Last week, Incoming Director Bobby Chesney and the Brookings Institution’s Benjamin Wittes visited the NSA to conduct a series of interviews with high-level officials. The interviews are a direct outgrowth of the Intelligence Studies Project, a joint venture of the Strauss Center and the Clements Center for National Security at UT Austin. The Intelligence Studies Project kicked off its work this fall when Chesney and Clements Director Will Inboden led a diverse group of academics, all experts in the field of national security and intelligence, on another trip to the NSA to participate in a day-long workshop with senior officials. During that visit, Wittes proposed the idea of podcast interviews with key NSA officials, and beginning Monday morning the resulting interviews are being posted to Lawfare, a blog co-founded by Chesney and Wittes.

The series, which they’ve titled “Inside the NSA: We Brought in a Recording Device So You Don’t Have To,” begins with an interview with Rajesh De, the NSA’s General Counsel. You can listen to the interview on Lawfare, here.

Upcoming interviews include:

• John DeLong, Director of Compliance,
• Lonny Anderson, Chief Information Officer,
• Anne Neuberger, who manages NSA’s relations with the U.S. private sector, and
• Fran Fleisch, Acting Deputy Director