The Puzzle Palace: A Report on NSA, America's Most Secret Agency
Jun 2018 · Sold by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
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eBook
593
Pages
About this eBook
The first book ever written on the National Security Agency from the New York Times bestselling author of Body of Secrets and The Shadow Factory.
In this groundbreaking, award-winning book, James Bamford traces the NSA’s origins, details its inner workings, and explores its far-flung operations. He describes the city of fifty thousand people and nearly twenty buildings that is the Fort Meade headquarters of the NSA—where there are close to a dozen underground acres of computers, where a significant part of the world’s communications are monitored, and where reports from a number of super-sophisticated satellite eavesdropping systems are analyzed. He also gives a detailed account of NSA’s complex network of listening posts—both in the United States and throughout much of the rest of the world. When a Soviet general picks up his car telephone to call headquarters, when a New York businessman wires his branch in London, when a Chinese trade official makes an overseas call, when the British Admiralty urgently wants to know the plans and movements of Argentina’s fleet in the South Atlantic—all of these messages become NSA targets. James Bamford’s illuminating book reveals how NSA’s mission of Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) has made the human espionage agent almost a romantic figure of the past.
Winner Best Investigative Book of the Year Award from Investigative Reporters & Editors
“The Puzzle Palace has the feel of an artifact, the darkly revealing kind. Though published during the Reagan years, the book is coolly subversive and powerfully prescient.”—The New Yorker
“Mr. Bamford has emerged with everything except the combination to the director’s safe.”—The New York Times Book Review
In this groundbreaking, award-winning book, James Bamford traces the NSA’s origins, details its inner workings, and explores its far-flung operations. He describes the city of fifty thousand people and nearly twenty buildings that is the Fort Meade headquarters of the NSA—where there are close to a dozen underground acres of computers, where a significant part of the world’s communications are monitored, and where reports from a number of super-sophisticated satellite eavesdropping systems are analyzed. He also gives a detailed account of NSA’s complex network of listening posts—both in the United States and throughout much of the rest of the world. When a Soviet general picks up his car telephone to call headquarters, when a New York businessman wires his branch in London, when a Chinese trade official makes an overseas call, when the British Admiralty urgently wants to know the plans and movements of Argentina’s fleet in the South Atlantic—all of these messages become NSA targets. James Bamford’s illuminating book reveals how NSA’s mission of Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) has made the human espionage agent almost a romantic figure of the past.
Winner Best Investigative Book of the Year Award from Investigative Reporters & Editors
“The Puzzle Palace has the feel of an artifact, the darkly revealing kind. Though published during the Reagan years, the book is coolly subversive and powerfully prescient.”—The New Yorker
“Mr. Bamford has emerged with everything except the combination to the director’s safe.”—The New York Times Book Review
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About the author
James Bamford, the author of the bestsellers Body of Secrets, The Puzzle Palace, and The Shadow Factory, has written extensively on national security issues. His writing on the war in Iraq for Rolling Stone magazine won the National Magazine Award for Reporting, the highest honor in the magazine industry.J. Paul Boehmer is an American actor best known for his numerous appearances in the Star Trek universe. Hkis audiobook narrations have garnered nine AudioFile Earphones Awards and two prestigious Audie Awards for Best Narration, besides being a finalist for the Audie Award in 2012 and 2015. Between narrations, he is active in regional theaters across the country. His television appearances include guest spots on Nip/Tuck and Numb3rs.
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