This paper traces the history of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) from its founding in 1963 through its post-9/11 evolution. It examines the agency's early struggles with obscurity and near-abolition, its contentious relationship with the CIA and other intelligence bodies during the Cold War, and the institutional dysfunction that hampered effective threat analysis. The paper also covers the transformative reforms introduced under Director of Central Intelligence John Deutch in the mid-1990s, particularly the establishment of the Defense Humint Intelligence Services (DHIS), and analyzes how chronic underfunding of human intelligence contributed to the intelligence failures surrounding the September 11, 2001 attacks. The paper concludes with an overview of the DIA's three operational centers as they exist today.
The paper effectively uses source-driven analysis: each argumentative claim is paired immediately with a supporting quotation and citation, then followed by the author's own interpretive commentary. This pattern — claim, evidence, analysis — maintains academic rigor while keeping the narrative flowing. It is a strong model for students learning to integrate sources rather than simply summarize them.
The paper opens with the DIA's founding mission and early institutional weakness, then moves through the Cold War period to examine budget-driven rivalry with the CIA. A middle section addresses internal dysfunction and the shift brought by civilian employees. The paper then pivots to the Deutch-era HUMINT reforms and their significance for 9/11 intelligence failures. It closes with a description of the DIA's three current operational centers, providing a concrete, forward-looking conclusion. Total length is modest but well-organized for an undergraduate survey essay.
The 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 Chiefs of Staff (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 JCS J-2" (Polmar, 1997, p. 159).
The DIA's history is a checkered one at best. Initially, it was a rather obscure organization with very little real power. The reason for this was that 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 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 period. "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, p. 159). The agency had become superfluous, which in most cases for government agencies meant dissolution.
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 in positions of power still looked with disdain upon the organization's capabilities. In 1986, 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, p. 159).
It seemed that the DIA had a bad case of an inferiority complex, and it compounded its problems 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, p. 382).
In retrospect, however, many experts might say that the DIA took a more measured approach — albeit perhaps a forced one — to intelligence gathering during those years than the CIA ever did. With its focus on military intelligence gathering, the DIA could have been, and many times was, enveloped in the widening spiral of defense and military justification for ever-increasing budgets to counter the perceived threat. That may have been one of the reasons why the organization so often took a contrarian stance. The intelligence agencies of that day, including the DIA, were frequently so busy justifying budget increases — in budgetary, personnel, and political terms — that to look realistically at the actual threat posed by the U.S.S.R. might have meant limiting the expenditures deemed necessary 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, p. 383).
The DIA played the budget game as well as some agencies, and better than others, growing from its initial 25 employees to over 2,000 by the early 1970s. That the CIA covered much of the same territory became clearly evident to many experts during those years, as each organization attempted 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 on defense, not the 5 to 6% previously claimed by the CIA" (Powers, p. 303). Some analysts even believed the figure was closer to 25%. As Powers notes, with such high figures being espoused, someone should have recognized that such spending levels would ultimately lead to a collapse of Russia's financial system. Yet none of the analysts from any intelligence agency predicted that outcome. Instead, they concluded that America's own spending had to keep pace with Russia's.
Regarding the Soviet problem specifically, and the intelligence agencies in general, Powers asks: "Why are the analysts so often wrong?" (Powers, p. 224). He explains that organizations frequently fall prey to the political climate of the times. If it served the political climate to vigorously amplify the enemy's capabilities, then that is precisely what both the DIA and the CIA did.
That the DIA survived that particular era is probably due more to luck than any other single factor. One development that may have helped the organization was the production of a closed-circuit telecast reaching approximately 1,000 defense intelligence officers, initiated in February 1991. Polmar and Allen describe the Defense Intelligence Network program as an encrypted broadcast viewable only on certain authorized monitors. Components of the program include aerial and satellite reconnaissance images and audio reports, including materials from the NSA.
The agency also improved its earlier image by aiding law enforcement agencies in their efforts against drug trafficking, assisting in counterterrorist actions, and providing intelligence to UN peacekeeping forces. Part of this retooled image may be attributable to the growing number of civilians employed by the DIA: "Although the DIA was conceived as a military agency, by the mid-1980s about 60% of the DIA staff were civilians" (Polmar, p. 159). Many of those civilian employees brought with them a civilian mindset that differed substantially from the military mindset of previous DIA administrations.
Beal, Clifford. (2006). Chronic underfunding of U.S. HUMINT plays role in intelligence failures. Jane's Defence Weekly. Accessed August 21, 2006.
Polmar, Norman, and Allen, Thomas B. (1997). Spy Book: The Encyclopedia of Espionage. New York: Random House.
Powers, Thomas. (2002). Intelligence Wars: American Secret History from Hitler to al-Qaeda. New York: The New York Review of Books.
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