WASHINGTON, July 11 (UPI) -- President Bush has selected Lt. Gen. Keith B. Alexander, the Army's intelligence chief, as the next head of the NSA.
The National Security Agency at Fort Meade has been without a director since mid-April, when Lt. Gen. Michael Hayden left to become the first deputy director of national intelligence. That is the longest vacancy for the top post in the spy agency's history, the New York Sun reported Monday.
Alexander will be a newcomer to the super-secret NSA, which monitors telecommunications worldwide. He was selected with the approval of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and National Intelligence Director John Negroponte and despite the apparent reservations of Alexander's predecessor, the Sun said.
Alexander, a West Point graduate and career Army officer, is described by former colleagues as open-minded and reform-oriented. If confirmed, he will inherit an ambitious but unfinished modernization agenda.
One of the programs, known as Ground Breaker, is an internal effort to upgrade NSA's computer systems, to improve communications with each other and other government agencies. A second initiative, Trail Blazer, is geared toward modernizing NSA's eavesdropping methods, so they can better track newer communication methods such as cell phones and e-mail.
Alexander's most recent project has been an overhaul of the Army's outdated intelligence apparatus to make it more responsive to the needs of soldiers in the field. Last week, Alexander announced a new program to give BlackBerry-type devices that would allow troops to tap into the latest intelligence affecting their mission.
