body-of-secrets-anatomy-of-the-ultra-secret-national-security-agency-2002

decided to return for a visit, "my ears caught a faint sound coming fromthe remains of the ops building." Then he realized what he was hearing:"Several hundred rats rummaging through the piles of garbage."The powerful wave of Cold War fears that decades earlier had sweptlistening posts onto remote mountaintops and Arctic wastelands and intohidden valleys was now receding like a fast-falling tide.During deactivation ceremonies at Edzell, Scotland, near the elephantcage that had captured so many Soviet voices, the only sound was thepiercing skirl of a lone bagpipe playing the haunting farewell "We're No'Awa' Tae Bide Awa'."At Key West, Florida, where reports had flashed to the White Houseduring the Cuban missile crisis, a bugler sounded "Taps" and an NSAofficial watched the flag descend for the final time.In the Command Conference Room at Kamiseya, Japan, once theNavy's largest listening post, the commanding officer solemnly read froma classified message ordering the station's closure.At Skaggs Island, California; Karamürsel, Turkey; and dozens of otherlistening posts around the world, massive antennas were disassembledas quietly as they had been built.Once a forbidden and frozen land populated exclusively byeavesdroppers, the Alaskan island of Adak was put up for sale on theInternet. Satellite dishes, power plant, the Adak museum, schools, eventhe church were to go to the highest bidder.After seventy-nine years of operation, the last watch was stood at thenaval listening post at Imperial Beach, California, near San Diego.Many listening posts not closed were virtually abandoned and turnedinto remotely controlled operations. At the small monitoring station atopEckstein, a high German peak overlooking what was onceCzechoslovakia, the intercept operators were replaced with automaticantennas controlled in Augsburg, more than five hours away by car. Theonly people left were a few security guards and several maintenance staff.The drawdown was not limited to NSA. In the far north, on thedoorstep of the North Pole, several hundred people were cut from theCanadian listening post at Alert, the most important in the country. Aswith Eckstein and many other listening posts around the world,technology now permitted the station to be operated remotely fromthousands of miles away.Across the Atlantic, Britain's GCHQ was going through the samepost—Cold War trauma. In 1995, 900 of 6,000 jobs were ordered cutfrom the headquarters in Cheltenham over four years. Listening postswere also nailed shut, including the monitoring station at Culmhead in466