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Defense Intelligence Agency
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Aerial view of the Defense Intelligence Agency headquarters, a large modern building with horizontal windows, surrounded by parking lots and open grassy fields at Bolling Air Force Base, Washington, D.C.
Quick Facts
Date:
October 1, 1961 - present
Headquarters:
Washington, D.C.
Areas Of Involvement:
military intelligence
Related People:
Robert S. McNamara
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Aerial view of the Defense Intelligence Agency headquarters, a large modern building with horizontal windows, surrounded by parking lots and open grassy fields at Bolling Air Force Base, Washington, D.C.
U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency headquarters, Washington, D.C.

Defense Intelligence Agency

United States government
Also known as: DIA
Written and fact-checked by
Britannica Editors
Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree....
Britannica Editors
Last updated
•History

Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the primary gatherer and producer of military intelligence in the United States. It was established on October 1, 1961, by direction of the U.S. secretary of defense to act as the central intelligence manager for the Department of Defense and to support the intelligence requirements of the secretary of defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, policy makers, and force planners. The director of the DIA is the main adviser to the secretary of defense and to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on matters related to military intelligence. The agency is headquartered in Washington, D.C.

Following World War II, U.S. efforts to collect, produce, and distribute military intelligence were scattered and uncoordinated. The three military departments—the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force—managed their intelligence needs individually. That type of organizational structure resulted in duplication, unnecessary costs, and inefficiency, because each branch of the armed services provided its own intelligence reports to the secretary of defense or to other governmental agencies.

Therefore, in 1958 Congress passed the Defense Reorganization Act, which was intended to correct those problems. Yet despite the legislation, intelligence responsibilities remained unclear, and the coordination of intelligence was difficult. Pres. Dwight D. Eisenhower, having realized the need for systemization of intelligence operations, appointed a joint study group in 1960 to find better ways to organize the country’s military-intelligence activities.

That systemization effort carried over into the administration of Pres. John F. Kennedy. In February 1961 Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara made formal his decision to establish the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). He gave the Joint Chiefs of Staff the job of developing a plan that would integrate all the military-intelligence efforts of the Department of Defense. The assignment was completed and published as Department of Defense Directive 5101.21 (“Defense Intelligence Agency”) on August 1, 1961, and made effective on October 1 of the same year.

Air Force Lieut. Gen. Joseph F. Carroll, the first director of the DIA, soon faced a major test during the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. The country’s involvement in the Vietnam War (1954–75) would pose another test of the newly formed agency’s ability to produce accurate, timely intelligence. Unfortunately, the DIA’s mission during the early years of its existence was complicated by resistance to its mandate from the intelligence services of the military branches.

China’s detonation of an atomic bomb (October 16, 1964) and the launching of its Cultural Revolution (1966), increasing unrest in Africa, and fighting in Malaysia, Cyprus, and Kashmir during the 1960s severely challenged the resources of the entire U.S. intelligence community. Later that decade the Six-Day War in the Middle East, the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, and North Korea’s seizure of the navy intelligence vessel USS Pueblo put pressure on U.S. intelligence agencies to anticipate and respond to unfolding world events. In the mid-1970s, at the conclusion of the Vietnam War, the DIA took an active role in U.S. efforts to account for American service members missing or captured in the conflict.

More recently, the DIA and other intelligence agencies, such as the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), were criticized for having failed to anticipate the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and for having supported the George W. Bush administration’s public assertions prior to the Iraq War (2003–11) that Iraq possessed or was actively attempting to develop weapons of mass destruction.

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The Editors of Encyclopaedia BritannicaThis article was most recently revised and updated by Adam Augustyn.