How I almost didn't work at the NSA

I served as an Arabic linguist at the National Security Agency for four years after 9/11, after which point I resigned to the quieter, but no less stressful, life of a public high school teacher. Here's the story of how I tried, failed, and then succeeded in becoming an Intelligence officer at the NSA.

Like so many people, I sat watching the news on September 11, 2001 in pure shock. I gave blood the next day, like thousands of concerned citizens around the country who simply wanted to do something, anything, in response to this senseless tragedy.

I also saw that the major television news outlets were running a ticker at the bottom of the screen, telling anyone with expertise in Arabic language to consider sending their resumes to the intelligence agencies. I just happened to have expertise in that area. I had my PhD in Biblical Hebrew with a minor in Arabic from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

And so, out of duty and patriotism, I sent my resume online to the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency. It was the least I could do. I mean, after all, we had been attacked and we also expected a follow-on attack imminently.

September 11, 2001 was a Tuesday. I sent my resume online to the NSA that Thursday the 13th. On Sunday, I received a reply. I got an email from the NSA asking me to call a number within 72 hours for an initial interview.  I assumed that this initial interview would involve some test of the language abilities I had claimed in my resume.

I left nothing to chance. I didn’t call immediately, because I wanted to brush up on my Arabic skills and be the best I could possibly be for the test I assumed I was about to face. And so, after 48 hours of non-stop study, I called the number I had been sent. I was ready for anything.

“Hello?”
“Yes, um, I was sent an email to call this number for an initial interview.”
“Your Social Security Number, please?”
I provided it.
“You’re Keith Massey?”
“Yes.”
I braced myself. The language test was surely about to begin.
“I just have a few questions for you. First, are you a US Citizen?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, good. Secondly, have you ever sold illegal drugs?”
“Um, no. Never.”
“Good. We’ll be getting in touch with you to arrange for your formal language testing here at the NSA as soon as possible.”

And that was it! Here I was assuming they would test my language abilities over the phone, but all they were really doing in that first call was weeding out unacceptable candidates. Notice, they didn’t ask me if I had ever used illegal drugs. Youthful indiscretions do not necessarily disqualify one from a Top Secret clearance. But trafficking in the stuff, well, that invalidates one forever.

They sent me an email with all the information I needed to make arrangements to travel to the NSA for my language testing. I seemed to be dealing ostensibly with a travel agency, but I imagined that the enterprise was probably something devoted solely to NSA recruitment activities. Over the phone with this travel agency, someone proposed potential dates of travel, less than a month in the future. I was informed that a shuttle at the airport would then take me to a hotel not far from an NSA facility called the Friendship Annex (FANX), where my testing would take place.

Still leaving nothing to chance, I studied hours on end in the couple of weeks I had before my formal testing. I particularly spent considerable time working on my listening and comprehension skills, which had always been the weakest part of my language abilities.

First Visit to the NSA

Flying in the month immediately after 9/11 was somewhat surreal. There were armed National Guard soldiers all over Dane County Regional Airport in Madison, something I had never seen there before. Recall that prior to 9/11 there was no TSA. Each airport ran its own provincial security operation with little consistency or even rigor. I used to have a large jackknife attached to my keys. And every time I flew before 9/11, I would put that thing with my keys in a little bowl to pass around the x-ray machine before I went through. You see, they were only trying to screen for guns and bombs. And I can remember wondering why in the world it was okay for me to be bringing a large blade onto the plane. It took a disaster to make America realize that we shouldn’t have allowed such things on planes after all.

As we were taxiing to the runway for my first flight, from Madison to Chicago, a man went berserk and was screaming that he needed to get off the plane. We taxied back and he was removed. This, of course, prompted all the other passengers to become concerned that the man in question might know something the rest of us didn’t. We were told that the man would be detained at the airport until we had safely arrived in Chicago.

From Chicago it was direct to Baltimore/Washington International Airport. After getting settled into my hotel room, I did some last minute language study in preparation for the next day.

The tests were two-fold. First, I translated a written passage. I had access to a dictionary, which both surprised and relieved me. Then there was a listening passage to translate. I’ll admit that I was additionally surprised that at the Top Secret and technologically advanced National Security Agency, this portion of the test used cassette players and tapes. I was physically hitting rewind on a machine to roll tape back to re-listen to the passage!

When it was all over, I felt very good about the text translation and not so good about the listening portion. There had been several spots in the recording where, despite listening to it over and over again, I couldn’t make out anything that seemed to make sense. And with time running out, I ended up putting down something I knew wasn’t completely correct, but that was better than leaving a hole in my translation.

The Results Come In

About a week after my testing, I got an email from the NSA. The message informed me that I had passed the graphic part of their exam (reading and translating), but that I had not passed the listening portion. And for that reason they would not pursue my potential employment any further.

I’m going to admit that I was deeply disappointed by this news. I had come to really anticipate serving my country at the NSA. It had been a few years since I finished my PhD and I had tried to keep up my Arabic skills, but I guess it wasn’t enough.

Then everything suddenly changed again. A few days after the bad news, I got a call back that they were creating a program for certain select people that had passed only one of the required skills. They would hire us and then strengthen the deficient skill once we started work at the NSA. On the basis of my advanced degrees and other scholarship, I had been selected for this program. And so, they sent me all the documents I needed to fill out for the security background check.

What a roller-coaster of emotions the whole experience had been up to that point! I mean, first off, this was all happening in the days following 9/11, with the fear of follow-on attacks, and then the Anthrax Scare. What I’ve described thus far was also happening against the backdrop of preparations for and execution of the US invasion of Afghanistan. I had experienced the stress of immediately post-9/11 air travel. There was the excitement of the whole application and testing process. Then there was the crushing disappointment of failure. And now there was the sudden elation that this adventure was back on track.

Second Visit to the NSA

In January I was flown back for my polygraph test. I was once again at the FANX. I’ll admit, I was very nervous, since I had never experienced such a thing before. My polygrapher wrapped this stuff like coiled telephone wire around my chest to measure my respiration. There was a little cuff on my finger to test perspiration. A blood pressure cuff was put on me as well.

And he proceeded to ask me questions such as “Are you now or have you ever been a member of an organization plotting the overthrow of the United States Government?”

“Nope, I am not.”

I answered everything truthfully, but at one point the guy tells me that the test indicated that I was evasive on questions regarding whether I had ever sold illegal drugs. We even had a little showdown in which he said he would wait as long as it took for me to just admit that I had once sold illegal drugs. And I wasn’t going to, since it simply wasn’t true.

He eventually unhooked me and I assumed my chances of working at the NSA were finished. Just as I left the room, however, a man stopped me and told me that failing an initial polygraph is not uncommon and he would rebook my flights to keep me there an extra day so I could try again the next day.

For that first polygraph test, I had dressed in slacks, a shirt, and a tie. The second time, I went in a t-shirt and sweat pants. I knew I just needed to relax. I had a different polygrapher, which is standard practice. And I passed.

I was informed in the middle of February that I had my Top Secret clearance, but that they would not be equipped to bring in new employees until the middle of June. I was in one of the very first new “classes” of NSA agents after 9/11. I was sworn in on Monday, June 17, 2002.

And I could not possibly have imagined, as I raised my right hand and took an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States, that just two years later, on June 17, 2004, I would be standing in Iraq looking at the first of three moons I would see there.

Life Lessons on the Way to the NSA

I had studied Arabic very intensely while working on my PhD. But from the time I was last formally in an Arabic class until the moment I sat down for the NSA tests was a period of eight years. If I had done nothing with my Arabic in the intervening time, I would not have succeeded. But I had regularly reviewed everything I learned and even managed to expand my vocabulary base.

Even so, as I described, it still nearly wasn’t enough! If they had not decided to admit people passing only one of the linguistic skills, well, I guess I wouldn’t be writing this post!

A part of me thinks that subconsciously I knew the day would come when Arabic would change my life. There would be a few months in which I would kind of let things slide. And then, as if in a panic, I would head back into my studies. Perhaps God was whispering in my ear that I needed to stay sharp for the momentous time to come. But after the fact, I knew that nothing truly valuable comes easily. I had kept my language skills strong through long hours of hard work. Whatever you want in life, you must be prepared to work hard for it and earn it.

I also certainly had to learn how to cope with disappointment. I had initially applied out of duty, but I soon wanted very badly to succeed in the application process. And I would spend a couple of days needing to come to terms with my failure to achieve that goal, before I then learned I was being given a second chance.
A final lesson I had to learn in the process of applying for government service was patience. Like so many Americans after 9/11, I wanted in the fight. I wanted to do my part. And it would turn out that I happened to have skills of crucial importance to that cause. But the reality is that the world sometimes just moves very slowly. The NSA got by in the early days after 9/11 by calling a bunch of retired people back into service part time. And they did indeed mobilize immediately to ramp up for a major effort. But the sheer logistics of it—where would these new employees have their desks, how to buy and install all the infrastructure these people would work with—these things took time. Indeed, these things took months.

When I finally came in the door, some of those returned retirees were still around. And the fact is, I learned many important lessons about the mission of being an Arabic linguist at the NSA from them before they were phased out as the new hires were coming in. So it all worked out for the best.

Starting Work on the Inside

I would confirm the confidence they placed in me by hiring me after failing one of their pre-employment tests. Just a month after I started, following a month-long course they sent me to, I passed that failed test with a 96%. 

The NSA took a chance on me. I mean, what if they had hired me and then I never did develop the ability to perform listening skills operationally? And the takeaway is that, in both our personal and professional lives, it pays off to have a certain tolerance of others’ weaknesses. Giving people the chance to improve, even after they have failed, can be a wise investment in potential resources for the future.

But another lesson I learned for myself is that one really can hone a skill by intense and intentional practice. Here I am reminded of a Latin quote:

assiduus usus, uni rei deditus, et ingenium et artem, saepe vincit. Constant practice, given to one thing, often beats both genius and talent.[1]
 
My linguistic strengths still primarily reside in grammar and translation. I just don’t have a natural talent for listening and comprehending a foreign language. But I was able to make up for that deficit by applying myself specifically in the area of my weakness.

So whatever skill you believe would advance your personal and professional life, get to work! Work on it even a little bit each day. Take personal responsibility that it is up to you to sharpen your skills, and become the person who will succeed.

[1] Cicero, Pro Balbo 45.



This post is an excerpt from my latest book, Top Secrets: Lessons for Success from the World of Espionage. It is available on Kindle and paperback.

I'm Coffeed Out!

I just made the statement, "I'm coffeed out," when my wife asked me if I would like another cup. 

And I suddenly found myself wondering whether this phrase, which I am certain I learned from my late father, might be an idiolectic utterance specific just to my family.

A simple Google search revealed that it's in wide use, Note the following example:

"I'm coffeed out. Would you like a soda, something cold?"
(P. 146, Deja Vu (Sisterhood Novels) by Fern Michaels)

As a linguist, the phrase is quite curious and worthy of discussion.

First off, it seems to have been coined by analogy to "I'm tired out." Or "I'm tuckered out." And so it means, "I am in the state of having drunk so much coffee that I am tired of the stuff and do not want any more of it currently."

 (I add, "currently" because anyone who can drink so much coffee that they get coffeed out will certainly be drinking more of the stuff within another day.)

I am assuming that the phrase "Coffeed Out" is the original coinage. As I reflected on the phrase, it didn't seem to me, at least by personal usage, that it had extended to other beverages. But a Google search showed me to be quite mistaken. Note the following examples.

"Maybe a Rémy, just to cap it off? I mean, I'm wined out; but just, I don't know, a taste of cognac?"
("Balto", p. 9, in Wild Child and Other Stories by T.C. Boyle)

And check out this double treat on the paradigm:

"How's your day at work?" Dan says when he rings me later that afternoon.
 "I'm completely champagned out," I laugh, already battling a headache from drinking far too much in the middle of the day. "Yours?"
"I'm beered out," he says. "Taken out for celebratory drinks at lunchtime.
(P. 57, The Other Woman by Jane Green)

The phrase seems to find its natural boundaries only with beverages one over-drinks to physical detriment. You really would never say "I'm milked out" to mean that you can't drink one more glass of the state beverage from my native Wisconsin.  Nor is anyone "watered out" when they no longer need to hydrate.

Anyway, as I've been writing this, I've been sipping shots of tsuica, a distillation made from plums that we smuggled in our checked luggage from Romania. 

And since I'm now tsuicaed out, I'll close here. And a Google search has revealed that there is about to be only one place on the Internet or published world where the phrase "tsuicaed out" can be found.

Fun With Grammar!

Whenever my Latin students say, "Dr. Massey, I have a question," I respond, "Is it a Latin-based question?" If the answer is in the affirmative, I chime, "That's my favorite kind!"

Now, what I really mean is any question linguistic or grammatical in nature. If, for instance, an Arab student were to ask me about the formation of a maSdar with an irregular verb, it makes my day!  And my Saturday today was brightened by a dear friend enlisting my native speaker instinct regarding a question within, mirabile dictu, an English test administered in China.

Here's the question and the possible answers:

Wasn't it the icy road rather than the
drivers ______ responsible for the accident?

a. that was      b. who were    c. which were 
d. who was 

This is a classic case of congruency conflict when you face intervening material. The phrase "rather than the drivers" is an aside. It could be put in parentheses. If we take it out of the equation, the answer A is obviously correct. The problem is, on a psycholinguistic level, it's very difficult to keep track of antecedents when you insert material as this sentence does. My native speaker instinct is to prefer B, even though I know as a linguist that A is the "correct" answer.


But, on further reflection, I'm more interested in how the fronting of the verb in an English negative question essentially negates the negative!


I had not considered this before. Here's the issue. Exhibit A:

The icy road was not responsible for the accident.

In this sentence, the icy road is fully exonerated.

But note, we can shuffle the same words to create a question and reverse the sense. Exhibit B:

Was not the icy road responsible for the accident?

Guilty as charged, icy road!

And I suspect that when I, as a native speaker, prefer B above, it's because the very structure of the sentence disinclines me from A because of the inelegant verb repetition:

Wasn't it the icy road that was...

Yuck!

At any rate, as a linguist who has successfully acquired a proficiency in a number of languages, I believe the question above, however grammatically interesting, is a pedagogical absurdity.

Getting this "right" or "wrong" will in no way further promote the ability of these students to arrive at a functional speaking ability of the English language.

Perchance to dream, to fart?

It is the dream of historical linguists to prove a connection between language families not previously provably related. And I wonder,  this evening, if I have  stumbled on a previously unconsidered correspondence between the Semitic language family and Indo-European. This would be a revolutionary contribution to linguistic science, if proven. And the key to the whole thing, was the word for farting.

So, this morning I was explaining deponent verbs to a couple of highly motivated Latin students, when the conversation naturally turned to farting. Oh, it's actually quite a direct, and interesting, linguistic route.

Latin deponent verbs are active in meaning, but passive in form. They are the last vestige in Latin of what Classical Greek preserved of a full blown verb mood, called Middle. The Middle Mood is used when you want to describe an action as being done in one's own interest. 

The perfect example is the Greek verb perdomai (πέρδομαι), to fart. It's frozen in the Middle Mood because, after all, in who else's interest would you ever do that? (Historical linguistic giant Andrew Sihler used this example in a course I was privileged to take from him at the University of Wisconsin.)

And I recall Dr. Sihler further noting that this verb is one of the most widely attested throughout the spectrum of Indo-European languages. Following normal phonological shifts, the English word fart is cognate to the Greek. Latin preserves it as pedere. In Sanskrit, the verb to fart is pardate. Russian preserves it as perdet' (пердеть).

This leaves us with the exciting news that, with great confidence, we can reconstruct the fact that, perhaps ten thousand years ago, a proto-Indo-European speaker chatting around a campfire let one fly and someone vocalized the root *pard in response. (I've sided with the vowel 'a' as original because the Germanic and Indic families are geographically separated, hence similarity between them points to originality.)

Anyway, when a linguist sets his or her mind to the matter of farting, quite naturally one finds themselves exploring other language families. I recalled the interesting fact that Arabic attests verbal roots for farting with noise, DarT ( ضرط ) and silently fasaa ( فسا  ).  DarT suddenly grabbed my attention because it seemed to share structural similarities to the Indo-European root for the same concept.

And this got me thinking. If the same word survived so well in Indo-European, might not the same word have maintained equal vigor even deeper in time? What if the similarities between Arabic DarT and PIE *pard are evidence of a connection between the two families?

Alright. Out of pure fun, let's see if any other words preserve an initial Arabic Daad and initial Latin or Greek 'p' (or English 'f').

So, I got home today and ran upstairs to retrieve my beautiful hard-bound copy of Wehr's Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic. 

Here's the volume in question. It's listed new on Amazon at about a hundred bucks.

I'm going to admit in this post that I basically stole this volume from the NSA. I was issued this book when I went to work there in 2002. When I was ready to

leave in 2006, I asked a co-worker what I was supposed to do with this beautiful book that had seen me through thick and thin--catching terrorists--spying on, well, not Angela Merkel, but, well, maybe [name removed by censor]. He told me that, in light of all my service to my country, which included time in Iraq in 2004, I should take that volume home and continue to serve my country with it through academic pursuits.

Heartfelt words from a man whose friendship I still cherish. But he didn't have the authority to tell me to take that book out of the building. So I stole it.

I will say, I rather doubt I could have successfully written Intermediate Arabic for Dummies without that dictionary. And I've spoken quite favorably about my former employer in multiple places. I don't expect them to come looking for that book.

Anyway, I began to look at Daad initial Arabic roots, with a mind toward comparing them to Greek and Latin initial 'p' (or English 'f').

Early in the dictionary, I find the following:

Arabic - Da'ula ( ضؤل  ), to be small, meager

It would be intriguing to compare this to Latin paulus, meaning 'little, small'.

I mean, these words are identical in every way with the exception of the same Daad-'P' correspondence that the words for fart displayed. 

Dr. Sihler had taught me that a proven correspondence requires no less than three really good examples. As far as I'm concerned, I have two toward proving a relationship between Semitic and Indo-European.

And I thought, OMG! What if I'm really on to something here?

I explored further. I find the Arabic word Darima, to catch fire. 

Here again, an intriguing potential correspondence with Indo-European. We've got the Greek word pyr (as in pyre, pryrotechnics), as well as English fire. 

Now, do the above correspondences prove these two language families are distantly related? Of course not. But I find them intriguing. 

There are other correspondences that have been noted in the past. The Indo-European family has words that begin with n- for negation (no, non, ne, etc), while the Semitic word for 'no' begins with l- (laa, Arabic, lo, Hebrew). Combine that with the words for night--Arabic layla and Latin nox, and you have another interesting potential correspondence. 

In the final analysis, it is hoped that genetic testing will yet describe the various ways humans are related one to another. And that may also help us hone our search for distant linguistic connections. In the meantime, I humbly offer these observations in the hope that perhaps even the word for fart could further the cause of human knowledge.

The NSA: Back in the News!

The Washington Post this morning is publishing the claim that the "NSA broke privacy rules thousands of times per year, audit finds." This claim is on the basis of yet another document that Edward Snowden stole from his previous employer.

I'm a former Arabic linguist at the NSA, and I've argued in another post that Snowden didn't entirely understand the documents he stole. This is certainly another case of that, and the WP's title seems to want readers to also misunderstand the true significance of the leaked document.

Let's parse just the title:

"AUDIT FINDS"

The word "FINDS" for many people implies the discovery of

something that was intended to be hidden and not found. That is not the case here. If this were an independent entity that went into the NSA, found evidence of breaking the rules, and then wrote an audit report, you could then state "AUDIT FINDS." But this was an internal audit (which the full article does state), as required by law. Far from hiding this information, the NSA carefully preserved it and compiled it into a detailed report!  A more accurate description would be "INTERNAL AUDIT DISCLOSES." Granted, it wasn't (for obvious reasons) disclosed publicly, but it was disclosed, as required by law, to the appropriate oversight bodies governing the Intelligence Agencies.

"BROKE PRIVACY RULES"

Again, the word "BROKE" is interpreted by most people to imply that someone knowingly did something they know they were not supposed to do. Players in sports "BREAK THE RULES" in order to win, but they hope they don't get caught. The exact opposite is true of the activities described in this document. 

The report carefully and comprehensively describes exactly how technical and human errors resulted in the inadvertent collection of  electronic communication associated with US Citizens. So this document certainly proves that the NSA is NOT, in fact, engaging in wholesale, widespread surveillance of Americans.

A reader pointed out that I did not provide an alternative to this title. The most accurate description of the incidents the NSA disclosed in this internal audit would be:

VIOLATED EO 12333 CHARTER

Readers may be surprised, given my overall positive tone towards the NSA, that I would use the word VIOLATED. But, despite all other nuances, VIOLATED does not imply cognizant wrong-doing the same way BROKE THE RULES does. The NSA is charged, per Executive Order 12333 to collect foreign intelligence. Any collection of the communications of a US Citizen, even if inadvertent or through human error or, in the case of the S2A51 office, insufficient review of targets, is a violation of that charter. Full disclosure of such violations is required by law, and these leaked documents demonstrate that the NSA exercises due diligence in this area.

Later in the article there is a link to another leaked document, with the title:

FISA Court finds illegal surveillance

Again this title is quite misleading if you read the actual leaked document in question.  "FINDS" implies the NSA was hiding it and FISA found them out. 

illegal surveillance

Read the document. The word "ILLEGAL" does not appear. In fact, FISA rules that certain collection methods were "deficient on statutory and constitutional grounds." But this followed the NSA clearly submitting all of its activities to the FISA court for examination. It is quite telling, in fact, that the FISA court did not order the immediate termination of this collection, rather gave the NSA time to pursue other approaches. The NSA quite deferentially states here that they will submit their proposed solutions to the judge and then comply with whatever the judge decides. The title implies that the NSA was doing something illegal and got caught. Rather, the document describes an agency under strict oversight adjusting its functions in accordance with deferential respect for legal authorities.

As long as I have you here, it's not every day that a former NSA Agent turned author has a chance to plug his books in the wake of a media frenzy! So here's my post in which I get over my shyness at shameless self-promotion.



 

What Language did Adam and Eve Speak?

And by "Adam and Eve" I mean, the earliest humans to speak language, since I don't believe in a literal Garden of Eden. But even using an evolutionary model, there really did have to be a first human (as well as an ultimate answer to which came first, the Chicken or the Egg). I've long believed that all languages on the planet do descend from one original language.

If you can line up even two ancient language families, you've gone a long way toward proving it. Indo-European and Semitic (which is itself provably connected deep into Africa) can be intriguingly shown to have affinities in the following regular correspondences:

Latin, non (not, no)
Arabic, laa (not, no)

Latin, nox (night)
Arabic, layla (night)

Latin, in (in)
Arabic el (to)
 

 But new research shows that word order demonstrates a probable ultimate ancestor. Ancient languages favor Subject-Object-Verb order (such as Latin Caecilius Metellam videt, 'Caecilius sees Metella). And all languages that don't follow this order are descended from languages that once did. That's fascinating.
Talk Like Yoda?