On Watch: Profiles from the National Security Agency’s Past 40 Years, 1984

On July 17, 1984, Lieutenant General Lincoln D. Faurer, the Director of the National Security Agency, asked the National Cryptologic School to produce a ‘popular history’ of the Agency aimed principally at new employees who perhaps were unaware of the past accomplishments of NSA. As the project evolved, the National Cryptologic School envisioned an informal collection of significant experiences from the Agency’s past which stressed NSA accomplishments as the best way to make new employees aware of the unique history of NSA and United States SIGINT and COMSEC efforts. At the same time the History and Publications Division was asked to compile a more formal one-volume study of NSA, stressing its organization, structure, mission and evolution. The two products, one produced by the School and the other by the History Office are complementary but separate. This is the National Cryptologic School’s contribution. The History Office study is to be published separately.

On November 27, 2021, The Black Vault filed a Mandatory Declassification Review (MDR) request to have this document further reviewed. Although previously released in 2007 to an unknown FOIA requester, it was redacted heavily in many sections.

In November of 2022, The Black Vault received a much less redacted version, which is available below.

Continue scrolling for more...

Document Archive

On Watch: Profiles from the National Security Agency’s Past 40 Years, 1984 [112 Pages, 40MB]

 

 

 

 


 

Follow The Black Vault on Social Media:

This post was published on December 7, 2022 12:44 pm

John Greenewald

Recent Posts

FBI Files: Historical Figures & Groups

Background Welcome to the FBI Files on Historical Figures & Groups archive at The Black…

June 26, 2025

Emails From Pentagon Spokesperson Uncovered on Gimbal, FLIR1, and GoFast UFO Videos

The Department of Defense has released a collection of internal emails in response to a…

June 18, 2025

Agency Cafeterias – Complaints & Menus

Background You can get quite a bit of material under the Freedom of Information Act…

June 18, 2025

DoD Releases Previously Unseen Document Detailing “NIGHT TRAIN 84” Nuclear War Exercise Scenario

The Department of Defense (DoD) has released, through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request…

June 18, 2025

TEMPS (Transportable Electromagnetic Pulse Simulator) Final Reports, 1973

The two volumes of the TEMPS (Transportable Electromagnetic Pulse Simulator) Final Report, dated August 1973…

June 8, 2025

FBI Releases Internal Emails on Comey Following FOIA Appeal Win by The Black Vault

This was originally published on  November 7, 2023. The article has been left unchanged, but…

June 6, 2025