Wednesday, September 26, 2012

NSA/CSS Policy 1-6 Records Management Program

In response to a FOIA request, the National Security Agency released its most recent version of NSA/CSS Policy 1-6 Records Management Program which governs the "life cycle of records from creation, through maintenance and use, to final disposition."

(*) Italics in the original


NSA/ CSS Policy 1-6 Records Management Program

Former DIRNSA Mike McConnell Says NSA Employees “Pampered” and “Spoiled.”


In a recently declassified and partially released NSA oral history conducted in the first year as his reign as DIRNSA, VADM stated that he believed the NSA’s staff, while the “best in the Government,” were “spoiled and pampered.”  As is the brief, 13-page interview were McConnell’s doubts as to whether he was “yet qualified to be director,” even though he had a prior tour of duty in the NSA, his plans for transforming the NSA in light of the collapse of the Soviet Union, and some amusing historical tidbits. 

The oral history isn’t very good which is not surprising that it can at the beginning of McConnell’s term when the prominent events of his reign had yet to begin or were just starting such as Operation Restore Hope in Somalia, the Bosnian War, and the flaring up of the conflict with Iraq.  The real value of this interview is the historical tidbits sprinkled within such as Dick Cheney was fishing and out of contact when the Soviet hardliners staged their coup in 1991 and that McConnell had been given the job of briefing Cheney as to what was going on in the Soviet Union during the coup. 

Another worthwhile bit of information is the revelation that the NSA or at least McConnell had a fear of Congress because “you have to be careful about talking to Congress. You go down there and just give it away, and some member in the Congress at a TS level could stand up on the floor and is not subject to prosecution. He can say anything he wants to say … classified or unclassified. So you have to be careful.”
DIRNSA McConnell NSA Oral History