Қорғаныс барлау агенттігі: құрылымы, қызметі және тарихы

U. S. DoD combat support agency
other organizations with similar names

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 (HUMINT), 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 (MASINT) 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 that 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. Three quarters of the agency's 17,000 employees are career civilians who are 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.

The Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency is an intelligence officer who is nominated by the President and confirmed by the 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 defense intelligence community. 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 (e. g., the CIA) 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 (NCMI) in Fort Detrick, Maryland, Missile and Space Intelligence Center (MSIC) 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 (DISC) in Reston, Virginia. DIA also recently completed the renovation of Intelligence Community Campus Bethesda in Maryland, which serves as the new 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.

DIA and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) 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 President and 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. DIA does, however, lead coordination efforts with the military intelligence units and with the national DOD intelligence services (NSA, NGA, NRO) 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 (MIDB) is due to be replaced by the Machine Assisted Analytic Rapid Repository System (MARS) beginning in spring 2024.

The DIA has its own police force (established in 1963), made up of federal officers who protect DIA people and property. DIA Police provide law enforcement and police services, emergency response and physical security at DIA campuses. DIA Police have 170 sworn, uniformed officers that protect and police the six DIA sites (Headquarters, Reston, Charlottesville, DIA Logistics Operation Center, National Center for Medical Intelligence and Missile and Space Intelligence Center). While the Defense Reorganization Act of 1958 aimed to correct these deficiencies, the intelligence responsibilities remained unclear, the coordination was poor and the results fell short of national reliability and focus. As a result of this poor organization, President Dwight D. Eisenhower appointed the Joint Study Group in 1960 to find better ways for organizing the nation's military intelligence activities. along with 118 other victims at the Pentagon in a terrorist attack when American Airlines Flight 77 piloted by five Al Qaeda hijackers plowed into the western side of the building, as part of the September 11 attacks. The death of seven employees at once was the largest combined loss in DIA's history. On September 11, 2009, DIA dedicated a memorial to the seven employees lost in the terrorist attacks on the Pentagon. The memorial is located in the garden at the Defense Intelligence Agency Analysis Center in Washington, D. C.

In October 2015, the Pentagon said that DIA appointed a British Royal Air Force officer as its first deputy director in charge of improving integration between U. S. intelligence units and spy agencies of other English speaking countries in the Five Eyes alliance. This was the first time that a foreign national was appointed to a senior position at a U. S. intelligence agency. Today, corporations carry out a large amount of DIA's workload. In fiscal year 2020 alone, such activity included work in DIA's Science & Technology Directorate, National Media Exploitation Center, and Missile & Space Intelligence Center. Corporations also worked on technology transfer analysis and assessments at DIA's Charlottesville branch, planned and analyzed DIA's workforce, carried out technical support, and conducted polygraph examinations and background investigations.

Due to the sensitive nature of DIA's work, all of its personnel, including interns and contractors, are subject to the same security standards and must obtain a Top Secret clearance with Sensitive Compartmented Information (TS/SCI) access. Collateral Top Secret clearances granted by the DoD are not sufficient to grant access to DIA's SCI information. Additionally, the SCI access granted by other intelligence agencies, such as CIA or NSA, do not transfer to DIA and vice versa. In addition to the rigorous background investigations, psychological and drug screening, as well as security interviews, DIA requires that its applicants pass the agency polygraph. In fact, DIA exercises operational control over the National Center for Credibility Assessment (NCCA), which establishes polygraphing standards and trains polygraphers for placement across the entire intelligence community. In 2008, the agency started expanding its polygraph program in an attempt to screen 5,700 prospective and current employees every year. This was a several fold increase from 2002 when, according to information provided to Congress, DIA conducted 1,345 polygraphs. According to the unclassified DIA document cited in the news report, since the mid 2000s the agency started hiring contract polygraphers in addition to the permanent DIA polygraphers and added 13 polygraphing studios to those the spy organization already operated. This expanded polygraph screening at DIA continued notwithstanding documented technical problems discovered in the Lafayette computerized polygraph system used by the agency; the organization allegedly refused to change the flawed Lafayette polygraph but declined to comment as to the reasoning. Unlike the CIA and NSA polygraphs, DIA polygraphs are only of Counterintelligence Scope (CI), rather than Full Scope (FS) (also known as Expanded Scope Screening or ESS), which is ostensibly more intrusive as far as one's personal life is concerned. DIA administered only a handful of FS polygraphs and only for those personnel who were to be detailed to the CIA. Additionally, DIA conducted a handful of FS polygraphs on its personnel remaining overseas in excess of 6.5 years, although this practice appeared to be outside the scope of DIA's authorization at the time. Like with other intelligence agencies, failing to pass the DIA polygraph is a virtual guarantee that an applicant will be judged unsuitable for agency employment. In fact, according to a report published by the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense of Intelligence, while the usually more stringent NSA is willing to give its applicants several shots at passing the polygraph, DIA tends to give one or at most two opportunities to clear the test, after which the employment offer is rescinded. The same report recommended that DIA seek permanent authority to conduct more intrusive Expanded Scope Screenings due to their supposed usefulness in eliciting admissions from applicants. Similarly to other intelligence agencies, employees are required to take periodic polygraph examinations throughout their careers. However, no unfavorable administrative actions will be taken against them based solely on their results.

DIA's budget and exact personnel numbers are classified. Classified Information is not willingly revealed to the public or with anyone that does not have a need to know verified. The agency does reveal that currently, it has approximately 17,000 employees, two thirds of whom are civilians The agency, however, has nearly doubled in size since then and also assumed additional responsibilities from various intelligence elements from across the Department of Defense, CIA and wider intelligence community. In 2006, at the height of Donald Rumsfeld's push to further expand the scope of military intelligence beyond tactical considerations, DIA was estimated to receive up to $3 billion annually. According to classified documents leaked by Edward Snowden and published by The Washington Post in 2013, the National Intelligence Program (NIP) component of the overall US intelligence budget contained approximately $4.4 billion/year for the General Defense Intelligence Program (GDIP), which is managed by DIA, even as it is not exclusively for the agency's use. The numbers exclude the Military Intelligence Component (MIP) of the overall US intelligence budget, which by itself has averaged more than $20 billion per year in the past decade.

DIA is one of a few U. S. federal organizations, such as the CIA and FBI, that rely on human espionage to collect information. For this reason, the agency has been involved in numerous espionage events over the course of decades.

Victor Kaliadin (Виктор Калядин) – a CEO of a Russian company "Elers Electron", who in 2001 was sentenced to 14 years in prison for selling a ring run by a DIA agent technical information on Arena, the Russian active protection system for tanks. He died of his fourth heart attack in 2004. Igor Sutyagin – Russian arms control and nuclear weapons specialist convicted in 2004 of spying for DIA. Released in 2010 in exchange for Russian spies arrested in the U. S. during the break up of the Illegals Program. Denies any involvement in spying. Edmond Pope – A retired intelligence officer turned "businessman", sentenced by a Russian court in 2000 to 20 years for buying up and smuggling classified military equipment out of the country as scrap metal. He was soon pardoned by newly elected Vladimir Putin but continues to assert that the Russian authorities used him as a scapegoat for their broken system. In the same interview with Larry King, however, he spoke of a plot by unspecified people in the U. S., as part of which Pope was being slowly poisoned in the Lefortovo Prison, with the hopes that he would eventually have to be transferred to a hospital, abducted on his way and smuggled out of the country; he claims that his representatives stopped the plot. Jerzy Strawa – a Polish engineer and an employee of the Ministry of Foreign Trade executed in 1968 at Mokotów Prison for passing industrial and defense information to DIA agents while on official trips in Austria and West Germany. Natan Sharansky – a former high ranking Israeli politician and Soviet dissident who, during his life in Russia, was sentenced to 13 years of prison with hard labor for spying for DIA. The prosecution alleged that he gave a DIA agent in journalist's disguise—Robert Toth—a list of people who had access to military and other secrets. Sharansky was released in 1986 following a spy exchange that took place on the Glienicke Bridge between the USSR and the Western allies. In 2006, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Charles Dennis McKee – a DIA officer who, along with CIA's Matthew Gannon, died as a result of the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing. The incident produced numerous conspiracy theories that the flight was bombed because the officers were aware of illicit U. S. intelligence drug activities or that the case was related to them trying to secure the release of American hostages in Lebanon. He is notably absent from DIA's memorial wall (below)

Ana Belén Montes – a senior DIA analyst arrested in 2001 for spying for the G2 of Cuba and sentenced to 25 years in prison. Prosecutors alleged that she started spying in the mid 1980s, around the same time when CIA's Aldrich Ames started his interaction with the KGB. Ronald Montaperto – a senior DIA intelligence analyst who pled guilty in 2006 for giving classified information to China's MSS. Montaperto claimed that he was tricked and served only three months in jail due to letters of support from other pro China intelligence analysts, pejoratively known as the "Red Team", who "harshly [criticize] anyone who raises questions about the threat posed by Beijing's communist regime." One of such supporters, Lonnie Henley, was initially reprimanded by the ODNI for his support of Montaperto but was later promoted to acting national intelligence officer for East Asia. Waldo H. Dubberstein – a senior DIA intelligence officer for the Middle East and an associate of CIA arms smuggler Edwin P. Wilson who was indicted in 1983 for selling DIA secrets to Libya. The day after being charged, he was found dead in what was ruled a suicide.

In 2003, the Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's "Working Group" on interrogations requested that DIA come up with prisoner interrogation techniques for the group's consideration. According to the 2008 US Senate Armed Services Committee report on the treatment of detainees in U. S. custody, DIA began drawing up the list of techniques with the help of its civilian employee, a former Guantanamo Interrogation Control Element (ICE) Chief David Becker. Becker claimed that the Working Group members were particularly interested in aggressive methods and that he "was encouraged to talk about techniques that
inflict pain." It is unknown to what extent the agency's recommendations were used or for how long, but according to the same Senate report, the list drawn up by DIA included the use of "drugs such as sodium pentothal and Demerol," humiliation via female interrogators and sleep deprivation. Becker claimed that he recommended the use of drugs due to rumors that another intelligence agency, the name of which was redacted in the Senate report, had successfully used them in the past. According to the analysis of the Office of Defense Inspector General, DIA's cited justification for the use of drugs was to "[relax] detainee to cooperative state" and that mind altering substances were not used. Some of the more lurid revelations of DIA's alleged harsh interrogations came from FBI officers, who conducted their own screenings of detainees in Guantanamo along with other agencies. According to one account, the interrogators of what was then DIA's Defense Humint Service (referenced in FBI correspondence as DHS), forced subjects to watch gay porn, draped them with the Israeli flag, and interrogated them in rooms lit by strobe lights for 16–18 hours, all the while telling prisoners that they were from FBI. The real FBI operatives were concerned that DIA's harsh methods and impersonation of FBI agents would complicate the FBI's ability to do its job properly, saying "The next time a real Agent tries to talk to that guy, you can imagine the result." Similar activities transpired at the hands of DIA operatives in Bagram, where as recently as 2010 the organization ran the so called "Black Jail". According to a report published by The Atlantic, the jail was manned by DIA's DCHC staff, who were accused of beating and sexually humiliating high value targets held at the site. The detention center outlived the black sites run by the Central Intelligence Agency, with DIA allegedly continuing to use "restricted" interrogation methods in the facility under a secret authorization. It is unclear what happened to the secret facility after the 2013 transfer of the base to Afghan authorities following several postponements. DIA's harsh interrogation methods at times paled in comparison to those of some U. S. special operations forces. In 2004, interrogations by Joint Special Operations Command's high value targets special operations task forces (including Task Force 6 26) were so heavy handed and physical with the detainees that two DIA officials complained, as a result of which they were threatened and put under surveillance by abusive military interrogators. The two DIA officials managed to share their accounts of abuse with the agency leadership, prompting DIA Director Lowell Jacoby to write a memo on this topic to the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence.

In 2014, Canadian electronic music group Skinny Puppy sent the Defense Intelligence Agency a symbolic bill of $666,000, after finding out that the agency had used their music in Guantanamo during "enhanced interrogation" (deemed torture by some) sessions. Their music was originally heard at GTMO by a guard, who happened to be a fan of Skinny Puppy and could not understand how his favorite music was being used in such a manner: "[Skinny Puppy's] songs are characterized by lyrics that call out corporate wrongdoing. The songs I heard at GTMO were heavily distorted, almost to the point of inaudibility. Even so, I would never have imagined that Skinny Puppy's music would, or could, be used for enhanced interrogation". The officer conducting interrogation sessions allegedly stating that the Canadian group's songs—which are "characterized by relentless drumbeats, panicked, convulsive riffs, synth samples"—were very effective for "enhanced interrogation."

Since mid 2000s, DIA has come under scrutiny for requesting new powers "to covertly approach and cultivate 'U. S. persons' and even recruit them as informants" without disclosing they are doing so on behalf of the U. S. government. George Peirce, DIA's general counsel, told The Washington Post that his agency is "not asking for the moon" and that DIA officers "only want to assess their [individual U. S. citizens'] suitability as a source, person to person", while protecting the ID and security of the agency operatives. The provision allowing DIA to covertly approach U. S. citizens was reportedly removed from the bill at the request of Senator Ron Wyden. It is unclear if the agency has received any additional powers since but it is known that until at least 2005 and possibly later, DIA's "personnel stationed in major U. S. cities [have been] monitoring the movements and activities—through high tech equipment—of individuals and vehicles"; this occurred parallel to the NSA's warrantless surveillance that was of similarly dubious legality. In 2008, with the consolidation of the new Defense Counterintelligence and Human Intelligence Center (DCHC), DIA secured an additional authority to conduct "offensive counterintelligence", which entails conducting clandestine operations, domestically and abroad, "to thwart what the opposition is trying to do to us and to learn more about what they're trying to get from us." While the agency remained vague about the exact meaning of offensive counterintelligence, experts opined that it "could include planting a mole in a foreign intelligence service, passing disinformation to mislead the other side, or even disrupting enemy information systems", suggesting strong overlap between CI and traditional HUMINT operations. According to the agency, Americans spying for a foreign intelligence service would not be covered under this mechanism and that DIA would coordinate in such cases with the FBI which, unlike any DIA components at the time, is designated a law enforcement agency. The media showed particular interest in the domestic aspect of DIA's counterintelligence efforts due to the fact that agency's newly created DCHC had absorbed the former Counterintelligence Field Activity, which had become infamous for storing data on American peace activists in the controversial TALON database that was eventually shut down.

In 2011, the German government uncovered a far right terrorist group named National Socialist Underground, which had been linked to a series of murders, including the murder of a police officer. A report by Stern claimed German BfV and DIA officers had witnessed the murder of a policewoman during their surveillance of the "Sauerland" group—an Islamist organization that planned attacks on U. S. military installations in Germany—but that neither of the agencies reported it, thus enabling subsequent violent acts by the same criminal entities. The magazine cited an unverified DIA report that confirmed the agency's officers were at the site of the incident. The authenticity of the alleged DIA observation protocol, on which Stern based its report, was swiftly denied by the BfV, while DIA refused to comment. An unnamed U. S. "insider expert" for intelligence matters told Der Spiegel he deemed it unlikely that DIA could be involved in that type of operation.

A memorial wall at the DIA headquarters is dedicated to those agency employees who lost their lives in the line of their intelligence work and whose deaths are not classified. The wall was first dedicated on December 14, 1988, by Director Leonard Perroots. It "commemorates the profound individual sacrifices made on behalf of the United States by DIA members and acts as a reminder of the selflessness, dedication, and courage required to confront national challenges "

DIA also maintains a memorial in the headquarters courtyard dedicated to personnel lost in the attacks of 9/11 on the Pentagon. Additionally, the agency maintains the Torch Bearers Wall at its Headquarters. The Torch Bearers award is the highest honor bestowed to former DIA employees and recognizes their exceptional contributions to the agency's mission.

The flaming torch and its gold color represent knowledge, i. e., intelligence, and the dark background represents the unknown—"the area of the truth" still sought by the worldwide mission of the agency. The two red atomic ellipses symbolize the scientific and technical aspects of intelligence today and of the future. The 13 stars and the wreath are adopted from the Department of Defense seal and mean glory and peace, respectively, which the DoD secures as part of its work.