NSA MONITORING
Originator: SSCIA
Document date: 09/09/1975
Document type: MEMORANDUM

## Page 1

JFK Assassination System

Identification Form

Date:

717/2015

Agency Information

AGENCY :

RECORD NUMBER :

RECORD SERIES :

AGENCY FILE NUMBER :

SSCIA

157-10014-10187

MISCELLANEOUS RECORDS OF THE CHURCH COMMITTEE

07-M-92

Document Information

ORIGINATOR:

FROM:

TO :

TITLE:

SSCIA

NSA MONITORING

DATE: 09/09/1975

PAGES:

6

SUBJECTS :

WATCH LIST

NSA

DOCUMENT TYPE: MEMORANDUM

CLASSIFICATION: Unclassified

RESTRICTIONS: IC

CURRENT STATUS: Redact

DATE OF LAST REVIEW : 06/26/2000

OPENING CRITERIA :

COMMENTS:

v9.1

NW 66327 Docld:32423575 Page 1

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## Page 2

Date :

08/07/95

Page

1

JFK ASSASSINATION SYSTEM

IDENTIFICATION FORM

AGENCY INFORMATION

AGENCY : SSCIA

RECORD NUMBER

157-10014-10187

RECORDS SERIES

MISCELLANEOUS RECORDS OF THE CHURCH COMMITTEE

AGENCY FILE NUMBER : 07-M-92

DOCUMENT INFORMATION

ORIGINATOR

SSCIA

FROM

TO

TITLE : NSA MONITORING

DATE: 09/09/75

PAGES

6

SUBJECTS : NSA

WATCH LIST

DOCUMENT TYPE : MEMORANDUM

CLASSIFICATION

: UNCLASSIFIED

RESTRICTIONS : REFERRED

CURRENT STATUS

POSTPONED

IN

DATE OF LAST REVIEW

01/19/99

OPENING CRITERIA

COMMENTS :

FULL

[R] - ITEM IS RESTRICTED

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6

INTERVIEW AND MEETING SUMMARY

Page 1 of

INTERVIEW WITH: Mrs. Juanita Moody

DATE/TIME/PLACE: September 9, 1975, 9:30 a.m., NSA

PRESENT:

Eric Richard, Peter Fenn

RE :

NSA Monitoring

IN-

3/14/02

Background

Moody began SIGINT work on April 20, 1943, when she

was

with the Second Signal Service

Battalion.

She began

as a clerk and later, during World War Il worked as a

cryptanalyst.

She then worked for the Army security

Agency,

and later, the

forerunner

to 1961, Moody worked in the Soviet area and analyzed

SIGINT traffic.

In July 1961, she became the head of G

the Nat one are and ely ed o

Armed Forces Security Agency, which

Prior

Group which was the

NSA section responsible for non-

Communist countries.

In 1966, she became head of P Group,

tomer Retauded the cormand center, the Library, and the-

Central Reference service.

In 1973, she became

head of

V Group, which included the responsibilities of P Group,

as well

as research and engineering, requirements, report-

ing, and the NSOC (National SIGINI Operations center) •

Watch List

Moody explained that the term "watch list" was some-

what of a misnomer because it changed in meaning over the

years.

She said the first time that she ever heard the

term

"watch list" was in 1961, and it was in relation to

looking for names of people, reports of meetings, or some

other kind of activity. She recalls, in the early 1960s,

the names of subversives and agents, particularly Soviet,

that CIA had sent to NSA. She has no recollection of any

U.S. citizens being on the watch list in the early 1960s.

In fact, she says that at that time, she was working on

the military aspect of the Cuban problem, and did not keep

FILE:

V

The period during which Moody has the clearest memory!

of change in the way the watch list was conducted was in

1963.

The assassination of John Kennedy provided the im-

petus for the Secret Service's inclusion of American citi

zens who posed threats to the lives of prominent Govern-

ment officials. She recalls meeting with other agencies

during the time the warren come me man et

its report, particularly with CIA and the FBI.

that these

early meetings were somewhat confusing in that

no one in the intelligence community seemed to understand

exactly what NSA dia.

She recommended that P-2, or Cus-

tomer Relations, be established to promote better contact

with the other agencies; this was done to provide direct

support to agencies, Ilke the secret service and the white

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INTERVIEW AND MEETING SUMMARY

Page 2 0f

The Director and Deputy Director were aware of the

early watch list activity.

Moody stated that because the

product, the Director and

Deputy Director took a major

role in

put on the watch list, Moody is sure that the Director

the activity. When names of American citizens wed

Deputy Director did know of this activity.

As for the

General Counsel, Moody was not sure about his knowledge.

Moody has no personal recollection of names coming in

from the Office of Security.

She stated that she inter-

faced mostly with the other

agency users and would not

have had responsibility for communications with the Office

of Security.

Asked about the submission of names by telephone,

Moody stated that this may have happened before the for-

malization of the procedure in 1969; after 1969, any name

coming in by telephone would have to be followed by written

authorization from the requesting agency.

The Yarborough cable of October 1967 signaled the

first time that U.S. citizens and groups associated with

black and antiwar movements were expressly put on the

watch list. She does recall the Yarborough cable coming

in on a weekend and the reply from General Carter the next

week.

At the time the cable came in, Moody discussed it

with a Colonel William Hamilton.

Hamilton questioned the

legality and propriety of the task requested by Yarborough.

Moody and Hamilton then decided not to implement the re-

quest until the Director approved it, which he did before

authorizing a reply.

Moody recognized her initials on the Carter response

and the date of June 19, 1969.

She could not recall why

she initialed that document at that late date,

although

it may have related to the MINARET charter, which was

written in July 1969. Moody cannot recall

any meetings

or discussions with anybody in the Defense Department,

CIA, or FBI about the Yarborough cable.

In fact,

she

said

she

never talked to Yarborough about anything.

She was

under the impression, however,.

that there was

a Presidentfal

order to the Secretary of Defense to keep track of civil

disturbances, and the Secretary of Defense had tasked the

Army to do that

monitoring.

The Carter response to the Yarborough cable was

familiar to Moody, but she could not recalt haying any

involvement in its production. She noted that

was listed as the document drafter. (We later

spent

about five minutes talking with

did state that she was involved in sending out that

cable. Burns stated that Carter probably either dictated

FILE:

JFK Act 5 (g)(2)(D)

5

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INTERVIEW AND MEETING SUMMARY

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6

it to her or gave her the essential points that he wanted FILE:

in the cable, and she then wrote it up.

Burns stated

that she was

quite sure that the telegram was sent to

Yarborough and to the other individuals on the u.s.

Intelligence Board. She cannot recall any meetings or

communications during that time between Carter and

Yarborough regarding civil disturbances).

Moody could not recall anything being included on the

watch list directly as a result of Yarborough's telegram.

She did not know of any names of people or organizations

that came along with the Yarborough cable. In addition,

she could not recall any specific

response other than the

Carter memorandum to Yarborough's telegram; she recalled

no SIGINI every being supplied.

Moody does not recall

any meetings within NSA that resulted from the Yarborough

cable.

Moody stated

that it was during this mid-late 1960s

period that NSA began to develop a fairly sophisticated

computer capability to do dictionary scans.

The initial

effort was focused on a pilot project related to Cuban

diplomatic links, and probably began in 1962-1963.

she said that it

took many years to develop the capability

to the point where the computers could scan a large num-

ber of messages.

Moody recalls that names began to come in to the P

Group from the FBI, CIA, Secret Service, and possibly

from the military services and DIA.

She does not recall

any names of individuals from the Army ACS(I) or from

the State Department, although Ambassador Höffacker was

Chairman of the Terrorism Committee

and may have submitted

names that related to it. As for the Bureau of Narcotics

and Dangerous Drugs, their submissions did not start

coming in until about 1970, and then with assurances from

Director Ingersoll that the material would not be used

to prosecute drug traffickers.

Moody stated that NSA

does not have "any law enforcement function."

red than.

She did

concede, however, that NSA could have intercepted com-

nunications which could have been used in apprehending

drug traffickers.

Moody stated emphatically that there

were never any names sent from state or local police, and,

had there been, NSA would not have accepted them. This

would have been a clear law enforcement function.

When asked about the 4-page, roughly-typed document:

Moody said that she did not author it, but speculated

that there were two people in her office who may have --

Joel Parks and Ross Hirshfield.

She recognized the lan-

guage in it, but could not pinpoint where the list of

names and organizations had come from.

4

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INTERVIEW AND MEETING SUMMARY

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6

When questioned about project MINARET and the reasons FILE:

for it, Moody stated that she sensed the sensitivity of

tecting the need to know."

one need to conna t he charter:

In a sense, she was "pro-

The charter was probably pre-

pared within her office,

but she cannot recall preparing

it herself.

It was approved by the Director, as were all

other

materials relating to the watch list.

She stated

that "Gayler was informed

on a day-to-day basis about

the watch list activities."

She stated that she even

took a specially-colored folder containing watch list

product to Gayler every day.

In addition, MINARET was discussed with and approved

by the Secretary of Defense.

Evidently, there was no

approval by the White House. The post-MINARET period did

not result in any substantive change in NSA's operation

with regard to monitoring U.S. dissidents.

Moody does

not recall any questioning about the legality of the

monitoring operation during this period.

Questioned about the scope of the project, moody

stated that all monitoring was a result of a USIB require-

ment and that it was also in response to another agency's

Moody confirmed that there was a total

of 1100 names of U.S. citizens and groups on the watch

list; the largest number at any one time totaled about

300.

Moody had no recollection of how much product was

generated each

month, nor how much was disseminated to

other agencies.

She

did say that there was never any

great amount of material, and that it was a small portion

of their SIGINT effort.

In terms of what material was

disseminated to which

agencies, Moody said that it depended

upon their requirement; anything related to foreign con-

nections with domestic

activities would be sent to clA,

and the product regarding domestic groups would be sent

to FBI. Obviously, if an agency had submitted a name,

they would have received the product on that name.

In terms of the value of the product, Moody said

efforts. "

She stated that some NSA take was purportedly

help save Henry Kissinger's life as well as that

of Undersecretary Sisco.

Moody was unclear as to when the General Counsel's

office first became aware of the watch list, but knew

that Lew Tordella informed both the General

Counsel at

CIA and DoD about

the watch list in 1973.

3

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INTERVIEW AND MEETING SUMMARY

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Moody was asked about the activities during the

Huston Plan and IEC periods.

she stated that certainly

G Group was involved in some of the efforts that related

to the Huston Plan; both Buffham

and Nunno from her shop

participated in those activities.

In fact, she recalls

a proposal to change the charter

of NSA.so

that the

Agency could target domestic citizens without having to

worry about the foreign communications caveat.

Moody

stated that if NSA were asked to monitor activities of

radicals domestically, and the charter was changed, they

would "carry out what

we were told

Moody recounted for us the dialogue between Henry

Petersen of Justice and Ed Rudolph and Tordella on the

legality of the NSA watch list.

She said that it was the

opinion of the Justice Department that the activities

against American citizens should be halted.

She stated

that this was a confusing period because for awhile they

thought all watch list activity was supposed to be stopped,

including that directed against foreigners.

Moody recalled that some of the watch list files were

destroyed in January 1974 and that she participated in

that decision.

It was decided that most of their material

should probably not be kept for a period of over five

The destruction of drug files was due to the fact

that that effort had ceased in 1973 and NSA saw no need

for that material.

As for the different attitudes ex-

pressed over the

watch list material, she attributed that

to the post-Watergate atmosphere.

She also stated that

Tordella may have been talking with the General Counsel

FILE:

Asked about the watch list product, Moody stated

that most of it was printer traffic and

very little was

voice.

She does remember that the general requirement to

look at people involved in civil disturbances was pro-

bably sent to the voice

intercept stations.

But she has

no personal knowledge of this, and she would not have

tasked them specifically.

To her knowledge, most hits

were

processed, ana no individuals or groups

were not

sent to any particular agency.

In terms of the biographic information included in

the footnotes, Moody said that most of it came from in-

ternal sources; C-5 and some from CIA. She does not re-

call ever calling, or knowing of anybody calling the FBI

to get information

to puton a piece of watch list product.

Moody was asked about the memorandum that she sent

out in May 1970 which instructed all agencies to re-

affirm their interest in the watch list product. The

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INIERVIEW AND MEETING SUMMARY

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6

primary reason for that memorandum, according to Moody,

was that she was instructed to keep records on who gets

what.

Also, the "customer wanting everything" attitude

is a

continual problem at NSA, according to Moody.

Both the Director and Deputy Director knew about

sending out that memorandum.

She did recall that there

may have been a question at the time of the possible im-

portance of the product, but doubted that there was ques-

tioning of the legality of the activity in 1970.

Finally, Moody stressed that the highest levels of

NSA were informed at all times about the watch list

activity; she expressly stated that the perishable nature

of SIGINT information caused them to be particularly

attentive.

There was a specific concern for any divulging

of

the SIGINT source.

FILE:

bcm

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