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National Intelligence justified the secret intelligence budget by saying in an open session of
Congress, “We are bolstering our support for clandestine SIGINT [signal intelligence]
capabilities to collect against high priority targets, including foreign leadership targets,” and to
develop “groundbreaking cryptanalytic capabilities to defeat adversarial cryptography and exploit
Internet traffic.” It was no secret, even before Snowden, that the NSA was engaged with
monitoring the Internet.

Through all this tumult the heart of the NSA’s activity remained its 5,000 acre base at Fort
George G. Meade, Maryland. It commanded the most powerful mechanism for intercepting
communications that the world had ever seen. No other country came close to its technology for
intercepting information. The NSA was not only able to intercept secret information from these
potential adversaries, but it also, at least not until the Snowden breach, managed to conceal these
means from them. As long as these adversaries remained blind to the ways in which its
communications were being intercepted, deciphered and read by the NSA, they could not take
effective countermeasures. Consequently, the NSA had the capability to provide the President
and his advisers with continuous insights into the thinking and planning of potential enemies.

Keeping its sources and methods secrets was no easy task. The NSA’s technicians had to deal
with continuous technical challenges to provide a seamless harvesting of data from a wide range
of communication devices, including telephones, computers and the Internet. It required
continuous intra-agency communications between the NSA’s own intelligence officers and a
growing number of civilian technicians. It even had its own “Wiki-style” network through which
they could discuss problems, called the NSANet. As it could not tightly control access to this
technical network, it expunged any mention of the sources and methods from the material
circulated on the classified NSA network. Instead, it stored them in discrete computers, called
compartments that were disconnected from other computers at the NSA. These compartments
could only be accessed by a limited number of analysts and NSA executives who had a need to
know about the data they contained. These compartments were the final line of defense against
an inside intruder.

In 2009, Snowden found his way into the NSA through a temporary job with an outside
contractor that had a contract with the NSA’s Technology Directorate to repair and update it
back-up system. Four years later, by maneuvering to get hired by another outside contractor with
access to the NSA’s sources and methods, he was able to steal secrets stored in isolated
computers bearing directly on the ongoing intelligence war. Snowden also copied from these
compartments in a matter of weeks, as has been previously mentioned, the NSA’s Level 3 sources
and methods used against Russia, Iran and China. The Snowden breach demonstrated that the
NSA’s envelope of secrecy was at best illusory.

After this immense loss, the NSA’s sources inside these adversary countries were largely
compromised even if they were not closed down. Once these adversaries were in a position to
know what channels the NSA was intercepting, they could use these same channels to mislead US

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