National Security Agency - The Black Vault

2000s
2000s
Director Hayden and 100 Days of Change.
NSA/CSS workforce, highlighting a different
aspect of his transformation initiatives. (See
Document A at end of chapter.)
The DIRgrams emphasized his basic themes of
open communication up and down the chain
of command and every employee’s personal
responsibility to foster beneficial change.
Among the changes implemented were:
• Creating a senior leadership team
composed of the Director, Deputy
Director, and the Directors of Signals
Intelligence (SID), Information Assurance
(IAD), and Technology (TD). (The other
key component chiefs became associate
directors and advisors to the senior
leadership team.);
• Eliminating SID’s internal divisions
to speed reporting information and
personnel shifts when crises arise;
• Hiring senior leaders from outside the
Agency to address insularity, including the
newly-created position of Chief Financial
Officer. General Hayden also added a new
position, Senior Acquisition Executive, to
his leadership team;
• Holding Town Meetings to explain his
policies and vision to the NSA workforce;
• Fostering working relationships with
print and broadcast journalists by inviting
them to unclassified sessions inside NSA;
• Eliminating most civilian promotion
boards and returning authority for
lower- and mid-level promotions to office
supervisors.
In late February 2000, after 100 calendar days
had passed since his program of change began,
Hayden noted that, although some goals were
still to be achieved, the “most important change
of all” had occurred, namely, that employees and
the Director were now “communicating freely,
frequently, and clearly.” Progress had been made,
but all recognized more work needed to be done.
January 24, 2000
In the late 1990s and into the 21st century,
media sources began to claim that NSA was
falling behind in its adoption of modern
communications and computer technology.
The concerns proved to be valid. On January
24, 2000, a software anomaly caused a massive
computer failure.
The outage was limited to the Fort Meade facility,
but NSA processing systems were affected for
72 hours. Fortunately, there were no signs that
the outage had been caused by malicious action
or by an outside party. In addition, NSA was able
to rely on other components of the cryptologic
system to handle aspects of the mission that
required immediate processing.
News of the outage leaked to the media,
prompting General Hayden to go “on the record”
with a broadcast journalist about the event.
After service was restored, NSA issued a public
statement reassuring Americans that the Agency’s
essential activities had not suffered due to the
outage and that no intelligence had been lost.
A New Approach
In July 2001 NSA announced the
GROUNDBREAKER contract for technical
support for much of its electronic infrastructure
as part of the transition to greater reliance on
contractor support. After a lengthy process
of study and contract competition, a defense
consortium and a few small technology
companies were selected for the effort.
Contractors managed assets, such as desktop
computers, telephones, and related equipment,
freeing NSA technicians to concentrate on
specialized operational equipment. As part of
the program, incentives were offered to many
of NSA’s technical employees to move into the
private sector. At the time, GROUNDBREAKER
was the second largest U.S. Government
information technology outsourcing effort ever.
The program still exists today.
Interoperability
While technology was rapidly changing the
SIGINT side of the mission, NSA’s Information
Assurance personnel were also working hard to
improve the means of protecting information.
One of the most impressive of these new
developments was the creation of the Secure
Terminal Equipment device or STE, which
became the successor to the STU-III.
The STE was developed by IAD in partnership
with private industry in the late 1990s to meet
secure communications requirements raised
by the DoD and other government agencies.
Development began with a core version for
offices with both digital ISDN (Integrated
Services Digital Network) and analog PSTN
(Public Switched Telephone Network)
capabilities. Tactical, shipboard, and “data only”
models would follow.
In 2000 the device was radically upgraded, and
its modem was replaced with a commercial
model. This new commercial technology
LEADERSHIP
Lt Gen Michael V. Hayden, USAF
(March 1999 – April 2005)
GEN Keith B. Alexander, USA
(August 2005 to Present)
William B. Black
(September 2000 - August 2006)
John C. “Chris” Inglis
(August 2006 - Present)
DIRECTORS
DEPUTY
DIRECTORS
96 60 Years of Defending Our Nation National Security Agency National Security Agency 60 Years of Defending Our Nation 97