DEFENSE INTELLIGENCE AGENCY

Committed to Excellence in Defense of the Nation

50th

Anniversary

An Illustrated History
DEFENSE INTELLIGENCE AGENCY

Committed to Excellence in Defense of the Nation

50th

Anniversary

An Illustrated History

Contents

Foreword

1960s: The Early Years

1970s: Years of Transition 13

 1980s: DIA Comes of Age 29

1990s: New Missions, New Adversaries 49

 2000s: Years of Transformation 65

Conclusion 85

Credits 86

1

i
President John F. Kennedy, Deputy Secretary of Defense Roswell Gilpatric, 

and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara were three of the men most 

responsible for the establishment of the Defense Intelligence Agency.
Foreword

This year, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) 

celebrates the 50th anniversary of its establishment. 

For five decades, DIA has provided timely and objective 

military intelligence to warfighters, defense planners, 

and policymakers. From the Cold War to the Gulf War, 

from the conflict in Vietnam to the current conflicts in 

Iraq and Afghanistan, from confronting communism 

to battling terrorism, the talented and dedicated 

professionals of DIA have repeatedly demonstrated their 

commitment to excellence in defense of the nation.

Anniversaries are a time for reflection. As we remember 

the way things used to be, we think about how and 

why things have changed. The Defense Intelligence 

Agency has undergone immense change and growth 

over the course of its first fifty years. DIA started with 

25 people in borrowed space in the Pentagon; it now 

has approximately 16,500 individuals deployed all 

over the world. This volume tells the story of how the 

agency grew in missions, abilities, size, and credibility, 

while overcoming early struggles and reorganizations, 

responding to Cold War threats, countering terrorism, 

and learning to handle the challenge of asymmetric 

warfare. These experiences have transformed 

DIA into what it has become today – the nation’s 

preeminent defense intelligence organization. 

 

RONALD L. BURGESS, JR.

Lieutenant General, USA

Director, Defense Intelligence Agency

 | i Defense Intelligence Agency
U.S. troops conduct an airdrop during Operation JUNCTION 

CITY, Tay Ninh Province, South Vietnam, 1967. Documents 

discovered during this operation led DIA analysts to increase their 

estimate of the number of enemy fighters in South Vietnam. 
THE EARLY YEARS

1960s

The Defense Intelligence Agency was established in 1961 to 

more efficiently integrate the military intelligence efforts of the 

Department of Defense. Until that time, each of the military 

services managed their own intelligence collection and analysis, 

and their findings, as reported to the Secretary of Defense 

and the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), were duplicative and in 

some cases contradictory. Fed up with the redundancy and 

unnecessary bureaucratic competition, President Dwight D. 

Eisenhower ordered Lyman Kirkpatrick, the Central Intelligence 

Agency (CIA) Inspector General, to form a Joint Study Group 

and conduct a study that would find a solution. On December 

20, 1960, Kirkpatrick’s report, which recommended combining 

the Service’s intelligence apparatus into a single, unified military 

intelligence organization, landed on Eisenhower’s desk.

One month later, President John F. Kennedy took office and 

armed his Secretary of Defense, Robert S. McNamara, with 

orders to reform the Department of Defense. McNamara, 

the former president of Ford Motor Company, had made his 

reputation finding efficient, cost-effective routes to success, and 

he agreed with Kirkpatrick’s proposals to streamline military 

intelligence. In February 1961, he ordered the JCS to devise a 

plan for a consolidated military intelligence organization.

After months of negotiation with the JCS, McNamara and his 

Deputy, Roswell Gilpatric, announced on August 1 the creation of 

DIA, which would begin operations October 1. They selected the 

Inspector General of the Air Force, Joseph F. Carroll, to lead the 

newly created agency. Lt Gen Carroll started DIA with 25 people 

assigned to borrowed office space in the cramped Pentagon. 

Two years later, the analysis and production components of the 

agency, which by that time numbered over 1,500 people, moved 

to Arlington Hall Station in northern Virginia. 

Throughout Lt Gen Carroll’s eight year tenure (the longest of 

any DIA Director), the agency continued to grow, all the while 

taking on increasing responsibilities. DIA’s Defense Intelligence 

School was chartered in 1962. It combined the curriculum of 

the Army’s Strategic Intelligence School and the Navy’s Naval 

Intelligence School, and began operations on January 1, 1963. 

The agency’s Production Center became operational the same 

year. DIA also established a Scientific and Technical Intelligence 

Directorate in 1964. The same year, McNamara designated a 

senior Defense Attaché in each U.S. Embassy to supervise all 

attachés assigned to that country. In 1965, he gave operational, 

management, and budget responsibilities for the attachés to 

DIA, which set up the Defense Attaché System. In 1967, the 

agency assumed the chairmanship of the Interagency POW 

Intelligence Ad Hoc Committee. By 1968, 6,690 people worked 

for the agency, which was producing intelligence on more than 

100 different nations. 

DIA housed its expanding staff in a variety of rundown buildings 

scattered across the National Capital Region. Personnel worked 

at Arlington Hall Station and Vint Hill in Virginia, in the Cafritz 

Building on Fern Street in Arlington, Virginia, at the Washington 

Navy Yard, and in Anacostia. In 1964, Lt Gen Carroll began 

requesting authorization and funding from Congress to build 

DIA a new building that would consolidate the agency in a 

single location, thus facilitating interagency communication 

and generating efficiencies. It would be another twenty years, 

however, before DIA finally moved into the Defense Intelligence 

Analysis Center (DIAC) at Bolling Air Force Base. 

During the Vietnam War, DIA personnel worked with overhead 

reconnaissance film, light tables and other tools, including a 

General Electric General Purpose 635 computer, to put together 

lists of potential bombing targets in North Vietnam and conduct 

1960s: The Early Years | 1 Defense Intelligence Agency
bomb damage assessments. The agency also began analyzing 

communist radio broadcasts, debriefings, interrogations and 

overhead imagery to determine where American POWs were 

being held. Meanwhile, other analysts used newer IBM 7090 

computers to create Order of Battle reports on the Soviet 

Union and its satellite nations. Additional hot spots demanding 

analytical attention included the U.S. intervention in the 

Dominican Republic in 1965, the Six Day War and the attack 

on the USS Liberty in 1967, North Korea’s seizure of the USS 

Pueblo in 1968, the Soviet Union’s invasion of Czechoslovakia 

that same year, and the signing of the Nuclear NonProliferation Treaty, also in 1968.

The agency’s efforts to provide policymakers and Pentagon 

leaders with timely analysis were made under increasingly 

difficult and unsafe physical conditions; the dozens of heavy 

safes used to store classified documents began to buckle 

the floors in DIA’s Arlington Hall buildings, and in 1966, a 

three-alarm fire damaged “B” Building, the production and 

data processing center. A flood in 1969 damaged several 

computers and soaked many classified documents, temporarily 

hindering analysis and production. 

Meanwhile, DIA became involved in analytical disputes with 

the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV) and the 

CIA on the number of enemy troops in South Vietnam. The 

agency also clashed with Secretary of Defense McNamara, 

who believed that DIA’s bomb damage assessments during 

Operation ROLLING THUNDER 1965-1968 (a three year 

aerial bombardment of North Vietnam designed to impede 

the flow of men and material into South Vietnam and convince 

the North Vietnamese to capitulate) were biased in favor 

of the MACV’s position that the attacks were having the 

desired effects. DIA’s reputation also suffered following the 

agency’s failure to predict the Warsaw Pact’s invasion of 

Czechoslovakia in 1968. In 1969, President Richard M. 

Nixon appointed a Blue Ribbon Defense Panel to study the 

organization and management of the Department of Defense 

and recommend changes. In its report, the panel stated that 

DIA had too many responsibilities and too many masters; it 

proposed structural changes to remedy the situation. That same 

year, Lt Gen Carroll retired. At the dawn of the new decade, 

DIA’s second director, Lieutenant General Donald V. Bennett, 

USA, began to reorganize the agency. LTG Bennett and his 

successors would fight to strengthen the agency throughout the 

next difficult decade. 

In 1960, Lyman Kirkpatrick’s Joint Study Group 

recommended the creation of a single agency for 

the production of defense intelligence products.

 | 2

[ 1960 ] December 1960. Joint Study 

Group Report published

LIEUTENANT GENERAL 

JOSEPH F. CARROLL, USAF 

August 1964. Gulf of Tonkin 

Resolution passes; U.S. 

involvement in Vietnam escalates

1961 1962 1963 1964

January 1961.

John F. Kennedy 

becomes President August 1961. McNamara orders DIA 

established, effective October 1, 1961

August 1961. Lt Gen Carroll 

becomes DIA’s first Director

October 1962. The 

Cuban Missile Crisis

November 1962. Defense 

Intelligence School established
Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, 1961. McNamara 

ordered the creation of DIA shortly after taking office in 1961.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Maxwell Taylor and 

Secretary of Defense McNamara meet with President Kennedy 

in the Oval Office. When DIA was founded, its primary 

mission was to provide finished intelligence to the Chairman 

of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Secretary of Defense.

1960s: The Early Years | 3 Defense Intelligence Agency

June 1967. USS Liberty

attacked by Israeli warplanes

January 1968. Tet Offensive 

in Vietnam; USS Pueblo 

captured by North Korea

July 1965. Defense Attaché 

System comes under DIA

1965 1966 1967 1968 1969

LIEUTENANT GENERAL 

DONALD V. BENNETT, USA

September 1969. LTG Bennett 

becomes DIA’s second Director

August 1968. Warsaw Pact 

invades Czechoslovakia

July 1969. Blue Ribbon 

Panel report published
Gilpatric’s office announced the establishment 

of DIA on August 2, 1961. 

DIA’S FIRST DIRECTOR: LIEUTENANT 

GENERAL JOSEPH F. CARROLL, USAF

Joseph F. Carroll was born in Chicago in 

1910 and worked his way up through the 

city’s stock yards to earn a law degree from 

Loyola University in 1940. The same year, 

he joined the FBI and rose to prominence 

during World War II solving bank robberies 

and kidnappings, eventually becoming the 

Special Assistant to FBI Director J. Edgar 

Hoover. In 1948, Hoover sent him to the 

new U.S. Air Force, and Carroll went on 

active duty at the rank of Brigadier General. 

He eventually rose to the post of Deputy 

Director General for Security, where he 

formulated security and counterintelligence 

policy for the Air Force. Brig Gen Carroll 

eventually received a promotion to Lieutenant 

General and became the USAF Inspector General, which he would later 

characterize as “the best job I ever had throughout my military career.”

Lt Gen Carroll came to McNamara’s attention because of his 

reputation as an honest broker earned during several successful leak 

investigations. When McNamara made it clear that he wanted Lt Gen 

Carroll to lead the new DIA, Carroll was reluctant because he had no 

experience managing an entire agency and no foreign intelligence 

experience. McNamara brushed aside these concerns and appointed 

him Director Designate, DIA in August 1961. He led DIA during its 

activation and subsequent foreign crises, such as the Cuban Missile 

Crisis, the Vietnam War, the invasion of Czechoslovakia, and the 

North Korean seizure of the USS Pueblo. Lt Gen Carroll retired in 

1969 and remains to this day DIA’s longest serving Director. 

“My father...a fluent patriot, a man of power.“

 -- James Carroll, An American Requiem

DIA’s Production Center leadership meets in 

1963 under the leadership of Brigadier General 

Herron Maples, USA. Maples’ son would 

become DIA Director in 2005.

 | 4
The Cafritz Building on Fern Street in Arlington, Virginia initially housed DIA’s 

imagery processing and production functions. Space for the new facilities 

was at a premium; DIA shared the Cafritz Building with a brewery. 

The U.S. Army Signal Communications Agency vacated space in 

“B” Building at Arlington Hall Station in 1963 to make space for 

DIA’s Production Center and Automated Data Processing Center.

DIA’s “Activation Plan” was drafted by the agency’s Director 

Designate, Lieutenant General Joseph Carroll, USAF.

1960s: The Early Years | 5 Defense Intelligence Agency
DIA’s IIR Photo Processing Section and the Aerial Photo Information 

Reference Facility were located inside the Cafritz Building. 

Geographic Area Specialists in the 

Aerial Photo Information Section 

worked in the Cafritz Building.

The Defense Intelligence School 

was chartered in 1962 and initially 

located in substandard facilities in the 

Anacostia section of Washington, D.C.

 | 6
The U-2 aircraft played a pivotal intelligence role 

beginning in the 1950s. While many missions were 

flown by CIA pilots, others were undertaken by U.S. 

Air Force pilots under Strategic Air Command (SAC). 

DIA validated and approved many U-2 missions up 

through the 1990s. The U-2 provided DIA’s analysts with 

overhead photographs depicting military bases, troop 

movements, border crossings, missile development and 

testing facilities, and other clandestine military activities. 

DIA’s facilities were widely scattered. This photographic laboratory 

was located in Vint Hill, Virginia, forty miles from the Pentagon.

1960s: The Early Years | 7 Defense Intelligence Agency
CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS, 1962

Combining information derived from overhead 

reconnaissance photographs with statements from 

human intelligence (HUMINT) sources, DIA analysts in 

September 1962 suspected that the Soviet Union had 

put nuclear missiles on the island of Cuba. DIA Director 

Lt Gen Carroll set up a special Cuban Situation Room 

so the agency could monitor events in Cuba around 

the clock, and began lobbying for U-2 flights over the 

western half of the island, where his analysts believed the 

missiles were located. President Kennedy and Secretary 

of Defense McNamara agreed, and when DIA and 

CIA photo-interpreters at the National Photographic 

Interpretation Center examined film from an October 14 

U-2 mission, they saw ballistic missile carriers, support 

trucks, and equipment, and later, the missiles themselves, 

confirming their suspicions. Lt Gen Carroll was informed, 

and he and his assistant John Hughes briefed Secretary 

of Defense McNamara early on October 16th. Over the 

next several days, analysts throughout the Intelligence 

Community located more missiles at other locations on 

the island, and DIA supplied nearly constant intelligence 

support to McNamara and the Joint Chiefs. President 

Kennedy was faced with a difficult situation; the United 

States could not tolerate the presence of Soviet missiles 

so close to its borders – somehow the Soviets had to be 

persuaded to remove the missiles. President Kennedy 

managed to avoid a direct military confrontation with the 

Soviet Union by placing a blockade around the island. 

Soviet vessels approached the blockade, but ultimately 

decided not to challenge the U.S. Two weeks after the 

U.S. discovered the missiles, President Kennedy and 

Soviet Premier Nikita Khruschev reached an agreement 

that included the removal of the missiles from Cuba. 

Using overhead reconnaissance photography, DIA’s John Hughes, Special Assistant 

to DIA Director Lt Gen Carroll, conducts a televised briefing on the removal of 

Soviet missiles from Cuba, February 6, 1963. McNamara asked Hughes to give 

the briefing in order to quell rumors that the Soviets still had nuclear missiles in 

Cuba. Hughes later received a personal note of thanks from President Kennedy. 

 | 8
This photo was the first one identified by photo-interpreters at the National 

Photographic Interpretation Center as revealing the presence of Soviet mediumrange ballistic missiles in Cuba. It was taken on October 14, 1962 by a U-2 flight 

ordered by President Kennedy because DIA analysts believed that Soviet nuclear 

missiles might be in Cuba. Missile trailers are visible on the bottom-right. 

Low-level photos such as this one flown by a U.S. Navy reconnaissance aircraft 

allowed DIA analysts to track the progress of construction at the missile sites.

President Kennedy meets 

with the U-2 pilots who flew 

over Cuba during the crisis 

in 1962. SAC Commander 

General Curtis LeMay 

is on Kennedy’s right. 

1960s: The Early Years | 9 Defense Intelligence Agency
A U.S. airman obtains photo information from the pilot of an F-100 

after his return from an airstrike in Vietnam in 1965. DIA’s analysts 

sometimes had to rely on after-action reports from combat pilots 

for raw intelligence. The method was notoriously unreliable.

A U.S. Air Force B-52 Stratofortress delivers a payload of bombs over 

Vietnam in 1966. DIA supported these strategic bombing missions, 

code named ARC LIGHT, by providing target lists to the Joint Chiefs 

of Staff, who selected the targets for each individual mission from this 

list and ordered Strategic Air Command to conduct the attacks.

Lieutenant General William Momyer, 7th Air Force 

Commander (left), and Admiral Grant Sharp, 

Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Pacific Command (far 

right), discuss a photo of Haiphong Harbor with the 

RF-4C Phantom Reconnaissance crew that flew the 

mission in 1967. Haiphong Harbor was targeted 

and bombed for the first time that year. Photographs 

such as this one of Haiphong eventually reached DIA, 

where analysts would examine them for shipping 

activity, prepare strategic bombing target packages, 

and use them to conduct bomb damage assessments.

 | 10
American soldiers check a house for enemy soldiers and 

weapons outside of Qui Nhon in 1966. Intelligence analysis 

conducted by DIA and MACV personnel indicated that North 

Vietnamese Army regulars were massing in the area.

The USS Pueblo, photographed in 1967. On January 20, 1968, 

the Pueblo, a technical research ship with orders to conduct 

surveillance of Soviet naval activity in the Tsushima Strait and 

gather signal and electronic intelligence from North Korea, was 

surrounded by North Korean sub chasers and torpedo boats, 

boarded, and captured while in international waters. Two crew 

members were killed while trying to delay the boarding process 

so that classified documents and sensitive equipment could 

be destroyed. North Korea released the Pueblo’s crew after 

11 months of captivity that included harsh interrogation and 

mistreatment, but never released the Pueblo, which remains in 

North Korea. Prior to the Pueblo’s ill-fated mission, DIA validated 

the ship’s collection requirements and conducted a risk assessment 

which concluded that the danger from North Korean forces 

was minimal. The assessment was a black eye for an agency 

already struggling to meet the demands of the Vietnam War.

A variety of reconnaissance cameras are displayed on the tarmac 

of a U.S. Air Force base. During the Vietnam War, DIA’s analysts 

used overhead photography taken with equipment like this to 

draw up target lists and determine damage estimates. 

U.S. aircraft bomb Phuc Yen airfield in North Vietnam in 1967. DIA 

analysts sometimes used photographs such as this one to conduct 

bomb damage assessments during the air war in Vietnam.

1960s: The Early Years | 11 Defense Intelligence Agency
DIA’s facilities remained scattered in the 1970s. Pomponio Plaza in 

northern Virginia housed elements of the Directorate for Plans, the 

Directorate for Collection, and the Directorate for Estimates. 
YEARS OF TRANSITION

1970s

During the 1970s, DIA struggled to survive in an inhospitable 

environment of Congressional criticism, investigations, and a 

mandated downsizing of 30 percent. Meanwhile, the agency’s 

leaders quietly took steps to strengthen DIA and make it more 

efficient through a series of reorganizations. Lt Gen Carroll’s 

successor, DIA Director Lieutenant General Donald Bennett, 

USA, reduced the number of elements reporting to him and his 

staff from 19 to 8 by combining related offices within DIA. He 

also revised the attaché system and established the Directorate 

for Estimates. Lieutenant General Daniel Graham, USA, who 

served as DIA Director from 1974 to 1975, established the J-2 

Support Office to better serve the intelligence needs of the JCS. 

LTG Graham also created the position of Defense Intelligence 

Officer (DIO) and hired several intelligence experts to serve in 

these positions. The DIOs were the Director’s substantive experts 

on various foreign intelligence issues, and gave DIA an influential 

voice in the drafting of National Intelligence Estimates, a process 

previously dominated by the CIA. LTG Graham also implemented 

the “delegated production” concept to offset heavy production 

requirements, tasking the military services and Unified and 

Specified Commands with the creation of specific intelligence 

products. Under Lieutenant General Samuel Wilson, USA, DIA’s 

charter was revised to recognize DIA as the primary intelligence 

authority in military inputs to national-level products, a step that 

gave the agency more control over finished military intelligence.

In the first half of the decade, the war in Southeast Asia, including 

the invasions of Laos and Cambodia, remained a significant 

challenge for analysts. In 1970, U.S. Special Forces attempted 

to rescue American POWs held at a camp in Son Tay, North 

Vietnam. DIA coordinated intelligence production during 

the planning stages of the operation and provided finished 

intelligence analysis to the JCS. Hours before the start of the 

operation, LTG Bennett warned the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs 

that new intelligence indicated that the North Vietnamese might 

have moved the prisoners. The Chairman decided to proceed 

with the raid anyway. The operators located no prisoners, but 

the operation was a masterpiece of planning and execution. 

Although many observers deemed the mission an intelligence 

failure, the intelligence process in support of the operation 

actually functioned remarkably well. The operation, despite its 

failure to rescue any prisoners, is now considered an excellent 

example of intelligence planning in support of special operations.

In December 1971, DIA began chairing the Defense 

Department’s Intelligence Task Force, which was responsible 

for coordinating worldwide POW/MIA intelligence efforts. 

The withdrawal of U.S. forces from Vietnam in 1973 and the 

fall of Saigon in 1975 hampered U.S. intelligence collection 

on POWs and MIAs. Throughout the 1970s, the main source 

of information was refugee reports, which grew increasingly 

unreliable as time went on. The agency continued to devote 

resources to the issue, however, and over the next two 

decades, the POW/MIA mission remained in the spotlight.

Following the establishment of the Defense Attaché Office 

(DAO) in Saigon in 1973, nearly 100 DIA military and civilian 

personnel, including intelligence analysts, administrative assistants, 

and clerks, deployed to staff the office’s Intelligence Branch. 

This was the first large-scale deployment of DIA personnel to a 

combat zone, but it ultimately resulted in the death of five agency 

employees. On April 4, 1975, as South Vietnam collapsed at 

the end of the war, five women who worked for the agency were 

killed in a plane crash during Operation BABYLIFT, an effort to 

evacuate hundreds of Vietnamese orphans from Saigon.

The following month, the Khmer Rouge of Cambodia seized the 

U.S. container vessel SS Mayaguez, prompting President Gerald 

R. Ford to order a joint rescue operation. DIA coordinated 

1970s: Years of Transition | 13 Defense Intelligence Agency
intelligence collection and analysis in Washington, D.C. 

with intelligence operations conducted by the U.S. Pacific 

Command (PACOM), and gave specific targeting objectives 

to the Air Force and Navy reconnaissance units involved in 

the operation. For the rescue mission, the agency accurately 

calculated the number of Khmer forces on the island of Kaoh 

Tang, where it was believed the crew of the Mayaguez

had been taken, but mission planners never received this 

information due to excessive compartmentalization of 

intelligence. The Khmer Rouge returned the ship’s crew in the 

middle of the rescue effort, but the operation cost U.S. forces 

41 casualties in part because assault planners were unaware 

of the true number of Khmer forces on Kaoh Tang Island. 

Throughout the decade, DIA also supported the Strategic 

Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) between the U.S. and the Soviet 

Union by providing information on Soviet military capabilities 

to arms control negotiators. In 1972, President Nixon and 

Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev signed the Anti-Ballistic Missile 

Treaty and the Interim Agreement on the Limitation of Strategic 

Offensive Arms, limiting the number of strategic missiles and 

allowing each country to use national technical means (satellite 

reconnaissance, signals intelligence, and what would become 

known as Measurement and Signature Intelligence, or MASINT) 

to verify treaty compliance. DIA’s third director, Vice Admiral 

Vincent de Poix, USN, believed strongly in technological 

solutions as a means to support intelligence collection and 

analysis for these tasks, but had to fight for the necessary 

funds during a period of tightening defense budgets. 

In 1975, a DIA Defense Intelligence Officer published an 

important paper entitled Détente and Soviet Strategy. Its 

conclusions stirred a controversy in the Intelligence Community 

because it stated that the Soviets intended to use Détente as 

a way to gain military dominance over the U.S., a conclusion 

at odds with CIA and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. The 

paper represented an important milestone for DIA in that it 

showcased the agency’s developing analytical maturity and 

signaled a new willingness to challenge Intelligence Community 

consensus on key intelligence issues. Furthermore, throughout 

the 1970s, DIA’s main analytical efforts continued to focus 

on Soviet military capabilities and intentions, and the agency 

monitored the Soviet Union’s growing relationships with an 

increasing number of third world nations such as Angola, 

Ghana, Mali and Yemen. An additional analytical challenge 

developed from the death of China’s long term leader Mao 

Zedong in 1976 and the two-year power struggle that followed. 

The decade ended with the Iranian Revolution of 1979 and the 

seizure of 53 U.S. embassy personnel as hostages. Events in 

 | 14

[ 1970 ]

June 1970. Assistant 

Army Attaché 

MAJ Robert Perry 

killed in Jordan

LIEUTENANT GENERAL 

DANIEL O. GRAHAM, USA

VICE ADMIRAL

VINCENT P. DE POIX, USN

May 1972. SALT I signed

January 1973. Paris 

Peace Accords signed

September 1974. 

LTG Graham becomes 

DIA Director

1971 1972 1973 1974

November 1970. 

Son Tay Raid August 1972. VADM de 

Poix becomes DIA Director

November 1974. 

DIA establishes J-2 

Support Office
Iran surprised the entire Intelligence Community, including DIA, 

and prompted considerable public criticism. Defending the agency, 

DIA’s leaders argued that personnel and budget cuts earlier in the 

decade had limited the agency’s ability to collect and produce 

timely and effective intelligence on certain regions of the world. As 

the nation grappled with the situation in Iran, a new intelligence 

problem developed when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan 

in late December 1979. Over the course of the next decade, the 

agency monitored the subsequent war in Afghanistan, a conflict 

that would ultimately have a significant impact on the Cold War.

U.S. Special Forces were assigned to the Son Tay mission in 1970. 

They used intelligence developed by DIA to plan the raid.

In 1970, the U.S. military attempted to rescue American POWs 

held at a camp in Son Tay, North Vietnam. DIA coordinated 

intelligence production during the planning stages of the 

operation and provided finished intelligence analysis to the 

Joint Chiefs of Staff. This model of Son Tay Prison Camp 

was constructed from overhead reconnaissance photos.

1970s: Years of Transition | 15 Defense Intelligence Agency

LIEUTENANT GENERAL 

SAMUEL V. WILSON, USA

LIEUTENANT GENERAL 

EUGENE F. TIGHE, JR, USAF 

June 1979. 

SALT II signed

May 1976. LTG Wilson 

becomes DIA Director

August 1977. Lt Gen Tighe 

becomes DIA Director

April 1975. Five DIA 

employees killed in 

Operation BABYLIFT

1975 1976 1977 1978 1979

May 1975. SS Mayaguez

captured

November 1979. Iran 

hostage crisis begins

December 1979. USSR 

invades Afghanistan
President Nixon meets with his staff to discuss the outcome of the Son Tay raid in November 1970. From 

left to right: Lieutenant General John Vogt, USAF, Director of the Joint Staff, Admiral Thomas Moorer, 

USN, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Colonel Arthur “Bull” Simons, USA, Deputy Commander of 

the raid’s Joint Task Force, Brigadier General Leroy Manor, USAF, the raid’s Joint Task Force Commander, 

President Nixon, Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird, and National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger. 

 | 16
USAF B-52 Stratofortresses take off from Andersen Air Force Base, Guam, for bombing missions over 

Vietnam during Operation LINEBACKER II. As in the earlier ARC LIGHT missions, DIA provided the JCS with 

a large list of target options. The JCS then chose specific targets and notified Strategic Air Command.

Bombs are lined up in preparation for Operation LINEBACKER II in 1972. 

1970s: Years of Transition | 17 Defense Intelligence Agency
“I have always believed that an attaché, to be professionally 

credible, must also be able to talk intelligently about 

his profession, that is, the profession of arms.“

 -- Vernon Walters 

VERNON WALTERS, AN ATTACHÉ 

AT THE CENTER OF HISTORY

Vernon Walters was born January 3, 1917. Between 

the ages of six and sixteen, he lived in Britain and 

France, and was educated at Stonyhurst College 

in Lancashire, England. Walters joined the Army in 

1941, serving with distinction in Africa and Italy.

Walters had a natural gift for foreign languages, 

and was fluent in Portuguese, Italian, Spanish, 

French, German, and later, Chinese and Russian. 

He served as an aide and interpreter for Presidents 

Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower, and for Vice 

President Richard Nixon. In the 1960s, Walters 

served as the Defense Attaché to Italy, Brazil, and 

France. Walters’ appointment to Brazil was met 

with alarm by leftists in Brazil, who were convinced that he was there to overthrow 

President João Goulart. Those suspicions seemed to be confirmed when the 

Brazilian military conducted a coup d’état in 1964, but even though Walters was 

close to many of the officers involved, there is no evidence of his involvement.

Before becoming Defense Attaché in France in 1967, Walters arranged an assignment 

to Vietnam in order to improve his relationship with French officers, nearly all of whom 

had served there between 1945 and 1954. In Paris, he played a key role in the 

secret diplomacy to end the Vietnam War, smuggling National Security Adviser Henry 

Kissinger into France for his negotiations with North Vietnamese diplomat Le Duc Tho. 

In the subsequent years, Walters advanced to a number of high profile positions. In 

1972, he became Deputy Director of Central Intelligence under Richard Helms, and 

later became Acting Director of Central Intelligence. In 1981, President Ronald Reagan 

made him Roving Ambassador. In 1985, Walters became Ambassador to the United 

Nations, and from 1989-1991, he served as Ambassador to the Federal Republic of 

Germany, where he represented the United States during the unification of East and 

West Germany. Walters, an extraordinary attaché and diplomat, died in 2002.

 | 18
Locating American prisoners of war and missing in 

action became a central mission for DIA in the Vietnam 

War. As the war drew to a close, the repatriation effort 

became even more imperative. Here, an American 

POW is returned by his Vietnamese captors.

Former American POWs cheer as their aircraft 

lifts off from Hanoi on its way to the U.S. 

in 1973. For two decades, DIA was at the 

center of the Vietnam POW/MIA effort. 

Former POWs salute the colors before 

boarding the C-141 Starlifter that will take 

them to the U.S. in February 1973. 

1970s: Years of Transition | 19 Defense Intelligence Agency
The Defense Attaché Office in Saigon established its compound 

in the old MACV Headquarters on Tan Son Nhut Airbase 

after the Paris Peace Accords were signed in 1973. 

Colonel William LeGro, USA, commanded 

the DAO’s Intelligence Branch.

 | 20
After the U.S. learned of the SS Mayaguez’s 

capture, the JCS asked DIA to coordinate the 

intelligence effort to locate the ship and its crew. 

Shortly after DIA tasked U.S. Pacific Command 

(PACOM) with collection requirements, a 

PACOM reconnaissance aircraft located the 

Mayaguez and took this photo. Khmer Rouge 

boats can be seen alongside the vessel.

Marines board the SS Mayaguez

during the re-taking of the vessel. 

1970s: Years of Transition | 21 Defense Intelligence Agency
OPERATION BABYLIFT AND THE CRASH 

OF C-5 FLIGHT 68-218

In April 1975, as the government of South Vietnam collapsed in the face of 

a massive North Vietnamese offensive, President Gerald Ford ordered the 

evacuation of Vietnamese orphans from Saigon. The U.S. Defense Attaché in 

Vietnam, Major General Homer Smith, USA, was in charge of the evacuation. 

The first available plane was a C-5A Galaxy transport that arrived in Saigon 

the morning of April 4. Ground crews loaded the small children and a staff 

of volunteers and nurses, among them, 36 female members of the Defense 

Attaché Office staff. MG Smith ordered the staff members aboard the flight 

in order to quietly begin their evacuation and to help serve as escorts for 

the orphans. At least five of them were DIA employees. At just after 5 p.m., 

the last of the 314 passengers were aboard and the transport took off.

Twelve minutes later, the locks on the rear cargo door of the C-5 failed, 

and the aft pressure door, part of the loading ramp, and the cargo door 

blew off, severely damaging the flight controls in the tail. The pilots 

attempted an emergency landing at Tan Son Nhut Airbase, but the plane 

crashed in a marsh two miles short of the runway. The impact crushed the cargo deck, where almost all of the 

orphans were kept. 138 people died in the crash, including 78 children and 35 DAO personnel. Five DIA 

employees, Celeste Brown, Vivienne Clark, Dorothy Curtiss, Joan Pray, and Doris Watkins, were killed in the 

crash. It was the single largest loss of life in DIA’s history until the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. 

 | 22
“The fourth day of April 1975. I’ll never 

forget it. It was the longest day of my 

life...I recall my [Executive Officer]... 

coming in and saying ‘Boss, we have a 

disaster. The C-5 just crashed out toward 

the airbase.’ And you could look out and 

you could see the smoke coming...We 

set up a morgue over at the Seventh Day 

Adventist Hospital and brought bodies 

over there. We had a few survivors. 

They were taken to the hospital. It was 

a shattering, shattering experience.“

– Major General Homer Smith, USA, U.S. Defense Attaché, Saigon 

1970s: Years of Transition | 23 Defense Intelligence Agency
Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger worked closely with Lieutenant 

General Daniel Graham, USA. Schlesinger left office in November 1975 

because of disagreements with President Ford, members of Congress and 

Secretary of State Henry Kissinger over the defense budget and the Strategic 

Arms Limitation Talks, prompting LTG Graham to resign his position as well. 

DIA’s computing technology improved over the course 

of the decade, with data punch cards (top) being 

replaced in some cases by desktop computers with 

floppy disk drives (bottom) by the end of the 1970s.

Arlington Hall Station continued to be the focal point for DIA’s 

analysis and production functions in the 1970s. The dilapidated 

conditions at Arlington Hall were a constant source of problems.

 | 24
DIA photo-interpreters assigned to the National Photographic Interpretation Center 

worked in Building 213 in the Washington Navy Yard, which also was home 

to portions of DIA’s Directorate for Research from the 1970s to the 1990s. 

President Nixon and Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev sign the Anti-Ballistic Missile 

Treaty and the Interim Agreement on the Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms, 

May 26, 1972 in Moscow. The agreements created new intelligence requirements 

and put major production pressure on DIA’s already overstrained analysts.

1970s: Years of Transition | 25 Defense Intelligence Agency
The Soviets parade SS-9 intercontinental ballistic missiles in Red Square in the mid-1970s. These 

missiles were the centerpiece of the Soviet nuclear threat for much of the decade. 

A Soviet Tu-22M/Backfire bomber, the focus of a major intelligence debate late in the Cold War, is intercepted 

by a U.S. Air Force F-16. The Soviets first fielded the Backfire in 1972. U.S. intelligence agencies disagreed 

on its mission and the distance it was capable of flying. DIA believed that the Backfire could attack the U.S. by 

using in-flight refueling. But the CIA disagreed, sparking a heated debate between the two agencies. The Soviets, 

meanwhile, insisted that the Backfire had been designed as a theater-level weapon and not, as DIA argued, 

a strategic weapon. Late in the SALT II negotiations, the Soviets agreed to remove the refueling nozzle. 

 | 26
The COBRA DANE radar on Shemya Island 

(top), the RC-135 COBRA BALL aircraft 

(bottom), and other MASINT platforms played 

a key role in determining Soviet ballistic 

missile capabilities. In the event of an actual 

attack against the U.S., COBRA DANE 

could also provide the U.S. with strategic 

warning. Both are still in operation today.

(Below) Radar operators work inside the COBRA DANE facility in 1977, the year it came on-line.

1970s: Years of Transition | 27 Defense Intelligence Agency
On December 20, 1989 President George H.W. Bush ordered 

U.S. troops into Panama and began Operation JUST CAUSE. 
DIA COMES OF AGE

1980s

By the time DIA celebrated its 25th Anniversary in 1986, the 

agency had matured to the point that it was able to have a much 

more influential voice within the Intelligence Community and 

among military and political leaders. Several events during the 

first half of the decade contributed to this transformation. In 1981, 

President Ronald W. Reagan began a sustained buildup in the 

Department of Defense, and DIA benefitted from an infusion of 

resources and personnel. Its analysis also received greater visibility 

after the Senate endorsed the concept of competitive analysis and 

Reagan ordered DIA to produce a regular publication to provide 

the President with policy-relevant military intelligence. 

In early 1981, DIA’s John Hughes briefed Secretary of Defense 

Caspar Weinberger on the growth of the Soviet military. 

Weinberger shared the briefing with Defense Ministers from the 

North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and they convinced 

him to declassify and release the information so that the 

general public would better understand the need for a military 

buildup and modernization. Weinberger in turn ordered DIA 

Director Lieutenant General Eugene Tighe, USAF, to produce an 

authoritative, unclassified document describing Soviet military 

capabilities and doctrine in exacting detail. Tighe placed his 

Vice Deputy Director for Foreign Intelligence, Dennis Nagy, in 

charge of the project. Key members of Nagy’s team included 

Soviet analyst Dr. David W. Phillips and Defense Intelligence 

Officer A. Denis Clift. The first edition of Soviet Military Power

was published in September 1981. Within a year, 250,000 

copies had been printed and distributed. It was republished in 

1983 and every year thereafter until 1991.

The same year the first edition of Soviet Military Power 

appeared, and after almost 20 years of effort, DIA received 

Congressional authorization and funding for a new building. 

The support of Senator Barry Goldwater was critical to the 

release of the building funds. In 1981, ground was broken 

for DIA’s new home at Bolling Air Force Base. The Defense 

Intelligence Analysis Center (DIAC) was designed to 

accommodate 2,739 personnel in 845,900 square feet 

of space. A small contingent of DIA personnel moved into 

the new building in October 1983, and by April 1984, 

the agency was settled into its new home and able to 

enjoy the substantial benefits of centralization, including 

increased efficiencies and intradepartmental cooperation. 

Meanwhile, the Reagan administration moved aggressively 

to confront the spread of communist influence in Central 

America. The Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) had 

taken control of Nicaragua in 1979, and by 1983, Marxist 

rebels in El Salvador threatened to topple the government 

there. That year, the Joint Staff instructed Tighe’s successor, DIA 

Director Lieutenant General James Williams, USA, to establish 

an intelligence center to provide tactical and operational support 

to the U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), U.S. embassies 

in Central America, and U.S. allies in the region. The result was 

the Central America Joint Intelligence Team (CAJIT), the nation’s first 

national-level intelligence fusion center. It was made up primarily 

of DIA personnel, but also included many analysts from across the 

Intelligence Community. CAJIT provided allied commanders with 

finished intelligence on enemy planning, force structure, order 

of battle, target locations, and capabilities, all of which helped 

to stabilize the situation in El Salvador until a political settlement 

ended the war in 1992. 

In April 1983, terrorists bombed the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, 

Lebanon, killing 63 people, including 17 Americans. Later 

that year, Islamic terrorists killed 241 American servicemen 

when they bombed the Marine Corps barracks in Beirut. In 

September 1984, terrorists bombed the U.S. Embassy Annex 

in East Beirut, killing two employees from the Defense Attaché 

Office and many others. Following these attacks, DIA set up 

a counterterrorism office designed to provide intelligence 

on terrorism to the U.S. military. In June 1985, Hezbollah 

1980s: DIA Comes of Age| 29 Defense Intelligence Agency
President Jimmy Carter studies his Iran Briefing Book one 

evening during the Iranian Hostage Crisis. In 1980, President 

Carter authorized Operation EAGLE CLAW, an effort to rescue 

American hostages in Iran. DIA provided intelligence 

support to the operation’s planners, but did not manage 

or coordinate the intelligence aspects of the operation. 

members hijacked TWA Flight 847, and in October, members 

of the Palestine Liberation Front hijacked the cruise ship Achille 

Lauro; in both cases, DIA’s counterterrorism office supported the 

military’s response with important tactical intelligence. 

In 1986, Libyan-backed terrorists bombed a Berlin discotheque 

frequented by American military personnel, killing three 

people, including two U.S. soldiers, and wounding 230. In 

retaliation, the U.S. military launched Operation EL DORADO 

CANYON, a series of airstrikes against Libya. DIA 

helped plan the airstrikes by providing target lists and 

locating and identifying Libyan air defenses. DIA’s 

support to counterterrorism operations like these proved 

crucial, and Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger 

later presented DIA’s Director, Lieutenant General Leonard 

Perroots, USAF, with the agency’s first Joint Meritorious 

Unit Award for intelligence support rendered during the 

military’s counterterrorism operations in 1985 and 1986. 

Throughout the decade, the Soviet Union continued to be 

a major focus of DIA’s analytical efforts. The U.S. and the 

U.S.S.R. signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces 

Treaty in 1987, and DIA was involved both in determining the 

number and lethality of the Soviet missiles and in monitoring 

treaty compliance. During the late 1980s, in the midst of the 

negotiations leading up to the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, 

DIA provided negotiators with detailed descriptions of the size 

and capabilities of Soviet long-range strategic weapon systems. 

1981 

 | 30

[ 1980 ]

April 1980. 

Operation EAGLE 

CLAW fails

January 1982. 

LTC Charles Ray, 

DAO Paris, killed

LIEUTENANT GENERAL 

JAMES A. WILLIAMS, USA

September 1981. Soviet 

Military Power first published

September 1981. LTG Williams 

becomes DIA Director

January 1984. CWO 

Robert Prescott, DAO 

Guatemala, killed

1982 1983 1984

October 1983. Terrorists bomb 

USMC barracks, Beirut

October 1983. Operation 

URGENT FURY in Grenada

May 1984. DIAC 

officially dedicated

September 1984. CWO 

Kenneth Welch, CPO Michael 

Wagner, DAO Beirut, killed
Hostilities in the Persian Gulf also drew the agency’s attention. 

In 1987, seven years into a bloody conflict between Iran 

and Iraq, Kuwait asked the U.S. to protect Kuwaiti oil tankers 

from Iranian attacks. In response, the U.S. initiated Operation 

EARNEST WILL (July 1987–September 1988). DIA provided 

targeting data on Iranian surface-to-air and surface-to-surface 

missile batteries, oil platforms, and naval installations. 

As the decade wound down in November 1989, DIA’s 

analysts were surprised when East German officials suddenly 

allowed East Germans to pass through the Berlin Wall into 

West Berlin. The event epitomized the huge changes taking 

place in communist Eastern Europe, and heralded massive 

changes within DIA itself. It was the beginning of a new era 

and a new set of mission priorities for DIA. 

An RH-53D helicopter lifts off during Operation EAGLE CLAW on April 24, 1980.

1980s: DIA Comes of Age| 31 Defense Intelligence Agency

LIEUTENANT GENERAL 

HARRY E. SOYSTER, USA

November 1989. Berlin 

Wall comes down

December 1988. 

LTG Soyster becomes 

DIA Director April 1986. Operation 

EL DORADO 

CANYON in Libya

1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 October 1986.

Goldwater-Nichols 

Act passes

December 1989. 

Operation JUST 

CAUSE in Panama

June 1988. CAPT William 

Nordeen, DAO Greece, killed

LIEUTENANT GENERAL 

LEONARD H. PERROOTS, USAF

October 1985. 

Lt Gen Perroots 

becomes DIA 

Director 
Defense Attaché Colonel Thomas Schaefer, USAF, (right) and Assistant Air Attaché Lieutenant 

Colonel David Roeder, USAF, arrive at Andrews Air Force Base on January 27, 1981, after being 

held hostage for 444 days by Iran. Schaefer was the most senior serviceman taken hostage.

On October 23, 1983, Islamic terrorists bombed the Marine Corps barracks in Beirut, killing 

241 U.S. servicemen. Below, a Marine is rescued from the rubble. Prior to the attack, DIA 

sent the Marine battalion stationed in Beirut large amounts of intelligence on terrorist threats 

in the region, but it was poorly refined and too much for the Marines to effectively process. 

 | 32
A DIA intelligence specialist from the Defense Attaché Office in Beirut, Lebanon revisits the U.S. 

Embassy after it was bombed by terrorists on April 18, 1983. The bombing killed 63 people, 

including 17 Americans, and wounded many others, including this intelligence specialist.

The DIAC became operational in 1984.

DIA broke ground on the Defense Intelligence Analysis Center (DIAC) 

in April 1981. By 1982, it was well on its way to completion. 

1980s: DIA Comes of Age| 33 Defense Intelligence Agency
JOHN HUGHES: AN INTELLIGENCE STALWART

John Hughes spent a thirty-three year career in DIA as a wellknown analyst, collection manager, and senior executive. 

He joined DIA in 1962, months after the agency’s founding, 

and almost immediately found himself thrust into the most 

dramatic events of the Cold War. In October 1962, working 

as Special Assistant to DIA Director Joseph Carroll, Hughes 

broke the news to his boss that the U.S. had discovered Soviet 

nuclear missiles in Cuba. The next day, the two men briefed 

Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara on the discovery. Every 

morning, Hughes drove to the National Photographic Interpretation Center in Washington, D.C., where he 

received photography that he used to brief the DIA Director, the Secretary of Defense, and Joint Chiefs of Staff. 

In February 1963, President Kennedy requested that a televised briefing on the crisis be made to the nation, 

and Secretary of Defense McNamara turned to Hughes, an enormously talented briefer, for the presentation.

Over the succeeding decades, his meticulously documented briefings on foreign military forces and capabilities 

were recognized and valued by U.S. and foreign leaders alike. In the 1970s, Hughes was also DIA’s Deputy 

Director for Collection, a position that put him in the front line of the agency’s efforts to understand Soviet and 

Chinese military capabilities. Hughes also improved DIA’s management of the military intelligence collection 

apparatus worldwide, changes which made innovative intelligence analysis possible and garnered the attention 

of policymakers at the highest level. When Hughes retired in 1984, President Reagan presented him with the 

National Security Medal in a Cabinet Room ceremony in the White House in recognition of his contributions.

While Hughes’ critics thought him alarmist and sometimes disparaged him as “That Briefer,” his legacy is 

an important one. He balanced the secretive world of intelligence collection with the valuable objective of 

sharing information with Congress, U.S. allies, and the general public. Hughes also did not fear innovation, 

and encouraged new collection techniques involving MASINT and other high-tech disciplines. He was 

an important contributor in the agency’s earliest days, and remained so until the end of his career.

Dear Mr. Hughes,

I thought you did an excellent job on television explaining 

our surveillance in Cuba. I understand it was done on short 

notice. I want you to know how much I appreciate your efforts.

With Best Wishes,

John Kennedy

John Hughes, DIA’s Deputy Director for Intelligence and External 

Affairs, receives the President’s Award for Federal Civilian Service 

from Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger on March 18, 1981. 

 | 34
President Reagan receives the 1983 edition of Soviet Military Power (SMP) 

from Secretary of Defense Weinberger in the Oval Office. SMP was the 

result of an unprecedented declassification effort spearheaded by DIA.

President Reagan presented Hughes with the National 

Security Medal in a White House ceremony in 1984. 

The 1988 issue of Soviet Military Power was the first to feature a photo 

on the cover. Its editors attempted to answer criticism of the publication 

by adding as many photos as possible of the Soviet military equipment it 

described. The increasing openness of the Soviet Union meant that more 

photographs were available to be used in later volumes of the series. 

1980s: DIA Comes of Age| 35 Defense Intelligence Agency
DIA Director Lieutenant General James Williams, USA, 

escorts Lieutenant General El Orabi, Chief of Staff, 

Egyptian Armed Forces, who visited DIA at Bolling 

Air Force Base on August 9, 1984. In 1981, the U.S. 

military began participating with Egypt in Operation 

BRIGHT STAR, a massive military exercise in Egypt 

supported by intelligence from DIA. 

DIA played an important role monitoring civil wars 

in Central America during the 1980s. This overhead 

reconnaissance photograph shows a Sandinista military 

garrison at Tempesque, Nicaragua in 1985. 

 | 36
A U.S. Air Force flight crew preps an F-111 before Operation EL DORADO CANYON in 1986. 

DIA supported the operation by providing target lists and identifying Libyan air defenses. 

DIA also retained a presence in the Pentagon 

after the DIAC opened. The hub of its activity was 

in the National Military Intelligence Center. 

Microprocessing and data storage improvements in 

the 1980s allowed DIA to move beyond the old punch 

card system and expand its database capabilities.

1980s: DIA Comes of Age| 37 Defense Intelligence Agency
DIA analysts provided targeting recommendations during Operation EL DORADO 

CANYON, including targets in and around Tripoli, Benina, and Benghazi.

The most serious concern faced by DIA personnel in the 1980s was the ongoing modernization 

of the Soviet strategic nuclear force. The Typhoon-class ballistic missile submarine (left) and 

Tu-160/Blackjack bomber (right) were significant force upgrades during this decade. 

 | 38
The SR-71 reconnaissance aircraft played a role in 

collection missions tasked by DIA between 1968 and 

1989. It flew missions over North Vietnam in the 1970s 

and provided coverage of the Soviet Union in the 1980s 

before falling victim to budget cuts later in the decade.

In 1986, Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger awarded 

DIA its first Joint Meritorious Unit Citation for its support to 

counterterrorism operations from June 1985 to June 1986.

1980s: DIA Comes of Age| 39 Defense Intelligence Agency
GORDON NEGUS: ANALYST AND MENTOR

Born in 1934 in Syracuse, New York, Gordon F. Negus joined 

DIA in 1967 as the Branch Chief for Soviet Command and 

Control in the Directorate for Scientific and Technical Intelligence. 

Thanks to Negus’ efforts in the 1970s, DIA managed to 

uncover hundreds of previously unknown communications sites 

and launch control facilities in the Soviet Union, which were 

then added to the U.S. target lists in case war broke out.

His work garnered the attention of DIA Director Lieutenant General 

Daniel Graham, who made Negus the agency’s first Defense 

Intelligence Officer for Strategic Weapons and Strategic Arms 

Limitation, the Defense Department’s top intelligence analyst 

responsible for arms control negotiations and verification. Negus 

also helped shape many of the agency’s analytical opinions 

of the decade, which allowed DIA to become a source of competitive analysis for the 

Central Intelligence Agency and ultimately had a salutary effect on both organizations.

It was in the 1980s, however, when Negus truly left his mark. As the Deputy Director for 

Research, Negus and his staff produced a landmark study that illustrated in concrete terms 

the criteria necessary to deny the Soviet Union their objectives in a war with the U.S. and 

thereby defeat them. The study fundamentally altered the development of U.S. nuclear war 

doctrine. Throughout the 1980s, Negus served in various DIA positions, including Assistant 

Deputy Director for Basic Intelligence and Vice Deputy Director for Production. In 1986, Negus 

became Executive Director of DIA, one of the three members of the command element responsible 

for daily DIA operations and for long-term planning and strategic resources management. 

Negus was also a gifted mentor for many young analysts. Throughout his career, he created 

an environment in which analysts could think creatively and constantly pushed them into 

uncharted analytical territory. “What don’t we know?” he often asked. Indeed, his lasting 

legacy may very well be the cadre of talented analysts he nurtured and developed, many of 

whom went on to hold leadership positions in DIA. He retired in 1990 and died in 2007.

“[Negus] is the single person most responsible for 

the maturing of the Defense Intelligence Agency as a 

military intelligence analysis capability for the U.S.“

— Former DIA Deputy Director Mike Munson

 | 40
(All photos below) The collapse of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 surprised U.S. intelligence analysts.

1980s: DIA Comes of Age| 41 Defense Intelligence Agency
President Reagan works at the White House 

during Operation URGENT FURY, 1983.

OPERATION URGENT FURY

In October 1983, hard-line communists overthrew 

Grenada’s socialist government and began 

strengthening that nation’s ties to the Soviet Union 

and Cuba. President Reagan, believing that hundreds 

of U.S. medical students on the island were in 

jeopardy, authorized a U.S.-led military invasion of 

Grenada to rescue the students and end communist 

influence on the island. DIA provided the bulk of 

the intelligence work in support of the operation, 

code-named URGENT FURY. The agency formed 

an intelligence task force that provided operational 

planners with information on the size, composition 

and location of Grenadian military forces and their 

Cuban allies as well as the geographic features of the 

island, including landing beaches and enemy strong 

points. During combat operations, they helped identify emerging targets for U.S. forces. The 

agency also put together foreign materiel exploitation teams to collect captured Soviet equipment 

and official documents. When analyzed, these materials revealed expanding Soviet influence 

in Grenada’s political, military, and economic affairs. Operation URGENT FURY provided DIA 

with many important lessons regarding the process of directly supporting military operations.

 | 42
Documents captured by U.S. forces during Operation URGENT 

FURY were exploited by DIA intelligence analysts and 

revealed the extent of communist penetration in Grenada.

The Cubans provided the Grenadian government with military equipment before 

the U.S. invasion, including this antiquated Soviet An-2/Colt aircraft seized at 

Pearls Airport (left) and this Soviet ZU-23 anti-aircraft weapon (right). 

Expanding Operational Support

1980s: DIA Comes of Age| 43 Defense Intelligence Agency
THE GOLDWATER-NICHOLS DEPARTMENT OF 

DEFENSE REORGANIZATION ACT

Passed by Congress in late 1986, the Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization 

Act designated DIA a Combat Support Agency. The legislation gave the Chairman of the Joint 

Chiefs of Staff the right to review DIA’s support to military operations, and ultimately made 

DIA responsible for establishing a joint military intelligence doctrine. In response, DIA Director 

Lieutenant General Leonard Perroots, USAF, set up the Command Support and Plans Directorate 

(CSP), which was responsible for coordinating support to the Combatant Commands and creating 

the new joint intelligence doctrine. Looking for ways to increase cooperative intelligence efforts 

between agency and field commands, DIA established the Operational Intelligence Crisis Center 

(OICC) as well as National Military Intelligence Support Teams (NMISTs). NMISTs were small 

teams that deployed to the field with secure communication equipment and provided commanders 

in the field with direct links to DIA’s analysts and intelligence specialists at the OICC and 

throughout the agency. The first test of the new organization would come in Panama in 1989.

Expanding Operational Support

 | 44
Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona (far left) and Representative 

William Flynt Nichols of Alabama (left) co-sponsored the GoldwaterNichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1986. 

Goldwater-Nichols designated DIA a Combat Support Agency and 

gave it certain responsibilities for supporting military operations.

1980s: DIA Comes of Age| 45 Defense Intelligence Agency
Before hostilities in Panama, a DIA intelligence specialist routinely obtained 

information on General Noriega’s whereabouts by chatting with the guards at 

the front gate of Fort Amador, a Panamanian base frequented by Noriega. OPERATION JUST CAUSE

In December 1989, President George H. W. Bush 

sent U.S. troops into Panama in Operation JUST 

CAUSE. The purpose of the operation was to seize 

and remove from power dictator General Manuel 

Noriega, who had been indicted in the U.S. for drug 

trafficking. Operation JUST CAUSE provided DIA 

with the opportunity to test its new organizations 

and doctrine. Planners in SOUTHCOM relied heavily 

on DIA’s newly created OICC and NMISTs, which 

successfully provided commanders in the field with 

direct and timely intelligence support. DIA also 

participated in several joint intelligence efforts in 

support of the operation, including the Joint Intelligence 

Fusion Cell, which helped track and seize Noriega.

Noriega was indicted in the U.S. for drug trafficking in February 

1988. In response, Noriega’s military forces began routinely 

harassing U.S. citizens in Panama throughout the next two years.

When relations between the United States and Panamanian dictator 

General Manuel Noriega began to sour in 1988, DIA deployed its 

first NMIST to Panama. The team was initially housed in the Marriott 

Hotel in Panama City, but moved to Fort Clayton when one of its 

members was harassed and injured by Panamanian soldiers. 

Expanding Operational Support

 | 46
THE POW/MIA MISSION

In the early 1980s, the Reagan administration 

placed a high priority on resolving POW/MIA 

issues lingering from the Vietnam War, and 

DIA’s Office of POW/MIA Affairs expanded 

five-fold during this period. The office was 

responsible for investigating all live sighting 

reports that might involve missing U.S. 

servicemen. Many witnesses making these 

reports delivered inaccurate or deliberately 

misleading information, while other wellintentioned people were simply mistaken, all 

of which created many problems for the office. 

DIA Director Lt Gen Perroots asked his Director 

of Attachés and Operations, Major General Charles Scanlon, USA, to develop a fresh 

concept for the proactive collection of POW/MIA information. In response, DIA established 

a special program to collect intelligence on POWs and MIAs. A team of trained personnel 

deployed to Southeast Asia to gather information and patiently interviewed thousands of 

refugees. In 1991, DIA sent a representative to Hanoi to comb through Vietnamese archival 

records in search for information. The work was in some cases highly controversial, but 

many cases were eventually resolved. In 1993, the POW/MIA mission was transferred 

to the Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) in the Pentagon. 

Rear Admiral Edward Sheafer, USN, DIA’s Deputy 

Director for JCS Support and the J-2 of the Joint Staff 

(center), and Lieutenant General Thomas Kelly, USA, 

the J-3 of the Joint Staff (right), brief President Bush 

and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Colin 

Powell, USA, during Operation JUST CAUSE. 

1980s: DIA Comes of Age| 47 Defense Intelligence Agency
In the opening stages of Operation DESERT STORM, DIA provided 

U.S. Central Command with much of the operational intelligence 

that allowed Coalition airpower to destroy Iraqi airbases, radar, 

and air defense sites.
NEW MISSIONS, NEW 

ADVERSARIES

1990s

DIA underwent significant organizational and technological 

changes during the 1990s. These were driven principally by the 

collapse of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of the Warsaw 

Pact early in the decade. By 1990, DIA and the rest of the U.S. 

Intelligence Community were well aware of the weakening Soviet 

threat, and throughout 1991 published dozens of intelligence 

reports tracking the decline of the U.S.S.R. When the final 

collapse came in December 1991, few in the IC were surprised. 

With the end of the decades-long Cold War came significant cuts 

in the defense budget, which impacted DIA along with the rest 

of DoD. DIA analysts refocused their efforts on potential terrorist 

threats and arms proliferation issues. They focused on countries 

such as Libya, which had stepped up its production of chemical 

weapons, and Syria, which was believed to support terrorism. 

North Korea’s and Pakistan’s pursuit of nuclear weapons were 

also of interest to agency analysts. DIA also continued to monitor 

a slowly resurgent China’s expanding military capabilities. 

Throughout the 1990s, DIA also supported a series of combat, 

peacekeeping, and humanitarian operations undertaken by the 

U.S. military. These included Operations DESERT SHIELD and 

DESERT STORM (1990–1991) in the Persian Gulf, Operation 

PROVIDE COMFORT (1991–1996) in Iraq, Operation 

RESTORE HOPE (1992–1993) in Somalia, Operation UPHOLD 

DEMOCRACY (1994–1995) in Haiti, and Operations JOINT 

ENDEAVOR (1995–1996) and PROVIDE PROMISE (1992–1996) 

in the Balkans. DIA also continued to manage NMISTs, small 

communication teams which deployed during contingency 

operations in support of Combatant Commanders. Eleven NMISTs 

deployed during Operations DESERT SHIELD and DESERT STORM. 

In 1992, they were reconstituted as National Intelligence Support 

Teams (NISTs) with representatives from CIA and NSA. DIA sent 

NISTs to Kenya, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Hungary, Rwanda, and 

elsewhere during the 1990s. 

In the midst of these operations, DIA underwent two significant 

agency-wide reorganizations meant to streamline operations and 

increase efficiency. The first of these occurred prior to Operation 

DESERT STORM and was led by DIA Director Lieutenant General 

Harry Soyster, USA. He eliminated the Executive Director’s 

position, civilianized the Deputy Director’s position, and created 

a new position for a civilian Chief of Staff. Dennis Nagy, who 

had been the Executive Director, became the Deputy Director, 

and A. Denis Clift, who had served as the Deputy Director for 

External Relations since 1985, became the Chief of Staff. This 

reorganization also reduced the number of directorates from 

eight to six and renamed three of them. 

DIA’s next Director, Lieutenant General James Clapper, Jr., USAF, 

conducted another reorganization in 1993. Lt Gen Clapper 

restructured DIA’s analysts along functional lines, placing analysts 

of weapons systems together and grouping defense economics 

analysts from various regions, breaking up existing regional 

organizations. Five DIA directorates and their subordinate 

elements were consolidated into three centers: the National 

Military Intelligence Production Center, with John Berbrich as 

the Director; the National Military Intelligence Collection Center, 

with Major General John Leide, USA, as the Director; and 

the National Military Intelligence Systems Center, with Martin 

Hurwitz as Director. 

1990s: New Missions, New Adversaries | 49 Defense Intelligence Agency
Lt Gen Clapper was a strong supporter of workforce diversity. 

By the mid-1990s, DIA’s workforce had changed to more 

accurately reflect the diversity of American society. By that 

point, women comprised 37.5 percent of the workforce, 

and minorities 19.2 percent. At the same time, the number 

of women and minorities in senior positions increased 

significantly. By the end of the decade, DIA had a female 

Chief of Staff (Barbara Duckworth) and many other women in 

leadership positions, including Caryn Wagner as the Director 

of Military Intelligence and Christine McKeown as the Director 

of Plans, Programs, and Operations. 

Despite the resource drawdown, the agency continued 

to acquire more missions. Under DIA Director Lieutenant 

General Kenneth Minihan, USAF, DIA was designated as the 

Intelligence Community’s Executive Agent for Measurement 

and Signature Intelligence (MASINT), an enormously complex 

field dealing with technically derived data other than imagery 

or signals intelligence. In September 1996, during the tenure 

of DIA Director Lieutenant General Patrick Hughes, USA, the 

Defense HUMINT Service (DHS) became fully operational, 

consolidating the efforts of the military services and streamlining 

the agency’s ability to identify and collect human intelligence. 

This organization proved its worth during Operation JOINT 

ENDEAVOR in the Balkans.

At the start of NATO military operations in Bosnia in late 1995, 

the Defense HUMINT Service set up an office to coordinate 

the intelligence requirements passed down to DHS collectors. 

Their mission was to gather information that would help protect 

the U.S. forces there and to support the mission of the NATO 

Implementation Force (IFOR). At the time, this was the largest 

deployment of Defense HUMINT elements since Operation DESERT 

SHIELD/DESERT STORM. DIA’s Directorate of Human Intelligence 

(DH) would continue to deploy personnel to the Balkans during the 

follow-on Stabilization Force (SFOR) operations.

Terrorism continued to be a significant global problem, and 

DIA evolved in critical ways to understand it and to provide 

improved warning and analysis capability. In 1996, after 

the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia, the agency 

President Bush and Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev 

sign the START Treaty at the Kremlin in Moscow 

on July 31, 1991. At the time, DIA analysts 

were predicting Gorbachev’s imminent fall from 

power. A month later, an attempted military coup 

against him failed, but Gorbachev’s position was 

permanently weakened in its aftermath. Within 

five months, the Soviet Union was no more.

 | 50

1994 [ 1990 ]

January 1991.

Operation 

DESERT STORM 

begins

July 1991. DIA wins Joint Military Unit 

Award for support during Operations 

DESERT STORM/DESERT SHIELD

January 1992. MSIC, AFMIC 

(now NCMI) join DIA

December 1992.

Operation RESTORE 

HOPE begins in Somalia

September 1994.

Operation UPHOLD 

DEMOCRACY 

begins in Haiti

1992 1993

November 1991.

Lt Gen Clapper 

becomes DIA 

Director

LIEUTENANT GENERAL 

JAMES R. CLAPPER, USAF

August 1990. Operation 

DESERT SHIELD begins

1991 

December 1991.

Soviet Union dissolves
JOAN DEMPSEY, INTELLIGENCE TRAILBLAZER

Joan Dempsey is a key figure in the history of women at the Defense Intelligence 

Agency and in the Intelligence Community. Her career in intelligence began 

as a cryptologic technician on active duty with the U.S. Navy, followed 

by 25 years as a Naval Reserve intelligence officer. She came to DIA in 

1984 and specialized in technical intelligence collection. In 1987, she 

advanced to serve on the General Defense Intelligence Program (GDIP) 

staff. The GDIP is an intelligence funding program covering DIA, the Army, 

Navy, Air Force, U.S. Special Operations Command, and in the 1990s, a 

portion of the U.S. Combatant Commands managed by the DIA Director.

Dempsey played an important role in managing intelligence downsizing after the 

conclusion of the Cold War. DIA Director Lt Gen Clapper made her Director of 

the new Military Intelligence Staff in 1992, which gave her oversight of the GDIP and Military Intelligence Board, 

and put her at the center of nearly every important programming and budgeting decision in the immediate postCold War transition years. In 1995, Dempsey became the first woman to lead DIA’s National Military Intelligence 

Production Center, today’s Directorate for Analysis. In May 1998, President William J. Clinton nominated her for 

the position of Deputy Director of Central Intelligence for Community Management, where she served until 2003, 

when President George W. Bush appointed her as the Executive Director of the President’s Foreign Intelligence 

Advisory Board. Dempsey also mentored many women who would go on to successful careers in DIA.

created the Office for Counterterrorism Analysis, with a Terrorism 

Assessments Division and a Terrorism Warning Division. Two DIA 

terrorism analysts were among the first to identify and focus on the 

newly developed group known as al-Qaida. 

The agency also witnessed significant technological innovations 

throughout the decade. A database known as the System for the 

Analyst’s File Environment (SAFE) made its debut in 1990, making 

intelligence more readily accessible to analysts who needed it. 

In 1992, thanks in part to earlier work by DIA’s Deputy Director 

for Joint Staff Support, Rear Admiral Ted Sheafer, USN, the Joint 

Worldwide Intelligence Communications System (JWICS) began 

to come on-line, replacing the Defense Integrated Secure Network 

(DISNET). Intelink, a secure intranet used by the Intelligence 

Community, became operational in 1994, and by 1995, DIA 

employees were gaining access to the Internet, which improved 

their ability to conduct all-source intelligence research. 

1990s: New Missions, New Adversaries | 51 Defense Intelligence Agency

1995 1996 1997 1998 1999

December 1995.

Implementation 

Force established in 

Bosnia-Herzegovina

August 1995. 

Lt Gen Minihan 

becomes DIA 

Director

February 1996.

LTG Hughes becomes 

DIA Director

July 1996. DIA 

employee Judith 

Goldenberg 

murdered in Cairo

October 1996. DIA wins 

Joint Military Unit Award for 

cost-cutting efficiencies

December 1996. 

Stabilization Force 

(SFOR) established in 

Bosnia-Herzegovina

August 1998. SSG 

Kenneth Hobson, 

USDAO Nairobi, killed 

in terrorist attack

July 1999. DIA wins 

Joint Military Unit Award 

for improved support 

to military operations

July 1999. VADM 

Wilson becomes 

DIA Director

LIEUTENANT GENERAL 

KENNETH A. MINIHAN, USAF

VICE ADMIRAL

THOMAS R. WILSON, USN LIEUTENANT GENERAL 

PATRICK M. HUGHES, USA
OPERATIONS DESERT SHIELD AND 

DESERT STORM, 1990 TO 1991

Throughout the summer of 1990, DIA tracked the developing 

crisis between Kuwait and Iraq, and on August 2, 1990, the 

crisis became acute when Iraq invaded its southern neighbor. 

When the U.S. committed forces to protect Saudi Arabia 

and eventually liberate Kuwait, DIA expanded the OICC and 

prepared NMISTs for deployment. At the same time, the DIA 

Deputy Director for JCS Support, Admiral John Michael (Mike) 

McConnell, USN, set up the Iraqi Regional Intelligence Task 

Force within DIA. The first NMIST arrived in the Persian Gulf 

on August 8, 1990 alongside the first allotment of U.S. 

forces to the region, and NMISTs quickly deployed with U.S. Central Command Service components and the XVIII 

Airborne Corps. Some 100 analysts also deployed to the Middle East to support combat operations. Finally, DIA 

had an 11-man all-source intelligence production team assigned to U.S. Central Command Headquarters in Tampa, 

Florida. All told, within DIA, more than 2,000 men and women were committed in support of the operation.

As Operation DESERT SHIELD turned to Operation DESERT STORM, the JCS assigned DIA the role of reviewing 

the military intelligence produced by over 30 intelligence entities both in-theater and in Washington, D.C. DIA’s 

responsibilities included order of battle preparation, targeting, imagery exploitation, and battle damage estimates. 

DIA also supported operations against Iraqi Scud missiles by using national-level assets such as satellites to provide 

launch warning and support Scud hunting operations, but the mobility of the Scuds’ transporter erector launchers 

(TELs) made them difficult targets. Later in 1991, DIA received a Joint Meritorious Unit Award for its support of 

military operations prior to and during Operations DESERT SHIELD and DESERT STORM. 

Oil storage tanks at the al Basrah refinery burn after being 

bombed by Coalition aircraft during Operation DESERT 

STORM, January 1991. During Operation DESERT STORM, 

DIA provided operational commanders with target lists 

and bomb damage assessments of similar targets.

 | 52
Lieutenant Colonel Rick Francona, USAF (right), DIA’s 

Deputy Defense Intelligence Officer for the Middle 

East, served as the personal interpreter for General 

H. Norman Schwarzkopf, USA, the Commander-inChief of U.S. Central Command, during Operations 

DESERT SHIELD and DESERT STORM. 

DIA analysts conducted battle damage assessments on 

Iraqi targets using overhead imagery and other methods.

1990s: New Missions, New Adversaries | 53 Defense Intelligence Agency
General Schwarzkopf presents the Defense Distinguished 

Service Medal to Brigadier General John E. Leide, USA, 

Director for Intelligence, J-2, Central Command, during 

a ceremony held in Saudi Arabia in April 1991. 

In 1989, Leide was the Defense Attaché in Beijing 

during the Tiananmen Square incident, and he would 

later go on to earn a second star and direct DIA’s 

National Military Intelligence Collection Center.

A U.S. Air Force F-16 fighter flies over an Iraqi mobile 

Scud launcher after Operation DESERT STORM. 

During hostilities, DIA attempted to track mobile Iraqi 

Scud launchers like this one, with limited success. 

 | 54
A sand table depicting Iraqi defenses in 

Kuwait was found in the Al Jahra School 

gymnasium at the conclusion of Operation 

DESERT STORM in February 1991.

Coalition combat forces were well aware 

of Iraqi military capabilities in part because 

DIA analysts had detailed information 

about their Soviet-origin equipment, such 

as this Mi-24/Hind-D assault helicopter.

DIA Director Lieutenant General Harry Soyster, USA, looks on 

as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Colin Powell 

places the streamer for DIA’s second Joint Meritorious Unit 

Award. DIA received this award in 1991 for its performance 

during Operations DESERT SHIELD and DESERT STORM.

1990s: New Missions, New Adversaries | 55 Defense Intelligence Agency
AFMIC AND MSIC JOIN DIA

The Armed Forces Medical Intelligence Center 

(AFMIC), now the National Center for Medical 

Intelligence (NCMI), and the Missile and Space 

Intelligence Center (MSIC), both of which were 

under the authority of the Army for decades, 

became field production elements of DIA 

in January 1992. NCMI’s mission includes 

monitoring foreign environmental health and 

infectious disease risks, foreign biotechnology 

development, and other issues that could 

potentially impact U.S. military operations and 

the health of U.S. troops around the world. 

MSIC personnel provide intelligence on shorter 

range missile technologies such as surface-to-air 

missiles, anti-tank guided missiles, short-range 

ballistic missiles, and anti-satellite weapons. 

DIA Director Lieutenant General James Clapper, Jr., USAF, hosted several visitors from Capitol Hill during 

1994 and 1995, including Maryland Congressman Steny Hoyer and Virginia Senator John Warner. 

 | 56
From 1992 to 1993, during Operation RESTORE HOPE, 

DIA supported U.S. efforts to capture Somali warlords 

preventing Somalis from receiving international assistance.

1990s: New Missions, New Adversaries | 57 Defense Intelligence Agency
(Two above) DIA deployed a National Intelligence Support Team 

to Bosnia to assist U.S. and NATO efforts to stop the genocidal 

war raging there. The NISTs brought sophisticated, secure 

communications equipment to the Combatant Commands to 

support rapid turnaround intelligence requirements from the field. 

A NIST supported Operation PROVIDE PROMISE, which airlifted food 

and medical supplies into the former Yugoslavia from 1993 to 1996.

 | 58
In 1997, DIA deployed a NIST to support a possible 

Zairian Noncombatant Evacuation Operation, 

code named Operation GUARDIAN RETRIEVAL. 

The terrorist bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia spurred organizational changes 

in DIA that placed more emphasis on transnational threats and global terrorism. 

1990s: New Missions, New Adversaries | 59 Defense Intelligence Agency
A. Denis Clift (left), President of the Joint Military Intelligence 

College (JMIC), today’s National Intelligence University 

(NIU), escorts General Dennis Reimer, USA, Chief of Staff 

of the U.S. Army, to the DIAC in late February 1996. In 

the 1990s, Clift spearheaded the drive to make the JMIC 

a fully accredited bachelor’s degree granting institution. 

It had been granting master’s degrees since the 1980s.

DIA has provided indications and warning on 

the border between North and South Korea 

since the 1960s, but by the early 1990s, 

its analysts were becoming increasingly 

concerned about North Korea’s secretive nuclear 

activities. The North’s military intentions and 

capabilities remain a focus of DIA’s work.

BARBARA SANDERSON: A MASINT PIONEER

Barbara Sanderson, who joined DIA in 1985, was a central figure 

in the development of Measurement and Signature Intelligence 

(MASINT) from an assortment of seemingly esoteric, decentralized, 

and poorly understood collection and analysis techniques to a welldeveloped intelligence discipline. MASINT actually consists of six 

sub-disciplines: geophysical intelligence, electro-optical intelligence, 

radar intelligence, radio frequency intelligence, nuclear radiation 

intelligence, and materials intelligence. As these sub-disciplines 

developed during the Cold War, they did so with little central 

direction or planning.

DIA formed a MASINT Division in 1985. Sanderson (at center in the photo) joined the division as Chief of 

the Electro-optics and Directed Energy Branch, and later held a number of influential technical and scientific 

intelligence positions both in DIA and the Intelligence Community during the 1980s and 1990s. In 1999, the 

Director of Central Intelligence ordered the creation of a Central MASINT Organization (CMO) under DIA, and 

Sanderson was made its Executive Director. CMO was an unprecedented organization, designed to unite the 

disparate MASINT sub-disciplines under a single management umbrella, and Sanderson drove much of this 

effort for the next nine years. In 2000, she became the Director of the CMO, and was responsible for managing 

the efficient use of MASINT throughout the IC. Sanderson would lead the MASINT world to improvements 

in ballistic missile technical collection, “operationalizing” its sub-disciplines (that is, making the traditionally 

strategic discipline capable of collecting operational and tactical intelligence), and expanding its exchange 

program with key U.S. allies.

 | 60
DIA Deputy Director Jeremy Clark and Deputy Director for Information Systems 

and Services Letitia Long accompany Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff 

General John Shalikashvili, USA (second left) and his aide on a visit to DIA’s 

U-2 Processing Center in 1996. Long would go on to become DIA’s Deputy 

Director and eventually the Director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence 

Agency (NGA), the first female head of a U.S. intelligence agency.

DIA’s Operational Intelligence Crisis Center, opened in response to the 

Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act, retained its 

core function of providing intelligence support in crisis situations in the 1990s.

1990s: New Missions, New Adversaries | 61 Defense Intelligence Agency
DIA Director Lieutenant General Patrick Hughes, USA 

(left), hosted the Director of Central Intelligence, George 

Tenet on the DCI’s visit to the DIAC in August 1997. 

Vice Admiral Thomas Wilson, USN (left), assumed 

command of DIA from LTG Hughes in July 1999. 

 | 62
DIA Director LTG Hughes (right) with Secretary of Defense William Cohen at the Pentagon in 1999.

1990s: New Missions, New Adversaries | 63 Defense Intelligence Agency
On October 12, 2000, al-Qaida terrorists bombed the 

USS Cole in Aden Harbor, Yemen. In response, DIA placed 

even more emphasis on its counterterrorism mission, 

organizing the Joint Terrorism Analysis Center.
YEARS OF 

TRANSFORMATION 

2000s

In the 21st Century, the U.S. was finally forced to confront the 

threat presented by global terrorism head-on. On October 12, 

2000, al-Qaida suicide bombers attacked the destroyer USS Cole 

in Aden, Yemen, killing 17 sailors and injuring 39. In response, 

DIA set up the Joint Terrorism Analysis Center (JTAC), which 

was designed to provide improved warning of terrorist attacks 

against deployed U.S. forces and perform intelligence analysis 

on trans-regional terrorism issues. On September 11, 2001, 

al-Qaida terrorists flew two commercial jets into the Twin Towers 

of the World Trade Center in New York, killing 2,752 people, 

and crashed another into the Pentagon, killing 184. Seven DIA 

employees died in their offices during the attack on the Pentagon. 

A fourth hijacked aircraft crashed in a field in Pennsylvania, 

killing all aboard. Months after this attack, DIA established the 

Joint Intelligence Task Force – Combating Terrorism (JITF-CT), 

which is responsible for indications and warning of terrorist 

attacks, intelligence support to counterterrorism operations, and 

intelligence support to DoD policymakers. 

Operation ENDURING FREEDOM, which began in October 

2001, was the U.S. military response to the September 11th 

attacks. The purpose of the operation was to topple the Taliban 

regime in Afghanistan, capture or kill the planners of the 

attack, and eliminate terrorist camps in the country. In support 

of the operation, DIA Director Vice Admiral Thomas Wilson, 

USN, convened a meeting of the Military Intelligence Board 

(MIB) to organize better intelligence support for U.S. Central 

Command (CENTCOM), accelerated the standup of JITF-CT, 

and increased the mobilization of Reserve units to provide more 

personnel in support of intelligence operations. Hundreds of 

DIA personnel eventually deployed to Afghanistan to provide 

in-theater analytical support, assist with document exploitation 

and prisoner interrogations, and provide direct support to military 

operations. As part of the broader Global War on Terrorism, DIA 

also supported military operations in the Philippines, the Horn of 

Africa, and other regions of the globe.

In March 2003, in response to the perceived threat posed by 

Saddam Hussein’s pursuit of weapons of mass destruction, the 

U.S. launched Operation IRAQI FREEDOM. DIA personnel 

provided intelligence support to combat operations in the 

planning and opening stages of the war, then deployed by 

the hundreds to Baghdad and other areas of Iraq to provide 

intelligence support. In May 2003, Undersecretary of Defense 

for Intelligence Stephen Cambone and DIA Director Vice 

Admiral Lowell Jacoby, USN, announced the establishment of 

the Iraq Survey Group (ISG), an interdepartmental, international 

organization headed by DIA that was charged with searching for 

Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. The ISG’s first Director was 

Major General Keith Dayton, USA, who had previously directed 

DIA’s Defense HUMINT Service. Eventually, the ISG transitioned 

to the new mission of providing intelligence support to Coalition 

military forces conducting counterinsurgency operations. 

During this same period, DIA initiated a series of significant 

organizational changes aimed at improving collection and 

analysis; developing, refining, and regularizing the deployment 

process for agency employees; and improving the agency’s 

ability to support and collaborate with the Combatant 

Commands. In one of the most significant developments, the 

Defense Warning Office (DWO) was created in October 2002 

at the direction of the Office of the Secretary of Defense. The 

DWO was established to focus on mid- to long-term future 

threats. It provides DoD leadership with intelligence that can 

2000s: Years of Transformation | 65 Defense Intelligence Agency
mitigate surprise, shape strategic outcomes, secure defense 

strategy objectives, and guide the development of future 

defense capabilities. In May 2005, DIA Director Vice Admiral 

Jacoby combined DIA’s Directorate for Intelligence (J-2) 

with its Directorate for Analysis (DI), merging many current 

intelligence functions and bringing analysts in DI into a closer 

relationship with those supporting the Joint Staff. In April 

2006, DIA Director Lieutenant General Michael Maples, 

USA, established the Defense Joint Intelligence Operations 

Center (DJIOC) to better integrate all aspects of operational 

intelligence support with the Combatant Commands. The next 

year, the DJIOC’s mission was expanded. DJIOC became 

the Defense Intelligence Operations Coordination Center 

(DIOCC) and established a relationship with the National 

Intelligence Coordination Center (NIC-C), further leveraging 

national resources against operational demands. At the 

same time, DIA began assuming management authority 

over intelligence budgets in the Combatant Commands, a 

bureaucratic move that had the practical effect of integrating 

Combatant Command intelligence personnel with DIA, 

thereby making DIA more responsive to the Combatant 

Command’s requirements. In 2008 DIA consolidated its 

HUMINT and counterintelligence functions with those of 

DoD’s Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA) to establish 

 | 66

2005 [ 2000 ]

October 2000.

Al-Qaida 

terrorists attack 

the USS Cole

September 2001. Terrorists 

attack the World Trade Center 

and the Pentagon. Seven DIA 

employees die in the attack

October 2001. 

Operation ENDURING 

FREEDOM begins

October 2002. DIA wins 

Joint Military Unit Award 

for intelligence support to 

policymakers and warfighters

July 2002. VADM Jacoby 

becomes Acting DIA 

Director; assumes full 

directorship in October

2001 2002 2003 2004

VICE ADMIRAL

LOWELL E. JACOBY, USN

March 2003. Operation 

IRAQI FREEDOM 

begins in Iraq

July 2002. Joint 

Intelligence Task 

Force – Combating 

Terrorism established

December 2000. MSG 

William Bultemeier, dies 

during a random carjacking 

in Niamey, Niger
the Defense Counterintelligence and HUMINT Center (DCHC). 

In 2009, DIA established the Afghanistan-Pakistan Task Force 

to coordinate military intelligence activities in the region and 

ensure a more focused response to intelligence requireme DIA 

supported several large humanitarian operations during the 

first decade of the 21st century. When a devastating tsunami 

hit Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, Thailand and other nations 

bordering the Indian Ocean in December 2004, several 

directorates allocated personnel to work around the clock in 

support of the response efforts of the U.S. Pacific Command 

and the U.S. Transportation Command. AFMIC assessed the 

environmental health risks in areas impacted by the tsunami 

and conducted a survey of medical facilities. When Hurricane 

Katrina hit New Orleans less than a year later, DIA analysts 

deployed to the area to assess the damage to infrastructures 

and the danger posed by hazardous material spills. When a 

devastating earthquake hit Haiti in January 2010, the response 

from the National Center for Medical Intelligence was immediate, 

providing SOUTHCOM, the U.S. government, and nongovernmental organizations with valuable information on how to 

stave off potential epidemics. Meanwhile, the DIOCC supported 

SOUTHCOM’s mission to stabilize Haiti as quickly as possible. 

Vice President Richard B. Cheney visited the DIAC 

on March 14, 2001. Vice President Cheney received 

briefings on the General Defense Intelligence 

Program (GDIP), the Automated Data Processing 

Center, and the deployment of National Intelligence 

Support Teams. Vice President Cheney then spoke 

to the DIAC workforce in the Tighe Auditorium and 

thanked them for their “often unheralded work.” 

The U.S. Navy destroyer USS Cole sits atop the 

Norwegian commercial lift ship MV Blue Marlin

as it begins its journey to the U.S. for repairs. 

2000s: Years of Transformation | 67 Defense Intelligence Agency

2006 2007 2008 2009 2010

October 2005. DIA wins Joint 

Military Unit Award for work 

in Global War on Terrorism

October 2006. COCOM J-2 

personnel begin transition to DIA 

administrative/management authority

October 2007. Defense 

Intelligence Operations 

Coordination Center 

(DIOCC) established

May 2009. DIA 

Afghanistan-Pakistan 

Task Force established

August 2008. DIA establishes 

Defense Counterintelligence 

and HUMINT Center 

March 2009. LTG 

Burgess becomes 

DIA Director

January 2010.

Earthquake strikes 

Haiti; NCMI supports 

humanitarian 

response effort

November 2005.

LTG Maples becomes 

DIA Director

LIEUTENANT GENERAL 

MICHAEL D. MAPLES, USA

LIEUTENANT GENERAL 

RONALD L. BURGESS, JR., USA
SEPTEMBER 11, 2001: “IT WAS 

LIKE WALKING INTO HELL”

On September 11, 2001, a mild, sunny morning 

in New York City and Washington, D.C., al-Qaida 

terrorists launched an unprecedented attack against 

the United States. That morning, they hijacked four 

passenger airliners. Two slammed into the Twin Towers 

of the World Trade Center in New York City, a third 

struck the Pentagon in northern Virginia, and the fourth 

crashed in a field outside Shanksville, Pennsylvania. 

The attacks killed more than 3,000 people, and the 

strike at the Pentagon was a defining event for DIA.

American Airlines Flight 77, a Boeing 757, hit the west 

wall of the Pentagon on the first floor at 9:37 a.m. It 

proceeded diagonally through the building, setting off a 

chain of explosions as it ripped through the interior walls. 

All 64 people aboard the plane died; 125 people inside 

the Pentagon were killed, and over 100 were hospitalized. Flight 77 crashed through 

office spaces occupied by 70 DIA employees, killing seven of them, all of whom worked 

for DIA’s Program and Budget Office: Rosa Maria Chapa, Sandra Foster, Robert Hymel, 

Shelley Marshall, Patricia Mickley, Charles Sabin, and Karl Teepe died in the attack.

In the immediate aftermath of the explosion, DIA employees helped relocate young 

children, some of whom were still in their cribs after a rushed evacuation of the building, 

to a safer location. Others searched the burning office spaces for their friends and 

colleagues. “It was like walking into hell,” recalled one witness. With smoke pouring 

into his office, DIA Director Vice Admiral Thomas Wilson, USN helped orchestrate the 

agency’s response from the National Military Command Center (NMCC) and National 

Military Joint Intelligence Center (NMJIC). VADM Wilson had to balance the difficult tasks 

of providing intelligence to national leadership and accounting for all DIA employees. 

Across the Potomac River at the DIAC, DIA employees could see smoke billowing from 

the Pentagon. Non-essential personnel were ordered to conduct a phased evacuation, 

while many other personnel stayed behind to funnel intelligence to VADM Wilson and 

his staff. VADM Wilson was undaunted. The day after the attack he told DIA personnel, 

“We will pull together...to get the job done.” In the days and months that followed, 

he reconstituted DIA operations, personally supported the families of the dead and 

injured, and grieved with his employees at the tragedy that had befallen the agency.

 | 68
“Everything was falling, flying, and on fire, and there was 

no escaping it... My eyes had a front seat to the horror... 

Everyone in our office area was struggling for life.“

-- DIA employee Christine Morrison

The September 11 terrorist attacks killed 125 people in the Pentagon, including seven DIA employees. DIA offices were 

located on the first floor of the C-Ring, to the left and behind the wreckage visible in the photograph at left. The photograph 

at right shows where the plane punched through the DIA office space and through the back wall of the C-Ring.

2000s: Years of Transformation | 69 Defense Intelligence Agency
The National Military Joint Intelligence Center in the 

Pentagon was the hub of DIA’s support to combat operations 

planning as the U.S. prepared for war in late 2001. 

NISTs were essential intelligence tools that were deployed by 

DIA in the early stages of Operation ENDURING FREEDOM. 

 | 70
(Below) DIA HUMINT personnel in Afghanistan and Iraq. In the 

last two decades, DIA has emphasized the forward deployment 

of both military and civilian personnel to combat zones.

The Afghan caretaker of the U.S. Embassy in 

Kabul unpacks the DIA and U.S. Army seals 

he kept in safekeeping after the closure of the 

embassy in 1989. The Defense Attaché Office 

in Kabul was vacated in the early 1980s in the 

wake of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

2000s: Years of Transformation | 71 Defense Intelligence Agency
The Joint Intelligence Task Force – Combating Terrorism was an expansion of DIA’s 

Joint Terrorism Analysis Center. It was established after the September 11th attacks. 

 | 72
Days after the September 11th attacks, DIA 

senior analyst Ana Belen Montes was arrested 

in her office in the DIAC and charged with 

espionage. Montes had been spying for the Cuban 

government since she joined DIA in 1985. She is 

currently serving a 25-year prison sentence. 

President of the Czech Republic Vaclav Havel (right) 

awards DIA Director VADM Wilson with the Czech 

Republic Order of the White Lion, the highest Czech 

award presented to foreign citizens, in April 2002.

2000s: Years of Transformation | 73 Defense Intelligence Agency
During Operation IRAQI FREEDOM in 2003, DIA personnel helped exploit 

intelligence such as this map depicting the location of the Iraqi 124th 

Communications Battalion and associated communications nodes (top), as 

well as a list of exercise objectives for the battalion and an organizational 

chart depicting the unit’s command and control structure (bottom). These 

items were discovered outside of Jaman Al Jurabi, Iraq, in April 2003.

A Chemical Biological Intelligence Support 

Team (CBIST), part of the Iraq Survey 

Group, takes chemical samples during 

a special site exploitation mission.

 | 74
The Perfume Palace at Camp Slayer served as 

the Iraq Survey Group’s headquarters. 

Major General Keith Dayton, USA, was in charge 

of DIA’s Defense HUMINT Service before VADM 

Jacoby made him the ISG’s first Director. 

MG Dayton meets with CENTCOM Commander General John Abizaid, 

USA (center), and David Kay (right), the Special Adviser to the Director 

of Central Intelligence for the ISG, in Iraq in the summer of 2003.

2000s: Years of Transformation | 75 Defense Intelligence Agency
Two U.S. Army soldiers, Specialist Don Clary and 

Sergeant First Class Clint Wisdom, were killed 

in the line of duty in April 2004 while providing 

security for an ISG mission in Baghdad.

The ISG exploited documents pertaining to potential Iraqi WMD.

A member of the ISG’s biological team examines Iraqi equipment believed 

to be related to the production of weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

 | 76
DIA Director Vice Admiral Lowell Jacoby, USN, (right) visits Camp Slayer, Iraq, in February of 2004.

The ISG’s mission gradually evolved from hunting for WMD 

to supporting counterinsurgency operations. The group 

discovered this insurgent weapons cache in 2003.

ISG personnel also searched for evidence of the fate of Captain 

Michael Scott Speicher, a U.S. Navy pilot shot down over 

Iraq during the first night of Operation DESERT STORM. 

2000s: Years of Transformation | 77 Defense Intelligence Agency
DIA underwent a period of rapid growth in the 2000s, making expansion 

of its facilities necessary. Here, DIA Deputy Director for Mission 

Services James Manzelmann (left) briefs DIA Director Vice Admiral 

Thomas Wilson, USN, about plans for the DIAC Expansion in 2002. 

Construction of the DIAC expansion began in 2003.

THE DIAC EXPANSION

In 2000, DIA Director Vice Admiral Thomas Wilson, 

USN, obtained funding from Congress to expand 

the DIAC. DIA selected the same architect who 

had designed the original building to design the 

expansion, which was completed in the summer 

of 2005. The first group of employees to occupy 

the new expansion were 66 people from the 

Directorate for MASINT and Technical Collection. 

The Director of National Intelligence (DNI) occupied 

the top two floors of the expansion through 2009 

before moving to a facility of its own that year. 

 | 78
DIA’s Roland Fabia (left) briefs Vice 

President Cheney while camping 

on the Snake River in 2008. 

Director of National Intelligence John 

Negroponte (right) presided when Vice 

Admiral Lowell Jacoby, USN, who had 

served as DIA Director since 2002, was 

replaced by Lieutenant General Michael 

Maples, USA, in November 2005.

2000s: Years of Transformation | 79 Defense Intelligence Agency
DIA personnel deployed to Qatar 

conduct document exploitation and 

other intelligence support activities.

DIA Director LTG Maples (left) hosts Director of National 

Intelligence Dennis Blair (right) at the DIAC in early 2009. 

DIA personnel continue to deploy to Afghanistan in 

support of Operation ENDURING FREEDOM and 

NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). 

DIA Director Lieutenant General Michael Maples, USA, (far 

left) testifies before the Senate Armed Services Committee in 

2007. To LTG Maples’ left is Director of National Intelligence 

J. Michael “Mike” McConnell, who had served as DIA’s 

Deputy Director of Joint Staff Support, or J-2 of the Joint 

Staff, during Operation DESERT SHIELD/DESERT STORM.

 | 80
U-2 reconnaissance aircraft continue to supply critical operational 

intelligence for DIA personnel in Washington, D.C., and in various 

Combatant Commands around the world. Many U-2 missions were 

managed by the Defense Intelligence Operations Coordination Center. 

U.S. Army soldiers, one a human intelligence 

specialist, survey a possible helicopter landing zone 

near Port-au-Prince, Haiti in January 2010.

2000s: Years of Transformation | 81 Defense Intelligence Agency
DIA Director Lieutenant General Ronald Burgess Jr., USA, 

opened the Joint Use Intelligence Analysis Facility (JUIAF) 

in August 2010. The JUIAF houses DIA’s Military Forces 

Analysis Office, the Defense Warning Office, and elements 

of the Counterproliferation Support Office. At the far right 

is the Commanding General of the U.S. Army Intelligence 

and Security Command, Major General Mary Legere, USA.

LTG Ronald Burgess, Jr. speaks at a hearing held by the 

Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in February 2011. 

Seated next to LTG Burgess (from left to right) are Director 

of National Intelligence (and former DIA Director) James 

Clapper and FBI Director Robert Mueller.

 | 82
(Below) DIA’s September 11 Memorial and Patriots’ Memorial are permanent monuments 

to the memory of DIA personnel who lost their lives in the line of duty.

2000s: Years of Transformation | 83 Defense Intelligence Agency

Conclusion

The Defense Intelligence Agency was conceived and established 

to remove Service bias from military intelligence estimates. The 

agency’s original mission was to coordinate and streamline the 

military’s intelligence efforts for the Secretary of Defense through 

the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and to provide unbiased intelligence 

reporting to national leadership. For three decades, DIA focused 

on the threat presented by communist nations around the world. 

Over the last twenty years, however, with the fall of the Soviet 

Union and its allies, threats to U.S. national security have become 

more decentralized and increasingly complex.

This brief overview of DIA’s first five decades reveals several 

enduring themes in the agency’s history: the constant intelligence 

support provided to Department of Defense leadership; the use of 

ever-evolving and improving technology in intelligence collection, 

analysis, and production; the recruitment of dedicated, accomplished 

and highly motivated intelligence professionals as collectors, 

producers, and analysts; and the accelerating drive towards direct 

operational and tactical intelligence support to the warfighter.

Over the next decades, DIA will continue to evolve in as yet 

undefined ways to meet new, unpredictable threats to the United 

States. When it was established in 1961, no one could have 

conceived that fifty years later, Soviet communism would be a 

relic of the past; or that nuclear proliferation in countries such 

as North Korea and Iran and unconventional threats posed by 

transnational terrorist groups would be the focus of so much of 

the agency’s effort. Yet there are lessons that can be learned 

from how the agency confronted historical threats and organized 

itself to meet new threats. These lessons demonstrate that in 

order to meet future challenges, DIA will need to maintain 

its focus on recruiting and training a diverse, talented, and 

motivated workforce. It will need to think creatively and flexibly 

about potential threats to national security. It will need to invest 

in technology so that it will be able to collect, analyze, and 

rapidly disseminate intelligence to its consumer base around the 

world. Using the knowledge and skills gained from fifty years of 

effort, the Defense Intelligence Agency will remain committed to 

excellence in defense of the nation. 

 | 85 Defense Intelligence Agency
1960s: The Early Years

(Section opener photo), Courtesy of the Department of Defense

page 2 (bottom), DIA Historical Research Support Branch 

page 3 (top), Courtesy of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library 

page 3 (bottom), Courtesy of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library

page 4 (highlight box), DIA Historical Research Support Branch

page 4 (top), DIA Historical Research Support Branch

page 5 (top left), DIA Historical Research Support Branch

page 5 (top right), DIA Historical Research Support Branch

page 5 (bottom left), DIA Historical Research Support Branch

page 5 (bottom right), DIA Historical Research Support Branch

page 6 (top left), DIA Historical Research Support Branch

pages 6 (top right), DIA Historical Research Support Branch

page 6 (middle), DIA Historical Research Support Branch

page 6 (bottom left), DIA Historical Research Support Branch

page 6 (bottom right), Courtesy of the National Archives

page 7 (top), DIA Historical Research Support Branch

page 8 (top), DIA Historical Research Support Branch

page 8 (bottom), DIA Historical Research Support Branch

page 9 (top right), DIA Historical Research Support Branch

page 9 (bottom), Courtesy of the Central Intelligence Agency

page 10 (top), Courtesy of the National Archives

page 10 (bottom left), Courtesy of the National Archives

page 10 (bottom right), Courtesy of the U.S. Air Force

page 11 (top left), Courtesy of the National Archives

page 11 (top right), Courtesy of the U.S. Air Force 

page 11 (middle), Courtesy of the Department of Defense

page 11 (bottom), Courtesy of the U.S. Navy

1970s: Years of Transition

(Section opener photo), DIA Historical Research Support Branch

page 14 (bottom), Courtesy of the National Archives

page 15 (top), Courtesy of the U.S. Air Force

page 16 (bottom), Courtesy of the Richard M. Nixon Presidential Library

page 17 (top), Courtesy of the Department of Defense

page 17 (bottom), Courtesy of the Department of Defense

page 18 (highlight box), DIA Historical Research Support Branch

page 18 (bottom), Courtesy of the Department of Defense

page 19 (top left), Courtesy of the National Archives

page 19 (top right), Courtesy of the National Archives

page 20 (top), Courtesy of the National Archives

page 20 (bottom), Courtesy of the Department of Defense

page 21 (top), Courtesy of the Department of Defense

page 21 (bottom), Courtesy of the U.S. Navy

page 22 (highlight box), Courtesy of the National Archives

page 22 (top left), Courtesy of the National Archives

page 22 (top right), Courtesy of the National Archives

page 23 (top), Courtesy of the National Archives

page 23 (bottom), Courtesy of the National Archives

page 24 (top left), Courtesy of the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library

and Museum

page 24 (bottom right), DIA Historical Research Support Branch

page 24 (top right), DIA Historical Research Support Branch

page 24 (center right), DIA Historical Research Support Branch

page 25 (bottom), DIA Historical Research Support Branch

page 25 (top), Courtesy of the Richard M. Nixon Presidential Library 

and Museum

CREDITS

(Photo opposite Foreword), Courtesy of the Historical Office, 

Office of the Secretary of Defense

 | 86
page 26 (top), Courtesy of the Department of Defense

page 26 (bottom), DIA Historical Research Support Branch

page 27 (top left), Courtesy of the Department of Defense

page 27 (center left), Courtesy of the U.S. Air Force

page 27 (bottom left), Courtesy of the Department of Defense

page 27 (bottom right), Courtesy of the Department of Defense

1980s: DIA Comes 

of Age

(Section opener photo), Courtesy of the Defense Visual 

Information Center

page 30 (bottom), Courtesy of the Briscoe Center for American 

History, University of Texas at Austin

page 31 (bottom), Courtesy of the Defense Visual 

Information Center

page 32 (top left), DIA Historical Research Support Branch

page 32 (top right), Courtesy of the National Archives

page 32 (bottom left), Courtesy of the Marine Corps Times and 

the Associated Press

page 32 (bottom right), DIA Historical Research Support Branch

page 33 (top right), DIA Historical Research Support Branch

page 34 (highlight box), DIA Historical Research Support Branch

page 35 (top), DIA Historical Research Support Branch

page 35 (bottom left), Courtesy of the Ronald W. Reagan 

Presidential Library

page 35 (bottom right), DIA Historical Research Support Branch

page 36 (top), Courtesy of the Defense Visual Information Center

page 36 (bottom), Courtesy of the Defense Visual 

Information Center

page 37 (top left), DIA Historical Research Support Branch

page 37 (top right), DIA Historical Research Support Branch

page 37 (bottom), Courtesy of the U.S. Air Force

page 38 (top left), DIA Media Services

page 38 (top right), DIA Historical Research Support Branch

page 38 (bottom left), Courtesy of the Department of Defense

page 38 (bottom right), DIA Historical Research Support Branch

page 39 (top), DIA Historical Research Support Branch

page 39 (bottom), Courtesy of the Department of Defense

page 40 (highlight box), DIA Historical Research Support Branch

page 40 (top), Courtesy of the Defense Visual Information Center

page 40 (bottom), Courtesy of the Defense Visual 

Information Center

page 41 (bottom), Courtesy of the Defense Visual 

Information Center 

page 42 (top), Courtesy of the Defense Visual Information Center

page 42 (highlight box), Courtesy of Ronald W. Reagan 

Presidential Library

page 42 (bottom), Courtesy of the National Archives

page 43 (bottom right), Courtesy of the Defense Visual 

Information Center

page 44 (top), Courtesy of the Defense Visual Information Center

page 45 (top), Courtesy of the U.S. Government

page 45 (bottom left), Courtesy of the U.S. Government

page 45 (bottom right), Courtesy of the U.S. Government

page 46 (top right), Courtesy of the U.S. Army Center of 

Military History

page 46 (bottom left), Courtesy of the U.S. Army Center of 

Military History

page 46 (bottom right), Courtesy of Getty Images

page 47 (top), DIA Historical Research Support Branch 

page 47 (highlight box), DIA Historical Research Support Branch

 | 87 Defense Intelligence Agency
1990s: New Missions, 

New Adversaries

(Section opener photo), Courtesy of the Defense Visual 

Information Center 

page 50 (bottom), Courtesy of the National Park Service

page 51 (highlight box), Courtesy of Joan Dempsey

page 52 (highlight box), Courtesy of the Defense Visual 

Information Center

page 52 (bottom), Courtesy of the Defense Visual Information Center

page 53 (top), Courtesy of the Defense Visual Information Center

page 53 (bottom), Courtesy of Lieutenant Colonel Rick Francona, USAF

page 54 (left), Courtesy of the Department of Defense

page 54 (top), Courtesy of the National Archives

page 54 (bottom), Courtesy of the Defense Visual 

Information Center

page 55 (center right), Courtesy of the National Archives 

page 55 (bottom), DIA Historical Research Support Branch 

page 56 (top), Courtesy of CT Snow

page 56 (highlight box, top), DIA Historical Research Support Branch 

page 56 (bottom left), DIA Historical Research Support Branch

page 56 (bottom right), DIA Historical Research Support Branch

page 57 (bottom), Courtesy of the Defense Visual Information Center

page 58 (top left), DIA Historical Research Support Branch

page 58 (center left), DIA Historical Research Support Branch

page 58 (top right), DIA Historical Research Support Branch

page 58 (bottom), Courtesy of the Department of Defense

page 59 (top), DIA Historical Research Support Branch

page 59 (top left), DIA Historical Research Support Branch

page 59 (bottom right), Courtesy of the Department of Defense

page 60 (highlight box), Courtesy of Barbara Sanderson

page 60 (bottom left), DIA Historical Research Support Branch

page 61 (top left), DIA Historical Research Support Branch

page 61 (top right), DIA Historical Research Support Branch

page 60 (bottom right), Courtesy of the Defense Visual 

Information Center

page 61 (bottom right), Courtesy of the Defense Visual 

Information Center

page 62 (top), DIA Historical Research Support Branch

page 62 (bottom), DIA Historical Research Support Branch

page 63 (top), DIA Historical Research Support Branch

2000s: Years of 

Transformation

(Section opener photo), Courtesy of the Department of Defense 

page 66 (bottom) Courtesy of the Defense Visual 

Information Center

page 67 (bottom right), DIA Historical Research Support Branch

page 68 (top), Courtesy of the Defense Visual Information Center

page 68 (highlight box), Courtesy of the Defense Visual 

Information Center 

page 68 (bottom), Courtesy of the Defense Visual 

Information Center

page 69 (top), Courtesy of the Historical Office, Office of the Secretary 

of Defense

page 69 (bottom left), Courtesy of the Defense Visual 

Information Center

page 69 (bottom right), Courtesy of the Defense Visual 

Information Center

page 70 (top), DIA Historical Research Support Branch

page 70 (bottom), DIA Historical Research Support Branch

page 71 (top left), DIA Historical Research Support Branch

page 71 (bottom left), DIA Historical Research Support Branch

page 71 (right), DIA Historical Research Support Branch

 | 88
The Defense Intelligence Agency 50th Anniversary: An Illustrated 

History is a product of DIA’s Historical Research Support Branch. Its 

publication was made possible by the support of DIA’s Media Services 

Division and the Office for Congressional and Public Affairs.

page 72, DIA Historical Research Support Branch

page 73 (top), Courtesy of the Federal Bureau of Investigation

page 73 (bottom), DIA Historical Research Support Branch

page 74 (top), DIA Historical Research Support Branch

page 74 (top left), Courtesy of the Defense Visual 

Information Center

page 74 (bottom left), Courtesy of the Defense Visual 

Information Center 

page 75 (top right), Courtesy of the Department of Defense

page 75 (bottom left), DIA Historical Research Support Branch

page 75 (bottom right), DIA Historical Research Support Branch 

page 76 (top left), DIA Historical Research Support Branch

page 76 (top right), DIA Historical Research Support Branch

page 76 (bottom left), DIA Historical Research Support Branch

page 76 (bottom), DIA Historical Research Support Branch

page 77 (top), DIA Historical Research Support Branch

page 77 (bottom right), DIA Historical Research Support Branch

page 78 (top), DIA Historical Research Support Branch

page 78 (bottom), DIA Historical Research Support Branch

page 79 (top), DIA Historical Research and Support Branch

page 79 (bottom), Courtesy of the White House Photo 

by David Bohrer

page 80 (top), Courtesy of the Department of Defense

page 80 (center left), DIA Historical Research Support Branch

page 80 (bottom left), DIA Historical Research Support Branch 

page 81 (top left), Courtesy of the Defense Visual 

Information Center

page 81 (top right), Courtesy of the Defense Visual 

Information Center

page 81 (bottom), Courtesy of Getty Images

page 82 (top), DIA Historical Research Support Branch

page 82 (bottom), DIA Historical Research Support Branch

page 83 (top), DIA Historical Research Support Branch

page 83 (bottom), DIA Historical Research Support Branch

page 84, DIA Historical Research Support Branch

 | 89 Defense Intelligence Agency