From: John Young <jya@pipeline.com>
Date: Fri, 24 Oct 1997 10:41:33 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: David Kahn on National Encryption Policy
Message-ID: <1.5.4.32.19971024020821.00ba3f74@pop.pipeline.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



This was published in the October 22 Congressional Record as
part of a statement by Senator Moynihan on the retirement of
NSA Deputy Director William Crowell:

                      [From Newsday, Oct. 6, 1997]

    National Security Official Retires--Helped Refocus Agency's Aims

                            (By David Kahn)

       The National Security Agency has said goodbye to its 
     retiring deputy director, who largely brought the super-
     secret spy organization into its public, post-Cold War 
     posture.
       William P. Crowell was the force behind the establishment 
     of the National Cryptologic Museum, which exhibits what had 
     been some of the nation's deepest secrets; the revelation of 
     the VENONA project, which broke Soviet spy codes early in the 
     Cold War; and the National Encryption Policy, which seeks to 
     balance personal privacy with national security.
       Succeeding Crowell will be Barbara McNamara, who, like 
     Crowell, is a career employee of the agency, which breaks 
     foreign codes and makes American Codes for the United States 
     government.
       McNamara is the second female deputy director of the 
     agency. The first, Ann Z. Caracristi, who served from 1980 to 
     1982, is the sister of the late Newsday photographer Jimmy 
     Caracristi.
       More than 500 present and past members of the agency 
     attended Crowell's recent retirement ceremony at its glossy, 
     triple-fenced headquarters at Fort Meade, Md. They applauded 
     as he was presented with awards for his intelligence and 
     executive services and with a folded American flag that had 
     flow over the agency.
       They laughed as a picture, claimed to be his retirement 
     portrait, was unveiled: It was a photograph of Crowell, 
     notorious for his love of motorcycles, astride his fancy 
     bike. During his acceptance speech, Crowell choked up when he 
     thanked his wife, Judy, a former agency employee and fellow 
     motorcyclist, for her help.
       The agency director, Air Force Lt. Gen. Kenneth Minihan, 
     recited some of the administrative landmarks of Crowell's 
     career.
       Crowell, 58, a native of Louisiana, began in New York City 
     in 1962 as an agency recruiter. In 1969, when he sought an 
     assignment to operations, he became instead an executive 
     assistant to the then-director. He eventually got to 
     operations, where he rose to be chief of W group, whose 
     function remains secret, and then chief of A group, which 
     focused on the then-Soviet Union. After a year in private 
     industry, he rose through other posts to the deputy 
     directorship on Feb. 2, 1994.
       Among his organizational accomplishments were conceiving a 
     crisis action center and linking the agency with other 
     producers of intelligence to improve information exchange.
       His more public initiatives included the museum and the 
     VENONA disclosures, which sought to maintain public support 
     for the agency after the disappearance of the Soviet Union. 
     The National Encryption Policy seeks to enable the agency to 
     read the messages of terrorists and international criminals 
     who use computer-based, unbreakable ciphers while enabling 
     individuals to use good cryptosecurity to preserve such 
     rights as security on the Internet.

----------

See Moynihan's statement:

     http://jya.com/nsa-crowell.htm