National Security Agency

The nation's work force is aging, and for several years now the federal government has recognized that its workers are aging more than most. The good news released in a survey this week is that many experienced federal workers aren't going anywhere, at least not anytime soon. The third in a series of surveys of government employees' attitudes toward their jobs, benefits and bosses found that only 4 percent of respondents plan to retire by this summer and 12 percent during the one to three years after that.

The National Security Agency likes to present itself rather dramatically as the nation's code-breaker - though in the warrantless wiretapping program that it conducts on behalf of the Bush administration, it's mostly the legal code that gets broken. Still, it has a big legitimate task to perform, intercepting and reading the electronic traffic of the world's malefactors. The problem, as Siobhan Gorman of The Sun has revealed, is that an agency that longs for an air of derring-do mostly has a culture of derring-don't.

WASHINGTON --In a major shift, the National Security Agency is drawing up plans for a new domestic assignment: helping protect government and private communications networks from cyberattacks and infiltration by terrorists and hackers, according to current and former intelligence officials. From electricity grids to subways to nuclear power plants, the United States depends more than ever on Internet-based control systems that could be manipulated remotely in a terrorist attack, security specialists say. The plan calls for the NSA to work with the Department of Homeland Security and other federal agencies to monitor such networks to prevent unauthorized intrusion, according to those with knowledge of what is known internally as the "Cyber Initiative."

President Clinton has nominated Air Force Maj. Gen. Michael Hayden as the director of the Fort Meade-based National Security Agency, the Pentagon announced yesterday.Hayden is a 32-year Air Force veteran and a longtime intelligence officer. He is stationed in Korea as deputy chief of staff for the United Nations Command, where he has led negotiations between North and South Korean delegations.Hayden, 52, will replace Lt. Gen. Kenneth Minihan, who will end his three-year tour at the agency March 15.Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen also announced yesterday that Hayden would be promoted from a major general to a lieutenant general.

With soldiers marching and flags flying, Col. John D. Frketic will hand over command of Fort Meade to Col. Michael J. Stewart this morning.The change-of-command ceremony is a time-honored tradition in the military, and it is taking place at what has become a nontraditional post.As Frketic moves on to a three-year position as an assistant to the commander of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe in Brussels, Belgium, he leaves behind a garrison teeming with tenants who lease space from the federal government.

Espionage watchers consider the early 1990s a low point for the National Security Agency.Around that time, the Internet was beginning to change how people communicate, becoming a new tool for everyday life. But while the rest of the nation was e-mailing each other, NSA was still delivering top-secret intelligence reports to Washington inside pizza boxes.An agency that in its heyday had helped create the first computers had become appallingly low-tech. Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf even complained about it during 1991's Persian Gulf war when he said intelligence reports on Iraq's military were taking too long to reach his hands.

President Clinton has nominated Air Force Maj. Gen. Michael Hayden as the director of the Fort Meade-based National Security Agency, the Pentagon announced yesterday.Hayden is a 32-year Air Force veteran and a longtime intelligence officer. He is stationed in Korea as deputy chief of staff for the United Nations Command, where he has led negotiations between North and South Korean delegations.Hayden, 52, will replace Lt. Gen. Kenneth Minihan, who will end his three-year tour at the agency March 15.Hayden's nomination to the NSA must first be confirmed by the full Senate.

WASHINGTON -- Nearly a dozen members of the police force that guards the top-secret National Security Agency are suspected of stealing ammunition from the Fort Meade-based agency, sources and federal officials said yesterday.The thefts, which included up to 50,000 rounds of ammunition, represent an embarrassing incident for the NSA, an intelligence agency that eavesdrops on foreign communications and makes and breaks codes. Besides NSA officials, agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms are investigating the thefts.

With more money and information zipping across the Internet, the National Security Agency and it counterparts from four other nations yesterday signed an agreement aimed at making the information highway a safer place for governments and consumers to do business.That agreement, five years in the making, creates new standards for computer systems and software programs, which face stricter requirements to make them less vulnerable to hackers.The goal is to assure that government secrets, consumer credit card numbers and other private information don't fall into the wrong hands.

Fort George G. Meade was once a bustling combat support center, home to thousands of troops trained to storm the beaches of Normandy and to fight in the Rhineland.Today, those training grounds are part of a federal wildlife refuge, and Fort Meade's employees are more likely to wear suits than fatigues.Civilians outnumber military personnel nearly three to one, and federal agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Library of Congress are carving out space for more employees on the 5,415-acre base.

Arthur Edward Goldman, a retired National Security Agency employee, died of melanoma Friday at his Columbia home. He was 67. Born in Scranton, Pa., he earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Scranton and a master's degree from American University. He also did postgraduate work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Mr. Goldman joined the Air Force in 1964 and served as a communications officer. He worked for nearly 30 years at the National Security Agency at Fort Meade and retired in 1998.

The National Security Agency could be adding thousands of jobs as it revs up plans to build a new complex near its Anne Arundel County headquarters - or possibly just relocating the thousands of people working clandestinely in unmarked office buildings around the region. The tight-lipped agency, which said little in response to requests for comment Friday, has notified the federal government that it wants to build 5.8 million square feet over 20 years. The land it has in mind is elsewhere on the Fort Meade base it already calls home.

The public needs to hear more about how the National Security Agency has been improperly tapping into the domestic communications of American citizens and what has been done with the information collected. The Justice Department confirmed last week that it had reined in the NSA's wiretapping activities in the United States after learning that the super-secret spy agency headquartered at Fort Meade had improperly accessed American phone calls and e-mails while eavesdropping on foreign communications.

The super-secret National Security Agency, traditionally reluctant to share its code-breaking secrets, is joining a new, highly classified social network that links its analysts for the first time with thousands of colleagues at other U.S. intelligence agencies. Gone are what used to be those rock-solid paradigms of intelligence: providing information only to those who need to know and limiting access to locked, specialized "compartments." Until now, a Pentagon analyst working on Afghanistan, for instance, might not know about highly sensitive NSA intercepts of opium smugglers discussing payoffs to Taliban insurgents.

OUTSIDE FORT MEADE - God bless 'em, but the nation's secret code-breakers and eavesdroppers aren't exactly the most sociable folks you'll ever meet. Many of them are hidden away here, behind the National Security Agency's bunkered fortifications, which are so foreboding they'd make Dick Cheney's eyes glisten with envy. Others work in uniform on dusty battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan, and man austere listening posts across the Middle East and Asia. They are descendants of an early generation of code-breakers recruited on the eve of World War II, a group of Navy women who were told if they breathed a word to civilians about their work, they'd be shot.

WASHINGTON - The U.S. spent $4 billion more on spying in the fiscal year ending Sept. 30 than during the previous year, the director of national intelligence said yesterday. Spending on strategic intelligence by the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency and other U.S. intelligence organizations reached $47.5 billion in fiscal 2008, compared with the $43.5 billion appropriated for fiscal 2007. The majority of the money supports electronic eavesdropping, wiretapping and the vast, high-speed data-mining operations of the National Security Agency, which has headquarters at Fort Meade.

The Shadow Factory By James Bamford Doubleday / $27.95 / 345 pages The bad news in James Bamford's fascinating new study of the National Security Agency is that Big Brother really is watching. The worse news, according to this veteran journalist, is that Big Brother often listens in on the wrong people and sometimes fails to recognize critical information, like the fact that terrorists are gathering and plotting an attack. When it does find a critical nugget like that, it occasionally files it away somewhere and doesn't tell anybody.

In a stinging rebuke, members of Congress from both parties are challenging a $17 billion plan that the Bush administration put on a fast track earlier this year to secure the nation's cyber networks from terror threats and foreign spying. Critics say the administration's plan to label virtually every part of the project as classified would make adequate oversight impossible. They also complain that some of the technologies poised to receive funding are "not mature" and that some projects deal more with foreign intelligence collection than protecting America's computer systems.

Wanda Sykes remembers those fun days back at the National Security Agency, a time filled with all the laughter and frivolity one would expect at the super-secret intelligence-gathering facility adjacent to Fort Meade. OK, that's a stretch. Truth is, humor and the NSA don't exactly go together. And even though Sykes would eventually morph into one of America's top comedians, her six-year stint as a purchasing agent at the NSA wasn't what made her funny. If you go Wanda Sykes performs at 8 tonight at the Lyric Opera House, 140 W. Mount Royal Ave. Tickets, which are $36.50, are available at the box office, by calling 410-547-7328 or by going to ticketmaster.

Robert Louis Subock Sr., a retired National Security Agency engineer, died of a heart attack Feb. 15 at Levindale Hebrew Geriatric Center. The Randallstown resident was 76. Born and raised on a Hebbville farm, he was a 1949 Catonsville High School graduate. He served in the Army from 1953 to 1955. As a young man, he worked at Caton Radio, Glenn L. Martin Co. and Westinghouse Corp. before becoming an electronics engineer for the National Security Agency at Fort Meade. He retired in 1995.