcurve, consisting
of four racks of equipment and a sixteen-megabyte memory.

Down
Corridor C in OPS 1, past the drugstore and Bank of America, is Crypto City's
medical center, staffed by an emergency medical response team. Nearby is an
urgent care unit, where ambulances occasionally come and go. NSA even has its
own mobile medical center to take medical services to people in distant parts
of the city so they don't have to come to the clinic. The large, streamlined,
bus-sized vehicle can accommodate wheelchairs and even has its own examination
room with table. It is equipped to perform a variety of tests, including EKGs.
As might be expected, the mobile medical unit is equipped with secure
telephones and cell phones for communicating with the various buildings.

Nearby, in
Room 1E145, is the Geographic Library, containing a unique collection of
worldwide maps, many on CD-ROM. Analysts can also access these digital maps
directly at their workstations through the library's Automated Mapping System.
Among the products developed by NSA is a high-resolution interactive
geographic-based software system codenamed Oilstock. It is used to store,
track, and display near-real-time and historical signals-intelligence-related
data over a map background.

A short
distance away on the South Corridor, near the drugstore and barbershop, is
NSA's Main Library. It contains probably the world's largest collection of
cryptologic materials. It also holds a major collection of foreign telephone
directories, very useful in finding key telephone numbers to target. Nearby are
the Main Research Center and Digital Library.

Walking
along the long, broad hallways, one passes the Crisis Action Center, the
Advanced Reconnaissance Programs Office, and the Office of Unconventional
Programs, where chief Coy R. Morris attempts to penetrate targets not
accessible by conventional means. In 1999 Morris was awarded the Department of
Defense Distinguished Civilian Service Award for amassing "an astounding
record of successful operations."

Also in
OPS 1 is the National Signals Analysis Center (NSAC). Before an encrypted
message can be broken, it first has to be found, and that is the job of the
NSAC's engineers, mathematicians, and computer scientists. They locate
important streams of communications, whether hidden in thin air or in a blanket
of noisy static. "With today's rapidly evolving global communications, NSA's
signals analysts are seeking to recover, understand, and derive intelligence
from all manner of foreign signals," says one NSA document. Another adds:
"Consider that hundreds or thousands of channels of mixed information
types may be multiplexed together and transmitted digitally over a satellite or
terrestrial link to form a single signal."

Flowing
between earth stations and distant communications satellites are millions of
telephone calls, fax transmissions, television signals, and computer and
multimedia data transfers. They are all squeezed together in thousands of
channels. Once they have been intercepted by NSA, it is up to the signals
analysts to untwist them and make them understandable. "Demodulating and
unraveling the internal structure of such complex signals, to recover their
information content and related data, is one job of the signals analyst,"
according to NSA. Other signals, such as covert communications, may be
deliberately hidden deep within such signals as television transmissions, or
broken into thousands of jigsawlike pieces and sent on hundreds of different
channels. They may even be spread so thin as to be almost invisible. Within the
center, many of the signals analysts have had multiple tours at overseas
listening posts. Once a year, at NSA headquarters, there is a week-long
conference to discuss new ways to discover, and eavesdrop on, the elusive
signals.

Within
these hallways, offices are protected by heavy steel doors containing a variety
of padlocks, combination dials, and cipher locks. Some doors also bear round,
color-coded seals. A red seal indicates an "Exclusion Area"—an office
containing what one NSA document calls
"extremely sensitive
(i.e.,
compartmented) classified materials or activities" [emphasis in original].
All classified documents, when not in use, must be kept locked in safes. Blue
seals indicate areas where the volume of sensitive materials is so great that
some may be left out on desks provided they are covered "completely by a
black cloth."

During the
Christmas season employees compete to see who can come up with the most
original door decorations. In 1999, the door to Room 1W070 in OPS 1 bore a
replica of a signals intelligence spacecraft entitled "The Malfunctioning
Santallite."

To enter
other offices, such as the NSA's Special Processing Laboratory, a person must
first pass through a complex, unmanned station known as a High Security Portal.
After entering a glass-enclosed booth, the person wishing to go farther must
swipe a security badge through a credit card—like reader. The computer then
checks the person's name against an access list known as CONFIRM.

Next an
eye scan is performed, providing for positive identification by recording the
pattern of blood vessels in the retina, at the back of the eye, and comparing
it with the person's pattern as stored in the CONFIRM database. An individual's
retina is unique and does not change during his or her life. Finally, load
cells take body weight measurements and once again check them against the
CONFIRM system to ensure that only one person is inside the portal. Only after
everything matches can the door be opened.

NSA is
continually developing more and more complex biometric identification systems.
"Using biometrics for identifying and authenticating human beings offers some
unique advantages," said Jeff Dunn, NSA's chief of biometrics and
protective systems. "Only biometric authentication bases an identification
on an intrinsic part of a human being. Tokens—such as smart cards, magnetic
strip cards, physical keys, and so forth—can be lost, stolen, duplicated, or
left at home. Passwords can be forgotten, shared, or observed."

In 1999,
NSA installed a number of multi-biometric security stations on a pilot basis.
The stations incorporate fingerprint recognition, voice verification, and
facial image recognition technologies into a single system. In face
recognition, a computer is programmed with a "statistical knowledge of
human faces" so that it can break down and reconstruct images of faces.

Once past
the High Security Portal, some employees must enter still another supersecure
area in order to work. As its name implies, the Vault Type Room (VTR) resembles
a large, walk-in bank safe, with a heavy, thick steel door and fat combination
dial.

But even
inside Crypto City, inside one of its buildings, inside a red-seal room, and
finally inside a Vault Type Room, one occasionally needs to open, like a
Chinese puzzle, another locked door. To accomplish this, one must first go to a
tall, steel, closetlike device, an Automated Key Access Machine (AKAM). After
one enters one's badge and PIN numbers, the computer searches key access lists,
determines eligibility, retrieves the key, and dispenses it with a robotic arm.
Each machine stores 406 keys on a carousel, has a response time of less than
thirty seconds, and provides complete tracking of key movements.

Although
one might assume that a security-obsessed scientist thought up the AKAM in a
dark corner of NSA, it was actually designed for use in auto dealerships. While
out shopping for a new car, an NSA security employee spotted the device and
recognized its potential. The agency then worked with the manufacturer, Key
Systems, to modify the equipment for use in Crypto City.

Finally,
another passageway leads to the Headquarters Building. Like OPS 1, it is
primarily occupied by personnel from the Directorate of Operations.

Inside the
offices, some people scribble away on green chalkboards while others talk in
"teaming areas," informal meeting spaces designed to increase the
sharing of ideas. Most work in bland, shoulder-height cubicles, tapping away at
a UNIX system built by Sun Microsystems or at a Dell workstation. Many
employees have two separate computer terminals on their desk and some,
especially voice analysts, also have reel-to-reel tape recorders to listen to
voice intercepts. Two recorders are occasionally required in order to listen to
both sides of a conversation.

Every desk
is equipped, as well, with two types of telephones: "black" phones
for unclassified conversations and "gray," secure phones known as
STU-IIIs (for Secure Telephone Unit 3; pronounced Stew-3). The STU-III was
developed under an NSA contract in the mid-1980s. Before that, NSA used the far
more cumbersome STU-I and STU-II systems, which were developed in the 1970s.
The principal drawback of these earlier secure phones was the need to call a
"Key Distribution Center" in order to set up each call, which
resulted in a delay of two to three minutes.

The
STU-III can be used both as a secure phone for conversations classified as high
as Top Secret/Codeword, or as a POTS ("plain old telephone system")
for normal, unclassified calls. To "go secure," both the caller and
the person on the other end insert a thin black plastic "Crypto Ignition
Key" into their STU-III. Many employees attach the key to the neck chain
that holds their security badge. Once the key is inserted, a small display
screen on the phone tells the person on the other end what security
clearance—Secret, Top Secret, or Top Secret/Codeword—the key's holder has. The
STU-III has reduced to about fifteen seconds the time needed to go secure; it
also has secure fax, data, and video capability. Once the key is removed, the
phone is again usable for unclassified calls.

Gradually,
the STU-III is being replaced by a new, more sophisticated system known as the
STE (for Secure Terminal Equipment). Made by L3 Corporation, the STE is digital
as opposed to analog and can therefore also be used to send and receive secure
data. The "key" used is not thin and plastic but similar to the small
metal cards used in computers. In addition to increasing the quality of the
sound and making it nearly identical to a normal phone, the new STE has the
advantage of virtually eliminating the wait time to "go secure." By
the time the receiver is placed to the ear, the system is encrypted. According
to Michael J. Jacobs, head of NSA's codemaking organization as deputy director
for Information Systems Security, the encryption within the STE is so powerful
that, given projected foreign codebreaking capabilities, it will remain fully
secure for at least fifty years.

Among the
places within NSA an employee can call once his or her Crypto Ignition Key is
inserted is an automated, classified information network. Need "SIGINT
Operations and Intelligence Information"? Simply dial 9-555-1212 on the
secure phone and you are connected to NSA's ACCESS menu, where you just press
"1."

Crypto
City's operators average 250,000 assisted calls per year—60 percent of which
are on the "unclassified" phones, 40 percent on the secure phones. A
computer program known as Searchlight provides directory assistance for secure
calls.

Highly
classified documents once could be whisked from one part of the city to another
over ninety-five miles of pneumatic tubes in less than ninety seconds. To
ensure security, the system contained over 10,000 sensors to monitor the
progress of the documents. But repair costs eventually became too great and the
system was abandoned. Today the city is interconnected by a network of fiber
optic cables not shared by the outside world. The cable contract was offered to
the small start-up fiber network company Qwest, said one person, "because
it was the only bidder that offered the agency its own fiber path that would
not have to be shared with commercial users."