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."
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.”
