Page 131 - Gobierno ivisible

Date: 4/5/2011 Page: 131 of 237

THE INVISIBLE GOVERNMENT -- THE NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY

PROBABLY the most secretive branch of the Invisible Government is the National Security Agency. Even more
than the CIA, the NSA has sought to conceal the nature of its activities.

The CIA's functions were revealed in general outline by Congress in the National Security Act of 1947. But the
NSA's duties were kept secret in the classified presidential directive which established the agency in 1952.

The only official description of its activities is contained in the U.S. Government Organization Manual, which
states vaguely: "The National Security Agency performs highly specialized technical and coordinating functions
relating to the national security."

Nevertheless, it is no secret that the NSA is the nation's code-making and code-breaking agency. It is impossible,
however, to receive official confirmation of that obvious fact. Unlike Allen Dulles and other high-ranking CIA
men who have occasionally talked to the press and on television, NSA officials have refused to grant interviews
under any circumstances.

As a sub-agency of the Defense Department, the NSA is watched over by the deputy director of defense research
and engineering. But the various men who have held this post have been similarly uncommunicative.

During the Eisenhower years, the job of overseeing the NSA was held by military men. The Kennedy and
Johnson Administrations turned to civilians with broader scientific expertise. In 1963 the assignment was taken
on by Dr. Eugene G. Fubini, a fifty-year-old Italian-born physicist.

Fubini was confirmed by the Senate without difficulty despite a challenge from Senator Thurmond, the South
Carolina Democrat. During the Armed Services Committee hearings on June 27, 1963, Thurmond questioned
Fubini closely on his political affiliations in Italy prior to his emigration to the United States in 1939.

Fubini admitted that he had been a dues-paying member of the GUF, the Fascist student organization in the
universities. But he explained that membership was "almost a compulsory thing" in Mussolini's Italy, and that he
finally left his homeland in political protest.

Fubini made it clear, to Thurmond's evident relief, that he had never been associated with Communist or Socialist
movements. His biographical data also underscored the fact that he had served ably as a scientific consultant and
technical observer with the U.S. Army and Navy in Europe during World War II.

After the war Fubini joined the Airborne Instruments Laboratory of Long Island, New York. He worked on
several classified electronic projects and rose to become the vice-president of the company. By the time he joined
the Pentagon in 1961 he was thoroughly impressed with the need for tight security. He became convinced that a
mass of vital national secrets was being given to the Russians through careless public disclosure.

Fubini and his staff maintained a long list of security violations which appeared in the press and elsewhere.
Prominent on the list were public statements by Defense Secretary McNamara and his deputy, Roswell Gilpatric.
In their zeal to defend administration policy, notably in McNamara's television extravaganza after the Cuban
missile crisis, Fubini felt his bosses were sometimes imprudent about national security.