CIA Recommendations to be the 1st Director of the National Security Agency

I came upon this list of possible candidates to be the first Director of the National Security Agency compiled by Huntington Sheldon then Assistant Director of the Office of Current Intelligence of the Central Intelligence Agency. While going through the list, I was struck by the absence of the man who became the first DIRNSA- Ralph Canine- and by those recommended by Sheldon who Canine beat out. Among the more notable names on the list are Omar Bradley, Mark Clark, Matthew Ridgway, and Anthony McAuliffe made famous for service during the Second World War. Canine beat out former DCI Hoyt Vandenberg and SAC founder Curtis E. LeMay to list a few. I doubt this was accidental; I suspect this slight was intentional given CIA displeasure over how the Armed Forces Security Agency (AFSA) had supported it during the agencies' mutual early years. Canine had been the last director the AFSA.

CIA List of Perspective NSA Directors

Besties: Earl E. Stone and J. Edgar Hoover

Earl E. Stone, the first director of the Armed Forces Security Agency, was a law enforcement “bestie” with J. Edgar Hoover, Director FBI, was praised by D.M. Ladd as being “most cooperative with the Bureau and has never hesitated to assist the Bureau in problems of mutual interest.” In a 7/10/1951 letter, Hoover told Stone that he “wish[ed] to extend to you my appreciation for the excellent cooperation that you have furnished to the Federal Bureau of Investigation” and “it has been a pleasure to have worked with you on matters of mutual interest which have so vitally affected the internal security of our country.” See the correspondence between them from one of Stone's FBI files.

Earl Stone/ J Edgar Hoover Correspondence

A Quick Bit of Korean War History

A Bit on the Korean COMINT Effort is a four-page history of the Korean communication intelligence effort of the Armed Forces Security Agency and National Security Agency during the Korean War. Undated, riddled with redactions, this short history is still informative, teaching us about how poorly prepared the intelligence community was for the Korean War. Lacking Korean linguists, knowledge of Korean military nomenclature, even dictionaries, cryptanalysts pressed ahead, rapidly achieving success and producing "large" amounts of end product that were " of extreme value to the customers." The redaction portion that ends at "the situation continued until the truce agreement was signed in July 1953," probably details the improvement in North Korean communications security that hampered COMINT efforts later in the war. The same is probably true of the redacted portion after the discussion on unclassified COMINT sources.

Richard Chun's A Bit on the Korean COMINT Effort