Body of Secrets

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Body of Secrets
Body of Secrets.jpg
Author James Bamford
LanguageEnglish
Subject National Security Agency
Genre Non-fiction
Published2001 (Anchor Books)
Publication placeUnited States
ISBN 978-0-385-49907-1
OCLC 44713235
327.1273 21
LC Class UB256.U6 B36 2001
Preceded by The Puzzle Palace  
Followed by A Pretext for War  

Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency is a book by James Bamford about the NSA and its operations. It also covers the history of espionage in the United States from uses of the Fulton surface-to-air recovery system to retrieve personnel on Arctic Ocean drift stations to Operation Northwoods, a declassified US military plan that Bamford describes as a "secret and bloody war of terrorism against their own country in order to trick the American public into supporting an ill-conceived war they intended to launch against Cuba." [1] [2] [3]

Contents

For the book, NSA director Michael Hayden gave him unprecedented access. In contrast, his previous book, The Puzzle Palace , was almost blocked from publication by the agency.

USS Liberty incident

One of the chapters in Body of Secrets is titled “Blood” and is about the 1967 USS Liberty incident. [4] In this chapter, Bamford details the attack and its immediate aftermath. He dedicates part of this chapter to discussing U.S. Navy Chief Petty Officer Marvin E. Nowicki, a linguist aboard a Navy EC-121 that was flying overhead during the attack. [5] [6] CPO Nowicki had commented that he and another linguist onboard the aircraft had intercepted Israeli communications that seemed to indicate they knew or suspected the ship they were attacking was American.

Bamford posits that the motivation for the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty was to cover-up the Ras Sedr massacre, which occurred the same day as the Liberty attack. Bamford postulates that the Israeli Defense Forces grew concerned that the USS Liberty, a signals intelligence collection ship, may have collected evidence of the massacre and was thus attacked in an effort to suppress the evidence. [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12]

Bibliographic data

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ James Bamford (2002-04-30). Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency . Anchor. ISBN   0-385-49908-6.
  2. ↑ Cohen, Eliot A. (2001). "Review of Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency" . Foreign Affairs. 80 (5): 164. doi:10.2307/20050282. ISSN   0015-7120. JSTOR   20050282.
  3. ↑ Zaleski, Jeff; Abbott, Charlotte; Gold, Sarah F.; Rotella, Mark (2001-04-23). "BODY OF SECRETS (Book Review)". Publishers Weekly. 248 (17): 67.
  4. ↑ Bamford, James (2007-12-18). Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. ISBN   978-0-307-42505-8.
  5. ↑ "USS Liberty: Cover Up | History News Network". hnn.us. Retrieved 2023-06-15.
  6. ↑ "USS Liberty: Cover Up | History News Network". historynewsnetwork.org. Retrieved 2023-06-15.
  7. ↑ Bamford, James (2007-12-18). Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. ISBN   978-0-307-42505-8.
  8. ↑ Risen, James (2001-04-23). "Book Says Israel Intended 1967 Attack on U.S. Ship". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2023-06-15.
  9. ↑ "CNN.com - Israel's 1967 attack on U.S. ship deliberate, book says - April 23, 2001". www.cnn.com. Retrieved 2023-06-15.
  10. ↑ Pensack, Miriam (2017-06-06). "Fifty Years Later, NSA Keeps Details of Israel's USS Liberty Attack Secret". The Intercept. Retrieved 2023-06-15.
  11. ↑ "Remember the USS Liberty? The US and Israel wish you didn't". Middle East Monitor. 2014-06-04. Retrieved 2023-06-15.
  12. ↑ Oren, Michael B. (2001-07-23). "Unfriendly Fire". The New Republic. ISSN   0028-6583 . Retrieved 2023-06-15.
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