Project Shamrock

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The Project Shamrock (also "Project SHAMROCK") is a sister project of Project Minaret , and was an espionage program of the US secret service NSA . It began in 1945 and was used to record and evaluate all telegrams that crossed the US borders in both directions. Messages within the USA were also intercepted.

The basis of the program was the cooperation of private telegraph companies such as Western Union . They collected the copies of the telegrams, which were first saved on punch cards and then on magnetic tapes , and regularly made them available to the NSA.

history

The program was originally implemented during World War II by the NSA's predecessor organization, the Armed Forces Security Agency , to monitor possible espionage activities by the enemy Axis powers . After the war, however, its continuation was approved by President Harry S. Truman and Attorney General Tom C. Clark . In the 1960s and 1970s it served at the suggestion of the CIA a . a. to monitor the activities of American citizens who spoke out against the Vietnam War , along with projects such as Operation CHAOS .

The project was so secretive that its existence was not revealed until 1975, during the Church Committee's investigation . On August 8, 1975, then-NSA Director Lew Allen, Jr. confirmed to the Pike Committee , an equivalent House Committee to the Church Commission, the existence and practice of the NSA-led surveillance projects:

" The NSA systematically bugged international communications, both voice and cable "

When the committee of inquiry was about to come to its final report, the then President Gerald Ford and the Justice Minister asked Chairman Frank Church not to publish Shamrock and to leave the names of the companies involved undisclosed. The majority of committee members rejected this.

literature

  • James Bamford : NSA. The anatomy of the most powerful secret service in the world (= Goldmann 15151). 3rd edition, full paperback edition. Goldmann, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-442-15151-1 .

swell

  1. ^ "NSA systematically intercepts international communications, both voice and cable " Stoa Report 2000 → point 29

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