experts call "packetized communications" (what the rest of the world calls e-mail and other computer missives). Also, cellphone use increased 50 times over in the '90s, noted General Hayden, now principal deputy director of national intelligence, in a 2002 congressional hearing. US international phone calls went from 38 billion minutes to over 100 billion minutes annually.

Faced with a new enemy - Al Qaeda - that communicated as little as possible, and in constantly changing ways, the NSA was forced to become "hunters rather than gatherers," in a phrase used by its former director of signals intelligence, Maureen Baginski.

Today, Ms. Baginski has moved on. In 2003, she was named the FBI's first-ever executive assistant director of intelligence. And the NSA is under fire for what critics deem is huntingis particularly advantageous in that the conveyor provides a substantial amount of smoothing. Smoothing is achieved internally of the slurry and on the surface. When the slurry is delivered to the apparatus, it is dumped through a housing from a mixing source typically conveyed by a conveyor, screw transfer machine, or the like, and may entrap air bubbles. The viscous nature of the slurry normally prevents escape of air bubbles. The apparatus of the present invention avoids entrapped air bubbles by placing the slurry on the conveyor belt where it is scraped as it emerges from a slot, thereby eliminating some of the bubbles. It is compressed between a compression roller and the pipe itself which compresses and removes many of the remaining air bubbles. Through this technique,