The CIA and Signals Intelligence
Formerly Top-Secret Multi-Volume History Details Spy Agency’s Conflicts with NSA and Military over SIGINT Role
Additional Declassified Documents Describe CIA Domestic and Foreign SIGINT Activity
CIA Role Often Put It in Direct Competition with NSA, but Recent Cooperation Made Possible Controversial Exploits Uncovered by Edward Snowden
National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 506
Compiled and edited by Jeffrey T. Richelson
Posted March 20, 2015
For more information contact:
202/994-7000, nsarchiv@gwu.edu
Washington, DC, Posted March 20, 2015 — For decades the Central Intelligence Agency has conducted a major signals intelligence (SIGINT) effort that often placed it in competition with other members of the Intelligence Community, according to a significant collection of declassified documentation posted today by the National Security Archive (www.nsarchive.org). As described in a previously Top-Secret multi-volume history of the CIA’s role from 1947-1970 — obtained by the Archive through the Freedom of Information Act — the CIA regularly struggled with not only Soviet counterintelligence and international upheavals like the Iranian revolution but overlapping missions and domestic budgetary battles with the National Security Agency (NSA) and other entities during the height of the Cold War.
Among the CIA’s successes described in the documents that make up today’s posting was the creation of the RHYOLITE geosynchronous satellite program which allowed continuous coverage of missile telemetry and targets in Eurasia. Agency operatives were also able to tap into radio-telephone communications of Communist leaders as they rode in limousines around Moscow, to track Soviet missile launches from two secret stations inside the Shah’s Iran, and to intercept Warsaw Pact communications from a tunnel dug under East Berlin.
These achievements were not without bureaucratic costs. The RHYOLITE program raised hackles at both the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), which oversaw much of U.S. satellite intelligence activity, and the NSA, whose personnel initially found themselves cut out of the program. Overseas, the Soviet limo bugging ended after a news report disclosed it and may also have led to the execution of the Soviet agent who installed the listening devices. After the Shah fled Iran during the 1979 revolution, the founders of the Islamic Republic quickly seized the two sensitive US monitoring sites, handing a major loss to American intelligence.
These and other aspects of the CIA’s long involvement with SIGINT are described in over forty documents obtained by Archive Senior Fellow Jeffrey Richelson through Freedom of Information Act requests, archival research, and other websites.
Check out today’s posting at the National Security Archive – http://www.nsarchive.org/NSAEBB/NSAEBB506/
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Unredacted, the Archive blog – http://nsarchive.wordpress.com/
New Memoir by Participant in U.S. H-Bomb Program Sheds Light on the Making of the First Test Device
First-Hand Perspectives on Edward Teller and Other Leading Figures, and on Dispute over Who Originated Key Idea of Radiation Implosion
Book by Kenneth W. Ford Being Published Over Objections of Department of Energy
First Full Account of Project Matterhorn, Pioneering Effort in Use of Computer Technologies for Nuclear Weapons Development
National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 507
Posted – March 24, 2015
For more information contact:
Ken Ford 215/439-8568, kenneth.w.ford@gmail.com or
William Burr 202/994-7000, nsarchiv@gwu.edu
Washington, DC, Posted March 24, 2015 — A new scientific memoir by one of the few surviving participants in the U.S. H-bomb project provides fresh information and insights into the production of the world’s first thermonuclear device. In an exclusive essay and selection of declassified documents provided to the National Security Archive and posted today on the Archive’s website (www.nsarchive.org), the author, Dr. Kenneth W. Ford, brings to light intriguing pieces of the H-bomb’s early history, including personal aspects such as the brittle relationship between physicists Edward Teller and Stanislaw Ulam and their feud over who came up with one of the central theories leading to the H-bomb’s development.
Building the H Bomb, A Personal History (Singapore: World Scientific, 2015) describes a central element of the process — the Princeton University-based “Project Matterhorn” — where Ford and his colleagues used the latest computer technology to calculate the mid and late stages of a thermonuclear explosion, especially the burning of the nuclear fuel. The Matterhorn calculations were essential to the IVY MIKE thermonuclear test that caused the island of Elugelab — part of Enewetak atoll in the Marshall Islands — to disappear on 1 November 1952.
As William Broad reports in The New York Times yesterday, 23 March 2015, Dr. Ford is currently in a dispute with the Department of Energy concerning the latter’s security review of Building the H Bomb. Ford emphasizes that he has scrubbed his book of nuclear weapons secrets and that any and all technical information he uses is from public sources. The DOE reviewers, however, declare that the book includes secret “Restricted Data.” Believing otherwise, Dr. Ford argues that much of the public-record material that he uses comes from people who had “Q” clearances authorizing their access to nuclear weapons data. On the grounds that the DOE arguments are poorly founded, Ford has gone ahead with publication.
In today’s presentation, Dr. Ford provides an overview of Building the H Bomb: A Personal History and highlights some of the key documents on the early history of the H-bomb program. Additional documents are presented in an annex to the posting.
Check out today’s posting at the National Security Archive’s Nuclear Vault – http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/nukevault/ebb507/
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Unredacted, the Archive blog – http://nsarchive.wordpress.com/
Federal Chief Information Officers (CIO) Council Wins Rosemary Award
Hillary Clinton E-Mail Controversy Illuminates Government-Wide Failure
National Security Archive Lawsuit Established E-Mails as Records in 1993
CIO Council Repeats as Rosemary “Winner” for Doubling Down On “Lifetime Failure”
Only White House Saves Its E-Mail Electronically, Agencies No Deadline Until 2016
For more information contact:
Tom Blanton, Director, National Security Archive – 202/994-7000
Lauren Harper, Associate FOIA Project Director – 202/994-7045
nsarchiv@gwu.edu
Posted – March 18, 2015
Washington, DC, Posted March 18, 2015 — The Federal Chief Information Officers (CIO) Council has won the infamous Rosemary Award for worst open government performance of 2014, according to the citation published today by the National Security Archive at www.nsarchive.org.
The National Security Archive had hoped that awarding the 2010 Rosemary Award to the Federal Chief Information Officers Council for never addressing the government’s “lifetime failure” of saving its e-mail electronically would serve as a government-wide wakeup call that saving e-mails was a priority. Fallout from the Hillary Clinton e-mail debacle shows, however, that rather than “waking up,” the top officials have opted to hit the “snooze” button.
The Archive established the not-so-coveted Rosemary Award in 2005, named after President Nixon’s secretary, Rose Mary Woods, who testified she had erased 18-and-a-half minutes of a crucial Watergate tape — stretching, as she showed photographers, to answer the phone with her foot still on the transcription pedal. Bestowed annually to highlight the lowlights of government secrecy, the Rosemary Award has recognized a rogue’s gallery of open government scofflaws, including the CIA, the Treasury Department, the Air Force, the FBI, the Justice Department, and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.
Chief Information Officer of the United States Tony Scott was appointed to lead the Federal CIO Council on February 5, 2015, and his brief tenure has already seen more references in the news media to the importance of maintaining electronic government records, including e-mail, and the requirements of the Federal Records Act, than the past five years. Hopefully Mr. Scott, along with Office of Management & Budget Deputy Director for Management Ms. Beth Cobert will embrace the challenge of their Council being named a repeat Rosemary Award winner and use it as a baton to spur change rather than a cross to bear.
Check out today’s posting at the National Security Archive – http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20150318/
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Unredacted, the Archive blog – http://nsarchive.wordpress.com/
Perestroika in the Soviet Union: 30 Years On
Documents show extraordinary achievements, Spectacular missed opportunities
Newly published records include report on Chernobyl, Gorbachev meetings with Mitterrand and Bush, and Gorbachev appeal for international aid in 1991
National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 504
Compiled and edited by Svetlana Savranskaya and Anna Melyakova
Posted March 11, 2015
For more information contact:
202/994-7000, nsarchiv@gwu.edu
Washington, DC, Posted March 11, 2015 — Thirty years ago today, in the Kremlin, the Soviet Politburo unanimously elected its youngest member, Mikhail Gorbachev, to the pinnacle of Soviet power — General Secretary of the Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. This election ushered in the “perestroika” period of revolutionary change, which led to the end of the Cold War, democratization of the Soviet Union, and ultimately — to the peaceful dissolution of the Soviet empire, as detailed in an extraordinary selection of documents from Soviet, American and other sources published today by the National Security Archive at George Washington University (www.nsarchive.org).
Gorbachev had come to Moscow only a few years earlier, in 1978, to serve as the party secretary for Agriculture. His rise was indeed meteoric. Under General Secretary Yuri Andropov (1982-84), Gorbachev essentially became number two in the party and a perceived successor to Andropov. According to the documents as well as diaries and memoirs, Gorbachev was a straight arrow, not a dissident, but a reformer within the system. His top priorities were to reform the Soviet economy, end the war in Afghanistan, and end the nuclear arms race to direct the peace dividend to domestic reform. It helped him that at the time, the entire Soviet elite was ready for change and saw in him the potential to make the Soviet system stronger and more vibrant. The documents published here show Gorbachev’s first efforts to achieve his goals — from the conversation with Afghan Communist leader Babrak Karmal to the launch of the anti-alcohol campaign, to the first conversation with President Ronald Reagan.
This selection of documents from all seven years of the perestroika era attempts to give the reader a sense of the scope of this revolutionary transformation, not just of the Soviet Union, but of the world. The documents cover the most important issues that confronted Soviet leaders in this period — the reform of the Warsaw Pact and relations with socialist allies from the beginning and to the crumbling of the Pact, arms control and the key U.S.-Soviet interactions, relations with West European countries, and Soviet activities in the Third World.
Check out today’s posting at the National Security Archive – http://www.nsarchive.org/NSAEBB/NSAEBB504/
Find us on Facebook – http://www.facebook.com/NSArchive
Unredacted, the Archive blog – http://nsarchive.wordpress.com/
The Merchant of Death’s Account Book
Declassified Documents Reveal More Information on Government’s Opportunistic Relationship with World’s Biggest Arms Smuggler, Sarkis Soghanalian
U.S. Cooperated with Arms Dealer Despite Record of Smuggling, Weapons Sales to Saddam Hussein, and Reported Ties to Armenian Terrorists
Soghanalian Tried to Link House Speaker Newt Gingrich to Bribery Scam in 1990s; and Assisted Ferdinand Marcos in Coup Attempt in 1980s
National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 502
Edited by Lauren Harper
Posted February 23, 2015
For more information contact:
Lauren Harper – 202/944-7000, nsarchiv@gwu.edu
Washington, DC, Posted February 23, 2015 — Documents posted for the first time — in a collaboration between the National Security Archive and VICE News — provide insight into the U.S. government’s paradoxical and opportunistic relationship with arms dealer Sarkis Soghanalian, whose larger-than-life deals were so well known that he was an inspiration for Nicholas Cage’s character Yuri Orlov in the 2005 film, Lord of War.
Sarkis Soghanalian was the Cold War’s largest arms dealer, made over $12 million a year at his peak, and had his hand in seemingly every major conflict across the globe — with the U.S. government’s tacit approval. His largest weapons deal was a $1.6 billion sale to the Saddam Hussein regime at the outset of the Iran-Iraq War that included U.S. helicopters and French artillery, and he sold arms to groups in Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, and Peru from the 1970s through the 2000s. Soghanalian was nicknamed the “Merchant of Death” for arming so many conflicts, a moniker he dismissed by arguing Alfred Nobel was called the same for inventing gunpowder, “and then they named it the Nobel Prize.” At one point the U.S. government indicted Soghanalian for, among other things, wire fraud and violating United Nations (U.N.) sanctions, but then freed him another once he provided useful intelligence.
The U.S. relied on Soghanalian’s unique intelligence so much that it kept him out of jail — for the most part. In 1982 he was sentenced to only five years probation for wire fraud in connection with reneging on a 1977 $1.1 million machine gun deal to Mauritania, and a federal judge dismissed all charges against him in 1986 after he was arrested at the Miami International Airport for possession of — among other things — two unregistered rocket launchers. Despite his oftentimes illegal arms trade, the longest prison term Soghanalian ever served was two years in connection with the 1983 sale of 103 Hughes helicopters and two rocket launchers to Iraq in violation of U.N. sanctions. The initial sentence was six and a half years, but was reduced after Soghanalian helped Americans infiltrate a sophisticated counterfeiting operation into his native Lebanon. Soghanalian said, “When they needed me, the U.S. government that is, they immediately came and got me out.”
After his 2011 death, the Archive filed a series of targeted FOIA requests for documents on Soghanalian to the FBI, the U.S. Central Command, the Defense Intelligence Agency, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Border Patrol, and the Department of State. The hard work of archivists and declassifiers at these agencies resulted in the declassification of nearly 2,500 pages of documents on the notorious arms dealer, and today the National Security Archive is posting the ‘top 10’ documents from this trove.
Check out today’s posting at the National Security Archive – http://www.nsarchive.org/NSAEBB/NSAEBB502/
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Unredacted, the Archive blog – http://nsarchive.wordpress.com/
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