Louis William Tordella

Louis William Tordella (May 1, 1911 – January 9, 1996) was the longest serving deputy director of the National Security Agency.

While serving as Deputy Director of the NSA, he commented on the 1967 USS Liberty incident: “I believe it was a deliberate attack.” His thoughts were further reflected in a NSA report in which he referred to the cover-up as “A nice whitewash for a group of ignorant, stupid and inept XXX [expletive]. If the attackers had not been Hebrew there would have been quite a commotion. Such crass stupidity – 30 knots, warship, 2 guns, etc., does not even do credit to the Nigerian Navy.” After consideration was given to ordering a U.S. Navy submarine to sink the Liberty in order to avoid the political liability of her being photographed, Tordella vocally opposed the idea: “Consideration was being given by some unnamed Washington authorities to sink the Liberty in order that newspaper men would be unable to photograph her and thus inflame public opinion against the Israelis. I made an impolite comment about that idea.”

Later career Tordella received unprecedented honors over the years. On his retirement in 1974 he received both the National Security Medal and the National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal. His relationship with the British was recognized in 1976 when he became an Honorary Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. In 1992 the Security Affairs Support Association, composed mainly of retired intelligence officials, gave him the William O. Baker medal for distinguished service to American intelligence.

Death He died at the Bethesda Naval Hospital in 1996. He had both Waldenström's macroglobulinemia and colon cancer but no autopsy was done to determine actual cause of death.

Aftermath Following his death, sixteen boxes were recovered from his NSA office safe. According to Stephen Budiansky, "...the documents turned out to be a compendium of every single one of NSA's most highly classified, compartmented programs of the post-World War II era." Lew Allen, the Director of the National Security Agency at the time, subsequently ensured "no NSA department director ever again wielded such untrammeled power."