In-house newsletters from the clandestine National Security Agency have been released by an online news site, part of the mountain of documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.
The Intercept, whose founding editors were the first to publish documents leaked by Snowden, released on Monday the first batch of nine years' worth of the newsletters, which offer a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the NSA's work. They reveal efforts to eavesdrop on a Russian crime boss, the search in Iraq for possible weapons of mass destruction and help with interrogations at the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
An article in the May 2003 newsletter describes how NSA spent "many months" obtaining the phone number of a Russian organised crime figure so his calls could be intercepted.
The State Department asked the NSA for information on the crime boss, and whether he had any ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin. The man later was convicted of fraud and money laundering and sentenced to 14 years behind bars.
In a newsletter article published on December 22, 2003, an NSA liaison officer recounts a temporary duty assignment at Guantanamo Bay where the task was to provide intelligence to support defence department, CIA and FBI interrogations of detainees picked up from battlefields.
The job entailed relaying information back to NSA, based in Maryland. But sometimes, NSA would share "sensitive NSA-collected technical data" to help the interrogators.
According to Intercept, "Neither the Senate Intelligence Committee's report on the CIA's detention and rendition program (which confirmed the existence of two CIA facilities at Guantanamo) nor a 2008 Senate Armed Services Committee report on detainee abuse by the military addresses the role of the NSA, at least in the heavily censored versions that have been made public."
It was serious business, but in their off hours, NSA liaisons at scenic Guantanamo Bay could visit the "Tiki Bar," or enjoy water sports, such as sailing and snorkelling.
In a more taxing assignment, the newsletter reports on a rendition where six Algerians, linked to a plan to bomb the US Embassy in Sarajevo, were moved from Bosnia to Guantanamo in early 2002.
The US rendition program involved secretly sending foreign captives to other countries that have more lax practices for the humane treatment of detainees.
A Bosnian judge ordered the Algerians released for lack of evidence, but the US persuaded the Bosnian government to turn them over to US custody.
As soon as they were released, the Algerians were to be transported from Sarajevo to another Bosnia city and then on to Guantanamo.
One of the Algerians, Lakhdar Boumediene, went on to file a lawsuit that led to a landmark decision in June 2008 that Guantanamo detainees had the right to challenge their detention in federal court.
Other tales came from NSA's work in Iraq. NSA staffers worked to research the locations for weapons of mass destruction material, although claims about Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction proved to be false.
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