"KSM Guarding Most Sensitive Information," the agency titled one of its memos to then-President George W. Bush and other Washington officials.
The software so excited C.I.A. officials that, for a few months at least, it was considered "the most important, most sensitive" intelligence tool the agency had, according to a former agency official, who like several others would speak only on the condition of anonymity because the technology was classified.
Some of the most sensitive U.S. government departments and agencies still aren't using a basic email security feature that would significantly cut down on incoming spam or phishing emails.
Surprisingly, one of the most sensitive departments, the electronic espionage agency, Government Communications Headquarters, had made available more than 8,000 records, including a block of decrypted radio messages of the former Soviet Union's clandestine network of sympathisers abroad between 1930 and 1945.
The supervisor, who is white, suggested that a black man, especially a tall athletically built black man like Mr. Sterling, could not meet secretly with Iranians without putting the agency's most sensitive Iranian cases at risk, Mr. Sterling said.
The Pentagon found 13 undisclosed "high risk" security issues caused by Snowden's disclosure to media outlets, including the Guardian, of tens of thousands of the US eavesdropping agency's most sensitive documents, according to the congressional inquiry.
Before his dismissal, Mr. Howard had already been briefed on many of the agency's most sensitive operations in the Soviet Union, including the case of Adolf Tolkachev, a Soviet aviation design expert who had given the C.I.A. a trove of secret information on Soviet military aircraft.
WASHINGTON — Private security guards from Blackwater Worldwide participated in some of the C.I.A.'s most sensitive activities — clandestine raids with agency officers against people suspected of being insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan and the transporting of detainees, according to former company employees and intelligence officials.
Under U.S. law, the D.N.I. serves as the President's principal intelligence adviser and oversees the P.D.B., a summary of the most sensitive intelligence collected by U.S. spy agencies.
When U.S. intelligence agencies gather and share the most sensitive information affecting national security, it is with the U.K., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, the so-called "five eyes".
