Talk:United States Army Security Agency

Untitled
Re: "I spent nearly 10 years in the Agency and I never felt the 4R the article states. All those that I served with probably would agree.  This sounds like a disgrunted whiner.  Maybe he has an axe to grind against his time with the Agency, but it should not be part of the article in Wikipedia about the Agency.  Let him start his own venue and air his grief."

In my 27 months of pre-'65 honorable service abroad, stationed at two different bases, I was aware of only two reenlistments of ASA soldiers who were not already career soldiers (I am talking about guys who worked in ops, not cooks, finance, MP's, etc.). That is a fair indicator of the failed leadership in those units. The original writer may be disgrunted(sic), but he was hardly the only one. The ASA was not broken up because of the great job it was doing:

"The Army inspector general...found grave deficiencies in the operations of the Army Security Agency." "The (Ursano) panel reserved some of its most stinging criticism for the Army Security Agency." MILITARY INTELLIGENCE John Patrick Finnegan Center of Military History United States Army Washington, D. C., 1998

I Was really impressed by the accuracy of the Article. I too was a member of class R-12-80 at the Army Language School along with Charles Deemer, and we also served together at Baumholder, West Germany. in the 507th USASA Group (which we "affectionately" called 507th USASA "Bunch".  The Unit was Previously located in Heilbronn, then moved en masse at the beginning of 1961.  The officers of our unit were universally considered sub-standard because of the issues cited in the article.  By my memory, when our Russian class started in October of 1959, three of us youngsters were not college graduates (inclunding me), and one was only 17 years old.    48 of us graduated on 25 October, 1960, including 5 officers.  I am positive there was a Marine Captain (a Naval Academy Graduate)named Ball, but he is not shown in the program. Although I was extremely proud to be a voice interceptor; the Army's motto of "Soldier First, Technichian 2nd" was very disheartening when we  were trying to translate sensitive info and some officer would decide our floor was too dirty.  Stop what you're doing and get the mops and buckets! I was only 19 years old (a half century ago) when I made Spec 5. It was the longest rank I held in 3-year hitch. I have in my possession the Program of Graduation (all Language groups) from ALS and would love to up-load it if I knew how, or if any individual wants a copy. I'm amazed how many names and faces I stll remember.

By the way, the term "Monterey Mary" was a derisive epithet! It arose because non-linguist ASA men believed a lot of us were homosexual, and many more overly genteel (efeminate). This was underscored by the fact that we believed we were among the "upper 7(%)", while they were just upper 10%

I was totally taken aback when I read that essentially, the draft provided the ASA with highly intelligent slave labor. Despite of the fact that I agree that there was the 4-R situation I'm still very proud of my service!!!

Paul Linowski Temecula, CA June 3, 2010  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.174.230.107 (talk) 04:16, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

Errors in this article
1. 05G's are / were Specialists. They were NOT Direction Finder personnel. That responsibility was held by 05D's like myself.

2. Augsburg had FOUR kaserns: Sheridan, Reese, Flak, AND Quartermaster

3. I never knew or heard of this individual during my time in Augsburg from 1974-1977. Have you checked out his background? Most of his material is fairly accurate, but to have mistakes listed in 1 & 2 above alludes to a lack of confidence with his knowledge.

step12@nycap.rr.com 05D / 05H 409th ASA Company Flak Kaserne, Augsburg, Germany 1974-1977 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.196.22.81 (talk) 16:56, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

removing POV tag with no active discussion per Template:POV
I've removed an old neutrality tag from this page that appears to have no active discussion per the instructions at Template:POV:
 * This template is not meant to be a permanent resident on any article. Remove this template whenever:
 * There is consensus on the talkpage or the NPOV Noticeboard that the issue has been resolved
 * It is not clear what the neutrality issue is, and no satisfactory explanation has been given
 * In the absence of any discussion, or if the discussion has become dormant.

Since there's no evidence of ongoing discussion, I'm removing the tag for now. If discussion is continuing and I've failed to see it, however, please feel free to restore the template and continue to address the issues. Thanks to everybody working on this one! -- Khazar2 (talk) 12:19, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

Reorder books by author surname
It's unusual to have a list of books that are alphabetized, roughly, by book title. I suggest the list should be reordered by author's surname. They are not chronological by date of publication or conflict, so alphabetical by author would be more consistent with standard schemes.Parkwells (talk) 14:33, 1 March 2019 (UTC)

Years "Active"
ASA units existed in the active-duty Army until 1976. There were, at the end, in the Army Reserves two company-size units as late as 1984 -- one on the East Coast, and one on the West. The one on the West Coast was the 519th ASA Co. in Mountain View, California. 2601:8A:C180:70:882A:55F0:91B4:B514 (talk) 08:25, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

Book: "The Most Secret War"
"The Most Secret War: Army Signals Intelligence in Vietnam" (the paperback is over $100 on Amazon). US Military History Office (January 1, 2006). A one-time printing, extremely rare. 2601:8A:C180:70:882A:55F0:91B4:B514 (talk) 08:32, 11 November 2020 (UTC)