What is the history of the NSA?
Following the war, President Truman reorganized American signals intelligence under the National Security Agency (NSA) in 1952. In 1957, the NSA moved to Fort Meade in Maryland, where it is still based today. The NSA began as a secret organization, half-jokingly referred to by many as “No Such Agency.”
The forerunner to the NSA…
Signal Intelligence Service
The SIS…Signal Intelligence Service was the United States Army codebreaking division, founded in 1930 and operating to 1942. It was headquartered at Arlington Hall, on Arlington Boulevard in Arlington, Virginia, across the Potomac River from Washington.
NSA
The Black Chamber
The agency’s origins date back to July 1917, when a man named Herbert O. Yardley became the head of the newly created Cipher Bureau of Military Intelligence.
The Cipher Bureau’s methods were somewhat questionable: deals with Western Union and other telegraph companies gave the Cipher Bureau unprecedented access to messages entering and exiting the United States. When Secretary of State Henry Stimson decided to close the agency in 1929, he cited moral opposition to its increasing surveillance, though his reasoning may also have been partly financial. In any case, Hoover’s administration did not see the need for peacetime surveillance and the agency was shuttered.
JFK Jr.
1000 pieces…geez! Mr Brennan must be very upset.