The Puzzle Palace

The Puzzle Palace, written by James Bamford, was published in 1982 and it covers the history of the NSA from its inception until the publish date. If you like anything related to espionage and technology, you’ll enjoy this book. James went through a lot of time and trouble to be able to make this, which included the government threatening him with prosecution over some of the documents he got through a FOIA request.

The book starts with the events leading up to the creation of the NSA, which included discussion of how the military started intelligence collection in the late 1800’s, the creation of MI-8, the fragmentation of Army and Navy intelligence, and the Signal Intelligence Service. There was an interesting section early in the book where James talked about the events leading up to the Pearl Harbor attack from an intelligence perspective.

There was a lot of detail about how the intelligence community (IC) had secret dealings with private businesses who dealt with communications, such as Western Union. The NSA also had a rocky history with some of the former presidents and other members of the government, and the book gives interesting insights into these tensions and how the NSA was able to keep operating despite these issues.

Another theme of the book was the methods the NSA used to capture intelligence and some of the hardware they used. If you’ve never read anything about the IC before, this book is going to be eye opening for you. I mention in my YouTube videos to not draw the attention of the federal government, because there’s no hiding from them if they really want to get you. You’ll be surprised at what they were capable of up until the 80’s. The most recent info we have on their capabilities came from Snowden, and that info is over a decade old now, which means they’ve made considerable advancements since then.