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remotely intercepting even the faintest traces of electromagnetic signals, hacking into computers,
and eavesdropping on distant conversations, but using special units, called “tailored access
operations,” to plant listening devices in embassies and diplomatic pouches. It also organized
elaborate expeditions to penetrate cables in enemy territory. In 1971, for example, the NSA had
sent a specially-equipped submarine into Russia’s Sea of Okhotsk in Asia to tap through Arctic
ice. The target was a Russian cable 400 feet below the surface that connected the Russian naval
headquarters in Vladivostok with a missile testing range.

In 1980, President Ronald Reagan, gave the NSA a clear mandate to expand its interception of
foreign communications. In Executive Order 12333, he told the NSA to use “all means, consistent
with applicable Federal law and (this Executive) order, and with full consideration of the rights of
United States persons, shall be used to obtain reliable intelligence information to protect the
United States and its interests.” It did restrict any foreign country, either an adversary or an ally,
from its surveillance.

The NSA’s target soon became nothing short of the entire electromagnetic spectrum. “We are
approaching a time when we will be able to survey almost any point on the earth’s surface with
some sensor,” Admiral Stansfield Turner, the former Director of Central Intelligence wrote in
1985. “We should soon be able to keep track of most of the activities on the surface of the
earth.” Bobby Ray Inman, a former director of the NSA and deputy director of the CIA, argued
that the “vastness of the [American] intelligence ‘take’ from the Soviet Union, and the pattern of
continuity going back years, even decades,” greatly diminished the possibility of Soviet deception
so long as the NSA kept secret its sources.

The NSA did not rely entirely on its own sensors for this global surveillance. It also formed
intelligence-sharing alliances with key allies the most important was with the British code-
breaking service, called the Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ, which in
World War II had achieved enormous success in using computers to crack the German Enigma
cipher. This alliance expanded to include Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, in the so-called
Five Eyes Alliance. Since over 80 percent of international phone calls and Internet traffic passed
through fiber-optic cables in these five countries, the alliance had the capability of monitoring
almost all phone and internet communications. .The NSA also established fruitful liaisons with
the cyber-services of Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Israel, Japan, and
South Korea, who often were willing to provide the NSA with access to telecommunications links
in their countries. These long-term allies greatly strengthened the NSA’s hand in other ways in the
intelligence war. For example, the so called “James Bond” provision of the British Intelligence
Services Act 1994 allowed officers of the GCHQ to commit illegal acts outside of Brittan
including planting devices to intercept data from computer servers, cell phones, and other
electronic targets. And, as Snowden’s release of documents revealed in 2013 and 2014, these
foreign allies fully shared their information with the NSA.

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