Small Wars Journal

Inside the NSA

Wed, 01/25/2012 - 6:49pm

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CHANNEL GETS UNPRECEDENTED

LOOK INSIDE AMERICA’S MOST SECRETIVE

INTELLIGENCE AGENCY IN INSIDE THE NSA

Agency Opens Its Doors to Documentary Cameras

For the First Time Since 9/11

Inside the NSA Premieres Monday, January 30, at 9 p.m. ET/PT on

National Geographic Channel

“We do not want to make a mistake.

It has terrible consequences for our nation.”

General Keith B. Alexander, Director, National Security Agency

(WASHINGTON, D.C. — January 11, 2012) It is the home of the modern-day spy.  Complex supercomputers, high-speed encryption, intricate listening devices, trained codemakers and codebreakers, and teams of risk takers and genius puzzle solvers fighting an elusive enemy.  This is the National Security Agency, or the NSA. 

On Monday, January 30, 2012, at 9 p.m. ET/PT, National Geographic Channel (NGC) gains unprecedented access into one of America’s most secretive intelligence agencies in Inside the NSA.  It is the first time since the attacks on 9/11 that the agency has opened its doors to documentary cameras and revealed its role in modern espionage and high-tech computer defense.  Go beyond the security barricades and into the intelligence emergency rooms to learn how the agency steals enemy secrets with billion-dollar technology and defends the nation from emerging threats. 

Housed outside of Washington, D.C., in Fort Meade, Md., the NSA has an over 2 million square-foot complex lined with copper mesh to prevent electronic eavesdropping.  With approximately 35,000 employees who work worldwide, the NSA demands that staff be U.S. citizens and undergo extensive, frequent background checks as well as psychological and polygraph exams.  They must be the best and the brightest in their fields to even be considered for hire.  Office keys are kept in secure vending machines.  And sensitive papers aren’t shredded, but pulverized into gray goo and recycled.

Now NGC cameras are allowed inside.  But to secure access, every piece of equipment is checked for prohibited devices.  Bomb-sniffing dogs go over everything.  And before tapes leave the NSA complex, security and classification experts review every second of footage to prevent sensitive state secrets from getting out.

Once cleared, our cameras are allowed access into NSA Threat Operations Center or NTOC — an ultrahigh-security 24-hour-a-day nerve center created in 2005 to protect the Defense Department’s networks from cyber intrusions.  This marks the first and only time documentary cameras have been allowed on the new NTOC floor.

“[Cyber terrorists] have no rules, they have no authority, they can come and go as they will and they do what they want whenever they want, and they can all do it in a millisecond.  That’s how fast cyber time is.  So we have to be prepared to understand not only the threat, not only their capabilities and intentions but prepared in cyber time to defend our networks against them,” says Tony Stramella, special assistant to the director of NTOC.

Go Inside the NSA’s state-of-the-art research facilities, where specialists are working on the newest optic communications that most people aren’t even aware of.  And on the front lines of combat, we’ll see how NSA personnel try to intercept valuable signals in the hunt for insurgents.

“If they [NSA analysts] have a bad day, then ultimately someone may lose their life,” says Maj. Timothy Blanch of the MEADE Operations Center regarding those personnel who analyze and distribute vital classified information. 

Inside the NSA also shows how the NSA provided critical information leading up to the killing of Osama bin Laden.  The hunt for bin Laden involved monitoring thousands of sources and billions of foreign communications: the ultimate needle in a haystack.

Inside the NSA is produced by Stephen David Entertainment.  Executive producer is Stephen David.  For National Geographic Channel, Richard Wells is executive producer; Michael Cascio is executive vice president of programming.

Visit www.natgeotv.com for more information.