The National Security Agency’s bizarre FOIA response to its involvement in the Inslaw affair and stolen PROMIS software highlight two significant problems that often arises in these types of internal investigations. The first is that the government’s bias and desire to clear itself can undermine the results of the investigation, and erode public faith. The second problem, which arises from the first, is that it indirectly encourages a culture of suspicion and occasionally outright conspiratorial thinking.

VENONA, a Signals Intelligence and decryption program run by the NSA intercepted and ultimately decrypted thousands of Soviet messages - messages, which as Emma Best found out, remain classified TOP SECRET even decades later.