Louis W. Tordella

Louis W. Tordella

Louis "Lou" W. Tordella (born May 1, 1911 in Garrett , DeKalb County , Indiana , † January 10, 1996 ) was Vice Director of the National Security Agency (NSA) from August 1, 1958 to April 21, 1974 . The supercomputer building in Fort George G. Meade (seat of the NSA) is named after him.

Second World War

In the summer of 1941, Tordella, then 30, had been working as an assistant professor of mathematics at Loyola University Chicago . He volunteered at the nearby 5th Army headquarters. While the US Army rejected him, the Navy welcomed him with open arms.

First Tordella worked in Washington in April 1942 for the Navy OP-20-G , from July 1942 in Bainbridge Island, also Washington, to intercept Japanese communications and in 1944 on Skaggs Island near San Francisco. He was discharged from military service in October 1946 after the end of World War II and took a position as a civil mathematician with the Navy's deciphering service , then Communications Supplementary Activity - later Naval Security Group. When the NSA was founded in 1952, he became head of the NSA-70 division. Since Tordella was on good terms with Richard Helms , then Chief of Operations and later director of the CIA , Gordon A. Blake used him as a mediator between the two secret services in the early years of the NSA.

literature

• James Bamford : NSA: the anatomy of the world's most powerful intelligence agency . C. Bertelsmann Verlag , Munich 2001, ISBN 3-570-15151-4 .

swell

1. ↑ James Bamford : NSA: the anatomy of the most powerful intelligence agency in the world . C. Bertelsmann Verlag, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-570-15151-4 . P. 104ff.
2. ↑ Biography of Dr. Louis W. Tordellas at the NSA ( Memento of March 7, 2004 in the Internet Archive )