I’ve interviewed a number of collectors who worked in Iraq and Afghanistan, and one of their complaints is, ‘I’m sitting in a foxhole and I’ve got 3,000 emails coming in from Washington every morning with all the latest intelligence. And the guy said, ‘It’s wonderful that they’re sharing this stuff with me; I just wish they were a little more selective about what they were sending me.’

— Matthew Aid says says intelligence analysts are drowning in raw data.

The NSA was spending billions of dollars on new collection systems and vast amounts of computer hardware and software, and jamming it into its headquarters, but did not build additional power stations to keep the systems up and running. So you had these embarrassing instances … where if you plugged in a coffee pot, you literally could knock of the electricity for an entire wing at NSA headquarters.

— Historian Matthew Aid details why America’s spies are struggling to keep up.

Tomorrow: NSA Historian Matthew Aid takes us behind the doors of the National Security Administration in the years after September 11.

US Navy Cryptanalytic Bombe (by brewbooks)

The CIA has a large collection of FOIA documents online, including this 91-page report (pdf) on brainwashing. 

Monday: Former CIA operatives (and husband-and-wife) Robert and Dayna Baer know how to scan a crowd for assassins, how to use a gun, and how to escape when someone ambushes a car.

But old habits die hard: Robert says that when he’s driving, if a car stops short in front of him, he always still looks for where he’s going to ram the car.

Bodyworn Surveillance Equipment (by CIAgov)