Code Warriors: NSA's Codebreakers and the Secret Intelligence War Against the Soviet Union Hardcover – Deckle Edge, June 14, 2016

Even if code is not your thing , the author wove a great story entwining the problems of codebreaking with events of the time .I read a book on code breaking and it was very dry, took me several years to read, this is not the case,Interesting from start to finish describes the infighting, power struggles between agencies , not sharing info, duplication of efforts.Disturbing thing is it seems very little has changed in the regard to all of the above.I used some of the machines the author described , this book will appeal to people like myself that just scratched the surface of cryptography and persons interested in history since one very seldom gets to see how events were formed from the secret side .Book is well researched and gives a clear picture of the Russian Problem as well as Korea, Vietnam and the Pueblo incident. Author does not favor any agency or individual tells it like it happened.

This is a remarkably accurate history of US signals intelligence. The only flaw was the now-mandatory cheap shot at an agency doing what it is tasked to do by the country's political leadership. Apparently people prefer to think that the US intelligence community runs rogue operations than to face the fact that more often than not they resist pressure from the White House to do things that are illegal. Still, well worth the read even for someone who has been on the inside.

Informative, even if you already know a bit about cryptography. Even non-technical people can enjoy this. What is really shocking, and scary, is how foreign intelligence agents were able to operate inside the NSA undetected for so long, even though in some cases they should have been caught much sooner.

It's a little tedious, I was expecting more on the technical aspects. This is all about bureaucracy and infighting.

This is an excellent and detailed chronology of communications intelligence gathering from ww2 to current times. However, like many subject focused books it helps if you have a keen interest in the subject. I worked in this area from late 50s to early 60s, so from my perspective it was fascinating and filled a lot of voids.

I enjoyed this book...If you were in the Army Security Agency, Air Force Security Service or Naval Security Group you will too. If you ever had any doubt that our work was meaningful, you won't after you finish this book!

I don't know much about this topic, so to me all the info was interesting. However, my dad, who was in the army in the late 50s, thought Budiansky did a terrific job of explaining things--including the sad truth about how poorly the agencies worked with one another and how many times they lost opportunities to do better intelligence work. For readers who want hard facts about coding and military intelligence, this is a satisfying read.

Excellent coverage of analytic techniques in 20th century through the 1950's. Due to security restrictions increasingly sparse afterwards. The book is one of the few that acknowledges the contributions of the tens of thousands of enlisted military linguists and analysts that kept close track of Warsaw pact and asian orders of battle during the cold war. Mostly missing of course is western history on encryption methods of the US and it's allies.

A broad exploration of what happened to the American code-breaking fraternity following the successes of World War Two when inventive and subtle intellect not only broke the Japanese diplomatic and military codes, but also contributed in no small way to the British efforts at Bletchley Park against German Engima and Secret Writer coding machines.These success were to leave a legacy that soon revealed itself as far from ideal as the world evolved into an armed stand-off between the United States and its Allies and the communist Soviet led bloc. A period when the accumulation of intelligence by the US became heavily biased towards what could be gained by listening to the air waves and trying to extract the meaning by tackling the coded output. Inhibiting this effort was far too much bureaucratic infighting between the main competing agencies, the CIA and the NSA, that was not addressed for several decades. A complication furthered by a failure to develop new methods as the world, in this particular instance mainly the Soviet Union and its satellites, introduced codes and ciphers that defied reading. Inevitably even today the successes tend to be hidden behind understandable secrecy so the book does tend to have a negative slant towards the mistakes and bungling that pervades these years. This is not meant to imply criticism, it just turns out that way in telling the story.Following the revelations of Edward Snowden of how the NSA morphed towards devoting too much resource to looking at Americans makes this book well worth reading to get a handle of how we arrived at this point, noting how necessary adjustments taken in good faith became mixed with abuse of power by certain Presidents leading to it becoming the norm. A norm out of step with American ideals.

This book is seriously good, if you are into post-war spooks, crypto and the like, Not a lot written elsewhere about this. The writer goes into the moral morass you get into if you start reading other peoples mail, and the consequences to your very soul!. Also describes, how NSA failed to read several RUSSIAN 10-rotor machines (ALBATROSS, FIALKA) and thus went down the dirty road to reading all un-encrypted stuff, ending up scooping up all of it (yours and mine),and the corruption of the politicians and government. -that they could never go back to being honest.Only brief on VENONA, described elsewhere, but focuses on NSA in the fifties and sixties, Very interesting revelations about Vietnam tactical sigint , Gulf of Tonkin and Tet. -recent disclosures re-write the history books there. A very good story, well told too.

poor! not as per description of the product

fast delevery, very satisfy

Nice read