New collections
The U.S. Intelligence Community After 9/11
The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 on New York and Washington led to profound changes in U.S. foreign and defense policy, internal security practices, and organization for national security - including dramatic changes in the organization and operations of the U.S. Intelligence Community. Other changes have been the product of factors unrelated to the attacks. The U.S. Intelligence Community after 9/11 reflects the National Security Archive's interest in documenting the organizational and operational changes in the U.S. Intelligence Community since the attacks.
For this publication, an effort was made to collect as many relevant documents as possible, both through examining the websites of relevant agencies and use of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Targets of research included all 16 agencies that constitute the U.S. Intelligence Community - the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the national intelligence agencies (the Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency, National Reconnaissance Office, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation), and the intelligence components of Cabinet-level departments (including State, Defense, Homeland Security, Treasury), and the military services. Also included are the organizations (such as the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence) that supervise and manage the above agencies' activities as well as the means of management (such as departmental directives).
The National Security Agency: Organization and Operations, 1945-2009
The National Security Agency: Organization and Operations, 1945-2009, is a uniquely detailed collection of records documenting the history, mission, and intelligence collection and analytic operations of America's largest and most secretive intelligence agency, the National Security Agency (NSA) and its predecessor organizations.
NSA's mission and functions are of considerable importance to U.S. national security. Since its creation in 1952, NSA has been the U.S. government's Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) collection agency, responsible for intercepting foreign communications of every kind and trying to break the codes and ciphers of America's adversaries (and sometime allies) around the world. In addition to its historical focus on monitoring the communications of foreign governments and militaries, NSA has also exploited the communications traffic of a wide range of non-governmental organizations, including terrorist groups, narcotics smugglers, companies and banks, and citizens of foreign countries. More recently, NSA has been implicated in engaging in warrantless eavesdropping on American citizens since the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001. Of equal importance, NSA has traditionally also been responsible for ensuring the security of the U.S. government's communications and data processing systems from the SIGINT agencies of foreign governments.
The NSA document collection is notable both for its size and its content. When complete, it will include some 2,200 documents, many of them written at the Top Secret Codeword level, culled from both archival sources and FOIA requests submitted to more than a dozen government departments and intelligence agencies over the past 25 years. Archival research has included a systematic search through the records currently held by the National Archives and Records Administration in College Park, Maryland.
