The US Establishes Yet Another Intelligence Directorate

The Pentagon gets into the CIA business

The Pentagon is setting up a new intelligence service. Its establishment reflects the dynamic of world events: since the U.S. has already departed from Iraq, and will withdraw its forces from Afghanistan by the end of 2014, the Department of Defense (DOD) is reshaping its espionage network. It seems that the military intends to pay more attention to Africa, where al-Qaeda is increasing their efforts, as well as to Iran, the DPRK and China.

The new structure will be called the Defense Clandestine Service and will cooperate closely with the Central Intelligence Agency. A highly placed official within the Pentagon anonymously informed a reporter about this. It is expected that the new military intelligence service will be composed of a few hundred employees from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). Consequently, the new intelligence service will not receive special financing or assign special authorities.

The plan to establish the new intelligence service arose when the DOD studied a secret report prepared by the Director of National Intelligence. The report indicated that after the completion of military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, it would be necessary to change DIA’s priorities from providing information to forces and commanders to assisting other entities beyond the battlefield. However, this does not entirely mean that the Defense Clandestine Service will compete with the CIA or its National Clandestine Service. On the contrary, the goals of military and foreign intelligence are often the same, which helps to increase cooperation.

The press refused to name the countries that will be the targets of the reorganization. Presumably, the Defense Clandestine Service will be concerned with key strategic areas: antiterrorism (primarily against al-Qaeda, which is increasingly active in Africa), nuclear non-proliferation (Iran, DPRK) and rising powers (China). In an interview with Nezavisimaya Gazeta, Vladimir Batyuk, head of the Center for Military-Political Research at the Institute for U.S. and Canadian Studies, says that the Pentagon intelligence service’s sphere of interest includes, without exaggeration, the entire globe. “Certainly, American intelligence has always been occupied with Russia, and the fact that Russia has increased its acquisitions and activities in the Air Force and Navy in recent years has not escaped the notice of the Americans,” he remarked.

In Washington, Donald Rumsfeld’s scandalous maneuver against the CIA is still remembered. In January of 2005, the Washington Post published an article about the DIA’s Strategic Support Branch (SSB), which was organized on Rumsfeld’s orders with the goal of cutting DIA’s dependence on CIA agents. Officers assigned to the SSB operated not only in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also in countries with which there was no credible chance of conflict (traditionally, this is the sphere of operations for the CIA). Legislators did not agree with the project and expressed strong indignation.

Now Congress is not so perturbed. As one of the legislators announced, “If this were an attempt of the type we saw during the Rumsfeld years to consolidate human intelligence to have a better bulwark against what the CIA is doing, that would be a concern. But I don’t think that’s what’s going on.” Mike Rogers of the House of Representatives supported the plan, saying that, in his opinion, “it will allow for greater value from our intelligence officers through integration.”

This phenomenon is connected with the erosion of the boundaries between the CIA and the Pentagon. There is good reason for the reform to have been ventured under Leon Panetta (he approved the plan last week), who previously headed the CIA. Michael Vickers, Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and author of the changes, also worked for the CIA in the past and was one of the architects of the program to arm the Afghan mujahideen, in the war with the USSR in the 1980s. Conversely, General David Petraeus, who commanded U.S. and NATO forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, now heads the CIA.