General Keith B. Alexander (1951–) served as director of the National Security Agency (NSA) and head of the Central Security Service (CSS) from August 2005 until his retirement in 2014, as well as commander of US Cyber Command (USCYBERCOM).
Alexander was born on December 2, 1951, in Syracuse, New
York, and graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in
1974 as an army second lieutenant.
He got master's degrees from Boston University (business
administration), the Naval Postgraduate School (systems technology and
physics), and the National Defense University throughout his military service
(security strategy).
Alexander also has degrees from the National War College and
the US Army Command and General Staff College.
Under the authority of US Strategic Command, Alexander was
in charge of planning, coordinating, and directing activities in defense of DoD
computer networks via USCYBERCOM (USSTRATCOM).
He also had overlapping duties for certain DoD national
foreign intelligence and combat support operations, as well as the safeguarding
of US national security information systems, while at the NSA and CSS.
Alexander was a career military intelligence officer who
held positions such as US Army deputy chief of staff, G-2; commanding general
of US Army Intelligence and Security Command; director of intelligence at US
Central Command (CENTCOM); and deputy director for requirements, capabilities,
assessments, and doctrine (J-2) for the Joint Chiefs of Staff before taking the
NSA directorship (JCS).
When General Michael Hayden was raised to fourth star and
assigned as deputy to Ambassador John Negroponte, President George W.
Bush's pick to the newly established office of director of
national intelligence, Alexander took over as NSA director (DNI).
Alexander's time at the NSA was plagued by questions about
the legality and effectiveness of the agency's data collecting efforts.
The first exploded in December 2005, when the New York Times
revealed that the National Security Agency (NSA) had been spying on Americans'
phone calls and e-mail without a warrant since 2001.
In June 2013, Edward Snowden, then a contract employee of
the National Security Agency, disclosed thousands of secret papers to
journalists, causing the second and most personal of these crises.
The NSA's access to private communication was exposed by the
trove of stolen papers, which showed the scope of the agency's infiltration of
the information infrastructure and secret partnerships with telecoms and
Internet service providers.
The NSA has come under fire as a result of the Snowden
leaks.
After the magnitude of the leaks became public, Alex ander
volunteered to retire from the NSA, but President Barack Obama resisted,
protecting both the NSA's activities and its beleaguered director.
Alexander was discharged from the military the following year.
See also:
Hayden, Michael V.; National Security Agency (NSA); Obama, Barack; Snowden, Edward J.; U.S. Cyber Command (USCYBERCOM)
Further Reading:
Harris, Shane. The Watchers: The Rise of America’s Surveillance State. New York: Penguin Press, 2010.
Hayden, Michael V. Playing to the Edge: American Intelligence in the Age of Terror. New York: Penguin Press, 2016.