(Updated: April 8, 2025)
In the period between the election and the inauguration, a new US president prepares to take over the administration and gets briefed by numerous officials and agencies, including the National Security Agency (NSA).
Here I will present some interesting topics from the extensive 2009 Presidential Transition Book (pdf), which the NSA had prepared for Barack Obama after he had been elected president on November 4, 2008.
Context
The NSA's briefing book was published in May 2017 by the National Security Archive as part of its Cyber Vault. That collection contains 42 declassified documents about cyber issues and also includes a 42-page Transition 2001 briefing (pdf) which the NSA had prepared for incoming president George W. Bush.
The 2009 Presidential Transition Book (pdf) for Obama was declassified on April 13, 2016 and has no less than 289 pages from a binder. It combines various documents and briefing materials from 2006 to 2008, some of them quite highly classified and therefore still heavily redacted.
Despite the redacted portions, the book provides a good and detailed introduction to the NSA and its activities, but with its 289 pages it sometimes goes well beyond what the president and his staff had to know, like for example the highly detailed acquisition and procurement plans of the agency. (p. 154ff)
Communications monitoring
Another topic that seems not necessary for the president to know is about a hardly known NSA unit called the Joint COMSEC Monitoring Activity (JCMA), which was part of the NSA's former Information Assurance (IA) directorate.
The JCMA consists of a Headquarters Operations Centers at Fort Meade and six Regional COMSEC Monitoring Centers, located at Menwith Hill Station (MHS) in the UK, NSA/CSS Europe in Stuttgart in Germany, an undisclosed location, NSA/CSS Hawaii at Camp Smith in Hawaii, and NSA/CSS Georgia at Fort Gordon in Georgia. (p. 36)
These JCMA units monitor the unclassified communications of American military and government entities to determine if critical information has been disclosed or if other vulnerabilities exist that adversaries could exploit. (p. 36)
According to the Transition Book the "Attorney General-approved procedures (and Federal law) permit monitoring with consent, and NSA/CSS ensures that personnel are notified of the possibility of monitoring and that all required consents have been obtained before such monitoring can begin." (p. 49)
Label on an
Integrated Services Telephone (IST) which can be
used for both classified and unclassified phone calls
(click to enlarge)
used for both classified and unclassified phone calls
(click to enlarge)
Declassifications
The 2009 Presidential Transition Book, which was declassified in April 2016, also reveals some details that can be compared to information from the Snowden documents:
For example, the Transition Book reveals the involvement of foreign partners in the NSA's RT-RG processing and analysis system:
"The Real Time Regional Gateway (RT-RG) [...] is bringing the full Signals Intelligence analysis, processing and exploitation power of NSA/CSS to deployed U.S. and governement agencies and military forces along with our 2nd and 3rd party partners in Theater through special agreements. RT-RG provides Signals Intelligence analysts near real-time access to [redacted]." (p. 19)
As part of the Snowden revelations this aspect was reported only three years later, in May 2019, by the online outlet The Intercept.
The Transition Book also mentions the multilateral group formed by the NSA's partners in the Pacific Region called SIGINT Seniors Pacific (SSPAC):
"In addition to bilateral partnerships, NSA/CSS continues to support a limited number of multilateral relationships such as SIGINT Seniors Europe (SSEUR) and SIGINT Seniors Pacific (SSPAC)." (p. 47)
The name of this group had already been revealed a year before, in March 2015, when The New Zealand Herald released a document from the Snowden trove (although a paper from 2012 had already mentioned a "Pacific version of the Five Eyes ‘plus’ grouping").
> See also: NSA's Foreign Partnerships
Cyber defense
Several parts of the 2009 Presidential Transition Book are about "Defending Vital Networks", which at that time already was a high priority issue.
The NSA saw a central role for itself, because "Insights and information gained from the Signals Intelligence mission, combined with the expertise and capabilities offered by the Information Assurance mission, make NSA/CSS a key player in defending vital networks against the threats of the Internet age." (p. 30)
Accordingly, the NSA was one of over 20 federal departments involved in the Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative (CNCI), or simply the "Cyber Initiative", which was established by president George W. Bush in January 2008 and was continued by president Obama.
The CNCI "seeks to address current cybersecurity threats and anticipate future threats and technologies in order to prevent, deter, and protect the U.S. Federal government (.gov) domain against cyber intrusions. The strategy includes establishing shared situational awareness across the federal government." (p. 32)
The exact way in which the NSA contributes to the CNCI is redacted, but some of its unclassified contributions are:
- "Threat analysis provides a comprehensive understanding of the intentions, capabilities, and activities of the adversary."
- "Activity analysis allows for the discovery of unknown, significant intrusion activity, in-depth analysis of known intrusion sets, and trend analysis."
- "Network analysis and cyber target development efforts monitor, characterize, and report on foreign digital networks, organizations and personas in cyberspace." (p. 32-35)
- "Activity analysis allows for the discovery of unknown, significant intrusion activity, in-depth analysis of known intrusion sets, and trend analysis."
- "Network analysis and cyber target development efforts monitor, characterize, and report on foreign digital networks, organizations and personas in cyberspace." (p. 32-35)
An intriguing issue is that in other NSA documents the notorious Utah Data Center is called an "Intelligence Community Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative Data Center", but the Transition Book doesn't contain a single unclassified reference to what the purpose of such a CNCI data center would be (neither do the Snowden documents).
However, the Transition Book does emphasize that "All of our responsibilities under the CNCI are within our existing authorities and missions, i.e., SIGINT, Information Assurance, enabling network warfare under JFCC-NW, and providing technical assistance to other federal agencies. The vast majority of our work under the CNCI is work we are already doing under our Transformation 3.0." (p. 100)
The NSA/CSS Threat Operations Center (NTOC), ca. 2006
(photo: NSA - click to enlarge)
Transformation 3.0
The 2009 Presidential Transition Book seems to be the first document that provides an elaboration of "Transformation 3.0" or T3.0. This appears to be a strategic technology plan meant to "distribute our processing capabilities throughout the global enterprise and to unify our missions."
This had to be done by "creating a cooperative and concerted real-time exploit-attack-defend capability [redacted]. T3.0 connects analysts, missions partners, clients, sensors, systems, and information on a global scale through a robust, secure, and distributed network." (p. 60)
(Upon request of The Black Vault, an Intellipedia page about Transformation 3.0 was declassified in 2018, but again most parts have been redacted)
Transformation 3.0 comes after two earlier Transformations of the NSA, which apparently took place in the 1990s and the early 2000s:
"T1.0 - Modernization
Following the cold war, T1.0 improved corporate business processes, shaped the workforce, modernized technlogy, and updated operations - better positioning the Agency to grapple with varied threats and emerging technology."
"T2.0 - Collaboration
Following 9/11/2001, T2.0 began to move NSA/CSS from a paradigm of "need to know" to "need to share", both within NSA and with our clients and partners. T2.0 began to merge the Signals Intelligence and Information Assurance missions together as one, providing on-site support and tailored services - which enabled NSA/CSS to fashing new relationships for the new world order, redrawing distinctions between national and tactical, producer and consumer, collector and operator."
T3.0 - [redacted]
Today, NSA/CSS is focused on the [redacted]. The intention is to create cooperative, interoperable, real-time Exploitation/Defense/attack-enabling (E/D/enA) capabilities [redacted]" (p. 123)
Following the cold war, T1.0 improved corporate business processes, shaped the workforce, modernized technlogy, and updated operations - better positioning the Agency to grapple with varied threats and emerging technology."
"T2.0 - Collaboration
Following 9/11/2001, T2.0 began to move NSA/CSS from a paradigm of "need to know" to "need to share", both within NSA and with our clients and partners. T2.0 began to merge the Signals Intelligence and Information Assurance missions together as one, providing on-site support and tailored services - which enabled NSA/CSS to fashing new relationships for the new world order, redrawing distinctions between national and tactical, producer and consumer, collector and operator."
T3.0 - [redacted]
Today, NSA/CSS is focused on the [redacted]. The intention is to create cooperative, interoperable, real-time Exploitation/Defense/attack-enabling (E/D/enA) capabilities [redacted]" (p. 123)
Transformation 3.0 was comprised of three parts: "(1) Mission Modernization, (2) Infrastructure Modernization (comprising significant improvement in Power, Space and Cooling (PS&C) and Information Technology (IT) Modernization efforts, both described earlier) and (3) Workforce Modernization." (p. 125)
T3.0 is briefly mentioned in some documents from the Snowden trove as well, for example this one that says that the initiative started in 2006, which means it came shortly after Transformation 2.0 which had just been launched in 2003. See about T2.0 also this newsletter. At GCHQ there was a counterpart program called SIGINT Modernisation.
Another document leaked by Snowden says that the objective of T3.0 was nothing less than "Global Network Dominance" and that a crucial piece for that was the Remote Operations Center (ROC), which manages and operates the NSA's rapidly growing array of hacking operations.
The 2009 Presidential Transition Book also includes a copy of an internal powerpoint presentation about the Transformation 3.0 plan, which is almost completely redacted. (p. 79ff)
This briefing slide from the Transition Book repeats that an important part of T3.0 was to "create cooperative, interoperable, real-time Exploitation, Defense and attack-enabling capabilities" which reminds us of the NSA's TURBULENCE program. This program was first reported on in 2007 and was the successor of the TRAILBLAZER project.
Update:
An internal NSA newsletter from October 2006 confirms that TURBULENCE is the actual implementation of the Transformation 3.0 initiative. Something similar can be read on page 293 of the National Defense Authorization Act (pdf) for the fiscal year 2008, which added that TURBULENCE was structured as a "series of loosely connected projects, not one of which met the threshold for designation as a major systems acquisition. This decision, while permitting the NSA to avoid external acquisition oversight, exacerbated the Agency’s weaknesses in systems engineering and systems integration."
An internal NSA newsletter from October 2006 confirms that TURBULENCE is the actual implementation of the Transformation 3.0 initiative. Something similar can be read on page 293 of the National Defense Authorization Act (pdf) for the fiscal year 2008, which added that TURBULENCE was structured as a "series of loosely connected projects, not one of which met the threshold for designation as a major systems acquisition. This decision, while permitting the NSA to avoid external acquisition oversight, exacerbated the Agency’s weaknesses in systems engineering and systems integration."
TURBULENCE (abbreviated as TU) was/is an umbrella program with at least seven components, including TURMOIL for passive collection from fiber-optic cables and TUTELAGE, which detects and blocks cyberattacks directed against the computer networks of the US Defense Department.
Even more interesting is TURBINE, which uses identifiers from TURMOIL and TUTELAGE to initiate a semi-automated process in which an implant from the NSA's Computer Network Exploitation system QUANTUM is installed on a target's computer system.
With these three components, TURBULENCE integrates all three capabilities of Transformation 3.0: TURMOIL for exploitation, TUTELAGE for defense and TURBINE for attack-enabling.
Slide about the TURBULENCE program from the Snowden files
(click to enlarge)
(click to enlarge)
Research program
Another interesting chapter in the 2009 Presidential Transition Book is about the efforts of the NSA's Research Directorate (RD):
"Since 2003, the NSA Research Program has been structured around four important mission thrusts which drive our advanced research efforts.
"Owning the Net.
This denotes our goal to dominate the global computing and communications network. Research will develop tools and techniques to access, at will, any networked device for offensive or defensive purposes."
"Coping with Information Overload.
We must turn the massive amount of information on the global network into a strategic asset, rather than an obstacle. Under this thrust, Research will develop capabilities to present the most valuable information, organized to make sense to analysts so that thy can perform their tasks in a more efficient and effective manner."
"Ubiquitous, Secure Collaboration.
The focus here is to provide the techniques and technology to allow diverse users - within the government and with our industrial and international partners - to work collaboratively and securely across multiple domains and different environments."
"Penetrate Hard Targets.
Penetrating hard targets provides the technological solutions to enable new access, collection and exploitation methodologies against the nation's toughest intelligence targets. The research Directorate provides foundational and advanced mathematics that contribute innovative solutions to all of the above mission thrusts." (p. 69)
This denotes our goal to dominate the global computing and communications network. Research will develop tools and techniques to access, at will, any networked device for offensive or defensive purposes."
"Coping with Information Overload.
We must turn the massive amount of information on the global network into a strategic asset, rather than an obstacle. Under this thrust, Research will develop capabilities to present the most valuable information, organized to make sense to analysts so that thy can perform their tasks in a more efficient and effective manner."
"Ubiquitous, Secure Collaboration.
The focus here is to provide the techniques and technology to allow diverse users - within the government and with our industrial and international partners - to work collaboratively and securely across multiple domains and different environments."
"Penetrate Hard Targets.
Penetrating hard targets provides the technological solutions to enable new access, collection and exploitation methodologies against the nation's toughest intelligence targets. The research Directorate provides foundational and advanced mathematics that contribute innovative solutions to all of the above mission thrusts." (p. 69)
The NSA's Research and Engineering (R&E) Building at Fort Meade
(click to enlarge)
(click to enlarge)
NSA workforce
The exact number of people working at US intelligence agencies was always classified, but surprisingly, the 2009 Presidential Transition Book provides some very detailed figures.
It says that, probably in 2008, NSA/CSS employed 36,371 people worldwide, with 52% of them civilians (18,849) and 48% military and civilians from the armed services (17,522).
68.8% of the NSA's civilian workforce had a bachelor's degree or higher, 40.7% were women, 17.7% members of a minority and 3.8% were persons with disabilities. The average age of the civilian workforce was 43.6 years. (p. 58-59)
A separate chapter titled "NSA/CSS Footprint" provides detailed information charts about the NSA's four regional Cryptologic Centers, including the names of their commanders, partial organizational charts and numbers about their workforce, with actual numbers for 2008 and projected numbers for 2012 and 2015. Below are the actual numbers for 2008: (p. 185ff)
- NSA/CSS Georgia (codename SWEET TEA):
2930 employees: 368 civilians, 42 service civilians, 2173 military, 347 other (foreign or IC partner, contractor)
- NSA/CSS Hawaii:
3054 employees: 224 civilians, 121 service civilians, 2582 military, 127 others
- NSA/CSS Texas (codename BACONRIDGE):
2136 employees: 246 civilians, 56 service civilians, 1689 military, 145 other.
- NSA/CSS Colorado:
1324 employees: 233 civilians, 4 service civilians, 976 military, 115 contractors.
2930 employees: 368 civilians, 42 service civilians, 2173 military, 347 other (foreign or IC partner, contractor)
- NSA/CSS Hawaii:
3054 employees: 224 civilians, 121 service civilians, 2582 military, 127 others
- NSA/CSS Texas (codename BACONRIDGE):
2136 employees: 246 civilians, 56 service civilians, 1689 military, 145 other.
- NSA/CSS Colorado:
1324 employees: 233 civilians, 4 service civilians, 976 military, 115 contractors.
> See also The NSA's regional Cryptologic Centers
Finally, the 2009 Presidential Transition Book ends with the biographies of over 30(!) top officials of the NSA, all of which have been fully redacted, except for those of the director (Keith B. Alexander), the deputy director (John C. Inglis) and the chief of staff (Deborah A. Bonanni). (p. 243ff)
