Larry Foster, an Army Security Agency (ASA) veteran, sent me the URL of a video on the 70th birthday of the National Security Agency (NSA), my employer before I retired more than 30 years ago. I was working for NSA when I was on the battlefield with U.S. and friendly forces supporting them with signals intelligence (SIGINT) resulting from the intercept and exploitation of enemy communications.
When I first went to work for NSA in 1961, the agency was much more secretive than it is today. We weren’t allowed to tell people that we worked for NSA; the most we could say was that we were employed by the Department of Defense (DOD). But now my years of service for the agency as a civilian undercover as an enlisted man in whatever unit I was supporting in Vietnam between 1962 and 1975 have been partly declassified, so that I can write about my experience. Where I went and what I did after 1975 is still classified.
I note with some irony that NSA is not as old as I am. I was a teenager when it was created. I spent several years there as an army enlisted man (in ASA) and 32 years as a civilian employee. And the agency invited me back twice after I retired to do my presentation on the fall of Saigon, from which, as an NSA employee operating under cover, I escaped under fire after the North Vietnamese were already in the streets of the city.
I was astonished to see the 70th birthday video because of the openness about what NSA does. I invite my readers to view the video so you can get a better idea of what I did in my secret years in SIGINT. It’s at https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=Cj-b7JEHyDk
Tom Glenn, Writer 