Volume 48, Number 10 · June 21, 2001
Notes from Underground
By Thomas Powers
Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency from the Cold War through the Dawn of a New Century
James Bamford
Doubleday, 721 pp., $29.95
Crypto: How the Code Rebels Beat the Government—Saving Privacy in the Digital Age
Steven Levy
Viking, 356 pp., $25.95
The four-engine US Navy aircraft which made an emergency landing on China's Hainan island on April 1 was on a routine ELINT mission, so called for what it collected—electronic intelligence. A crew of four actually flew the plane; the other twenty Americans on board, all Navy personnel but on a mission ultimately sponsored by the National Security Agency, were there to find, identify, collect, and record a range of electronic emissions from routine military chatter on radios to the characteristic signature of Chinese defensive radars.
Review, 5559 words
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