Prerequisites for

Body of Secrets
Bamford, James. 2001. 721 pages.
Categories: History, Politics and Organizations
This is the long awaited sequel (of sorts) to Bamford's first book on the NSA, "The Puzzle Palace" (1983). The book is divided into two parts, first covering the history of SIGINT (mostly in times of war) and the second covering the agency today. The first part gives good treatment of the Cuban Missile Crisis and touches on pre-80's sources and methods. The second part is sometimes boring, as he exhaustively details the NSA's dealings with reverse discrimination, layoffs, chronology of directors, and other mundane administrative trivia.
The book sites many FOIA-obtained documents which the author uses to make some very serious accusations. One of which is "Operation Northwoods", in which the author claims that during the 60's, the Joint Chiefs of Staff were united in proposing various scenarios in which innocent Americans would be killed by the US government within US borders in order to lay the blame on Castro and rally the American public to back an invasion into Cuba.

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