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The Shadow Factory
brothke writes "The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America is the third of James Bamford's trilogy. Bamford started this with The Puzzle Palace in 1982 and Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency in 2001. The Shadow Factory is likely the last book Bamford will find the NSA cooperative to, given his often harsh treatment of the agency and its directors. It is also doubtful that former NSA Director Lt. Gen. Michael Hayden will grant Bamford additional dinner invitations, given his portrayal of Hayden as a weakling who could not stand up to Dick Cheney and other in the Bush administration." Read below for the rest of Ben's review.
The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America
author
James Bamford
pages
416
publisher
Doubleday
rating
When sticking to facts: 9. When digressing: 2
reviewer
Ben Rothke
ISBN
0385521324
summary
Good overview of the NSA post-9/11, but some of the author's biases get in the way
The book can be summed up with two basic themes: The top management of the NSA and CIA has not made the fundamental changes needed post 9/11, as the politicking and inter-agency squabbles are seemingly alive and well. Bamford's other premise continues to be his contempt towards Israel.
Often bands produce abysmal releases in order to fulfill contractual requirements. In some ways, The Shadow Factory is reminiscent of that; at almost half the size of Body of Secrets, and 2/3 the size of The Puzzle Palace. When the book sticks to the facts and avoids conspiracy theories, it is a fascinating read.
If nothing else, Bamford knows how to turn often mundane aspects of wiretapping and supercomputers into a gripping read. Divided into five interwoven sections, the book starts out with a fascinating account of how two of the 9/11 hijackers lived the American dream, all the while planning their devious acts. Had there been some semblance of interagency cooperation and shared databases, Khalid Al-Midhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi would have been identified in seconds.
Not only that, in the book, Bamford writes that many of the 9/11 terrorists set-up shop within miles of the NSA headquarters in Maryland, communicated with their counterparts in the Middle East, at the same time the NSA was searching the world over for them. Bamford makes the NSA seem like the keystone cops searching for these terrorists, while they were literally a par 5 away.
A number of the chapters details the Bush administration forays into its illegal wiretapping adventures and how Counsel Alberto Gonzales and Chief of Staff Andrew Card manipulated a sick and barely lucid Attorney General John Ashcroft into signing on to the program.
It has long been known that Bamford has no love lost for Israel. His previous books have incorrectly written of the details around Israel's attack of the Liberty, a US Navy technical research ship, which was sailing in the Mediterranean Sea during the Six-Day War.
The book details how Israeli high-tech data mining and surveillance companies such as Comverse, Verint, NICE and more have become indispensable to the US intelligence community. Bamford asserts that the vast majority of surveillance of telephone transmissions are done via technology from Israeli companies. He then makes the jump that the American intelligence community is placing itself as risk and that the Israeli companies will access this same information.
Such conspiracy theories are tired and old. For the longest time, there were claims that every Check Point FireWall-1 had a backdoor which the Mosad could tap into. Some years ago, the NSA even sent out a memo denying that fact, as it was getting in the way of firewall deployments at the agency.
As to Bamford's assertion of Israeli control of American intelligence, it makes great fodder for the conspiracy theory community, but lacks any sort of real evidence. What Bamford does is show that many of the founders of these companies are graduates of programs from the Israeli military, served in the same intelligence corps unit and therefore, guilty by some sort of association.
Irrespective of Bamford's deep hostility towards Israel, there is not the slightest indication that the American intelligence community was forced to purchase these Israeli products. They purchased these due to their superior capabilities produced by one of its closest allies. What Bamford fails to mention, is that Israeli and US intelligence groups have a long history of mutual cooperation. Much of the US success in its war against terror and monitoring of Iran are only due to help from Israel.
If the Shadow Factory is meant to be a critique of the NSA, then Bamford's unsubstantiated allegations about Israel and the Mosad show the agency to be a bastion of utter incompetency. Irrespective of problems with management at the NSA, it is utterly incredulous that the Mosad could single-handedly undermine the entire US intelligence effort, filling it with back doors and secret agents.
Bamford seems to be confused on his approach to the NSA. On one side, the NSA are the smartest guys in the room, successfully, surreptitiously and often illegally monitoring nearly every telephone call on the planet. They push supercomputers to the envelope and optimize ever CPU cycle. Yet simultaneously, these smart guys are simply pawns of a small group of Israeli intelligence agents who have managed to develop and get their software on various NSA projects.
In his review of the book in the New York Times, Christopher Dickey sums it up best when he writes of Bamford's habit of such conspiracy theories that "it's a fair bet that Bamford will find a way to work the bloodbath at the Taj Mahal hotel into the long NSA narrative that he began with "The Puzzle Palace" in 1982, followed up with "Body of Secrets" in 2001, and may well continue with paperback updates and further sequels after the present book. These are the kinds of details, or coincidences, that Bamford loves. In "The Shadow Factory" he piles one on top of another — events, addresses, room numbers — in a slapped-together text that often blends facts with speculation to evoke a pervasive atmosphere of conspiracy".
When Bamford is able to stick to the facts, which is about 2/3 of the book, he paints a frightening picture of the threats that the US is facing. Equally frightening was the response of the Bush administrations to the threats and attacks, which in some cases turned mince meat out of the Constitution. Bamford writes of Dick Cheney's attempt to give the President significant more control, while ignoring the need for separation of powers. There are many other such instances in the book. Yet when Bamford takes off his hat of reason and attempts to connect invisible dots, Christopher Dickey's observation should be kept in mind.
Seemingly on the brink of failure, the events of 9/11 recycled the NSA. For the astute reader who is able to discern between fact and fiction, The Shadow Factory is a fascinating read into an agency that still exists in the shadows. With a budget larger than the GDP of some countries, and a workforce that spans the globe, the NSA has long existed and thrived in the shadows that Bamford often describes so well.
Ben Rothke is the author of Computer Security: 20 Things Every Employee Should Know.
You can purchase The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Often bands produce abysmal releases in order to fulfill contractual requirements. In some ways, The Shadow Factory is reminiscent of that; at almost half the size of Body of Secrets, and 2/3 the size of The Puzzle Palace. When the book sticks to the facts and avoids conspiracy theories, it is a fascinating read.
If nothing else, Bamford knows how to turn often mundane aspects of wiretapping and supercomputers into a gripping read. Divided into five interwoven sections, the book starts out with a fascinating account of how two of the 9/11 hijackers lived the American dream, all the while planning their devious acts. Had there been some semblance of interagency cooperation and shared databases, Khalid Al-Midhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi would have been identified in seconds.
Not only that, in the book, Bamford writes that many of the 9/11 terrorists set-up shop within miles of the NSA headquarters in Maryland, communicated with their counterparts in the Middle East, at the same time the NSA was searching the world over for them. Bamford makes the NSA seem like the keystone cops searching for these terrorists, while they were literally a par 5 away.
A number of the chapters details the Bush administration forays into its illegal wiretapping adventures and how Counsel Alberto Gonzales and Chief of Staff Andrew Card manipulated a sick and barely lucid Attorney General John Ashcroft into signing on to the program.
It has long been known that Bamford has no love lost for Israel. His previous books have incorrectly written of the details around Israel's attack of the Liberty, a US Navy technical research ship, which was sailing in the Mediterranean Sea during the Six-Day War.
The book details how Israeli high-tech data mining and surveillance companies such as Comverse, Verint, NICE and more have become indispensable to the US intelligence community. Bamford asserts that the vast majority of surveillance of telephone transmissions are done via technology from Israeli companies. He then makes the jump that the American intelligence community is placing itself as risk and that the Israeli companies will access this same information.
Such conspiracy theories are tired and old. For the longest time, there were claims that every Check Point FireWall-1 had a backdoor which the Mosad could tap into. Some years ago, the NSA even sent out a memo denying that fact, as it was getting in the way of firewall deployments at the agency.
As to Bamford's assertion of Israeli control of American intelligence, it makes great fodder for the conspiracy theory community, but lacks any sort of real evidence. What Bamford does is show that many of the founders of these companies are graduates of programs from the Israeli military, served in the same intelligence corps unit and therefore, guilty by some sort of association.
Irrespective of Bamford's deep hostility towards Israel, there is not the slightest indication that the American intelligence community was forced to purchase these Israeli products. They purchased these due to their superior capabilities produced by one of its closest allies. What Bamford fails to mention, is that Israeli and US intelligence groups have a long history of mutual cooperation. Much of the US success in its war against terror and monitoring of Iran are only due to help from Israel.
If the Shadow Factory is meant to be a critique of the NSA, then Bamford's unsubstantiated allegations about Israel and the Mosad show the agency to be a bastion of utter incompetency. Irrespective of problems with management at the NSA, it is utterly incredulous that the Mosad could single-handedly undermine the entire US intelligence effort, filling it with back doors and secret agents.
Bamford seems to be confused on his approach to the NSA. On one side, the NSA are the smartest guys in the room, successfully, surreptitiously and often illegally monitoring nearly every telephone call on the planet. They push supercomputers to the envelope and optimize ever CPU cycle. Yet simultaneously, these smart guys are simply pawns of a small group of Israeli intelligence agents who have managed to develop and get their software on various NSA projects.
In his review of the book in the New York Times, Christopher Dickey sums it up best when he writes of Bamford's habit of such conspiracy theories that "it's a fair bet that Bamford will find a way to work the bloodbath at the Taj Mahal hotel into the long NSA narrative that he began with "The Puzzle Palace" in 1982, followed up with "Body of Secrets" in 2001, and may well continue with paperback updates and further sequels after the present book. These are the kinds of details, or coincidences, that Bamford loves. In "The Shadow Factory" he piles one on top of another — events, addresses, room numbers — in a slapped-together text that often blends facts with speculation to evoke a pervasive atmosphere of conspiracy".
When Bamford is able to stick to the facts, which is about 2/3 of the book, he paints a frightening picture of the threats that the US is facing. Equally frightening was the response of the Bush administrations to the threats and attacks, which in some cases turned mince meat out of the Constitution. Bamford writes of Dick Cheney's attempt to give the President significant more control, while ignoring the need for separation of powers. There are many other such instances in the book. Yet when Bamford takes off his hat of reason and attempts to connect invisible dots, Christopher Dickey's observation should be kept in mind.
Seemingly on the brink of failure, the events of 9/11 recycled the NSA. For the astute reader who is able to discern between fact and fiction, The Shadow Factory is a fascinating read into an agency that still exists in the shadows. With a budget larger than the GDP of some countries, and a workforce that spans the globe, the NSA has long existed and thrived in the shadows that Bamford often describes so well.
Ben Rothke is the author of Computer Security: 20 Things Every Employee Should Know.
You can purchase The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
A review that tries to debunk the conspiracy theories set out in the book... pretty lame.
If you're interested in this type of book, you might want to check out the Limits of Power by Andrew Bacevich. Bacevich discusses the immense cost of the entire national security apparatus, and how most of the money spent on it goes to increasing the power and prestige of the individual services (NSA, CIA, FBI) and very little goes to actually protecting the American people.
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
The USS Liberty was a spy ship. Israel was doing some things they didn't want anyone else to know. They tried to sink the ship and destroy all lifeboats. They wanted no witnesses. There are suggestions that they feared the USS Liberty had intercepted info that could have exposed Israel to war crime charges. The whole story will come out someday.
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There are suggestions that they feared the USS Liberty had intercepted info that could have exposed Israel to war crime charges. The whole story will come out someday.
Even if that's true it still begs two questions:
1) Why would the Israeli's sink an American ship when they could just ask the American Government to keep secret whatever the Liberty intercepted? They trust us enough not to retaliate when they kill our servicemen but not enough to keep a secret?
2) How would sinking the Liberty keep such information a secret anyway? The Liberty was presumably in constant communications with her base. How could the Israeli's know that whatever information she had hadn't already been communicated?
I still find the conspiracy theories hard to swallow......
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
"His previous books have incorrectly written of the details around Israel's attack of the Liberty, a US Navy technical research ship, which was sailing in the Mediterranean Sea during the Six-Day War."
I have not read the book, but I'm curious. What was incorrectly written? Why was it incorrect?
You accuse the author of making unsubstantiated claims, yet you've done the exact same thing here. I understand this is a book review, but if you're going to make such broad statements, at least back them up with a link containing evidence to support what you say.
Labelling things that he says as "conspiracy theory" does not debunk anything at all . That is a sloppy way of trying to refute what he says (which we don't really know, since you don't actually quote anything he says, preferring to give your interpretation of it).
The evidence you do cite is equally poor, however. The NSA sent out a memo refuting the claims of a backdoor in a firewall? So what? Bush claimed the US doesn't do torture, guess how accurate that claim was. And so what if the US and Israel have a long history of mutual co-operation. Are you naive enough to think that Israel wouldn't exploit that to achieve its own ends, if necessary? Why shouldn't they?
Judging by some of your statements, you come across as having admiration for the work that the US and Israel have done together, so it seems clear that you have a bias towards Israel. Why should we not, then, discount anything you say here?
This is, in my view, a poorly written, biased and unsubstantiated review, guilty of the same things that the reviewer accuses the book of.
1. That would mean telling the very people they wanted to keep in the dark.
2. Not sure if I can address every concern because that gets into methods. The first thing the Israelis did was cripple communications. The first torpedo hit the com center killing all within. It took a while to get an SOS out.
They even shot down our Flag, but our sailors risked their lives to run up a new, even larger American flag. they knew it was an American ship. It was clearly market, the weather clear. Our sailors were sun bathing on deck and waved and cheered the Israeli pilots circling the ship. They had no idea of what was coming.
Two Israeli pilots refused to fire on Americans and were punished. They were the only ones disciplined. Because of that, it would be very difficult for the government to pretend they didn't know it was an American ship.
The Captain of the Liberty was given the CMOH, but the ceremony was done at a hanger, not the White House because of protests from the Israeli government.
My anger is at the Israeli government, not the Israeli people.
Our government should have stood by our sailors. Our government acted cowardly. What a great disappointment.
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As a reasonable, skeptical individual, I would personally be completely shocked to find out that absolutely none of this data was being passed on to Israeli security forces. At the very least, I would expect that Israeli intelligence has in some fashion managed to get access to information it needs through at least one of these companies. It would beggar belief that an organisation like Mossad had not availed itself of such an opportunity.
Frankly, in the times we live in, I would expect that all of these companies along with every other subcontractor, has already creamed off useful statistics and data and sold them to banks, credit agencies and marketers. This in fact would bother me more than data being passed to competent intelligence outfits, would would at least misuse it in a security conscious way.
This data is in some fashion being passed on to the Israeli security forces. It is in no way a conspiracy theory to suggest this, and any reasonable person would come to the same conclusion. Whether the American intelligence community is placing itself at risk by outsourcing like this is another matter.
Frankly, from the tone of the book, the American intelligence community appears to be a contradiction in terms.
May the Maths Be with you!