Binary code: Mystery number one - стр. 5
Not the least bit embarrassed, the journalist went back to the library vaults. A comprehensive list of telephone numbers of U.S. military installations around the world gave no information as to which numbers might correspond to secret NSA radio interception posts. The Senate subcommittee reports dealing with military construction funding were carefully scrubbed clean of any reference to NSA facilities. However, the incurious Bamford noticed that when a secret base decided to build a court or basketball court, the requests were unclassified and showed up in the committee reports. By cross-referencing between military telephone directories and such requests, as well as similarly unremarkable data, Bamford was able to compile a nearly complete list of radio intercept sites in the NSA's global network.
At the same time, the journalist began searching for personal documents of employees of the U.S. radio-intelligence community.
A number of other important sources of information were found in the library.
From these documents, in particular, it was clear that the NSA, which as a foreign intelligence agency is not officially authorized to engage in eavesdropping on U.S. communications systems, does so through cooperation with foreign allies conducting radio intercepts on U.S. soil.
The NSA tried to stop Bamford's "subversive" activities and prosecute him under the Espionage Act. The journalist was accused of obtaining classified documents, but at the time the Reagan administration had not yet succeeded in passing a national security directive allowing for the reclassification of documents.
This is the kind of thing an ordinary journalist could do. It is impossible to imagine such things in the USSR, even in modern Russia. Over time, Rutra got fed up with it and decided to leave the service, as it involved risk to life and danger to freedom. The pay was not bad, but the money came and went. No serious earnings. Days and months went by like "life was a raspberry", you could walk around at your own pleasure. At the moment when he decided, so to speak, to "stop" with it, he received an offer he could not refuse. There are no exes in the system he was in, so it was impossible to just walk away. He didn't want to fulfill cheap requests; he couldn't move up the career ladder either, because he had to serve there and fulfill his assignments. There were changes in the country, and the surrounding reality promised very good prospects. So Rutra was at a crossroads. And then, out of nowhere, Alexander Ivanovich appeared.