and find target conversations
easily."

p126-127: Since the wiretap law barred the Bureau of Narcotics and
Dangerous Drugs from installing a tap on New York City's Grand Central
Station pay phones, bureau head John Ingersoll asked the NSA for help.

Within a few months the spy agency was sorting through all the
conversations it was already acquiring for general intelligence
purposes.

Of course, the technicians were required to acquire, monitor, and
discard a large number of calls made by people with no connection
with the cocaine business in South American cities.

But so pleased was Mr. Ingersoll with the tips he was getting from the
dragnet monitoring that he ultimately persuaded the NSA to monitor
simultaneously nineteen other U.S. communication hubs.

]

* "Project L.U.C.I.D.", continued...
*
* Fort Meade is the hub of an information gathering octopus whose tentacles
* reach out to the four corners of the earth.
*
* The principal means of communicating this information is by the National
* Aeronautical and Space Administration (NASA) satellite communications
* system, which most people erroneously think exists primarily for the
* space program.
*
* It does not.
*
* The satellites, indeed NASA and the entire American Space Program, exist
* largely to supply the NSA with its telecommunications system. That is why
* the bulk of its operations are officially declared 'secret'. This
* ultimate 'Big Brother' machine even has an official name 'Project
* Platform'.

[
"The Puzzle Palace": a