Pentagon plans spy agency to rival CIA

OP - you might have seen this coming if you'd paid attention to some of the DIA moves over the last 10 years, also things that are up at JSOC.

For one, DIA and JSOC really started cranking up the intel gathering back in the 90's. They're spending lots of money on SIGINT and HUMINT that they used to get from NSA and the Agency. Now, DIA is one of the largest net combers in support of their constantly developing efforts in relationship mining.

You'd think that would be an NSA effort, but the NSA is off doing their own thing. The CIA is more interested in political issues than in militarily useful intelligence. DIA is more after strategic and tactical intel for warfighter support. The two are similar but not congruent. With neither the NSA nor the CIA really supplying them some of the basic intel they need, there has developed a sort of info vacuum that DIA is trying to fill.

Something you might not know is that the Agency and JSOC have sort of a weird collaboratory thing that goes on, Army SF missions are generally dictated by the OMA branch of the Agency. As such, they tend to use them more for political info gathering and espionage than in direct action missions, something that the JCS got really tired of. Eventually Rumsfeld broke off his own SF group and placed them under the director of the joint staff, and they do not answer to the Agency at all. The Agency responded by creating their own analog group. They DO sometimes conflict in the field, the Agency guys feel that the military barges in and smashes their way to a goal rather than using finesse and treachery over a long haul the way they like to do it, while the SF group feels that the Agency wonks are p-----s who take forever and get nowhere. There have been some stories that the groups have occasionally ratted each other out in the field to take the other team out of play.

It's sort of a conflict of goals and approaches. Each thinks it should be the pre-eminent group, each thinks its own view of the data is correct. Each is after a different goal, but is sharing a common pot of money, HUMINT and political resources in the field, so there are bound to be conflicts.

Each agency has focus on different things. The DIA for the last decade has pretty much been the Iraq/Afgan intel agency as that is where 95% of its focus has been. It is now returning to its traditional mission. Nothing crazy or odd about this.

US set to establish new spy network as big as CIA: Report

Excerpt

The Pentagon has embarked on an ambitious plan to establish an overseas espionage network which is expected to incorporate a colossal structure of operatives as big as the CIA, a report says.

According to the US officials, the new scenario has been devised to transform the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) into a spy service more focused than the CIA on military aspects, the Washington Post reported on Sunday.

Based on the planned structure, the DIA is expected to recruit an unprecedented number of 1,600 clandestine operatives called “collectors” across the world over the next five years.

Originally posted by MrSpad
Each agency has focus on different things. The DIA for the last decade has pretty much been the Iraq/Afgan intel agency as that is where 95% of its focus has been. It is now returning to its traditional mission. Nothing crazy or odd about this.

The IC as a whole has been focused on Iraq/Afghanistan (and more recently, Iran). It is notoriously bad at balancing competing priorities from the national intelligence priority framework. If a dollar can be programmed for the top priority or a lesser priority, it will go to the top priority every time. So you get an agency that knows every thing about Russia, then nothing about anything, and then it thinks Iraq has stockpiles of WMDs. Slam dunk. Now it knows everything about Iraq, but when the next crisis breaks out somewhere else, they won't know anything about that, and the cycle starts over again. All those commentaries about how the Cold War IC wasn't up to the task of counterterrorism will be repeated in 20-30 years, with everyone lamenting how the IC spent too much time tracking terrorists and didn't predict/infiltrate/counter Threat X. Maybe the DIA's new collectors will take some pressure of CIA so it can go find Threat X.

Posting articles as they arise - each one has a different angle and its good that we see more than one closed minded opinion. After all - we have so many 'experts' here each with their own divergent take on the matter.

The Pentagon building in Washington, DC. (RT.com / AFP Photo)

Double agents: Pentagon grows CIA twin out of own spy pool
RT.com
December 3, 2012

The Pentagon’s spy agency is to be reformed into a military sibling of the CIA with 1,600 clandestine operatives collecting intelligence overseas five years from now. The civilian spies will train and oversee them.
The prime targets for the overhauled Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) would be Chinese military, Iranian and North Korean arms transfers, and Islamist militant groups in Africa, reports The Washington Post, citing a number of officials. Most spoke on condition of anonymity because of the classified nature of the project.
The plan is likely to raise concerns that the expansion of DIA’s clandestine operations will be accompanied by an escalation in lethal strikes and other missions outside public view. There is a potential oversight gap due to differences in legal requirements between military and civilian spies.
The Pentagon wanted to beef up overseas DIA operations as early as under Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, but at the time it led to turf conflicts with the CIA. Now the civilian agency is supporting the reform, because it will keep much control over DIA missions.
The DIA operatives “for the most part are going to be working for CIA station chiefs,” one congressional official said. A CIA clearance will be needed to enter a particular country or recruit an informant.
The military’s interest is to collect intelligence on subjects that the CIA would not cover for some reason.
“We are in a position to contribute to defense priorities that frankly CIA is not,” a senior Defense Department official said. Agents with military background are also better suited to recruit sources and collect information on narrow issues, like the particulars of China’s newest weapons.
The arrangement “amplifies the ability of both CIA and DIA to achieve the best results,” said CIA spokesman Preston Golson.
Together with the CIA resources, which have grown substantially since the September 2001 terrorist attacks, the overhaul would create a spy network of unprecedented size. It reflects President Obama’s affinity for espionage and covert operations over conventional warfare, the newspaper says.
The new spy slots for the DIA would be created at the expanse of existing positions in the agency. Over the past decade its staff has doubled to about 16,500, mostly by absorbing different intelligence entities. But it has about 500 “case officers” – the term for clandestine operatives – at the moment. This number is to reach between 800 and 1,000 by 2018.
Also included in the 1,600 target are military attaches working at the US embassies, who openly gather information from their foreign counterparts. Their roles would not change, but their share will decline as the number of undercover agents grows.
The plan faces some challenges, such as the need to create cover identities for hundreds of new spies.
The CIA will be involved in the training of new military spies. Currently they account for about one fifth of the classes at CIA’s facility in Virginia, but the number will grow correspondingly.
Private contractors are involved in the overhaul too. In September the DIA hired six security firms, including the former Blackwater, to train agents in “hard and soft skills relevant to living and working in hostile and austere environments.” The agency also increasingly hires civilians to fill in its spy ranks.
Officials say the changes were made possible due to a rare synchronization of personalities among top official at the Pentagon and CIA. Many of them switched between the two organizations. The project was spearheaded by Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Michael G. Vickers, Pentagon’s top civilian defense official, who served at CIA’s elite Special Activities Division in the past.
In addition to the civilian counterpart, the DIA will work closely with the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), the military’s elite commando force. The command’s operations in Iraq and Afghanistan benefited greatly from DIA’s analyst resources both in the war zones and back home. Retired three-star general Ronald L. Burgess, who served as DIA director and developed key aspects of the reform, served as intelligence chief to JSOC.

Head about this somewhere.
Yeah their own spies cause where were you CIA when 911 happened.
Of course the Pentagon would have no resources to stop an on soil attack.

Ed: Especially miffed at building a reenforced wing that was a target in 911
must have initiated an effort to put up its own walls. Thus making two
agencies more difficult to miss the boat next time.

ED+: Double, triple or quadruple spy redundancy lets get safe America.

reply to post by GArnold


The reason the DIA did this is there primary function is to collect on anything that will affect conducting military operations and defense. The CIA does not focus on such things. Their primary mission is to collect solely on intelligence requirements regarding other nations. In the event that the opportunity arises to collect on a requirement outside of an agents preview they are to take every advantage so long as it does not interfere with the priority intelligence their primary mission demand. Like the other 14 agencies they have different missions, capabilities and functions.

reply to post by Asktheanimals


Why not National public intelligence?

I heard Naval intelligence technology is pretty advanced.