At NSA, the response to the crisis was led by the director, Lieutenant General Gordon Blake, USAF. Blake had become DIRNSA only three months before, but he had a strong background in communications and intelligence. Early in his career he had been operations officer at Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii, and was awarded the Silver Star for gallantry during the Japanese attack on December 7, 1941. After a series of command and staff positions, in 1957 he became chief of the Air Force Security Service. Two years later he became vice commander and chief of staff of the Pacific Air Forces, then chief of the Continental Air Command. In 1962, when Vice Admiral Laurence Frost was unexpectedly transferred from his position as DIRNSA, Gordon Blake was selected as his replacement.
Much of the day-to-day -- or minute-to-minute -- burden fell on an element of the Operations organization headed by Mrs. Juanita Moody. Mrs. Moody had begun her career as a cryptanalyst during World War II and had remained in cryptology after the end of the war. Her office worked around the clock to reexamine older reports about the status of Cuba's armed forces and produce current intelligence quickly. In addition to producing new reports and summaries, Mrs. Moody found it necessary to give impromptu telephone briefings to senior military and political decision makers, most of whom would call for information updates at any hour of the day or night.
Mrs. Moody later recalled how NSA responded as a team to the crisis, sometimes in unusual ways. At one point General Blake came to her office to ask if he might be of any assistance to the effort there. She asked him to try to get additional staff to meet a sudden need for more personnel. Shortly she heard him on the telephone talking to off-duty employees: "This is Gordon Blake calling for Mrs. Moody. Could you come in to work now?"
To ensure timely responses to unexpected needs by the consumers of SIGINT, General Blake established NSA's first around-the-clock command center. General Blake also took responsibility for getting NSA's product to the White House and interpreting its sometimes arcane indicators to the policymakers.
NSA had deployed a considerable capability around Cuba, including SIGINT collection from ground-based stations, and aircraft circling the periphery of the island, just outside Cuban territorial waters. The USS Oxford, a specially configured SIGINT collection ship, nestled close to the Cuban coastline intercepting radio communications from the island.