-Caveat Lector-
An excerpt from;
The Puzzle Palace
James Bamford1982All rights reserved
ISBN 0 14 00.6748 5
Penguin Books
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6. Targets
<snip>
* * *
"I consider keeping dangerous drugs out of the United States just as
important as keeping armed enemy forces from landing in the United States ...
We are going to fight this evil with every weapon at our command." On October
24, 1969, President Nixon designated international narcotics control a
concern of U.S. foreign policy and established the White House Task Force on
Heroin Suppression. Members included representatives from the White House
staff, State Department, Treasury, Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs
(BNDD), and the Department of Defense. Also named was DCI Richard Helms, who
was instructed by the President "to contribute to the maximum extent
possible." His contribution consisted of establishing an Office of Narcotics
Coordinator under the agency's Deputy Directorate of Plans (now the Deputy
Directorate of Operations), which provided the task force with narcotics
intelligence reports and studies concerning trafficking in Turkey and
Southeast Asia, as well as any European connections between Latin American
traffickers and Turkish opium suppliers.
A second responsibility of the office was to act as liaison with other
agencies on narcotics problems. This the CIA took quite seriously, and within
a short period of time the ONC was supplying the BNDD with training, was
lending it "flash rolls" for overseas operations, and was providing it with
sensitive intelligence reports. These included 00 Reports, compiled by the
Domestic Collection Division exclusively from interviews of people who had
traveled to foreign countries; analytical reports, such as one entitled
"Cocaine Trafficking Network in Colombia"; and the Director of Operations
Narcotics Control Reports (DONCS), which were sent directly to BNDD's chief
of Strategic Intelligence.
Most important, however, the CIA, probably through its Division D, also began
conducting overseas interceptions specifically for the collection of
international narcotics intelligence. When this activity produced information
concerning the narcotics-trafficking activities of U.S. citizens, however,
the local CIA officer would reportedly bow out, surrendering his information
to his local BNDD counterpart, who would continue the investigation, most
likely with similar, NSA-supplied eavesdropping equipment.
Pleased as the Bureau was to receive the CIA's help, there was one flaw in
the arrangement. The CIA was forbidden by law from conducting eavesdropping
operations within the United States. This presented a major problem for the
BNDD, since a large portion of the traffickers it was interested in operated,
at least a large part of the time, within the United States. One particularly
frustrating case involved information it had received indicating that
arrangements for certain South American drug deals were being conducted by
telephone from a booth in New York's Grand Central Station.
Because the CIA 'Was forbidden from monitoring domestic telephone
conversations and also because, under the law, BNDD felt that it could not
tap public telephones, BNDD director John E. Ingersoll turned to an agency
that had, from its birth, never been handicapped by such mundane
considerations: the .NSA. In fact, Roy Banner, the Agency's top lawyer for
many years, had secretly helped draft the wiretap legislation contained in
the 1968 Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act, making sure to insert an
inconspicuous loophole for NSA's operations. In a July 24, 1968, memorandum,
Banner boasted of the coup, telling his director that the effect of the
NSA-added exception to the act (�2511(3)) "is to remove any doubt as to the
legality of the SIGINT and COMSEC activities of the Executive Branch of the
Government." He then added that the language of the law "precludes an
interpretation -that the prohibitions against wiretapping or electronic
surveillance techniques in other laws applies to SIGINT and COMSEC activities
of the Federal Government."
In early April 1970 an official from BNDD journeyed up to Fort Meade and met
with Deputy Director Tordella, who assured the official that NSA could handle
the bureau's request to start a watch list and even fulfill its requirement
for coverage of the public pay phones in Grand Central. On April 10, Director
Ingersoll dispatched a memorandum to Director Gayler, thanking him for
Tordella's help and attaching a general statement of his bureau Is watch list
requirements.
After first establishing the fact that BNDD's "primary responsibility ... is
to enforce the laws and statutes relating to narcotic drugs, marihuana,
depressants, stimulants, and the hallucinogenic drugs," the memorandum went
on to list the bureau's requirements:
1. The BNDD has a requirement for any and all COMINT information which
reflects illicit traffic in narcotics and dangerous drugs.
Our primary interest falls in the following categories:
a. organizations engaged in such activities
b. individuals engaged in such activities
c. information on the distribution of narcotics and dangerous drugs
d. information on cultivation and production centers
e. international agreements and efforts to control the traffic in narcotics
and dangerous drugs
f. all violations of the laws of the U.S. concerning narcotics and dangerous
drugs.
2. To assist NSA in the selection of pertinent COMINT information,
the BNDD will provide a list of organizations and individuals with a history
of illicit drug activities. This Watch List will be updated on a monthly
basis and any additions/deletions will be forwarded to NSA. Any COMINT
information developed on these individuals/organizations should be brought to
the attention of the BNDD. [Emphasis supplied.]
Instituting the BNDD's watch list was no simple matter, according to Frank
Raven, who, as chief of G Group, was responsible for processing), the
traffic. "That requires special intercept. That requires covering telephone
circuits from New York to Venezuela," he recalled. Although processing data
communications on that link was quite economical, not so the telephone
circuits. "Not voice," according to Raven. "We don't have that kind of
resource. I mean, these people have the idea that NSA covers all the
communications in the world-they don't cover a tenth of one percent of the
communications in the world. As a matter of fact, that's probably a high
estimate."
With the implementation of the BNDD watch list and special domestic targeting
requirements, the NSA had taken its most dangerous step. Not only had the
Agency clearly begun supporting domestic law enforcement agencies; it was
also preparing to begin the specific targeting of American citizens within
the United States. Until then, all intelligence provided through the Minaret
program had been "byproducts," information on watchlisted persons picked up
during the course of monitoring foreign targets for foreign intelligence
collection. The giant ear had suddenly turned directly inward.
By June the first watch list intercepts began flowing to the BNDD, and in
September the special domestic targeting had begun. Initially, the monitoring
was conducted from one NSA intercept site, but in December 1970 that station
was closed. The operation began again in March at an NSA East Coast facility
operated by the military, probably the Naval Security Group listening post
just outside the little town of Northwest, Virginia, a swampy, snake-infested
site bristling with $10 million worth of antennas. In 1975 the Security Group
moved from the fourteen-hundred-acre site on the Virginia-North Carolina
border to Sugar Grove, West Virginia.
Although only six South American cities, in addition to New York and Miami,
were of primary interest in the drug monitoring, this is somewhat misleading,
since these are transit points: calls are routed through them to other
cities. For example, by monitoring one New York-South American city link, NSA
could pick up calls from other South American cities to other cities in the
United States. The calls, once received either at the Etam or Andover earth
station, would simply be routed through New York City to other United States
destinations. Likewise, a call from St. Louis to Caracas will likely go first
to New York and then be transmitted down to Etam. In all, NSA monitored
nineteen separate United State�South American links for voice traffic at the
two sites between 1970 and 1973.
Though the procedures NSA set up for Minaret and the drug monitoring were, at
times, quite informal, the normal method by which the Agency sets targets and
priorities is standardized and formal.
Of all the superclassified documents within the Puzzle Palace, few come close
to matching the secrecy of the one known as the IGCP. Instituted about -1966,
and possibly standing for Intelligence Guidelines for COMINT Priorities, the
IGCP is NSA's bible for targeting. Prepared by an IG staff made up of
representatives of the member agencies of the intelligence community, and
issued by the DCI in his role as chairman of the USIB, the document provides
the NSA director with specific priorities and guidelines for the NSA's
overall SIGINT collection responsibilities.
In the IGCP, the world is divided into numerous "subelements." Western
Europe, for example, is Subelement 27; other Asian countries (such as India),
are 24; Latin America is 26; the Middle East and North Africa are 28; and the
sub-Saharan countries are 29.
Listed directly below each subelement are the various methods of SIGINT
collection. Interception of international commercial communications, for
example, such as telephone, telegram, and telex, is identified as Group B.
Another group, most likely Group A, is for foreign internal communications.
Finally, listed numerically under the groups are the specific NSA targets,
known as "line items." A line item may be a requirement for all information
relating to weapons systems or military construction. In addition to
identifying the specific target, the line item also includes information on
when the desired information is needed, such as "within 48 hours after
recognition," and the information's level of completeness. Level 1, for
example, would be the most complete.
As a general rule, when an agency submits a new requirement to NSA that falls
within an existing line item, like additions to a watch list, and does not
require additional resource allocations, NSA would normally honor that
requirement without further review. However, when in NSA's view a new
requirement does necessitate additional collection or processing efforts, or
constitutes a significant change in scope, completeness, or time
specification of an existing line item, then the requesting agency would be
informed that it must first submit the requirement for approval to the IG
staff. Once it is approved, the IG staff would submit it to the SIGINT
Committee, one of the USIB's three intelligence committees. This committee,
always chaired by the NSA director, would then approve the changes in the
IGCP as appropriate, unless further action by the USIB is required.
But a serious problem with the document was that many of the requirements
listed were far too broad to be of much assistance to the analysts sifting
through the reams of intercepted traffic. The Army at one point, for example,
simply asked for "all information on the venereal disease rate in East
Germany", because it might reflect on the capabilities of the East German
troops. One of the major critics of the IGCP was Frank Raven, who labeled it
"a worthless piece of paper." "The first priority would be as to whether or
not the Russians are going to attack you," said Raven. "Well, you would be
astonished by the things that you can justify under evidence of a Russian
attack." One of those requirements called for reporting the disappearance of
any senior Communist official-but never specified what was meant by a
"disappearance." "We were required to report this worldwide within something
like fifteen minutes. Now you report within fifteen minutes that Brezhnev is
missing�but at what point is he missing? ... Hell, if he goes to the john,
he's disappeared!"
When BNDD's John Ingersoll submitted his bureau's drug watch list to NSA in
April 1970, no line item existed for international narcotic trafficking.
Nevertheless, NSA began processing this intelligence without first going
through the normal USIB procedures. The Agency did informally notify the IG
staff of the program, but advised it "that such effort should not be given
visibility."
Declaring that drug abuse had grown to crisis proportions and that it was
"imperative that the illicit flow of narcotics and dangerous drugs into this
country be stopped as soon as possible," President Nixon, in August 1971,
upgraded the priority of the drug control effort. In a memorandum to
Secretary of State William Rogers, he disbanded the White House task force
and directed the establishment of the Cabinet Committee on International
Narcotics Control (CCINC), naming as members the Secretaries of State,
Defense, and Treasury, the Attorney General, the director of Central
Intelligence, and the ambassador to the United Nations.
The major objective of the CCINC was the "formulation and coordination of all
policies of the Federal Government relating to the goal of curtailing and
eventually eliminating the flow of illegal narcotics and dangerous drugs into
the United States from abroad." Named as executive director of the committee
on September 7 was Egil (Bud) Krogh, Jr., who, under his other hat as head of
Nixon's leak-plugging "plumbers' unit," had approved the infamous burglary of
Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office, conducted only three days earlier.
One of Krogh's first actions was to appoint an Intelligence Subcommittee,
chaired by the CIA narcotics coordinator. Now for the first time the CIA,
DIA, NSA, State Department, Treasury Department, and the White House were
brought together as one force in the war against drugs.
Earlier that summer the CIA finally decided to "legitimate" its drug watch
list by processing it through the USIB mechanism. Writing of the program in a
memorandum to the other members of the IG staff, the CIA member noted:
"During the past year this effort was increased in scope, with most of the
work done. on the basis of informal requests for information from the various
agencies involved in the problem. COMINT produced has been of great value to
the CIA production offices and has been used as a principal source of
information in several intelligence reports and memoranda. We understand that
it has also bee [sic] of considerable value to operational components, such
as the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs."
Following approval by the USIB, the new narcotics requirement was added to
NSA's IGCP as Line Item 8 of Group B, Subelement 32:
8. International Narcotics activities.
a. Report information relating to the international trafficking in narcotics
and dangerous drugs.*[ This line item applied only to Subelement 32, possibly
North and Central America. Later, however, NSA "developed its processing
effort" against the international, internal, and external communications of
much of the world and, therefore, on July 22, 1974, added a new line item to
Subelements 24, 26, 27, 28, and 29. Generally, the language of this
additional line item was identical in each subelement and in all cases
provided for the various watch lists and referred to travel. For example, the
1974 IGCP provided:
Subelement 27 [Western Europe]
Group B [ILC traffic (international licensed carriers)] Line Item 6
d. Travel of selected individuals. a/ [a/ As specified by or through CIA.]
(1) Travel of individuals related to narcotics trafficking. b/ [b/ As
specified by BNDD, ONNI, Customs and/or CIA.]]
Time specification of the item was to be "within 72 hours after recognition"
and reporting to be at an estimated completeness' level of "2," the level at
which the NSA had been reporting all along.
Throughout 1972 the Nixon administration's drug war continued. On June 12 the
CIA reorganized its Office of Narcotics Coordinator into the more unified
Narcotics Coordination Group, or NARCOG. The following month the White House
issued Executive Order 11676, providing for the establishment, within the
justice Department, of the Office of National Narcotics Intelligence (ONNI),
whose major goal was to be "the development and maintenance of a National
Narcotics Intelligence System." And in September the President told an
International Narcotics Control Conference: "We are living in an age, as we
all know, in an era of diplomacy, when there are times that a great nation
must engage in what is called a limited war. I have rejected that principle
in declaring total war against dangerous drugs ... We are going to fight this
evil with every weapon at our command."
By now, the names of U.S. citizens on NSA's many watch lists had grown from
the hundreds into the thousands, presenting increasing worries for the
Agency's chief keeper of the secrets.
More and more, during his thirteen years as the Puzzle Palace's de facto
head, Dr. Louis Tordella began resembling Webster's definition of one of the
Agency's highest code words, Umbra: "the dark cone of shadow from a planet or
satellite on the side opposite the sun." If NSA was the darkest part of the
government, Tordella was the darkest part of the NSA. Even General Carter,
DIRNSA for the longest period of time, could never be totally sure he knew
all of the Palace's secrets; he believed there may have been times when,
"because of the sensitivity they felt, well, why burden [me] with it?"
When Noel Gayler took over as director in August 1969, Tordella waited a year
or so before briefing even him on the NSA watch list program. The DIRNSA,
however, was not the only one kept in the dark about the operation. The fact
that NSA had begun devoting additional resources to the specific purpose of
targeting U.S. citizens had never been approved by, or even formally brought
before, the USIB. Although the board did approve the drug watch lists, it was
only when the information was picked up as a by-product of NSA's normal
foreign intelligence collection. As one senior official familiar with the
mechanics of the Agency's operations pointed out, "Consumers and NSA are
often in direct contact and USIB cannot maintain complete oversight.
Consequently, NSA may, without the knowledge of USIB, embark upon a new
collection requirement."
That the USIB was completely unaware of the NSA's specific U.S. targeting
programs, like the one directed at the pay telephones in Grand Central
Station, is evidenced by a report prepared by the USIB's Critical Collection
Problems Committee (CCPC). On January 31, 1972, DCI Richard Helms asked the
CCPC to conduct a review of intelligence efforts against narcotics, looking
into such problems as the coordination of collection, dissemination, and
production of national intelligence information on narcotics. The final
report was issued in October 1972, more than two years after NSA had secretly
begun directing programs against American citizens. Under the heading "SIGINT
Information on Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs," the report opened its first
paragraph with the declaration: "1. No SIGINT resources are dedicated solely
to the intercept of narcotics information. The SIGINT which is now being
produced on the international narcotics problem is a by-product of SIGINT
reporting on other national requirements."
Another group that Tordella and Gayler mistrusted with the watch list
information was, incredibly, their own intercept operators. Though using the
three service cryptologic agencies (ASA, NSG, AFSS) to perform the Agency's
worldwide intercept operations had the advantage of providing a cheap labor
force, it also had a number of definite disadvantages. One of them was that
most of the operators were young military personnel on short tours of duty.
Because their turnover was high, the risks that one might someday decide to
blow the whistle on the operation was greatly increased.
Tordella and Gayler's fears were realized in August 1972, when a
twenty-five-year-old former staff sergeant in the Air Force Security Service
decided to bare his top secret soul to the magazine Ramparts. A latent
Vietnam War protester and former traffic analyst at listening posts in
Turkey, West Germany, and Vietnam, Perry Fellwock wove a tale of much fact
and some fancy in a question-and-answer session with the magazine, using the
pseudonym Winslow Peck. The Joplin, Missouri, native's claim that NSA was
able to break all Soviet code systems ("We're able to break every code
they've got"), was most likely an exaggeration, but the majority of the
sixteen-page article was, unfortunately for the Agency, quite accurate. Once
the magazine hit the stands there was little the red-faced officials of the
Puzzle Palace could do except hold their tongues in embarrassed silence.
Prosecution, they must have reasoned, would only serve to confirm all that
Fellwock had said.
The information released by the disenchanted sergeant, Tordella most likely
concluded, was severely damaging to the Agency. Had Fellwock known of the
drug watch list program, however, the results would have been devastating,
which was why Tordella had withheld the most sensitive names and telephone
numbers from the intercept operators at the East Coast listening post. In
October, he sought the help of his sister agency, and, without protest, the
CIA accepted and turned the mission over to Division D. On November 17 the
chief of the Special Programs Division of the CIA notified his agency's
director of Communications of the new requirement: "NSA had tasked [the East
Coast site] with this requirement [to monitor for drug traffic] but were
unwilling to provide the site with the specific names and U.S. telephone
numbers of interest on security/sensitivity grounds ... To get around the
problems mentioned above NSA requested the Agency [CIA] undertake intercept
of the long lines circuits of interest. They have provided us with all
information available (including the 'sensitive') and the [CIA] facility is
working on the requirement."
Again, the tightest security was wrapped around the project, and even the
CIA's own drug coordination unit, NARCOG, was uninformed of the new operation.
One who did discover the project, however, was CIA general counsel Larry
Houston, and in a January 29, 1973, memorandum to the acting chief of
Division D he made it clear that he didn't like what he found. In Houston's
opinion the activity possibly violated Section 605 of the Communications Act
of 1934, prohibiting the unauthorized disclosure of private communications.
He concluded, too, that, since the intercepted messages were eventually given
by NSA to BNDD, the activity was for law enforcement purposes, which was also
outside the CIA's charter. As a result of Houston's memorandum, the CIA
suspended any further collection.
According to Tordella, however, the major reason for the CIA pullout was that
the phone calls were being intercepted from U.S. soil. "I was told that if
they could move a group of Cubans up to Canada," Tordella later recalled, "it
would be quite all right, but they would not do it in the United States."
Rebuffed by the CIA, the Puzzle Palace took back its names and telephone
numbers and continued the operation itself, once again unaffected by the
burdens of federal law or the restraints of a charter. But six months later
the risk of exposure became too great even for the NSA, and the drug program
was shut down once and for all.
"Five or six years before we retired we did some very nice drug busts,"
recalled Frank Raven. "We demonstrated that we could follow drug transactions
and drug dealers. We could do it quite economically-it wasn't a high-budget
item." One such bust involved tipping off the BNDD about the impending
arrival on American shores of an automobile that was so lined with cocaine
that the drug authorities believed that the car had actually been built
around the cocaine. Concluded Raven: "NSA could really have cleaned up the
drug business�drug-running and such ... But it got so screwed up in American
law and American red tape that it wasn't worth the effort."
pps. 325-336
-----
Aloha, He'Ping,
Om, Shalom, Salaam.
Em Hotep, Peace Be,
Omnia Bona Bonis,
All My Relations.
Adieu, Adios, Aloha.
Amen.
Roads End
Kris
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