The position of the National Security Agency (NSA) as the centralized communications intelligence (COMINT) agency for the U.S. government is so well-established that it is difficult to grasp the scope of the lengthy post-World War II debate over a centralized versus decentralized U.S. COMINT capability. Only after the appointment of a presidential commission by President Truman and its subsequent report (the Brownell Report) was the managerial foundation of what was to become the NSA put in place. "The Quest for Cryptological Centralization and the Establishment of NSA: 1940-1952" documents the origins of NSA. It attempts to explain "what happened regarding the issues and conflicts that led Truman to establish a centralized COMINT agency by tracing the evolution of the various military COMINT organizations from the 1930s to NSA's establishment in 1952. This study highlights the main events, policies, and leaders of the early post-war years, with emphasis on the jurisdictional struggles between military and civilian authorities over the control and direction of American COMINT resources. Moving chronologically from the pre-war and war years through the 1946-1949 period, which marked the passage of the National Security Act of 1947 and the beginning of high-level efforts to centralize U.S. intelligence responsibilities, "The Quest for Cryptological Centralization and the Establishment of NSA" then focuses on the Brownell Committee and its deliberations, and concludes with an overall review of COMINT organizational changes and a suggestion that the struggle may not be over even today. Historians and intelligence professionals alike will find important insights into the politics of COMINT in the post-war world and the implications they hold for intelligence organizations today.

The Center for Cryptologic History (CCH) is proud to publish the first title under its own imprint, Thomas L. Burns's The Origins of NSA.* In recent years, the NSA history program has published a number of volumes dealing with exciting and even controversial subjects: a new look at the Pearl Harbor attack, for example. Tom Burns's study of the creation of NSA is a different kind of history from the former. It is a masterfully researched and documented account of the evolution of a national SIGINT effort following World War II, beginning with the fragile trends toward unification of the military services as they sought to cope with a greatly changed environment following the war, and continuing through the unsatisfactory experience under the Armed Forces Security Agency. Mr. Burns also makes an especially important contribution by helping us to understand the role of the civilian agencies in forcing the creation of NSA and the bureaucratic infighting by which they were able to achieve that end. At first glance, one might think that this organizational history would be far from "best seller" material. In fact, the opposite is the case. It is essential reading for the serious SIGINT professional, both civilian and military. Mr. Burns has identified most of the major themes which have contributed to the development of the institutions which characterize our profession: the struggle between centralized and decentralized control of SIGINT, interservice and interagency rivalries, budget problems, tactical versus national strategic requirements, the difficulties of mechanization of processes, and the rise of a strong bureaucracy. These factors, which we recognize as still powerful and in large measure still shaping operational and institutional development, are the same ones that brought about the birth of NSA. The history staff would also like to acknowledge a debt owed to our predecessors, Dr. George F.Howe and his associates, who produced a manuscript entitled" The Narrative History of AFSA/NSA." Dr. Howe's study takes a different course from the present publication and is complementary to it, detailing the internal organization and operational activities of AFSA, and serves as an invaluable reference about that period. The Howe manuscript is available to interested researchers in the CCH. It remains for each reader to take what Tom Burns has presented in the way of historical fact and correlate it to his/her experience. This exercise should prove most interesting and illuminating.