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NSA

The NSA (National Security Agency) is a U.S. intelligence agency that never acts openly in the campaign but whose identification turns up twice on dead men in black suits.
Type Organization (U.S. federal agency)
Aliases National Security Agency; the Puzzle Palace
First appearance Radford Horror 03

Overview

No confirmed NSA employee ever appears. The agency matters as a name on two badges, and as the thing the team is afraid might be listening. "The Puzzle Palace is what the CIA calls the NSA", as Andre explained to the table, and Kurt has a CIA man's contempt for it: its people are "pencil-pushing weenuses" who do not deserve alien technology. (Radford Horror 04, Appalachia 07)

According to Kurt, "our jurisdiction trumps them on domestic soil". Andrew Howard still does not want to go around "pissing off the NSA", and Diane spells out "M-O-T-H" on the telephone because nobody can hear the call "except for the NSA". (Radford Horror 04, Radford Horror 05, Summer Service 01)

Members

Both known "members" are dead men whose only link to the agency is the identification they carried.

History

Agent Murphy

On a mountain road outside Radford, Kurt and the Biz hit a man in a black suit with their car. Vomiting blood, he refuses a hospital and shows a badge. (Radford Horror 03)

Quote

"I'm Agent Murphy. I'm NSA. You are fucking this up for me. Get back in your car and drive away." (Andre as Agent Murphy, Radford Horror 03)

Quote

"I don't believe he's NSA for a fucking second." (Dante, Radford Horror 03)

Murphy carries a briefcase and the first flashlight weapon the team sees. He burns Kurt with it, flees into the woods and dies there when it overheats. Kurt recovers scorched teeth and a wallet holding nothing but an NSA card and a little cash; the papers in the briefcase look nothing like the classified NSA documents he has seen. The Biz warns that the agency will deny everything and that the whole thing could be a plant. (Radford Horror 03, Radford Horror 04)

A couple of weeks later Kurt's illegal contacts report on the badge: it is not a counterfeit, but there is no one in the records with that name. If it is a forgery, it is the best they have ever seen. (Radford Horror 08)

Quote

"But hey, you know what that means. I didn't kill an NSA agent, officially." (Dante, Radford Horror 08)

Whether the armed cleanup crew that burned the old-town church, which carried the same weapons, has anything to do with the NSA is unresolved. (Radford Horror 08)

The second man in black

In CIA custody, Jan Martense tells Kurt where his first ape woman came from. Five years earlier, driving drunk in the Georgia countryside at night, he hit and killed a man in a black suit who was crossing the highway. The man was Hispanic and carried NSA identification, and in his van was an ape woman strapped to a gurney and being fed drugs. Jan put the body "in the passenger seat of his car", drove it into a lake and kept her. (Walkers 01)

The players noticed that both "NSA" men were struck by cars while crossing a road at night ("they have gotta start training their dudes better"), and Dante describes the second as "a different guy pretending to be an NSA agent". (Walkers 01)

Other contact

  • Kurt sends the cryptogram menu from the Spud Hut to the Puzzle Palace to decode. (Appalachia 07)
  • Kurt's Secret Santa gift to Diane at Christmas 1992 is a Herman Miller chair stamped "Property of the National Security Agency". (Roulet Estate 01)

Quote

"It's a little used, I hope you don't mind, but they're, like, you know, eight grand new, but it should work just fine." (Dante as Kurt, Roulet Estate 01)

Unresolved

  • It is never established whether Murphy or the Georgia man actually worked for the NSA, or only carried its identification. (Radford Horror 08, Walkers 01)
  • Nor do the episodes say whether the two men in black are connected to each other, to the flashlight weapons, or to the cleanup crews that follow the team's cases, or why an NSA-badged man had a drugged ape woman in his van. (Radford Horror 08, Walkers 01)

Appearances