NSA secretly obtained copies of all telegrams entering or leaving the U.S. from 1945-1975 through agreements with telegraph companies. Government agencies accessed private communications of citizens with no judicial oversight or legal authority.
“Government agencies respect the privacy of American communications and follow all legal procedures”
From “crazy” to confirmed
The Claim Is Made
This is the moment they called it crazy.
For three decades, millions of Americans sent telegrams believing their communications were private. None of them knew the National Security Agency was quietly copying every single one.
Between 1945 and 1975, the NSA conducted a classified operation called Project SHAMROCK that intercepted telegrams entering and leaving the United States. The program wasn't built on court orders, congressional authorization, or public knowledge. It was built on handshake agreements with telegraph companies who simply handed over their traffic to government officials.
The operation was staggering in scope. Every telegram from Western Union, RCA Communications, and ITT World Communications flowed directly to NSA facilities. That meant personal messages, business communications, news reports from foreign correspondents, and private letters between citizens and their families abroad—all captured, stored, and made available to government agencies without any judicial oversight.
When the program first came to light during the mid-1970s Church Committee investigations into intelligence abuses, officials defended it as necessary for national security. They claimed the NSA needed bulk access to international communications to detect foreign threats. The idea that the government was routinely reading the private messages of ordinary Americans seemed exaggerated or unavoidable given Cold War realities. For many, the claim simply didn't feel credible. Surely there were oversight mechanisms. Surely warrants were required.
There weren't. There weren't.
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The National Security Archive, a repository of declassified documents at George Washington University, has documented the full scope of what actually happened. Declassified testimony and internal memos show that NSA officials deliberately avoided seeking warrants because they knew courts might deny them. The program operated without meaningful legal authority, congressional knowledge, or any formal restraints beyond the discretion of the agencies involved.
The evidence is substantial. Former NSA director General Lyman Kirkpatrick told investigators that SHAMROCK continued partly because "we felt that we were operating under implied authority." Implied authority. Not explicit law. Not constitutional amendment. Not even explicit executive order. The intelligence community had simply assumed it could monitor Americans' international communications because nobody had explicitly told them they couldn't.
What makes Project SHAMROCK significant isn't just that it happened—it's what it revealed about the gap between what government officials publicly claimed and what they actually did. Officials weren't ignorant of constitutional concerns. They deliberately structured the program to avoid legal oversight precisely because they knew oversight might stop them.
The operation wasn't discovered through transparency or reform. It took a congressional investigation and declassification to bring it to public light. Even then, the full implications took years for citizens to understand.
Today, Project SHAMROCK serves as a historical reference point for debates about surveillance authority, corporate cooperation with government intelligence agencies, and the difference between what officials claim is necessary and what courts might actually authorize. It demonstrates that even well-established constitutional protections can be circumvented when agencies operate in classified secrecy and when companies cooperate without resistance.
The public was never asked. No warrant was ever issued. The program simply operated in the shadows for thirty years, proving that extraordinary claims about government surveillance sometimes underestimate the reality of what actually happened.
Unlikely leak
Only 9.6% chance this would come out. It did.
Conspirators
~500Large op
Secret kept
50.7 years
Time to 95% exposure
500+ years
