Secret Journey to Planet Serpo (25 page)

PRELUDE: HOW AND WHY IT ALL STARTED

The creation of a unified Dept of Defense [DOD] in 1947–49 was not accompanied by the unification of defense activities. Each of the military services maintained its one [own] intelligence organization; indeed, maintaining these distinct capabilities had been a major demand of the military during deliberations over the creation of the CIA. But there were also a number of intelligence requirements that were either interservice or departmentwide. Thus, an additional intelligence organization had to be designed and developed to meet these broader, growing needs for the future.

THE BIRTH OF THE DIA

The U.S. Dept of Defense established the DIA on Sunday, October 1, 1961, to coordinate the intelligence activities of the military services. The DIA serves as the intelligence agency for the Joint Chiefs of Staff [JCS] as well as for the Secretary of Defense and the U.S. unified or theater military commanders. As a senior military intelligence component of the U.S. intelligence community, the DEFENSE INTELLIGENCE AGENCY is a combat-support arm, providing all-source intelligence to the American armed forces, defense policy makers, and other members of the U.S. intelligence community. Under the Defense Reorganization Act of 1958, several unified military commands were created, but as long as each individual service had its own intelligence organization, the unified commands would not be receiving unified intelligence. The services had set up barriers that prevented the free exchange of intelligence data.

Complaints about vastly different estimates and bureaucratic infighting inspired the creation of the DIA under the KENNEDY administration, although the specific efforts by the Dept of Defense “to put its house in order” with respect to intelligence dates back to 1959. In his first State of the Union message, President Kennedy said: “The capacity to act decisively at the exact time action is needed has too often been muffled, [creating] a growing gap between decision and execution, between planning and reality.”

The brainchild of President JOHN F. KENNEDY and his secretary of defense, ROBERT S. McNAMARA, the DIA was established in 1961 as a military intelligence authority that would provide independent information while circumventing the “turf” problems arising from interservice rivalries. [See end of this section.]

The Secretary of Defense ROBERT S. McNAMARA created the DIA, giving to it as a prime mission the coordinating of intelligence estimates, which previously had been individually produced by the individual services. The DIA is a member of the intelligence community and, as such, in theory comes under the nominal responsibilities of the director of central intelligence [DCI] as well as the secretary of defense. Further, as originally set up, the DIA director assumed the functions of the J-2 (intelligence) within the JCS; the DIA still provides support for the J-2. The classified Plan for the Activation of the Defense Intelligence Agency (1961) called for a maximum of 250 personnel—military and civilian—at DIA headquarters.

THE DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE IS REVAMPED

The military services retained their intelligence agencies—Air Force intelligence, Army intelligence, Naval intelligence—and responsibilities for intelligence training, developing doctrine for combat intelligence, internal security, and counterintelligence within their respective services. Other duties retained by the services, but available to the DIA for its mission, included the collection of technical intelligence and intelligence support for JCS studies.

The DIA has frequently struggled—through reorganizations and Pentagon lobbying—to increase its importance within the intelligence community. But in fulfilling its charter to collect military and military-related intelligence, the DIA must rely upon the National Reconnaissance Office [NRO] for military information obtained by satellites and strategic reconaissance [
sic
] aircraft; the National Security Agency [NSA] for the making and breaking of codes; and the CIA for military intelligence gained from foreign intelligence agencies. If, for example, the CIA “turns” a Russian GRU officer, the DIA must depend on the CIA to obtain the GRU officer's information.

By 1975, the DIA had more than 4,600 employees and an annual budget estimated at more than $200 million. However, the DIA had been among the intelligence agencies most severely hit by the end of the Cold War, which led to a 25 percent reduction in its personnel. Former DCI Admiral STANSFIELD TURNER wrote in 1986: “Because the DIA is self-conscious about living within the shadow of the more capable CIA, it often takes contrary positions just to assert its independence. . . . More often than not, when the DIA does produce a differing view, it cannot—or will not—support it.” Turner, like many other CIA officials down the years, also criticized the DIA for being unable to dominate with the competing military services.

There were great changes in intelligence network and routing systems to battlefield and at-sea commanders. In February 1991, the DIA began producing a closed-circuit telecast to about 1,000 defense intelligence and operations officers in the Pentagon and at 19 military commands in the United States.

THE DIA IN THE MODERN ERA

The
Defense Intelligence Network Show
is encrypted so that it can be watched ONLY by authorized monitors. Ingredients for the telecasts in clude aerial and satellite reconnaissance images and audio reports from the NSA. “We've got to do to intelligence what CNN has done to news,” a Pentagon official told The WASHINGTON POST.

The DIA has also provided intelligence to United Nations peacekeeping forces and to U.S. responses to terrorist actions. The DIA also aids law enforcement agencies involved in antidrug operations. There has been a marked improvement in performance as the military establishment has changed its attitude toward intelligence, which had been seen as a dead end for nonspecialist officer career paths.

Although the DIA was conceived as a military agency, by the mid1980s, about 60% of the DIA staff were civilians. The DIA has sometimes found itself torn between its military customers (the JCS and their organization) and the civilian customers of the DOD. The Joint Chiefs may seek analysis to support specific or preferred positions; the civilians may prove skeptical of military-produced analysis, which often tends toward more pessimistic assumptions about conflict and combat.

A possible renaissance [
sic
] for the DIA came in 1995 with the appointment of JOHN M. DEUTCH, former deputy secretary of defense, as DCI. During his time in the Pentagon, Deutch had taken a close interest in the DIA and had created within it the Defense HUMINT Service [DHS], which is authorized to run agents and proprietary companies overseas.

After the capture of Saddam Hussein in December 2003, the CIA was chosen to lead his interrogation. But specialists in the DIA, who had operated extensively in Iraq, were also part of the interrogation team. DIA analysts were also involved in the hunt for weapons of mass destruction.

DIA VS CIA: “SIBLING RIVALRY” AND INTELLIGENCE TURF WARS

The so-called “sibling rivalry” is just that: it is a CIA term used to refer to officers employed by the sometimes rival DIA. The UNofficial rivalry between the two (2) agencies began when the DIA was established in 1961. From the beginning, some CIA officials felt that the DIA was encroaching on agency territory. It was believed that the DIA was too involved with CIA-controlled spy satellite operations. The rivalry also stemmed from fiscal concerns, wherein both agencies found themselves competing for budget dollars. However, by virtue of the coordinating and oversight authority of the DCI, the CIA is senior to the DIA within the U.S. intelligence community. Today, the DIA very effectively reduces the role of the individual armed services in the realm of strategic intelligence.