The top-secret National Security Agency has confirmed that a computer failure compromised its ability to process intelligence information for several days last week, the Associated Press reported.
The NSA said the system failed at 7 p.m. EST Monday and service was restored on Thursday. In the meantime, the spy agency was unable to issue reports on intercepted foreign telephone, cable, and radio messages, according to ABC News, which first reported the problem.
ABC characterized the information blackout as the greatest in NSA history. But the agency did its best to downplay the problem.
"This problem, which was contained to the NSA headquarters complex at Fort Meade, Maryland, did not affect intelligence collection, but did affect the processing of intelligence information," the NSA said in statement issued Saturday. "NSA systems were impacted for 72 hours."
The cause of the problem remained a mystery.
The Washington Post quoted one unnamed official, who described the problem as a software anomaly. "As of now, there is no evidence other than this was a system stressed to meet day-to-day operational pressures," the Post quoted the official as saying.
"There was no evidence of malice or no evidence of a Y2K problem," an agency official who asked not to be identified by name told the Associated Press.
"Contingency plans were immediately put into effect that called on other aspects of the NSA system to assume some of the load," the agency said in its statement.
"While intelligence collection continued, NSA technicians worked to recover the IT [information technology] infrastructure. That backlog of intelligence processing is almost complete and NSA is confident that no significant intelligence information has been lost," the NSA statement said.
The statement said the agency "is currently operating within the window of normal operations."
