National Security Agency, Director

Department/Agency: National Security Agency

Position:

Director

Executive Schedule: Other Pay Plan

Major Responsibilities:

• Leads the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Central Security Service
• Ensures that the NSA is on the forefront of cryptology and high tech intelligence and communications capabilities
• Oversees collection and analysis of foreign communications and foreign signals intelligence
• Provides combat intelligence for U.S. forces

Key Competencies and Preferred Qualifications:

Insight:

Budget:  Classified

Staff:   Approximately 30,000

The National Security Agency (NSA) is the cryptologic organization that gathers foreign intelligence to protect the United States and its inhabitants.

Under Executive Order 12333, NSA has two national missions: the Information Assurance and foreign signals intelligence (SIGINT). The SIGNIT mission allows for an effective, unified organization and control of all foreign signals collection and processing of activities in the U.S and the searching for weaknesses in adversaries’ systems and codes. Under the Information Assurance mission, NSA protects all classified and sensitive information that is stored or sent through U.S. government equipment.  With the world become more technology-oriented, this mission has become increasingly more important and challenging. 

While the NSA budget and much of its activity are classified, the NSA describes its job this way on its public web site: “It coordinates, directs, and performs highly specialized activities to protect U.S. government information systems and produce foreign signals intelligence information. A high technology organization, NSA is on the frontiers of communications and data processing. It is also one of the most important centers of foreign language analysis and research within the government.” 

The NSA is said to be the largest employer of mathematicians in the country. Both civilians and military personnel work at its Fort Meade, Md., headquarters, midway between Baltimore and Washington. NSA conducts extensive classified research and is home to the National Cryptologic School, a training resource for both the NSA and Department of Defense. 

After the 9/11 terrorist strikes, the NSA collected intercepts within the United States of communications of those suspected of supporting the al Qaeda terror network. It acted under a presidential directive in 2002 that allowed it to bypass the need to obtain court warrants. Controversy erupted when the New York Times revealed the wireless intercepts in December 2005. After considerable debate and acrimony, Congress in July 2008 gave the Bush administration wider leeway with the surveillance laws and granted limited immunity to the telephone companies that supplied raw data to NSA. Members of Congress who fought for tighter restrictions on surveillance may hesitate to reopen that battle with a Democrat, Barack Obama, moving into the Oval Office. 

Still, the next director of NSA will have to deal with ongoing controversy over whether the spy agency has breached the boundaries of what the Constitution allows. The 4^th Amendment to the Constitution protects against “unreasonable searches and seizures.”

Bush appointed Lieutenant General Keith B. Alexander in 2005 to run NSA and succeed four-star Air Force General Michael Hayden. Hayden defended his stewardship of NSA in a January 2006 appearance before the National Press Club. “I'm here to tell the American people what NSA has been doing and why. And perhaps more importantly, what NSA has not been doing,” he said.

“NSA intercepts communications, and it does so for only one purpose: to protect the lives, the liberties and the well-being of the citizens of the United States from those who would do us harm. By the late 1990s, that job was becoming increasingly more difficult. The explosion of modern communications in terms of volume, variety, velocity threatened to overwhelm us,” he said. The NSA always has sought to “balance the legitimate need for foreign intelligence with our responsibility to protect individual privacy rights.”  

Hayden noted that “the 9/11 commission criticized our ability to link things happening in the United States with things that were happening elsewhere.” After the terrorists struck, he said, “I exercised some (signal intelligence) options I've always had that collectively better prepared us to defend the homeland.” It was narrowly targeted, he said, and “not a driftnet over Dearborn or Lackawanna or Freemont grabbing conversations.” Hayden, the 15th and longest serving NSA director, replaced Russian linguists with Arabic ones and intensified efforts to break computerized encryption. Hayden was credited with improving information sharing with other spy agencies. He also allowed limited media access to the agency’s Fort Meade headquarters – a first.

Key Relationships – Within the Department or Agency:

Deputy Director
The Signals Intelligence Director (SID)
The Information Assurance Director (IAD)

Key Relationships – Within the Government:

Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI)
House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI)
Defense Subcommittees of the Appropriations Committees in both houses of Congress

Key Relationships – Outside the Government:

Office of the Director of National Intelligence
President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board
President’s Intelligence Oversight Board
Office of Management and Budget

 The 16-member Intelligence Community:    
         
               --Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) 

               --United States Department of Defense 

                   Air Force Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Agency (AF ISR or AIA)
                   Army Military Intelligence (MI)
                   Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) 
                   Marine Corps Intelligence Activity (MCIA)
                   National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA)
                   National Reconnaissance Office (NRO)
                   Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI)

                --United States Department of Energy

                    Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence (OICI)

                    Coast Guard Intelligence (CGI)

                     Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) 
                     Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)

                     Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR)

Nomination Referred to:

Senate Armed Services Committee

Current Position Profile:

1.  Lieutenant General Keith B. Alexander, U.S. Army, M.S. (2005-    ). Former deputy chief of staff at the Department of the Army headquarters and former Commanding General of the U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command at Fort Belvoir, VA. West Point graduate with multiple master of science degrees and MBA.

Recent Position Profiles:

2. Lieutenant General Michael V. Hayden, U.S. Air Force, M.A. (1999-2005). Former Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence. Current CIA Director. Former commander of the Air Intelligence Agency and as Director of the Joint Command and Control Warfare Center. Former National Security Council director for defense policy and arms control. ROTC graduate of Duquesne University with master’s degree in modern American history. 

3. Lieutenant General Kenneth A. Minihan, U.S. Air Force, M.A. (1996-1999). Former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency and former assistant chief of staff, intelligence, at Air Force headquarters. ROTC graduate from Florida State University. Served as target intelligence officer in Vietnam. Master’s degree in national security affairs.