The AFSA mission . . . is to provide authentic information for planners and policy makers within the National Military Establishment and other Governmental Agencies having membership on the United States Communication Intelligence Board to apprise them of the realities of the international situation, war-making capabilities, vulnerabilities and intentions of foreign countries, and to eliminate the element of surprise from an act of aggression by another country. | ||
| --Requirements for Conduct of an Optimum Communication Intelligence Program, 14 July 1950[56] | ||
When armed conflict began in Korea in June 1950, 390 employees (military and civilian) were assigned to the Machine Division.[57] Driven by the Agency's operating philosophy that exhaustive collection and processing of Russian communications and extensive coverage of the communications of Communist China were required to execute its mission, that number rose to 573 in March 1951.[58] Cryptanalysis could be accomplished only through machine manipulation of the data, and as interception capabilities expanded, appropriate increases in processing personnel were required. Hiring of African-Americans to become tabulating equipment operators or key punchers exploded in the early 1950s.
Local recruitment of operators and card punchers was intensive. In October 1951, the Agency's personnel office reported that it had placed recruiters in the U.S. Employment Service and in the Department of the Army Office of Employee Coordination, which allowed them to interview a steady flow of applicants.[59] They had contacts at the Civil Service Commission, and recruiters worked to acquire applicants from other government agencies, such as the Veterans Administration, Census Bureau, and Government Accounting Office, that announced reductions in force (RIFs). Usually hired as GG-2s, the lowest pay scale, operators and card punchers frequently requested transfers out of the machine division soon after they reported for duty. Considering the physical demands of the jobs, a significant level of dissatisfaction is not surprising:
Note
"I detested one thing about MPRO. The women had to do what we did and that was handle those boxes of cards and paper. I never liked that. The boxes were delivered to the area and were put in a corner. You had to pick them up, and it was heavy and hard lifting. Most of the time the fellows would help the girls."
Maurice Bush, 12 April 1999
Tabulating machine operators will be required to stand for long periods and to lift and carry trays of cards weighing approximately 20 pounds.
Keypunch machine operators will be required to sit at assigned machines for long periods.
Both tabulating and keypunch machine operators, GS-5 and below, will be required to work rotating shifts in a noisy atmosphere due to the machines.
In most instances the skills and knowledge acquired in NSA-222 [IBM Branch] are not easily adapted to work in other branches, therefore time and money are expended unnecessarily when personnel request a transfer.[60]
Transfers were rare, and opportunities for advancement within the organization were limited, according to Maebelle Holmes, a college graduate who entered the Agency in 1949:
I had just graduated from A&T and applied for a job. It seems that they were only accepting applications for key punch operator. I took the [typing] test, but didn't pass – not fast enough. But they notified me that I could get a job in the IBM section, wiring boards. I was in the 8th wing. There were more blacks than whites, but key punch was virtually all black except for the supervisors. They started me as a GG-2. I was promoted to GG-3, then GG-4 and when I got be a GG-5, I became a first line supervisor. I had about ten people working for me. I tried to get out. Openings would be posted on the board, and I would apply for something, but it was almost unknown to transfer. At that time, it seems like the whites would come in with no degree and in a little while they would move on up. They would go to lunch with the bosses, and would move right on up – not necessarily in the section in which they trained, but in another section across the aisle or in a different wing.
I liked my job, but I felt that they weren't always fair to us.[61]
Novella Carr, who entered the Agency in January 1951, spent the first twenty years of her career in the machine processing (MPRO) organization. She talked not only about the lack of mobility, but also about the negative effect security had on the flow of information about job opportunities:
I came to the Agency in January 1951 from the Veterans Administration where I was being riffed. I was in the 8th wing. MPRO was divided into three wings. The 6th wing was the key punch operators and the 7th and 8th wings were tabulating equipment operators. When I went into the IBM [tabulating equipment] section it was 90 percent black, and the whites that were in there were not educated. All the supervisors were white. There were some black team captains and most of them had some college. And all the key punchers were black. Security was very tight. If you didn't have a need to know, you couldn't go into another section. We got to know some of the girls in key punch because the wings were open in the back and they would walk through our section to go to lunch. And you might know somebody in 213, which was all black, because you caught a ride with someone. So you never heard about vacancies. You didn't get transferred. You just stayed. Supervisors would change, and they would reorganize, but you just stayed.[62]
Few memories of Arlington Hall Station are more vivid than those of the stifling heat. In that time, before air conditioning, windows were left open and huge fans were used to circulate the hot, humid air. In climate, as well as culture, the Agency was a southern institution. That image is evoked with remarkable clarity by the words of Dorothy Amis, who began a thirty-four-year career in the Agency as a tabulating equipment operator.
Arlington Hall was a beautiful place. You see it was a former school, and they had beautiful landscaped gardens in front of the headquarters building. If it got too hot in the evening, from 4 to 12, well, you could go out and sit on the benches in the park area. And if it didn't cool off, they would dismiss you for the evening. But in the morning, it would start getting hot around 10. We would work right by the window, and all the windows were open. Novella was one of those people singing all of the time – singing and working on the machines. It was just a different environment.[63]
