In-house newsletters from the clandestine National Security Agency have been released by an online news site – part of the mountain of documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.
The Intercept, whose founding editors were the first to publish documents leaked by Snowden, released on Monday the first batch of nine years’ worth of the newsletters, which offer a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the NSA’s work. The newsletters reveal efforts to eavesdrop on a Russian crime boss, the search in Iraq for possible weapons of mass destruction and help with interrogations at the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
An article in the May 2003 newsletter describes how NSA spent “many months” obtaining the phone number of a Russian organised crime figure so his calls could be intercepted. The State Department asked the NSA for information on the boss of the Tambov crime network in Russia – a figure known only as “Mr. Kumarin” – and whether he had any ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin. The man later was convicted of fraud and money laundering and sentenced to 14 years behind bars.
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In a newsletter article published December 22, 2003, an NSA liaison officer recounts a temporary duty assignment at Guantanamo Bay where the task was to provide intelligence to support Defense Department, CIA and FBI interrogations of detainees picked up off battlefields.
The job entailed relaying information back to NSA, based at Fort Meade in Maryland. But sometimes, NSA would share “sensitive NSA-collected technical data” to help the interrogators.
According to Intercept, “Neither the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on the CIA’s detention and rendition programme (which confirmed the existence of two CIA facilities at Guantánamo) nor a 2008 Senate Armed Services Committee report on detainee abuse by the military addresses the role of the NSA, at least in the heavily censored versions that have been made public.”
It was serious business, but in their off hours, NSA liaisons at scenic Guantanamo Bay could visit the “Tiki Bar,” or enjoy water sports, such as sailing and snorkelling.
