I take books like this with a large grain of salt. Don't get me wrong: the author, James Bamford speaks with authority and certainly has the footnotes and bibliography to back himself up but there's always something that makes me wonder. I mean, let's consider the subject matter. It's the National Security Agency- one of America's most secret intelligence agencies so while Bamford presents an engaging and well-researched story over the course of the book, you have to wonder what he doesn't know and whether he really thinks he knows what he says he does know.
Does that make sense? It's like with books about the Mossad. It's the Mossad, for crying out loud. Take everything with a large grain of salt.
Leaving that aside, now that I've managed to finish this book, it feels like an especially timely book, given the recent and ongoing scandal about the size and scope of the NSA's surveillance efforts. What's shocking is that the NSA was sort of built to operate this way. Truman established the agency with unprecedented levels of secrecy around it and didn't even give it a formal charter to operate under. (The Puzzle Palace was published in 1982, so whether that remains the case today is something I honestly don't know.) This was designed to be an agency that came into the public view as little as possible and remained as far away from any kind of oversight by law as possible (an oversight Bamford laments in the book- while in the late 70s, the NSA took giant steps forward in technology and research, it did not accompany such steps with increased oversight and bringing it's overall mission and activites fully in line with the law.)
The structure of the book took some getting used too- which is part of the reason why it turned into a bit of a long slog for me. First, Bamford opens with the origins of the agency and a prelude detailing the history of cryptology and signals intelligence and the government's involvement in it. (A very telling detail was the long and complex negotiations with companies like Western Union to get them to turn over their traffic to the NSA- and Western Union and the other communications companies eventually caved and agreed to do it!) Then, Bamford takes a left turn and starts describing the anatomy of the agency and the various platform across the world that it uses to do it's mission. Which isn't bad, because the book's title does say 'Inside The National Security Agency' and to his credit, Bamford does take us inside and let us, the readers see how the place ticks but the transition from narrative history to more structured tour guide/research paper type of language is a bit jarring.
Then it sort of blends, as Bamford goes into the growing threat (at least from the NSA's point of view) of technological innovation as the computer/electronics industry began to blossom and how the NSA set up a research pipeline from the nation's top universities to them and how they began to co-opt patents and research to help keep their agency ahead of the game when it came to technology- a mission that they've largely successed at. The book more or less ends with The Church Committee hearings and warnings about the growing power of the NSA and what it can do to our democracy if left unchecked (again, a timely warning, even in 1982) but bizzarely, there's an odd Afterword which deals with the history and structure of Britain's NSA the GCHQ and the discover of a double agent for the Soviets inside it. The whole Afterword feels like a reader's digest attempt to write a version of Puzzle Palace about the GCHQ- something that Bamford should just go ahead and do if it's that interesting. (The level of cooperation between the English speaking democracies when it comes to signals intelligence is unprecedented and one aspect of the current NSA mess that isn't getting the coverage it deserves.)
Overall: Body of Secrets is a lot better and a lot more current to boot! While you can't doubt level of research behind The Puzzle Palace, you're still reading something written in 1982- a whopping three decades ago and it feels more than a little out of date at times- and even though Body of Secrets was published in 2002, I'm sure that's still out of date barely even a decade later. Plus, there's the little fact that the back of the book promises that it's 'been extensively revised and updated to include the major world events in the 80s and 90s' when in reality, it stops with the revelation of the Soviet penetrations at the GCHQ in 1982. I'd say ** out of ****. Probably felt amazing to read when it was first published- but there are more up to date sources out there- some of them written by Bamford himself.
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