The Down East Seniors Club held their October 22 meeting at the Blind Center of NC in Washington. President John Tunstall led the meeting. Ed Sample led the singing of “God Bless America” and gave the invocation. Dick Robinson provided humor.

Program Chairman Bill Cates introduced Barry Eckman, retired National Security Agency special agent. Mr. Eckman said that NSA evolved from the government effort in World War II to break the German Enigma code and gain intelligence from their communications. The primary goal of NSA today is to collect intelligence in the effort to protect the United States. By law NSA can’t spy on American citizens, and they can’t spy on foreign agents in the U.S. without approval from the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. NSA has sites that receive messages of interest and decode them. They provide this service for all government agencies, including the military. They also create message codes for government agencies. They cooperate with intelligence agencies of countries that are our allies. When the Soviet Union broke up, many Russian linguists at NSA had to be retrained in other languages.

Stewart Rumley had a signup sheet for those planning to attend the Christmas party on December 3.

Clif Heidel had a signup sheet for the Salvation Army bell ringing December 8.

Arnold Koch won the 50/50 drawing.