The Backroom Memo That Put 1,200 Americans Under Government Surveillance
The NSA's surveillance watchlist targeting activists and journalists began not with presidential authority, but with an unofficial request between colleagues.
Project MINARET began in 1967 when NSA official Louis Tordella informally requested a watchlist of Americans from FBI counterpart William Sullivan—with no legal basis. The program quickly expanded to over 1,200 names, including anti-war activists, civil rights leaders, and journalists, with intercepted communications shared across the FBI, CIA, Secret Service, and military. Operating without statutory authority and hidden from most NSA employees, MINARET demonstrates how the most consequential surveillance programs often emerge not from grand directives but from casual bureaucratic favors that no one later remembers to halt.
In 1967, NSA Director of Operations Louis Tordella sent a memo to FBI official William Sullivan. He wanted a list of “American persons” whose international communications the NSA could monitor. There was no legal basis for the request. Tordella and Sullivan knew each other from previous inter-agency work, and the request was informal, off-the-books. That memo became Project MINARET. The watchlist began with a handful of names. Within years it expanded to over 1,200—anti-war activists, civil rights leaders, journalists. The program operated without statutory authority, hidden even from most NSA employees. The FBI, CIA, Secret Service, and military all received the intercepted communications. What makes MINARET unsettling is not the scale. It is the origin story: not a presidential directive, not a congressional mandate, but a mid-level official asking a counterpart for a favor. The pattern repeats across surveillance history. The most consequential programs rarely arrive as grand decrees. They start as a memo between colleagues, then expand until no one remembers to stop.