A 'Secret/Noforn' primer kept from foreign allies for years mapped the threats facing the US through 2020, but the planners left the internal rot of the American state entirely off the ledger.
By Constance Bell ·
While the CIA mapped terrorist networks in South Asia, a 1995 security assessment began moving the burden of national defense onto private corporations under the guise of technical risk management.
By Marcus Boone ·
While the FBI tracked hackers attacking the Air Force in 1998, Sandia researchers built a system to scrub the gore from security failures, keeping the true scale of nuclear vulnerability in the dark.
By Eleanor Voss ·
Specific methods for protecting the government's most sensitive data remain hidden in a missing manual, though later breaches jeopardized national security for a generation.
By Vera Kessler ·
Federal infrastructure remained fragile after Y2K as Senate investigators used subpoena power to probe whether the government could survive a targeted human cyber attack.
By Harlan Pryce ·
Personal data for a significant portion of the population faced operational risk during a three-part Senate probe whose specific findings now remain hidden.
By Miriam Adler ·