Life Before the National Security Agency (NSA)

Established on November 4, 1952, the National Security Agency (NSA) would act as a top United States government organization responsible for the protection of the United States government as a component of the United States Department of Defense. It would also be responsible for the directing and performing of highly sensitive activities which deal with cryptanalysis and intelligence gathering by monitoring the local, national and international communication systems. The NSA sometimes involves itself with cooperating with the Central Security Service (CSS) based on a Presidential Directive in 1972. Other intelligence community members include the Office of Naval Intelligence, the National Reconnaissance Office, the National Geospatial - Intelligence Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, Army Intelligence, and the Air Force Intelligence (Surveillance and Reconnaissance Agency).

Before the NSA, the CSS or any of the other intelligence agencies existed, there was a forerunner of the two and other intelligence organizations. It was called the Black Chamber (Mi-8) which was the first peacetime cryptanalytic organization following World War I. Its primary mission was to learn from or break other nation's communication channels. It was funded by the United States Army and the State Department (which actively pulled out in 1929). It was headed by Herbert Osborne Yardley (1889 - 1958), an important cryptologist who would author a book called The American Black Chamber (1931). It explained how the secret pre - World War II organization acted towards other nations.

During the Washington Naval Conference, the Black Chamber had covert agents which fed information to their American negotiators at the conference concerning intelligence from the other nations, one chiefly being the nation of Japan. The Japanese navy was third best behind Great Britain and the United States at the time. And the Japanese negotiators were interested in limiting the expansion of Great Britain which controlled Hong Kong not far from mainland China.