Linguist up to his ears tracking security threats

Linguist Everette Jordan listens to taped conversations for the National Security Agency.

By David Ensor
CNN National Security Correspondent

FORT MEADE, Maryland (CNN) -- It could be any office building, but Everette Jordan's workplace is one of the most unusual in the country. He cannot take his office keys home as he must punch in a code to get them each morning.

Jordan is a spy -- but not in the way you probably imagine. He is a "listener."

Jordan, 41, is a longtime linguist for the National Security Agency, which is in charge of eavesdropping on behalf of the U.S. government. He is fluent in Russian, Spanish, French, German and Arabic and spends his days listening to tapes of conversations the NSA has acquired via its worldwide array of powerful surveillance technology.

As he listens, Jordan must not only translate but pay attention to the subtleties of the spoken word, no matter what language.

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NSA Linguist Everette Jordan: What sorts of things do you listen to? Do you ever listen to Americans? More Video (QuickTime, Real or Windows Media)

"You have to listen for irony, for sarcasm, for tension," he said. "You have to listen for rhetorical statements being made. You also have to listen for humor."

But the focus of his eavesdropping is to listen for any threats made against the United States. And in his NSA career, he's heard items that were of critical importance to U.S. national security.

"There have been many cases, and thatÕs one of the fun things about being a linguist, knowing that the work you have done has gone right downtown to the president of the United States or the United States Congress, or any of the decision- and policymakers that would provide them with the information they need to make a very critical decision," he said.

As a child, Jordan enjoyed languages and ended up at the NSA after joining the U.S. Army. He heard about the agency needing linguists, applied and got a job.

The agency has a variety of linguists, some who are listeners such as Jordan, while others focus on reading and translating written material. Given that Jordan is unlikely to travel to Russia because of his job as an intelligence officer, he keeps his language skills sharp in a variety of ways.

Security is so tight at the NSA that Jordan must enter a code just to get keys to his office.

"We take as many courses as we possibly can," he said. "We have other avenues of trying to keep our language skills up. We have a lot of foreign films we listen to or watch at the agency."

Nevertheless, he admits to wanting to travel to Russia, having spent so much time learning about the language and listening to native speakers. "There will always be a soft spot in my heart," he said.

In all the conversations and other material that Jordan has heard, however, he said he's never listened to a tape of a U.S. citizen. The NSA is banned by law from eavesdropping on conversations of U.S. citizens.

"We have very strict protocols toward handling that, those sorts of situations and really we erase the thing," he said. "But we also report that such and such a thing has happened. It's an incident report, but we are enjoined by law to, against, you know, listening to Americans."

The possibility also exists that the NSA might record the conversations of U.S. citizens speaking other languages while living and working abroad.

"But there are places you donÕt expect Americans to be, and in the pursuit of our business, we try to focus on places Americans are not expected to be," he said.

While Jordan works in a serious business, he also comes across the humorous in his job, such as trying to discern what a drunk is saying or a person who is missing their false teeth. Jordan said he must gauge whether a drunkÕs conversation is more or less true because of his or her inebriated condition.

"It depends on what kind of drunk they are," he said, laughing. "But we have to know the language to a degree that we can understand when this person is drunk and you're ... really trying to pay attention to get through it all without laughing."

Because of its trafficking in secrets, the NSA remains a very closed agency. Its budget is classified and an old joke is that NSA really stands for "No Such Agency." For many years, its headquarters at Fort Meade did not have a sign.

Jordan is limited to what he can say to his family and anyone else outside the NSA. He said that NSA employees accept these restrictions when they take the oath to protect and defend the U.S. Constitution.

"ItÕs enough satisfaction to know that you made a difference," he said. "It doesnÕt matter that youÕre never going to be able to tell anybody."

To say that NSA employees are security-conscious is putting it mildly. Jordan is the first NSA listener ever to give a television interview. As CNN toured NSA headquarters to film its special report, employees were warned ahead of time so they would not discuss anything classified.

Years of listening to surveillance tapes may have given Jordan some minor hearing loss. He now says he hopes to move into management.

Asked if most of his colleagues would be unwilling to give an interview, Jordan quickly replied, "You got that right." The NSAÕs secretive culture doesnÕt encourage employees to talk to the media.

"One of the ways weÕre very successful is the work we do is very quiet, and in some cases, in many cases, our work force has been indoctrinated not to draw attention to themselves because in some cases they would be traveling on official government business, and to sit here in front of the camera as an NSA employee is something like killing one's career," he said.

But Jordan is not living in the secret world anymore, appearing at job fairs and recruitment drives for the NSA. The agency is looking to hire 600 workers with experience or education in computer science, mathematics, engineering, signal analysis, data collection, cryptanalysis and intelligence analysis.

"My name is open; my face is out there," he said. "And I have no career aspirations in the areas that are more, you could say, quiet. So I can basically do this with the understanding that my face may go all around the world, but my body will have to stay here at Fort Meade, Maryland."

Jordan, however, is starting to pay a physical price for listening to pops and screeches of surveillance tapes. The frequent tests that Jordan undergoes have started to show a high-frequency hearing loss in high decibels.

Though he hopes soon to move into management, Jordan said he wouldn't have wanted any other career up to this point -- protecting the nation with his ears and his gift for languages.

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