Employed 7 part 6

l never did discover why l was given the temporary duty that amounted to a

three-week vacation, but l got an idea about that just after returning to WS.

About two weeks before being sent on my TDY holiday, Operations atWS was

visited by a team from NSA Headquarters who made themselves available to

those of us working there, who might have questions, suggestions,complaints

or disatisfactions related to our work. l had a question about at least one of my regularly scheduled intercept assignments. The details are of no interest

to the reader, so l'll just give you the surface; l felt that one of my assigned

intercepts, a romantic couple, with about 5,000 miles between them, told each-other how much they loved and missed each-other. Every week at the 

same time, for the exact amount of time, saying the exact same words...NSA

guy said that the site in question can have the same callers indefinitely, but

on any day or time another set of callers can materialize and generate traffic

that we need to hear. Mission Planning decides  the exact shape of the mis-

sion and right now they like the site of which you speak remaining intercept-

ed.

The NSA guy seemed happy to respond to my question and was really very

knowledgeable of the entire voice-intercept world. And so personable! He

was so nice to me, that when l was first told of my TDY holiday my first thought was that he had set it up because he liked that l had a question

he could get his teeth into. Only two of us came forward and the other guy

got upset with the NSA guy and lost his turn.

Returning to WS at the end of the TDY, l realized that l had had it wrong..My

work position, radios, recorders,typewriters desk and all had been removed

from the Voice Section. The lone voice op in the section told me to check

with the day's ops officer for details. When l did, l learned that l'd been

transferred; no more da kine voice op, l was then the one-man Shipping &

Receiving dept. Having spent nearly a year preparing to do the voice-op job,

l was more than a little peeved to be dismissed with not so much as a discussion of the overall situation.

Shipping and receiving at WS was heavy-duty: Boxes containing the typed

transcripts are wrapped with a special paper that is actually two paper sheets

held together with a dense sticky black substance that  blocks any light

from entering or exiting the box. My job was simply to receive the already-

filled boxes and the rolls of double paper, wrap with two layers of the doubled

paper held together with tar. My job was entirely in the S&R room, not moving the boxes from the voice section or moving them out to the trucks that carry them to the plane that carries them to NSA.