Uncle Cece … you’re wrong … what the National Security Agency (which doesn’t exist) does is soooo secret that what you stated is just their COVER STORY.
First and foremost, the NSA (if it actually existed) is charged with protecting our own military secrets from falling into enemy hands. As a part of this effort, they intensely study how our enemy tries to get this information. In an amazing act of government efficency, these same people are then asked to use these techniques on our enemy, try to learn their secrets. But make no mistake, this is secondary and of minor importance to the NSA (which doesn’t exist).
The military has secrets, and it’s very secret how we protect these secrets … however … there is No Such Agency specifically tasked with this. Why would I lie about this?
I’ve thought that the premise of True Lies- that there is a highly secret agency dedicated to preventing nuclear terrorism, by covert ops and assassinations if necessary- was intriguingly plausible.
Whenever anybody gets too ga-ga about “What a Great President Harry Truman Turned Out to Be Even Though Everybody Hated Him Back Then”, I like to point out he’s the guy who single-handedly began the construction of our current Secret State by issuing an Executive Order in 1952 that created the NSA.
Had a conversation once with a Swami of the Ramakrishna Order (from India) who said America’s national karma, even given slavery and what we did to the natives, was still fairly good prior to the 50’s, thanks to the millions we allowed in over the years to escape various forms of persecution. But sadly, since the creation of the CIA, NSA and God knows what entities we’ve never heard of, it’s been all downhill. The bad now outweighs the good.
Food for thought, even though there’s not a goddam thing we can do about it, of course.
> Whenever anybody gets too ga-ga about “What a Great President Harry
> Truman Turned Out to Be Even Though Everybody Hated Him Back Then”, I like
> to point out he’s the guy who single-handedly began the construction of our
> current Secret State by issuing an Executive Order in 1952 that created the NSA.
Truman did not actually create the NSA. He renamed the Armed Forces Security Agency, which was a consolidation of the Army Security Agency, the Naval Security Group, and the Air Force Security Service, each of which can be traced back at least to units that existed during World War II:
If you want to blame a President for the growth of the entire Intelligence Community in the U.S., you have a lot of choices:
At least every President since World War II has, in effect, supported the existence of the Intelligence Community. (There were intelligence activities in the U.S. even before that, and intelligence activities have existed in many countries for a long time.) Whether the Intelligence Community in the U.S. is a good or bad thing, the fact is that nobody in any power has significantly reduced it in size since at least World War II, and in general it has been steadily increasing in size over that period. According to The Washington Post, there are now 854,000 people in the U.S. with top secret clearances, 29% of whom are contractors.
Of course, the reason why no President can reduce the size of the intelligence bureaucracy, is that as soon as Americans are killed somewhere, the intelligence agencies are blamed for not sniffing it out and stopping it ahead of time.
Powers &8^]
The Federal Reserve isn’t that secretive - they publish their minutes 3 weeks after every meeting. These minutes show everything they are worried about and what things they disagree on in excruciating detail.
As we all should be. The most attractive thing about Hinduism to me is that, basically, they’re right about everything: evolution, dark matter, subatomic particles, energy and matter being essentially the same, the endless cycle of Big Bangs and Big Contractions, you name it–thousands of years before western scientists had a clue. 'Course, this is all a bit off topic…but worth checking out anyway.
George Washington was arguably the creator of intelligence as we know it. He realized that the Revolution was a new type of war, where light-cavalry scouting of enemy dispositions and secret letters from ambassadors wouldn’t be enough. (He had an actual head of intelligence; the British just made it one more assignment for the Adjutant General, which is how poor John André ended up behind American lines in 1780.)
smokefoot: first, welcome to the Straight Dope Message Boards, we’re glad you found us. Second, since there was already a thread on this column (about secret societies that operate in the open), I’ve merged your post into that thread (Pos #13 above.) Helps other readers to keep topics together, more or less. Again, as I say, welcome!
