Revelations of a Former NSA Insider

December 25, 1992 - Bruce Brill - The Jewish Press

We called ourselves "spooks." It implied that our work was intriguing as well as secret. But, it was said tongue in cheek since although our intelligence gathering efforts were clandestine, they were not covert, were quite routine and by and large anything but intriguing. Yet, over the course of my years at NSA -- or "The Agency," as we spooks called it-- I was privy to some sensitive and disturbing intelligence. But, first some background.

The American intelligence community is just that, a community, a society unto itself with social guidelines even stricter than those of an ordinary open society. Even personnel peripheral to Agency intelligence work must have intensive security checks and clearances in order to step foot into the NSA complex. Thus, the hierarchy of security clearances begins at the Top Secret level and goes on from there. There are parallel and layered levels of clearances which allow the bearer access only to concomitantly classified information. Most intelligence remains off limits to even the cleared analyst by the requisite "need to know" restriction.

Only a select few, who sit at the top of the hierarchy, are privy to the vast bulk of intelligence processed by the Agency. By controlling the type of information passed on to National Security Council policy makers, these few Agency heads effectively wield an immense amount of influence by proxy with profound national --if not global-- implications. Their hidden agendas remain hidden ... to the public, the Congress and members of the National Security Council itself (unless, of course, there is collusion between certain members of the NSC and Agency higher-ups).

The traditional antagonism of the US State Department toward Israel is mirrored in the US Intelligence Community. Examples are many, but are subtly camouflaged. For example the Hebrew language was the only one used at the Agency for overt spying where Hebrew linguists were told to declare that they were "Special Arabic" linguists.

While I worked at the Agency as an Arabic and "Special Arabic" traffic analyst in the early 1970's, I had learned of the planned October 6, 1973 invasion of Israel by Syria and Egypt 41 hours before the attack began. Upper echelon Agency personnel knew of the planned attack hours, if not days, prior to that. Not forwarding this vital information resulted in the unnecessary deaths and maiming of thousands of Israeli young men. That -- according to Moshe Dayan and Golda Meir-- the US actually forwarded misinformation that there would be NO attack on Yom Kippur, is criminal.

The unstated anti-Israel policy within the US Intelligence Community is one which --until now-- has been successfully kept from public knowledge, or even general knowledge at the Agency since the "need to know" where such policies are made is strictly confined to non-Jewish select. It was, therefore, quite by accident that I discovered that there are in fact chambers at NSA that are off limits to Jews, US citizens with the highest clearances, simply because they are Jews. Clearly, efforts towards Israel's demise are made here. These Agency inner sancta are so totally immune from any monitoring, that such unconstitutional goings on have a totally free hand.

Are there such inner sancta that are off limits to blacks, Orientals orother American minorities? There is no reason to believe that there aren't, since there is absolutely no answerability that would prevent it. Such discriminatory practices fly in the face of the US Constitution's Bill of Rights. Likewise, working against the only democracy in the Middle East, Israel, seems hardly very American.

Since only after the war these things became known to me, I naturally assumed that Israel, America's publicly declared friend, would have been notified immediately through proper channels about the imminent attack on Yom Kippur, 1973. Now I live with the haunting doubt that, somehow, I could have discovered the intelligence was not being forwarded, gotten it to the Israelis, and saved some measure of anguish that became known as the Yom Kippur War. Yet I didn't and agonize each Yom Kippur.

I was a loyal American military intelligence analyst who contributed towards Israel's planned demise. I received my honorable discharge from the US Army and I am a free man; Jonathan Pollard, by contrast, is still sitting in prison.