The NSA Horse Left The Barn...Years Ago...

[kpete]

Into the Wayback Machine
by BooMan
Thu Jun 13th, 2013 at 12:21:51 AM EST

Here is the beginning of the hearing on the National Security Agency held by the Church Committee which occurred on October 29th, 1975. The Chairman was Frank Church, a Democratic senator from Idaho who had presidential aspirations. He makes it clear at the outset that, at the time, the NSA was so secretive that almost no Americans had ever heard of it, despite its huge employee base and enormous budget. It had no statutory basis and no oversight.

http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2013/6/13/02151/1758

[LuvNewcastle]

1. Lots of interesting comments at the bottom.

One person questions why they made 2 separate agencies instead of simply putting the CIA in charge of intelligence. I'm wondering why they wanted people to be unaware of the existence of the NSA. Everyone had heard of the CIA; it's existence was certainly no secret. I don't know if this is true or not, but it looks to me like the NSA was created for domestic spying while the CIA was created for international spying. That would go a long way toward explaining why they didn't want people to know about the NSA.