Representative Heather Wilson: “And probably one of the best ways that we have to get a handle, particularly on the terrorist threats, is what they call…”

“And probably one of the best ways that we have to get a handle, particularly on the terrorist threats, is what they call communications intelligence. We try to listen to people talking to each other. If you are trying to get people's plans and their intentions, understand more about them, you listen to them when they are talking to each other. That is what communications intelligence does. And we have been trying to collect communications intelligence since we started technical intelligence since the invention of the telegraph. There were spies during the Civil War. We tried to read communications telegrams, intercept international telegrams during the First World War. So we have been trying to intercept communications to be able to tell what is the enemy going to do. In New Mexico, probably the best example and the one that people know today is what we tried to do to protect our own communications. Particularly in the Pacific, in the Marine Corps, because we knew the Japanese were listening to our guys in the field talk to each other on the radios back and forth on where they were going and what hill they were going to, what their plans were. They used Navajo communicators because nobody in Japan could translate the Navajo code talkers. So we try to protect our own communications. We also try to intercept those of the enemy, both on the battlefield and more globally.”