How the NSA and Its Allies Tried to Stop the First Book-Length Exposé of the Agency

The Intercept has published an engrossing memoir
by James Bamford, author of the first book-length exposé of the
National Security Agency, 1982’s
The Puzzle Palace. It’s a long article filled with
great stories—this, for example:

Even though the agency was
virtually immune from the Freedom of Information Act, I managed to
find a loophole that allowed me access to more than 6,000 pages of
internal documents. I even worked out an agreement whereby they
would provide me with an office in the agency for a week to go
through the 6,000 pages. But then the NSA got its revenge—when they
handed me the 6,000 pages, they were all out of order, as if they
had been shuffled like a new deck of cards. Nothing in the Freedom
of Information Act, it turns out, requires collation.

And this, involving the Reagan-era Justice Department’s attempts
to reclaim a file that the Carter-era Justice Department had
already reviewed and released to Bamford:

The second meeting took place on August 14, in the
editorial conference room of my publisher, Houghton Mifflin, on
Beacon Hill. This time, the government dispensed with any attempt
at politeness. Accompanying [Justice Department attorney Gerald]
Schroeder were the NSA’s general counsel, Daniel Schwartz, and the
agency’s director of policy, Eugene Yeates. They immediately began
by interrogating me. How many copies of the document I had made?
Whom I had given them to? Where were the documents now located? I
responded that none of those questions were on the agenda; since my
attorney could not be present, we had agreed in advance that the
meeting was simply to allow them to explain the government’s
position. Any questions, I said, would have to go through Mark
Lynch. I pointed to the phone.

After placing a call to Lynch, Schroeder brought up the possibility
of using the espionage statute to force me to return the documents.
Lynch immediately asked to speak with me privately.

Once the three officials left the room, Lynch expressed worry over
the way the meeting was going. The officials could have a subpoena
or a restraining order or a warrant for my arrest in their pocket,
he said. He advised me to put down the receiver, call Schroeder to
the phone, leave the room—and keep walking. To this day, I still
have no idea how long the three officials waited for me to return
before finding their way out of the publishing house and back to
Washington.

And there’s more. Read the rest here.