Bamford, James. The Puzzle Palace: A Report on America's Most Secret Agency. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1982. With New Afterword. New York: Penguin, 1983. [pb] UB251U5B35
Bernon F. Mitchell and William H. Martin were National Security Agency cryptologists who defected to the Soviet Union in 1960. They surfaced at a Moscow news conference on 6 September 1960. This was a major embarrassment for NSA. A statement released in Moscow was carried by the New York Times on 7 September 1960. See Bamford (Penguin, 1983), pp. 177-196, as a starting point.
Bamford, James. The Puzzle Palace: A Report on America's Most Secret Agency. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1982. With New Afterword. New York: Penguin, 1983. [pb] UB251U5B35
Clark comment: This work continues to be reviled by critics; but if Bamford had not written it, we would not have had an early, serious, and in-depth look at NSA's activities and organization. It is not completely superceded by Bamford's later Body of Secrets (2001).
Pforzheimer suggests that the book "must be used with caution because of some errors of fact." The Afterword in the 1983 paperback edition includes material on the British spy, Geoffrey Arthur Prime, and on Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the British equivalent of NSA.
For Lowenthal, the book is "[s]tronger on organizational history than on the actual work of signals intelligence." Watson, et al, Encyclopedia, p. xiii, notes that Puzzle Palace "is the result of an outstanding research effort, and it provides a detailed and accurate study of the agency."
Powers, NYRB, 3 Feb. 1983, and Intelligence Wars (2004), 243-255, comments that the author "has assembled all that was known, and much that was unknown," about NSA, "but the result does not make for light reading." Except for a handful of stories, the "book reads like a study of AT&T," with methodical lists of organizational detail.
For some insights on Bamford's monumental research effort, see Paul Constance, "How Jim Bamford Probed the NSA," Cryptologia 21, no. 1 (Jan. 1997): 71-74.
Barker, Wayne G., and Rodney E. Coffman [R&D: Kaufman]. The Anatomy of Two Traitors: The Story of the Defection of Two Americans to the Soviet Union. Laguna Hills, CA: Aegean Park Press, 1981.
Petersen: "Not held in high regard by some experts."
Caruthers, Osgood. "Two Code Clerks Defect to Soviet Union, Score U.S. 'Spying.'" New York Times, 7 Sep. 1960, 1, 11. [Bamford2]
Mitchell, Bernon F., and William H. Martin. "Prepared Statement." New York Times, 7 Sep. 1960.
Petersen: "Issued after defection."
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