Troubling look at U.S. surveillance policy in "The Shadow Factory"

"The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America"

by James Bamford

Doubleday, 395 pp., $27.95

In 1961, President Dwight Eisenhower warned the U.S. that the "military-industrial complex," his term for the armed forces and their suppliers, posed a threat to democracy.

Now journalist James Bamford is sounding a variation on Eisenhower's theme. In "The Shadow Factory," he cautions that the "surveillance-industrial complex" has been undermining the privacy, and potentially the liberty, of Americans.

Federal security agencies and their private-sector allies, such as AT&T, have snooped on telephone calls and e-mail and combed through electronic records of Americans' personal data on a gigantic scale, often in defiance of the law.

Government officials wanted to learn where targeted Americans shopped, "what they bought, what movies they saw, what books they read, the toll booths they went through, the plane tickets they purchased, the hotels they stayed in, and the restaurants where they ate," Bamford writes.

Far from decrying the surveillance, President George W. Bush promoted it, calling it necessary for hunting down terrorists akin to those responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks. At the heart of the book is the question of whether such anti-terrorist programs pose a greater risk to American ideals than do the country's enemies.

"There is now the capacity to make tyranny total in America," writes Bamford, the author of three earlier books on U.S. intelligence agencies. "Only law ensures that we never fall into that abyss — the abyss from which there is no return."

Bamford isn't the first to report the central development around which he builds his new book: Bush's secret decision that allowed the National Security Agency to spy on people inside the U.S., including citizens, without first seeking court clearances that were required by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978.

A special court to approve warrants under FISA had rarely failed to give government investigators the clearances they sought. But the Bush administration, after Sept. 11, didn't want investigators slowed down by the permitting process. Until he finally sought changes in the law, which was amended this year, Bush just chose to defy it.

AT&T and other private companies cooperated as the NSA tapped into Americans' communications, and an industry grew up to supply equipment needed by the spies. For example, Verint Systems, a company founded by a former Israeli intelligence officer, has built "bigger and better bugs," Bamford says.

The eavesdropping drew public scrutiny after leaks from government officials troubled by the program led to news coverage. After sitting on the story for more than a year, according to Bamford, The New York Times broke it in December 2005. The coverage won a 2006 Pulitzer Prize for two Times reporters.

After court battles over the exposed program, the Bush administration said it would follow the FISA law. Instead, the administration sought, and won, amendments from Congress. The changes gave immunity from lawsuits to the telecom companies involved in eavesdropping, weakened the FISA court and provided the NSA a freer hand in some matters, though the agency is still required to seek warrants to target Americans.

While the book has extensive notes, it isn't always clear how the author learned what he reports. He writes that "many courageous people" who aided him must go unnamed. The book also requires patience. The first section, juxtaposing the actions of the intelligence agencies and terrorists before Sept. 11, never builds any suspense because we know what's going to happen.

But at times, as in a chapter called "Extremis," Bamford marshals fascinating detail. Those pages convey not only the horrors of the Iraq war but also the practical challenges faced by intelligence agencies forced to comply with the original FISA law. By the end, Bamford has distilled a troubling chapter in American history.