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one account pairs of men, one FBI, the other NSA, would visit the cable companies very early each morning to pick up stacks of accumulated cables. Cooperating employees were paid fifty dollars a week. Technology evolved. The cable companies switched from punched paper strips to magnetic tape recordings. They were happy to continuecooperating, but reluctant to relinquish the tapes. The code-breakers suddenly needed to make copies of the tapes, which meant a physical presence in New York City. Deputy Director Louis Tordella of NSA met with CIA’s Tom Karamessines on August 18, 1966. From September 1 until August 31, 1973, the CIA’s Project LP/Medley furnished NSA with corporate cover and office space in lower Manhattan. There the code-breakers made their copies. The FBI also continued to bring NSA “drop copies” of cables until 1973. The NSA finally canceled Shamrock in May 1975.
    The second NSA initiative was known as Project Minaret. This activity aimed to intercept telephonic conversations, not written communications. It began under President Kennedy as an effort to collect information on individuals talking to people in Cuba. Minaret expanded. Following the Kennedy assassination, the Secret Service asked NSA to monitor the phones of persons it considered threats to the president. So NSA created its own watch list. Instead of simply tapping phone circuits to Cuba, with the advent of electronic switching, microwave relay, and satellite transmission, Fort Meade could program its computers to eavesdrop on calls from specific telephone numbers and pull the signals right out of the air. On October 20, 1967, during an antiwar demonstration at the Pentagon, army intelligence asked the NSA to listen in on the calls of political activists. Lieutenant General Marshall S. Carter, who had been John McCone’s deputy when Minaret began, and who had then moved over to head the NSA, received the request. He agreed. The army added its own names to the watch list.
    Political dissenters were suddenly major targets. The FBI became one of Fort Meade’s best customers. It put 1,000 Americans on the Minaret watch list—almost 60 percent of the total—along with 1,700 foreign persons and groups. An NSA criterion was that one side of the phone conversation had to be abroad. There were few, if any, antiwar protestsplanned by transatlantic telephone. Despite the wide net, as with mail-opening, the take proved paltry. FBI intelligence chief W. Raymond Wannall later told investigators, “The feeling is that there was very little in the way of good product as a result of our having supplied names to NSA.” 27
    Meanwhile, new clients lined up. The Defense Intelligence Agency added a small number of persons to the watch list. The CIA’s Project Chaos made contributions too. The Secret Service’s slice of the pie, which peaked in 1970–1971, included 180 Americans and another 525 foreign individuals or groups. Individuals were added or removed from the watch list under criteria that remain secret even today. At any given time the denizens of Fort Meade were eavesdropping on about 800 Americans. By July 1969, just before Carter left, Minaret business had become substantial enough that he promulgated a formal charter for it. Minaret, like Chaos, was above Top Secret, in this case handled over signals intelligence channels even though no codebreaking was involved. The take included both phone material and Shamrock messages that seemed relevant. Minaret reports were hand-carried and went out with no mention of the National Security Agency. They were supposed to be used for background only. But the breadth was extensive—NSA was to collect information on individuals or organizations whose activity “may” lead to civil disturbances or in any other way “subvert” national security. 28
    The Nixon administration supplied a new element. Richard Nixon was the president who first declared war on