Rise of the Mavericks traces the beginnings and subsequent development
of the U.S. Air Force Security Service. Established in 1948 as part of
the emerging U.S. national security apparatus, this communications
intelligence organization was meant to place the fledgling U.S. Air
Force on a competitive footing with its Army and Navy counterparts. As
World War II ended and the Cold War began, Air Force leaders understood
that an effective cryptologic capability would be crucial for
maintaining and enhancing the Air Force as a strategic and decisive
component of America's national defense. Successfully deploying
air-atomic strategy in the event of a future war would require reliable
information on the capabilities, intentions--and potential targets--of
an opposing force, in particular the Soviet Union. Communications
intelligence would be a critical source of this information, and Air
Force leaders were adamant that their service not remain dependent on
other service structures for this capability. The Air Force Security
Service rose to the occasion, quickly establishing itself as one of the
preeminent communications intelligence agencies in the United States.
Rise of the Mavericks fills the gap in the military and intelligence
history literature and further complicates the literature surrounding
the history of the NSA, which too often ignores or hastily addresses the
contributions and role of the service COMINT agencies during the early
Cold War period. The book explains how Air Force Security Service
personnel were viewed as mavericks by other U.S. military and government
organizations. The airmen lived up to this characterization by creating
and developing an independent communications intelligence capability
while persistently resisting the controlling efforts of the Armed Forces
Security Agency and the National Security Agency.
