James Ed has served in the National Security Administration for 28 years. Ed entered the service of NSA after completing a Bachelor's of Arts in French language and literature from Yale in 1971. Ed went on to complete an intensive course of study in Russian and Arabic at Middlebury College, demonstrating mastery of these languages after additional independent study. Ed earned a Masters of Science in linguistics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1974. Then, while active as an NSA translator, Ed undertook NSA's full two-year course of training in cryptography, completing this in 1976. Ed then served as a translator and cryptoanalyst in intercept stations in or near seven foreign countries, performing codebreaking and signal analysis. In 1978-79, Ed served as a special advisor in a U.S. operation to retrieve hostages held in Tehran. Ed then served as a high-level analyst, advising on tactical and strategic uses of foreign language in intelligence and military applications. In 1992, Ed designed the current course of study in modern languages for NSA trainees. In 1996, Ed oversaw the cryptographic upgrade of local computer networks in U.S. embassies worldwide. After chairing the Commission to Investigate the Use of Civilian Contractors by U.S. Intelligence Organizations, Ed joined a special team of data analysts on a advanced computational architecture designed to perform real-time analysis of global Internet activity.