Four-star general in eye of US cyber storm

Reuters/Washington

Alexander, 61, has headed the National Security Agency since 2005, making him the longest-serving chief in the history of an intelligence unit so secretive that it was dubbed “No Such Agency.” Alexander also runs US Cyber Command, which he helped to create in 2010 to oversee the country’s offensive and defensive operations in cyberspace.

The dual role means Alexander has more knowledge about cyber threats than any other US official, since the NSA already protects the most sensitive US data, extracts intelligence from foreign networks and uses wiretaps to track suspected terrorists. But it also puts the general at the centre of an intense debate over how much power the government should have to spy on private citizens in the name of protecting national security.

“He’s lasted as long as he has because he’s focused and he’s persistent. I’ve never heard him yell,” said retired four-star general Michael Hayden, who was Alexander’s predecessor at the NSA. “He doesn’t spread himself too thin. He decides what’s important and puts his personal energy into those things.”

Raised near Syracuse, New York, Alexander graduated from West Point, the Army’s elite training academy, in 1974. He had planned to serve in the military for just five years but got hooked on the work when he served in Germany as an intelligence officer, monitoring what he once described as “sensitive issues on the border of East Germany and Czechoslovakia.”

After Germany, Alexander held a series of increasingly senior intelligence jobs and spent the first Gulf War as a senior Army intelligence officer in Saudi Arabia. Over the years, he also earned four master’s degrees, in electronic warfare, physics, business and national security studies.

In 2005, after two years as the Army’s top intelligence officer, Alexander replaced Hayden at the helm of the NSA, where he continued to run a warrantless surveillance programme initiated after the Sept 11, 2001, hijacking attacks.

The programme, which bypassed a federal court that authorises domestic wiretapping, was first revealed late in 2005, sparking lawsuits, congressional hearings, leak investigations and a furor that still dogs the agency - and Alexander.

Against this backdrop, his push to expand the NSA’s role in domestic cybersecurity has drawn criticism from privacy advocates, and sometimes put Alexander at odds with the White House and the Department of Homeland Security, according to current and former officials.

Alexander had wanted the NSA to control a government security programme to aid non-military companies against cyber threats, but others at DHS insisted on civilian control of the project, and they ultimately prevailed, the officials said.

Jane Holl Lute, who stepped down this month as the No 2 at DHS, said she has had intense conversations with Alexander about the roles of their two agencies in improving cyber security. She declined to detail any differences of opinion, but said they were all judgment calls and she respected the general.

“He pushed up his hill, and I pushed up mine, and what we came to was essentially two sides of the same hill,” Lute said.

“We didn’t always call balls and strikes the same way. That does not mean he wasn’t trying to get it right,” she said. “I would challenge anyone who would question his integrity.”

Alexander, who told Reuters he plans to retire in the first half of 2014, has presided over one of the busiest times in the NSA’s 61-year history, from tracking the cellphone calls that helped pinpoint Osama bin Laden to drawing national attention to cybersecurity. He played a key role in shaping of recent cyber policy orders from the Obama administration.

More controversial has been the NSA’s construction of a $1.2bn data centre in Utah, which has fanned concerns about the agency’s expansive eavesdropping capabilities.

NSA whistleblower William Binney, a former senior crypto-mathematician, last year accused the agency of building the Utah facility to collect data on virtually every American, including private e-mails, cellphone calls and Google searches.

According to Alexander, the NSA has its hands full keeping tabs on potential terrorists, and does not have the bandwidth to read the 420bn emails generated by Americans each day - even though some foreign governments were trying to do that.