[FOUNTAIN]Inside intelligence

Who do you think employs the most mathematicians? The answer is the National Security Agency in Washington, D.C., where secret information about every country is saved on computers. Where would you think the most computer engineers work? Again, the National Security Agency. At this moment, engineers at the agency are doing their best to develop or to install new electronic devices. A good number of linguists there are also helping to decode bugged conversations on telephones or decipher ones found in email.

Thirteen secret organizations are governed by this agency. The Central Intelligence Agency analyzes all the information obtained by the National Security Agency or other organizations. Then the agency provides evaluations of such information to the president or to the National Security Council.

The New York Times recently reported that another, previously unknown information analysis department exists in the Pentagon. What is this organization about and what does Donald H. Rumsfeld, the secretary of defense, say about it?

Senior Pentagon officials who were dissatisfied with CIA analyses of the relationship between Al Quaeda and Iraq made agents at this secretive organization work harder than employees at the CIA.

Thus, much of the world will likely want to know how this agency is going to handle the war against terrorism.

Mr. Rumsfeld, who has been well known as a hard-liner, worked for the Gerald Ford administration in 1975, also as the secretary of defense. He often argued back then with the then director of the CIA, George Bush, father of George W. Bush.

The National Security Agency controls and manages the operations of the National Reconnaissance Office, a sub-unit within the Pentagon.

The official roles of the U.S intelligence agencies are to warn of clear or potential dangers against the United States and the world, to help make defense strategies and to watch for environmental pollution.

The Korean presidential candidates have said almost unanimously that they would modify and reshuffle this country's National Intelligence Service.

The reorganization of the National Intelligence Service should be performed according to Korea's national interests.

The writer is an editorial writer for the JoongAng Ilbo.

by Choi Chul-joo