Summer 2002: AT&T Informs Staffers that NSA Plans to Begin Conducting ‘Some Kind of Business’ at San Francisco Facility

Veteran AT&T technician Mark Klein (see July 7, 2009) is startled when he receives an email informing him and his colleagues that a representative from the National Security Agency (NSA) will soon arrive to conduct “some kind of business.” Klein works at the Geary Street facility in San Francisco, helping provide Internet, VoIP (voice over Internet Protocol), and data transport between the US and the Far East. Klein and his supervisor, Don Henry, soon learn that one of their colleagues, one of AT&T’s senior “field support specialists” whom Klein will only identify as “Ski,” is to be interviewed by the NSA for a security clearance. Ski is slated to begin working in an NSA-operated “secure facility” at AT&T’s Folsom Street facility in San Francisco. [PBS Frontline, 5/15/2007; Klein, 2009, pp. 22-25] Klein later says of the NSA visit: “That struck me as a little odd to begin with, because I remember from back in the ‘70s, the NSA is not supposed to be doing domestic spying, so what were they doing in an AT&T company office? It struck me as odd, but I didn’t know anything more about it, so I just let it lie and waited for the guy to come.” Klein will later describe the NSA representative as “closemouthed and unsmiling, and he did his business.” Klein decides that the NSA visit was a one-time affair, and he thinks no more of it for the time being. [PBS Frontline, 5/15/2007]