When was the United States National Security Agency established?

The story behind the answer

The National Security Agency was established on November 4, 1952, when President Harry S. Truman issued a classified directive reorganizing the Armed Forces Security Agency (1949) into a centralized authority for signals intelligence (SIGINT) and communications security (COMSEC). Born in the early Cold War—and informed by WWII codebreaking and the Korean War—the NSA unified U.S. efforts in cryptanalysis and global electronic eavesdropping.

Memory tip: “No Such Agency” starts in ’52—right as the Cold War intensifies. The other dates belong to different agencies: July 26, 1908 (origin of the FBI’s Bureau of Investigation), July 1, 1973 (DEA), and November 25, 2002 (Department of Homeland Security). NSA’s 1952 founding marked America’s pivot to intelligence dominance through electronics and encryption.