Defense Intelligence Agency
The Defense Intelligence Agency is an intelligence agency and combat support agency of the United States Department of Defense specializing in military intelligence.
A component of the Department of Defense and the Intelligence Community, DIA informs national civilian and defense policymakers about the military intentions and capabilities of foreign governments and non-state actors. It also provides intelligence assistance, integration and coordination across uniformed military service intelligence components, which remain structurally separate from DIA. The agency's role encompasses the collection and analysis of military-related foreign political, economic, industrial, geographic, and medical and health intelligence. DIA produces approximately one-quarter of all intelligence content that goes into the President's Daily Brief.
DIA's intelligence operations extend beyond the zones of combat, and approximately half of its employees serve overseas at hundreds of locations and in U.S. embassies in 140 countries. The agency specializes in the collection and analysis of human-source intelligence, both overt and clandestine, while also handling U.S. military-diplomatic relations abroad. DIA concurrently serves as the national manager for the highly technical measurement and signature intelligence and as the Defense Department manager for counterintelligence programs. The agency has no law enforcement authority, contrary to occasional portrayals in American popular culture.
DIA is a national-level intelligence organization which does not belong to a single military element or within the traditional chain of command, instead answering to the secretary of defense directly through the under secretary of defense for intelligence. Around 2008, three-quarters of the agency's 17,000 employees were career civilians who were experts in various fields of defense and military interest or application; and although no military background is required, 48% of agency employees have some past military service. DIA has a tradition of marking unclassified deaths of its employees on the organization's Memorial Wall.
Established in 1961 under President John F. Kennedy by Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, DIA was involved in U.S. intelligence efforts throughout the Cold War and rapidly expanded, both in size and scope, after the September 11 attacks. Because of the sensitive nature of its work, the spy organization has been embroiled in numerous controversies, including those related to its intelligence-gathering activities, to its role in torture, as well as to attempts to expand its activities on U.S. soil.
Overview
The director of the Defense Intelligence Agency is an intelligence officer who is nominated by the U.S. president and confirmed by the U.S. Senate. He or she is the primary intelligence adviser to the secretary of defense and also answers to the director of national intelligence. The director is also the commander of the Joint Functional Component Command for Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance, a subordinate command of United States Strategic Command, which is headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska. Additionally, he or she chairs the Military Intelligence Board, which coordinates activities of the entire US defense intelligence community.File:Bird's eye view of the Defense Intelligence Agency Headquarters from Potomac, Washington DC.jpg|thumb|Bird's eye view of DIA HQ from the Potomac in Washington, DC
DIA is headquartered in Washington, D.C., on Joint Base Anacostia–Bolling with major operational activities at the Pentagon and at each Unified Combatant Command, as well as in more than a hundred U.S. embassies around the world, where it deploys alongside other government partners and also operates the U.S. Defense Attache Offices. Additionally, the agency has staff deployed at the Col. James N. Rowe Building at Rivanna Station in Charlottesville, Virginia, National Center for Medical Intelligence in Fort Detrick, Maryland, Missile and Space Intelligence Center in Huntsville, Alabama, Russell-Knox Building on Marine Corps Base Quantico, National Center for Credibility Assessment at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, and Defense Intelligence Support Center in Reston, Virginia.
Since 2012, the Intelligence Community Campus-Bethesda in Maryland serves as the location of the National Intelligence University as well as a facility for DIA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
Less known than its civilian equivalent or its cryptologic counterpart, DIA and its personnel have at times been portrayed in works of American popular culture. As with other U.S. foreign intelligence organizations, the agency's role has occasionally been confused with those of law enforcement agencies. DIA's parent organization, the Department of Defense, features in fiction and media much more prominently due to the public's greater awareness of its existence and the general association of military organizations with warfare, rather than spycraft.
Comparison to other intelligence community members
CIA
DIA and the Central Intelligence Agency are distinct organizations with different functions. DIA focuses on national level defense-military topics, while CIA is concentrated on broader, more general intelligence needs of the US President and his Cabinet. Additionally, due to DIA's designation as a combat support agency, it has special responsibilities in meeting intelligence requirements specifically for the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Combatant Commanders, both in peace and at war. Although there are misconceptions in the media and public about the DIA–CIA rivalry, the two agencies have a mutually beneficial relationship and division of labor. According to a former senior U.S official who worked with both agencies, "the CIA doesn't want to be looking for surface-to-air missiles in Libya" while it is also tasked with evaluating the Syrian opposition. CIA and DIA Operations Officers all go through the same type of clandestine training at Camp Peary, an interagency Defense installation under CIA administration better known in popular culture by its CIA nickname "The Farm".DIA and the military services
DIA is not a collective of all U.S. military intelligence units and the work it performs is not in lieu of that falling under intelligence components of individual services. Unlike the Russian GRU, which encompasses equivalents of nearly all joint U.S. military intelligence operations, DIA assists and coordinates the activities of individual service-level intelligence units, but they nevertheless remain separate entities. As a general rule, DIA handles national-level, long-term and strategic intelligence needs, whereas service-level intelligence components handle tactical, short-term goals pertinent to their respective services. DIA does, however, lead coordination efforts with the military intelligence units and with the national DOD intelligence services in its role as chair of the Military Intelligence Board and through the co-located Joint Functional Component Command for Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance.The Military Intelligence Integrated Database is due to be replaced by the Machine-Assisted Analytic Rapid-Repository System beginning in spring 2024.
Organization
DIA is organized into four directorates and five regional centersDirectorate for Operations:
- Defense Clandestine Service : DCS conducts clandestine espionage activities around the world and is the executive agent for human intelligence operations throughout the Department of Defense. Staffed by civilian and military personnel, the DCS is a consolidation of the former Defense Human Intelligence Service and works in conjunction with the Central Intelligence Agency's Directorate of Operations, among other national HUMINT entities. It globally deploys teams of case officers, interrogation experts, field analysts, linguists, technical specialists, and special operations forces.
- Defense Attache System : DAS represents the United States in defense and military-diplomatic relations with foreign governments worldwide. It also manages and conducts overt human intelligence collection activities. Defense Attaches serve from Defense Attache Offices co-located at more than a hundred United States Embassies in foreign nations, represent the Secretary of Defense in diplomatic relations with foreign governments and militaries, and coordinate military activities with partner nations.
- Defense Cover Office : DCO is a DIA component responsible for executing cover programs for agency's intelligence officers, as well as those for the entire Department of Defense.
Directorate for Science and Technology: The Directorate for Science and Technology manages DIA's technical assets and personnel. These assets gather and analyze Measurement and Signature Intelligence, which is a technical intelligence discipline that serves to detect, track, identify or describe the signatures of fixed or dynamic target sources. This often includes radar intelligence, acoustic intelligence, nuclear intelligence, and chemical and biological intelligence. DIA is designated the national manager for MASINT collection within the United States Intelligence Community, coordinating all MASINT gathering across agencies. DIA is also the national manager of the Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System, the central Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information processing network for the United States, and Stone Ghost, a network for US and partner nations.
Directorate for Mission Services: The Directorate for Mission Services provides administrative, technical, and programmatic support to the agency's domestic and global operations and analytic efforts. The Directorate also manages DIA's training centers—the Joint Military Intelligence Training Center and the Joint Military Attaché School. This includes providing counterintelligence to the agency as well as serving as the counterintelligence executive agent for the Department of Defense.
Centers: DIA is divided into five regional centers and two functional centers which manage the agency's efforts in these areas of responsibility. These centers are the Americas and Transnational Threats Center, the Indo-Pacific Regional Center, the Europe/Eurasia Regional Center, the Middle East/Africa Regional Center, the China Mission Group, the Defense Resources and Infrastructure Center, and the Defense Combating Terrorism Center. DIA also manages Community-wide centers such as the National Center for Medical Intelligence, the Missile and Space Intelligence Center, the National Media Exploitation Center, and the Underground Facilities Analysis Center.
Further, DIA is responsible for administering the JIOCEUR and various Joint Intelligence Centers which serve and are co-located with each of the Unified Combatant Commands. Additionally, DIA manages the Directorate for Intelligence, Joint Staff which advises and supports the Joint Chiefs of Staff with foreign military intelligence for defense policy and war planning.
DIA also managed the National Intelligence University on behalf of the Intelligence Community before transitioning it to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in June 2021. NIU and the John T. Hughes Library is housed at the Intelligence Community campus in Bethesda, Maryland and has several branch campuses at RAF Molesworth, MacDill Air Force Base, and Marine Corps Base Quantico as well as academic programs at the NSA and NGA.