American Cryptology during the Cold War - The Black Vault

Ib) (1)
Ib) (3) -P.L. 86-36
Ib) (3) -50 USC 403
Ib) (3) -18 USC 798
1956 in History
By the end of 1958, the United States w~s firmly in the Middle East,l
\ \\
\By the time ofthe1967 Arab-Israeli War,
\\.. I The problem
proved difficult to address because of the wild mood swings between somnolence and war
in the Middle East. But the cryptologic community eventually had a core of expertise and
resourceJ
I
The Hungarian crisis marked the dawning of a new capability. I
Unfortunately, such sophisticated analysis, available in later decades, simply did not
exist in 1956.
It was an art form that had to
be learned.
L..:--:-----:------------...._-------I
As for crisis response, all was chaos. The cryptologic community proved incapable of
marshalling its forces in a flexible fashion to deal with developing trouble spots. The
events ofthe year did not demonstrate success - they simply provided a case study to learn
from.
The Reorganization
Ralph Canine departed NSA on 23 November 1956. But before he did, he hired the
management firm of McKinsey and Company to look at NSA's organization from top to
bottom. The McKinsey study resulted in a thorough revamping of the way NSA functions
that still had repercussions through the 1980s.
Canine was concerned with primarily two questions: would operations function more
effectively on a functional or geographic organization, and to what extent should staff
functions be centralized?
McKinsey introduced a modified geographical concept. Organization for COMINT would
be along target (Le., country or geographical) lines, but within that scheme, specific
processes like cryptanalysis,1
land resource tasking, would often appear
in separate organizations. The new scheme brought with it a greater focus on targets, but
retained many aspects ofthe factory-like origins ofthe business.
I1MfBI>JE VIA 'fAI>JE~f'fKEYII8I>JE S8MUT'f S8~f'fR8I>JSYSlfEMB