Top NSA Scribe Takes Us Inside The Shadow Factory -- The Danger RoomNo outsider has spent more time tracking the labyrinthine ways of the National Security Agency than James Bamford. But even he gets lost in the maze. Despite countless articles and three books on the U.S. government's super-secret, signals-intelligence service — the latest of which, The Shadow Factory, is out today — Bamford tells Danger Room that he was caught off guard by revelations that the NSA was eavesdropping on Americans. He remains confused about how the country's telecommunications firms were co-opted into the warrantless spying project. And he's still only guessing, he admits, at the breadth and depth of those domestic surveillance efforts. In this exclusive interview, Bamford talks about how hard it is, after all these years, to fit together the pieces at the NSA's "Puzzle Palace" headquarters.
DANGER ROOM: When did you learn that the NSA was listening in on American citizens?
JAMES BAMFORD: After 2001, when people would ask, I'd say, "I don't think the NSA is breaking the law. As far as I'm concerned, the NSA doesn't do that. They don't eavesdrop illegally on Americans anymore." So on December 16, 2005 [when The New York Times broke the story of the NSA's domestic surveillance], I was … shocked to learn the NSA for years had been doing warrantless eavesdropping — exactly contrary to what I insisted they were doing, what I thought [agency director Lt. Gen. Michael] Hayden wouldn't do.
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