Md. Thursday, May 3, 2001. Competing with a dozen other agencies for intelligence dollars, the NSA, the largest and most secretive of them wants to spread the word about itself - without revealing too much. Once, the National Security Agency insignia, a bald eagle perched on a skeleton key, surveyed a barren terrain of top-secret letterhead, its forbidding stare known only to a privileged few. The NSA's director, Lt. Gen. Michael Hayden, accelerated the change after his 1999 appointment, perhaps most dramatically by making public two lacerating reports on agency deficiencies. The end of the Cold War led some to question the need for a national eavesdropper and subjected intelligence budgets generally to a harder look.
Openness only goes so far.
A European Union team angrily left the United States last week when NSA and CIA officials refused to meet with its members. The team is investigating whether the United States engages in economic espionage. But in recent years, the progenitor of information technology in the 1950s has been lagging behind Silicon Valley. In January 2000, the NSA's overtasked computers shut down for three days. Last year, Congress increased intelligence funding by 7 percent.