The phones of US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper

One of the key players during the Snowden affair was Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. He is responsible for coordinating all 16 American intelligence agencies, a role which is reflected by the number and the types of telephone equipment in his office.

Clapper has six phones, more than for example the director of the NSA, or the Defense Secretary. Here we will take a close look at these telecommunication devices used by the US Director of National Intelligence.


The office of Director of National Intelligence (DNI) was created in 2004, after the 9/11 Commission Report recommended a stronger and separate leadership for the US intelligence community. Before, it was the director of the CIA who acted as Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) in order to coordinate the various intelligence agencies.

Australian foreign affairs minister Kevin Rudd (right) meeting DNI James Clapper (left)
(Photo: Australian Foreign Affairs Department - Click to enlarge)

The telecommunications equipment used by DNI James Clapper can be seen in a picture from September 17, 2010, which shows his office in the headquarters building of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) at the Liberty Crossing compound near Tyson’s Corner, Virginia, while he was visited by the Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs, Kevin Rudd.

When we take the high resolution version of the picture above, we can see that the displays and buttons of all the phones behind the DNI's desk are blurred by a censor. Apparently there's some rule for that, because from this distance it would be impossible to read anything.

Close-up of the telecommunications equipment behind the desk of DNI James Clapper.

IST-2 phone

The first phone on the left side is an Integrated Services Telephone version 2 (IST-2), which was designed by Raytheon and subsequently manufactured by Telecore, a small company that took over the production of these devices.

The IST is a so called "red phone", which means that it's connected to the Defense Red Switch Network (DRSN). This is the main secure telephone network for military command and control communications and connects all mayor US command centers and many other military facilities.

Like previous red phones made by Electrospace Systems Inc. (ESI), the IST-2 allows to make both secure and non-secure calls through this one single device. The phone itself has no encryption capability: any secure calls are encrypted in bulk before leaving the secure building, enclave or compound.

As part of a military telephone network, the IST-2 also has the distinctive 4 red buttons which are used to select the four levels of a system called Multilevel Precedence and Preemption (MLPP). This allows to make phone calls that get precedence over ones with a lower priority.

VoIP phones

Next, there are three Cisco 7975 unified IP phones, which belong to the most widely used high-end office phones. These phones have no encryption capability, but they can easily be used as part of dedicated and secure Voice-over-IP networks.

The first Cisco phone, next to the IST-2, seems to have a bright green label, indicating that it has to be used for unclassified phone calls. Probably this phone is part of the internal non-secure telephone network of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI).

The second Cisco phone, right of the computer screen, has no recognizable label. It can be part of any secure or non-secure telephone network which DNI Clapper needs to have access to. One option could be the National Secure Telephone System (NSTS), which is used by the signals intelligence community (i.e. NSA).

The third Cisco phone has a distinctive bright yellow faceplate instead of the standard silver one. This indicates that it's part of the highly secure Executive Voice over Secure IP-network, which connects the President with senior cabinet members and some other high-level government officials.

This top-level telephone network was set up in 2007-2008. Before, the President was connected to the general military DRSN, but during the attacks of 9/11, this network appeared to be not reliable enough.

It's this bright yellow Cisco phone that shows that the Director of National Intelligence has direct access to the President. As we have seen earlier, even the director of NSA doesn't have this kind of telephone, and therefore lacks a direct line to the President.

> See also: NSA director Alexander's phones - US State Department red phones

STE phones

The last type of telephone we see in Clapper's office are two big black phones called Secure Terminal Equipment (STE). These are made by the American defense contractor L3 Communications and are highly secure devices capable of encrypting calls up to the level of Top Secret/SCI.

STE phones can be used to make secure calls to anyone with a similar or compatible device and there are an estimated 400.000 STE users. STE is the successor of the almost legendary STU-III secure phone system from the late 1980s.

These STE phones can be used for secure communications with everyone working for the US government, the military, its contractors, and also foreign partners who can not be reached through a more select secure telephone network, like the DRSN or the NSTS.

Videoteleconferencing

Besides the six telephones, DNI Clapper also has two videoteleconferencing (VTC) screens behind him. In the first picture we saw a white videoconferencing screen at the far right, and another picture, from a different angle, shows another VTC screen standing at the far left side:

A black Tandberg Centric 1700 MXP VTC screen behind DNI James Clapper.
(Photo: ODNI)

Both these VTC screens have a high-definition camera and are made by the Norwegian manufacturer Tandberg. In 2010 this company was bought by Cisco Systems, so their equipment can be safely used for classified US videoconferencing purposes.

Maybe one of the sets in Clapper's office is used for unclassified, and the other for classified videoconferencing, but it's also possible that both are used for secure video connections but at different classification levels.

At least one of the VTC screens will be used for Top Secret/SCI Videoconferencing, which is for users within the intelligence community. From within secured locations (SCI enclaves), this video feed goes over the JWICS-network, which is secured by stream-based Type 1 bulk encryption devices.



Computer

Finally, there's also one computer screen standing in the midst of the telephones. Below is a keyboard and likely there's also a KVM-switch to enable access to multiple physically separated networks through a single "Keyboard, Video and Mouse" set.

For US intelligence officials, such a KVM-switch usually provides access to NIPRNet or DNI-U (Unclassified, for general purposes), SIPRNet (Secret, for military and intelligence purposes) and JWICS (Top Secret/SCI, for intelligence purposes).

> See also: US military and intelligence computer networks

Update:
James Clapper resigned as Director of National Intelligence on January 20, 2017, the same day that the new president Donald Trump was inaugurated.

NSA director Alexander's phones

(Updated: September 29, 2014)

After a range of articles about how NSA intercepts foreign communications, we now take a look at the equipment that NSA uses to secure their own telecommunications, more specific those of its director.

We can do this because last December, the CBS program 60 Minutes offered some unprecedented insights into the NSA headquarters. Of course very limited, but still interesting for those with a sharp eye. Perhaps the most revealing was that for the first time ever it was shown how the office of the director of NSA looks like:

The office of NSA director Alexander, December 2013
(click to enlarge)

The office of the director is at a corner on the eighth floor of the OPS 2B building, which is the wider and lower one of the two black mirrored glass structures of the NSA headquarters at Fort George G. Meade. Contrary to what many people would probably expect, the director's office is far from high tech.

We see a rather traditional interior with a classic wooden desk, shelfs with books, picture frames and lots of memorabilia, a conference table and a group of old-fashioned seatings with a large plant in a shiny copper pot.

Most interesting for us is the telecommunications equipment used by the current director, Keith B. Alexander, which can be seen in the following screenshot:

NSA director Alexander working at his desk, December 2013
Behind him we see his secure telephone equipment
(click to enlarge)

VTC Screen

In the corner at the left we see a video teleconferencing screen with a high-definition camera, made by the Norwegian manufacturer Tandberg. In 2010 this company was bought by Cisco Systems, so their equipment can be safely used for US Top Secret/SCI videoconferencing. From within secured locations (SCI enclaves), the video feed goes over the JWICS IP network for the intelligence community, which is secured by stream-based Type 1 bulk encryption devices.


STE Phone

At the left of general Alexander there's a large black telephone called Secure Terminal Equipment (STE), which is made by L3 Communications. The STE is a highly secure phone, which means that this device is capable of encrypting calls up to the level of Top Secret/SCI. This phone can be used to make secure calls to anyone with a similar or compatible device. STE is the successor of the almost legendary STU-III secure phone system from the late 1980s.

With an estimated 400.000 users, STE is used for secure communications with everyone working for the US government, the military or its contractors, who can not be reached through a more select secure phone network for the US military (IST/DRSN) or the SIGINT community (NSTS).


IST Phone

At the far right we see a big white Integrated Services Telephone (IST), which was designed by Electrospace Systems Inc. and manufactured by Raytheon. This is a so called "red phone", which means that it's connected to the Defense Red Switch Network (DRSN). This is the main secure telephone network for military command and control communications and connects all mayor US command centers and many other military facilities.

Although this IST phone looks very futuristic, it was gradually replaced by the newer IST-2 since 2003. Remarkable to see that notably the highest NSA official still uses the old model. The new IST-2 was also on the President's desk in the Oval Office, before it was replaced by a Cisco IP phone for the new Executive Voice over Secure IP-network in 2011, to provide a dedicated link between the President and his senior cabinet members.

It's revealing to see that there's no such new IP telephone in the office of the director of NSA, which means that he has no direct line to the President. Which is according to the fact that NSA actually falls under the Department of Defense and its intelligence gathering is coordinated by the Director of National Intelligence.
&nsbp;


NSTS Phone

A third, white phone set is hidden right behind general Alexander's back, but we can see a glimpse of it in this screenshot:

NSA director Alexander working at his desk, December 2013
Behind him we see his secure telephone equipment

This telephone is part of NSTS, which stands for National (or NSA/CSS) Secure Telephone System and is the NSA's internal telephone network for calls up to the level of Top Secret/SCI. Newer NSTS phones are connected by fiber optic modems to a fiber backplane that interfaces with an NSANet access point router. The voice traffic is then encrypted together with data traffic utilizing a Type 1 bulk encryption device.

As can be seen in other pictures from inside NSA, the devices used on the NSTS network are white Nortel M3904 executive phones - a very reliable high-end model which is also used at the offices of both the Israeli and the British prime minister. Nortel was a big Canadian telephone equipment manufacturer, but was dissolved in 2009. Thereafter, the Enterprise Voice and Data division of Nortel was bought by the US telecommications company Avaya (formerly Lucent)

A Nortel M3904 phone from the NSTS network as seen
elsewhere in the NSA headquarters building

From declassified NSA documents, we can learn that the NSTS phones have numbers like 963-5247s (with s for secure) and that the numbers of the STE phones are written like STE 6325 (no real examples).* The IST phones of the DRSN have four or five digit numbers.*


Predecessors of these three types of telephones (STE, IST and NSTS) were also present in the office of then NSA director Michael V. Hayden, when James Bamford described a meeting with him in his 2001 book Body of Secrets:

"There are also several telephones on the table. One for secure internal calls; another is a secure STU-III for secret external calls; and a "red line" with buttons that can put him through instantly to the secretary of defense, the Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff and other senior officials.
No phones, however, connect the director to the White House; indeed, during Hayden's first year in office, he never, once spoke directly to president Clinton".*

In a declassified interview (pdf) with NSA director Hayden from January 5th, 2000, he says:

"Behind my credenza, I have a gray phone, a STU-III, an STE, and a red phone. NSA has a gray phone because it was ahead of everybody else. But everyone else has caught up. So I actually made the note today to go back and see how much it costs us to sustain these systems."

Compared to the situation in 2001 as described above, we see that the (outdated) STU-III was removed shortly afterwards, and the term "gray phone" apparently refers to the telephone device connected to the NSTS.


Computers

In a separate program, called 60 Minutes Overtime, CBS showed 'The Making Of' their previous 60 Minutes report about NSA. It included some new video fragments, like one in which we get a better look at the computer equipment on the desk behind director Alexander's chair:

NSA director Alexander being interviewed by John Miller, December 2013
At the left side we see the director's computer equipment
(click to enlarge)

We see a common HP office keyboard, two computer screens and in between them there's a so-called KVM-switch with some colorful stickers on it.

The latter device is used to work on multiple computers or networks operating at different classification levels, all with one Keyboard, Video screen and Mouse, hence the abbreviation KVM. By pushing a button, the device can switch between four different connections, which is done by the hardware in order to keep them physically separated. The KVM Switch in this picture is the SwitchView SC4 from Avocent (formerly Cybex) with four secure channels.

From the stickers with the color codes, we learn that this device enables the director to switch between three separate computer networks at the following classification levels:

- Green: UNCLASSIFIED, which is the military NIPRNet
- Red: SECRET, which is the military SIPRNet
- Orange: TOP SECRET and Yellow: TOP SECRET/SCI

The latter connection is most often used for access to JWICS, the highly secure network used by the American intelligence community, but here it may also be used for NSANet. It's not clear whether the second compter screen is for one of these networks, or for a separate access to the common internet. Both screens have a blue label which might denote that the screens can be used for multiple classification levels.

> See also: US military and intelligence computer networks

60 Minutes

The CBS program Inside the NSA was broadcasted on December 15, 2013, but was immediatly heavily critized as being too less critical in approach to the NSA, some people even said it was NSA propaganda. This seems not quite fair, as Snowden reporter Glenn Greenwald had numourous occasions in media from all over the world to present his interpretation of what NSA is doing - which went almost unquestioned.

CBS reporter John Miller asked NSA director Alexander about all the major things that came up from the Snowden-leaks and he also got answers. NSA even showed an actual example of how the metadata contact chaining method works. Whether one is satisfied by these anwers is another thing, but we should keep in mind that Greenwald's version is not always the right one and NSA is not always lying.

CBS 60 Minutes: Inside the NSA (December 15, 2013)

NSA director Keith Alexander, who's a four-star general and a career Army intelligence officer, will retire on March 28. He was head of the National Security Agency and the Central Security Service since August 2005 and the US Cyber Command since May 2010. It's expected that he will be replaced by US Navy Vice Admiral Michael S. Rogers.



Links and Sources
- Premium.chosun.com: 미국 국방부 산하 정보기관 NSA(국가안보국) 국장, 극비통신장비 노출에 비상 [출처] 본 기사는 프리미엄조선에서 작성된 기사 입니다
- HuffingtonPost.com: '60 Minutes' Trashed For NSA Piece
- CBSNews.com: Inside the NSA - How did 60 Minutes get cameras into a spy agency
- Wired.com: NSA Snooping Was Only the Beginning. Meet the Spy Chief Leading Us Into Cyberwar

Pictures at the NSA's 60th anniversary

Last month, on November 4, 2012, the National Security Agency (NSA) of the United States celebrated it's 60th anniversary. The NSA is one of the world's largest intelligence agencies, responsible for gathering foreign signals intelligence and protecting domestic communications.

For this diamond anniversary, NSA published a full color illustrated publication (available here in PDF) with an interesting overview of its history. In this booklet there are also nice pictures, some of them unseen until now:

President George H.W. Bush using a secure Motorola STU-III telephone.
Such a phone was placed everywhere where the president stayed during a travel,
so he was able to always place secure calls. This purpose is also indicated
by the plate below the phone. It's not clear what the white device is for.
This black Motorola STU-III still served in this function, when president George W. Bush
was calling during his stay at the elementary school on September 11, 2001.
(Photo: NSA - Click for a bigger version)

The new National Security Operations Center (NSOC) at the NSA
This center was established in 1968 as the National SIGINT Watch Center (NSWC)
and renamed into National SIGINT Operations Center (NSOC) in 1973.
This "nerve center of the NSA" got its current name in 1996.
(Photo: NSA - Click for a bigger version)

The NSA/CSS Threat Operations Center (NTOC) at the NSA
From left to right we see a black STE secure phone, an unidentified,
but quite common black phone, and a white Nortel M3904 phone,
which is connected to the NSA Secure Telephone System (NSTS).
(Photo: NSA - Click for a bigger version)

Many more new pictures and also newly declassified documents can be found via the timeline at the 60th anniversary-page on the NSA-website!


Earlier this year, NSA also cooperated with the National Geographic Channel in making what is said to be the first documentary about this agency since the 9/11 attacks in 2001:

With a close look at this video, we can recognize a number of different telephone systems used at the NSA. Some of them we already mentioned here earlier, more of them we will discuss sometimes later on at this weblog.


Update January 12, 2014:

After the Snowden-scandal, a new television report with some unique insights into the NSA was broadcasted in the CBS 60 Minutes show on December 15, 2013.

Commander Petraeus' phones

Last week, David Petraeus resigned as director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), after admitting he had an extramarital affair with his biographer Paula Broadwell. This led to many news reports and also many pictures on the internet.

Some of them give a nice look at the telecommunications equipment which general Petraeus used when, from July 2010 to July 2011, he was commander of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Kabul, Afghanistan:

ISAF Commander Petraeus being interviewed by Paula Broadwell
(Photo: paulabroadwell.com, date unknown)

In this picture we see the following telecommunication devices:

Video conferencing screens
On Petraeus' desk we see two Centric 1700 MXP video teleconferencing screens, made by the Norwegian manufacturer Tandberg. In 2010 this company was bought by Cisco Systems, and so the 1700 MXP screens are often used by US military officials. They are equipped with a HD camera and have a widescreen LCD screen, which operates both as a video conferencing system and PC display.

STE
Left of the personal computer screen we see a Secure Terminal Equipment (STE), made by L3 Communications. The STE is a phone capable of encrypting calls up to the level of Top Secret/SCI. This phone can be used to have a secure line to anyone with a similar device.

IST-2
Right behind the chair of commander Petraeus is an Integrated Services Telephone 2 (IST-2), made by Telecore Inc. This is a so called "red phone", which is part of the Defense Red Switch Network (DRSN), connecting all mayor US command centers and many other military facilities. This is the primary telephone network for military command and control communications.

VoIP phones
In the picture above we see three of four Voice over IP (VoIP) phones: at the right end a Cisco SPA and the other three being phones from the Cisco 7970-series. It's likely each of these phones is part of a separate telephone network. Nowadays many military phone networks use Voice over IP, often with Cisco IP phone sets. These phones have no encryption capability, but their voice data networks can easily be secured with specific network encryptors.
In the picture below we can see al four VoIP phones, neatly aligned on a shelf and with an organizational chart at the left side of them:

General David Petraeus in his office at the ISAF headquarters in Kabul.
(Photo: Adam Ferguson/The New York Times, March 8, 2011)

Printers
Also in this picture we see three printers on a table at the left side of the room. Apparently there are separate printers for different computer networks, in order to keep documents of different classification levels separated.

At the upper left corner of the front of at least the first two printers we can see the colored classification labels: a green label for Unclassified materials on the printer in the foreground and a red label for materials classified as Secret on the printer in the middle. The third printer seems to have no marking, but we can assume this one is for Top Secret (orange label) or Classified SCI (yellow label) documents.


This kind of communications equipment is typical for US military commanders in similar positions. Therefore one can quite easily recognize it also on other pictures of American military commanders and command centers. Contrarily, pictures in which we can see the equipment used in Petraeus' last office, that of director of the CIA, are very rare - but we keep looking!


UPDATE February 5, 2013:

A reader of this weblog kindly noticed me of another picture of general Petraeus in his office, with clearly visible another kind of communications device. It's an HH2G Tetrapol handheld radio device, sitting in a desktop adapter, so it can be more or less used like a phone:

General David Petraeus in his office in ISAF headquarters in Kabul, Afghanistan
(Photo: Chris Hondros/Getty Images Europe, October 21, 2010)

The Tetrapol secure voice and data radio network was installed in 2004 by Cogent Defence and Security Networks, the UK operating company of EADS Defence and Communications Systems Group. This trunked Tetrapol ISAF Command Network, with end-to-end security, provides command communications coverage for the NATO Area of Responsibility in the Kabul region.