Term Paper on "History of the Defense Intelligence Agency"

Term Paper 7 pages (1943 words) Sources: 1+

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Defense Agency

Department of Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) was established on October 1, 1963. Its stated primary purpose at that time was to coordinate the intelligence activities of the military services.

"The DIA serves as the intelligence agency for the Joint Chief of Staffs (JCS) as well as for the Secretary of Defense and the U.S. unified or theater military commanders. The director of the DIA also serves as the JCSj-2." (Polmar 1997-page 159).

The DIA's history is a speckled one at best, initially it was a rather obscure organization with very little real power. The reason for this was because it was supposed to be a coordinator of information gathered by other agencies, and even though the agencies were military in nature, as was the DIA, there was still a myriad of problems in gathering the respective data from those individual agencies. The agencies jealously protected their information, thereby rendering moot the DIA's attempts at clarification and enhancement of the data it was charged with coordinating.

For over twenty years, the organization fought against this obscurity, and there were times during that era when the DIA was in danger of being abolished entirely.

One of those times was during the 1974-1976 years. "A report from the Pike Committee, leaked in February 1976, recommended the abolition of the DIA because it duplicated work being done by other intelligence agencies." (Polmar pg 159) The agency had become superfluous, which in most cases for government agencies, meant death.

The organization was saved by General Daniel Graham who called the report "a rotten piece of work." Though the organization survived the Pike Committee, many of the "powers to be" still looked with disdain upon the organization's capabilities.

In 1986 the former Director of Central Intelligence Stansfield Turner had this to say about the organization; "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." (Polmar pg 159).

It seemed that the DIA had a bad case of an inferiority complex, and compounded the organization's problem by assuming an attitude of contrarianism, much of the time to its own detriment.

Even, in its earlier years, when the DIA and other American intelligence agencies worked together to analyze threats; military or otherwise, the DIA was not always well represented.

"Defining and describing the 'threat' was easier during the forty years of cold war with the U.S.S.R., when estimators at the CIA hammered out the Annual Survey of Soviet Strategic Intentions and Capabilities, the hard fought consensus reached (or in some cases not reached) by analysts from the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency and other American intelligence organizations." (Powers 2002-page 382)

In retrospect however, many experts might say that the DIA took a more sane approach (albeit it may have been a forced sanity) to intelligence gathering during those years than the CIA ever did.

With its focus on military intelligence gathering the DIA could have (and many times was) been enveloped in the widening spiral of defense and military justification of ever increasing budgets to limit that 'threat'. That could have been one of the reasons why the organization many times took the 'contrarian stance'. The intelligence agencies of that day (including the DIA) many times were so busy justifying those increases (in budget terms, human terms and possibly even in terms of perceived power and influence) that to look at the real "threat" posed by the U.S.S.R. might have meant a limit to the expenditures needed to analyze such threats.

"What Moscow intended was neither here nor there, the threat of war might have been small on any given day but Soviet capabilities - the power of the weapons themselves - were threat enough to keep the United States and its allies on edge for decades." (Powers pg 383).

The DIA played the budget game as well as some, and better than other intelligence agencies growing from its initial 25 employees to over 2000 employees by the early 70's.

That the CIA covered much of the same territory became clearly evident to many experts during those years. Each organization was attempting to prove its place in the intelligence wars.

"The battle was joined after the DIA interrogated a defector who said the Soviets were spending 11 to 12% of GNP of Defense, not the 5 to 6% previously claimed by the CIA." (Powers pg 303). Some analysts even believed the figure was closer to 25%. In his writings, Powers says that with such high figures being espoused, somebody, somewhere should have been cognizant of the fact that such high spending would ultimately lead to a collapse of Russia's financial system, but what happened was that none of the analysts from any of the intelligence agencies predicted that was the case. Instead they came to the conclusion that Russia's spending had to be kept up with by America's spending.

Regarding the Soviet problem specifically, and the intelligence agencies in general, Powers asks the question; "Why are the analysts so often wrong?" (Powers pg 224). He goes on to explain that many times the organizations fall prey to the political climate of the times. If it made sense according to the political climate to vigorously enhance the enemy's capabilities, then that is exactly what the DIA and the CIA did.

That the DIA survived that particular era is probably due more to luck than any other factor. One thing that may have helped the organization in its cause was the production of a closed-circuit telecast to approximately 1000 defense intelligence officers initiated in February 1991.

In their book, Polmar and Allen portray the Defense Intelligence Network program as an encrypted show that can only by watched on certain monitors.

They state that components of the show include aerial and satellite reconnaissance images and audio reports, including ones from the NSA. They say that the agency has improved its earlier image by aiding law enforcement agencies in their efforts against drug dealing, as well as assisting in antiterrorist actions and providing intelligence to UN peacekeeping forces. Part of this retooled image could be due to the civilians employed by the DIA.

"Although the DIA was conceived as a military agency, by the mid-1980's about 60% of the DIA staff were civilians." (Polmar pg 159). Many of those civilian employees could have brought with them a civilian mindset, differing totally from the military mindset of previous DIA administrations.

"Dishonesty in the intelligence business is not personal but institutional. In effect, the analysts are advocates. The Air Force wants to build planes and missles, the Navy wants to build ships, the Army wants more tanks and fully equipped divisions." (Powers pg 224)

With the onset of civilian employees in the DIA much of the advocating became more analytical than many previously thought was possible. A renaissance in the entire intelligence community was taking place.

It was not until the mid-1990's however, that the DIA finally began a renaissance of its own. This renaissance was primarily due to the appointment as Director of Central Intelligence of John M. Deutch who was formerly the Deputy Secretary of Defense. He was the individual most instrumental in providing the DIA with a plan for its future.

He did this partly by establishing the Defense Humint Intelligence Services (DHS) which called for the DIA to run agents and proprietary companies overseas. By establishing HUMINT, Deutch was able to provide a lift to the DIA by allowing it to use agents for gathering human intelligence.

The use of agents to gather information enables the agency to be more efficient and to better provide data and information that is more reliable. This reliability is by no means a small matter, especially in the eyes of experts who do not always respect the intelligence community.

"Outside of professional circles, the intelligence community does not always command respect. Some critics see it as a fraternity of closet militarists scaring each other with shrill cries....others assume that the estimates are in the naked service of money and power. "Powers pg 225).

That thinking still in large part remains true today, even though Deutch led the DIA to a semi-respectability by enhancing its capabilities. With Deutch as the DCI, the DIA now had in its repertoire a weapon that it had not had before, and that is the use of human intelligence. This was to become very important in future events, especially those that took place on September 11, 2001.

"This latest act of terrorism, although the most horrific to date, is not the first time that the U.S. government has been caught unaware. Indeed, the subject of 'asymmetric warfare' the use of terrorist methods to strike at weaknesses in the societies of western countries - has been a significant worry for strategic planners in the U.S. For most of the 1990's." (Beal 2006).

Many experts believe that the reason the attack on 9/11 was successful was due to the… READ MORE

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