The brain behind the world's largest intelligence gathering operation
Fly to Baltimore-Washington International Airport, which these buildings are very close to. Albeit, hidden.
The National Security Agency is still one of the shadowiest of the US intelligence agencies. Until a few years ago its existence was a secret (until 1989 the buildings didn't even have so much as a sign in front of them), it was jokingly referred to as “No Such Agency” by government insiders, and its charter and any mention of Its duties are still classified.
But it is the world's largest intelligence gathering operation. Its 20,000 employees patiently sift signals intelligence (or “Sigint” as they like to put it) and information security (“Infosec”) for the US government. Its biggest overseas supplier of data is Menwith Hill, Yorkshire, in the UK. (No Holiday No. 76)
During the Watergate affair, it was revealed that the NSA, in collaboration with Britain's secret listening post, GCHQ, had routinely intercepted the international communications of prominent anti-Vietnam war leaders such as Jane Fonda and Dr. Benjamin Spock. Another target was former Black Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver. President Carter had to order the NSA to stop obtaining “back door” intelligence about US political figures through its UK bugging operations.
So today things have opened up a bit. Now everyone, not just the enemy, knows about the NSA and its base in Maryland. And there are a number of buildings there to traipse around, at least the outsides of them, all in the severe office block style the US government specializes in. In fact, the style ranges from the mock Greek of the Admin building to a more modernist quasi-nuclear power plant chic for the computer centers. None of it is at all interesting, least of all the National Cryptologic Museum, located next to the NSA's headquarters building.
This is the NSA's public face. Hidden obscurely away in a disused motel at the end of a crumbling road behind a gas station just off the Baltimore-Washington Parkway it couldn't be more anonymous—unless perhaps it did away with the elaborate chain-link fence that surrounds it, topped with barbed wire. Inside it has a dismal collection of artifacts, which are there, it explains, to remind people of “the Nation's, as well as NSA's, cryptologic legacy and place in world history.” There are books on cryptography dating from the 16th century, as well as an elegant little wooden cipher machine dating from around 1800, that may or may not (it's a secret) have been Thomas Jefferson's. There are lots of German World War II Enigma cipher machines, the electromechanical typewriters with adjustable rotors, as well as a US Sigma machine, the only machine during the war whose codes remained unbroken. There's a large, modern Cray computer.
If its daily activities are all secret, here at least visitors can “catch a glimpse of some of the most dramatic moments in the history of American cryptology,” the people who devoted their lives to cryptology and national defense, the machines and devices they developed, the techniques they used, and the places where they worked. “For the visitor,” the publicity leaflets promise, “some events in American and world history will take on a new meaning.”
One visitor commented:
Whoever named this place had quite a sense of irony—the surveillance cameras, briefcase searches, constant escorts, and armed guards did not project a particularly “friendly” image. I was hoping to pick up some souvenirs, but when I asked about an employee gift shop they looked at me like I was crazy. One thing that really caught my eye was a poster, which was displayed widely, apparently a security-reminder-of-the-month thing. This was the holiday season, and the poster showed Santa stopped at the gate submitting his bag to be searched. I'm surprised they didn't have the old boy being strip-searched. Anyway, I begged and begged but nobody would let me have one.
Adjacent to the Museum is the ludicrously named National Vigilance Park. The park contains, or “showcases” as the cryptologists code it, two reconnaissance aircraft used for those very worthy secret missions over Vietnam and the Soviet Union.
The 1998 movie Enemy of the State, starring Will Smith and Gene Hackman, portrayed the NSA as an evil Big Brother spying on Americans! Its plot involved the NSA's deputy director overseeing the murder of a congressman who was opposing a bill that the NSA wanted passed. Astonishingly, or not, George W. Bush's administration admitted in 2006 that it had indeed instructed the NSA to spy on Americans.
Like the CIA's own Spy museum in Langley, Virginia, the National Cryptologic Museum was originally created to “give employees a place to reflect on past successes and failures.” Actually the CIA's museum is much more interesting, with the entrance graced by a bronze statue of Wild Bill Donovan, the founder, and decorated by 83 stars. Not, as foreigners will imagine, for each of the countries the US has quietly turned into client states, but for each of its agents who have died on active service. But anyway, the CIA museum is only open for dignitaries and its own agents. Only they can share the frisson of excitement at the “fish robot,” the pigeon camera, the letter from Stalin's daughter asking for political asylum, etc.
However, the National Security Museum threw its priceless collection of code making and code breaking exhibits open to all and sundry in 1993. It is thus apparently the first and only public secret museum.
Orange.