Volume 52, Number 8 · May 12, 2005
Black Arts
By Thomas Powers
Chatter: Dispatches from the Secret World of Global Eavesdropping
by Patrick Radden Keefe
Random House, 300 pp., $24.95
Blind Spot: The Secret History of American Counterterrorism
by Timothy Naftali
Basic Books, 367 pp., $26.95
The Reader of Gentlemen's Mail: Herbert O. Yardley and the Birth of American Codebreaking
by David Kahn
Yale University Press, 318 pp., $32.50
'Chatter' seems too casual a word for what is arguably the most important single product of the mammoth American cyber-industrial establishment which gathers 'communications intelligence,' commonly abbreviated as Comint. Intelligence professionals use 'chatter' to describe the miscellany they acquire of the personal and operational communications of 'persons of interest,' another term of art meaning people who may know or be planning something the United States wants or needs to know about. For the last three years the people at the top of the American list of persons of interest have included Osama bin Laden, his lieutenants, associates, and supporters in al-Qaeda, and the widening circles of Islamic fundamentalists who share or know or have heard rumors about Osama's goals and plans. In the absence of agents reporting from al-Qaeda's innermost sanctum, American intelligence professionals must depend on chatter to keep track of whatever devastating attacks al-Qaeda's terrorist cells may be planning next.
Review, 5415 words
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