The tone of the answering machine message was routine, like a reminder for a dental appointment. But there was also an undercurrent of urgency. \u201cPlease call me back,\u201d the voice said. \u201cIt\u2019s important.\u201d<\/p>\n
What worried me was who<\/i> was calling: a senior attorney with the Justice Department\u2019s secretive Office of Intelligence Policy and Review. By the time I hung up the payphone at a little coffee shop in Cambridge, Mass., and wandered back to my table, strewn with yellow legal pads and dog-eared documents, I had guessed what he was after: my copy of the Justice Department\u2019s top-secret criminal file on the National Security Agency. Only two copies of the original were ever made. Now I had to find a way to get it out of the country\u2013fast.<\/p>\n
It was July 8, 1981, a broiling Wednesday in Harvard Square, and I was in a quiet corner of the Algiers Coffee House on Brattle Street. A cool, souk-like basement room, with the piney aroma of frankincense, it made for a perfect hideout to sort through documents, jot down notes, and pore over stacks of newspapers while sipping bottomless cups of Arabic coffee and espresso the color of dark chocolate.<\/p>\n
For several years I had been working on my first book, The Puzzle Palace<\/i>, which provided the first in-depth look at the National Security Agency. The deeper I dug, the more troubled I became. Not only did the classified file from the Justice Department accuse the NSA of systematically breaking the law by eavesdropping on American citizens, it concluded that it was impossible to prosecute those running the agency because of the enormous secrecy that enveloped it. Worse, the file made clear that the NSA itself was effectively beyond the law\u2013allowed to bypass statutes passed by Congress and follow its own super-classified charter, what the agency called a \u201ctop-secret birth certificate\u201d drawn up by the White House decades earlier.<\/p>\n
Knowing the potential for such an unregulated agency to go rogue, I went on to write two more books about the NSA, Body of Secrets<\/i>, in 2001, and The Shadow Factory<\/i>, in 2008. My goal was to draw attention to the dangers the agency posed if it is not closely watched and controlled\u2013dangers that would be laid bare in stark detail by Edward Snowden years later.<\/p>\n