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(S//SI) Is NSA Going Deaf? What Is 'Golf Cart Reporting'? -- An
Interview With MENA's
FROM: SIGINT Communications
Unknown
Run Date: 10/19/2005
(U//FOUO) There's been no shortage of work in the Middle East - North Africa Product Line (S2E)
in recent years. SIDtoday talked with the Deputy Chief of MENA,
, to find out
how things look from where he's sitting...
(U//FOUO) As a MENA manager, what's the biggest challenge you face right now-- the
difficulty of the target? ...managing your resources? ...something else?
(S//SI) The biggest challenge for us is leading a mostly junior work force. We have a lot of
unfilled billets at a time when we are surging in more areas than ever before. As a result, we've
found it necessary to dramatically change the way we make use of both interns and the military.
Traditionally these new people were placed mainly in a training mode and not expected to be
highly productive for several years. But now, we automatically ask these new people to tackle
very demanding work for us, with our senior analysts acting chiefly as mentors. They are
immediately thrown into the fight!
(S//SI) The results have been great -- our production has gone up and the quality of the work is
very good. The young people working here are very sharp and they've proven that they can
handle tough assignments. We have brand new personnel who have penned several hundred
reports in a 6-month period and others going overseas including stints in the war zone. At the
same time, the senior personnel have risen to the challenge. Without them and their dedication
none of this would have been possible. Remember, the ranks of the senior personnel had been
greatly thinned from years of no hiring and early outs.
(U//FOUO) Regarding mentoring, we have a good program in place. A lot of interns want to
come back to MENA when they finish their tours, so it's working. It also helps that the mission is
exciting and the work they are given is meaningful.
(U//FOUO) There's been an emphasis in recent years on making the most of our Second
and Third Party relationships. Is MENA collaborating more closely with foreign partners
now than was the case before?
(S//SI) Definitely. Our work with Second and Third Parties is quite extensive -- a huge benefit
for us. Beyond that, NSA also makes full use of the Extended Enterprise in covering the MENA
target area. NSA/CSS Georgia has responsibility for most of the force protection mission,
Menwith Hill Station is doing SIGINT Development work, 12 SCS sites support our mission, etc.
Here at Fort Meade, MENA concentrates more on reporting for the policy makers and strategic
issues. All of the organizations performing the MENA mission demand really top-notch linguists
and IA's.
(U) NSA is hiring a lot of analysts these days. Is MENA getting its share of them?
(TS//SI//REL) Given our personnel shortages, we believe that more new hires need to come to
support MENA here and at the Cryptologic Center in Georgia. These are very important billets to
fill, as are positions we are looking to establish in England and possibly Germany. MENA's
intelligence has shaped history. Major U.S. policy decisions -- like refusing to deal with Yassir
Arafat, for example -- were based on our reporting. (MENA had smoking-gun evidence that
Arafat was still supporting terrorism.) We've also stopped many terrorist attacks in Iraq and
other places and saved untold lives. We were way ahead of the pack in providing tactical
intelligence to U.S. negotiators.
(TS//SI//REL) In support of the Middle East peace negotiations we provided support that could
be called "golf cart reporting." During the Clinton administration, in support of talks going on
at Camp David we were producing near real-time reporting that we would stamp "draft" on and
fax it to a CIA liaison officer up in Thurmont, Maryland who in his own golf cart would race
across the grounds to give it directly to the President or Secretary of State. Imagine the thrill
and the responsibility of providing -- with virtually no oversight -- intelligence going directly to
the President! They would read the report and know the other diplomats' stances before they
even arrived at the conference room! There were some funny stories of racing and cutting off
the golf cart carrying the foreign diplomats (picture NASCAR with Jeff Gordon running neck-toneck against Dale Jarrett). A finished, more polished report would later be produced for wider
distribution. The bottom line is that what we're doing has real-life ramifications -- it's not
exaggeration to say that we are shaping history.
(U) What's the most exciting project for the future that MENA is working on?
(S//SI) It's hard to single out just one, but let me say this... People claimed that we were
going deaf in the face of new communications technologies, but I think just the
opposite has happened. We can now get intelligence from media in ways we never thought
possible. GSM, pagers, SMS, Voicesail, signals being routed around the world... these are all
opportunities we never had before. How about Geo? The collectors became more aggressive.
And more important, the content is way better! Now we're seeing personal messages directly
from the sources we want, not second- or third-hand information. We have never had it so good.
I think it's the greatest thing that ever happened. At the same time, it comes with a cost. How
do you process all of this material?
(U) If you could make one change at the Agency, what would it be?
(U) I think we need to do a better job of applying "lessons learned." Too often we seem to repeat
the same mistakes we made in the past. For anyone who has been here as long as I have, we
have seen the same ideas, organizational structures, personnel initiatives and strategic plans
surface over and over.
(U) What was the most memorable experience you've had during your career?
(S//SI) This is a hard one in that on a personal level I have a lot of memorable experiences and
not-so-memorable experiences, such as being called back to work while fishing in Ocean City
and even once sitting in a tree stand hunting in Garrett County, Maryland. While in MENA I have
witnessed or been part of countless success stories, but the fact is that none of them would have
come to pass without the hard work done by a large number of people ranging from the
developers, engineers and collectors who get things rolling and then the language and
intelligence analysts who produce the final SIGINT. I played a small role, but took great pride in
the work that came out of the MENA Extended Enterprise.
(S//SI) We have had a CIA Chief of Station drive to Ft. Meade to thank the Persian linguist who
he said saved his life in Sarajevo. [Former DCI] George Tenet spent an hour in our spaces to
explain the role SIGINT has played in the Middle East. In Iraq I wonder how many U.S. soldiers
whose lives were saved because of our hard work -- no way to get metrics. But I know there are
soldiers who would not have returned to their parents, wives, children, etc. without the work
being done every day by all the people working the MENA mission, including our foreign
partners. For my own part, every time I was able to get any one of these MENA people an award
or promotion, it made my day.
"(U//FOUO) SIDtoday articles may not be republished or reposted outside NSANet
without the consent of S0121 (DL sid_comms)."
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DERIVED FROM: NSA/CSSM 1-52, DATED 08 JAN 2007 DECLASSIFY ON: 20320108