The Quest for Cryptologic Centralization and the Establishment of Nsa 1940-1952

The Center for Cryptologic History (CCH) is proud to publish the first title under its own imprint, Thomas L. Burns's The Origins of NSA.* In recent years, the NSA history program has published a number of volumes dealing with exciting and even controversial subjects: a new look at the Pearl Harbor attack, for example. Tom Burns's study of the creation of NSA is a different kind of history from the former. It is a masterfully researched and documented account of the evolution of a national SIGINT effort following World War II, beginning with the fragile trends toward unification of the military services as they sought to cope with a greatly changed environment following the war, and continuing through the unsatisfactory experience under the Armed Forces Security Agency. Mr. Burns also makes an especially important contribution by helping us to understand the role of the civilian agencies in forcing the creation of NSA and the bureaucratic infighting by which they were able to achieve that end. At first glance, one might think that this organizational history would be far from "best seller" material. In fact, the opposite is the case. It is essential reading for the serious SIGINT professional, both civilian and military. Mr. Burns has identified most of the major themes which have contributed to the development of the institutions which characterize our profession: the struggle between centralized and decentralized control of SIGINT, interservice and interagency rivalries, budget problems, tactical versus national strategic requirements, the difficulties of mechanization of processes, and the rise of a strong bureaucracy. These factors, which we recognize as still powerful and in large measure still shaping operational and institutional development, are the same ones that brought about the birth of NSA. The history staff would also like to acknowledge a debt owed to our predecessors, Dr. George F. Howe and his associates, who produced a manuscript entitled "The Narrative History of AFSA/NSA." Dr. Howe's study takes a different course from the present publication and is complementary to it, detailing the internal organization and operational activities of AFSA, and serves as an invaluable reference about that period. The Howe manuscript is available to interested researchers in the CCH. It remains for each reader to take what Tom Burns has presented in the way of historical fact and correlate it to his/her experience. This exercise should prove most interesting and illuminating.