The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) was the first
new agency established by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara after he
assumed office in 1961. The ambitious McNamara intended to reformulate
U.S. strategic nuclear policy and reduce inefficiencies that had
developed in the Department of Defense (DoD) in the 1950s. DIA was the
lynchpin to both efforts. In the early and middle 1960s, McNamara and
his subordinates, Deputy Secretary of Defense Roswell Gilpatric and new
DIA Director Lieutenant General Joseph Carroll (USAF), worked hard to
establish the Agency, but their efforts were delayed or stymied by
intransigent and parochial military leadership who objected to the
creation of DIA because they feared a loss of both battlefield
effectiveness and political influence in Washington, D.C.
The work of building the DIA was made all the more
urgent by the deteriorating situation in Southeast Asia. By the early
1960s, millions of dollars and hundreds of advisory personnel sent by
the U.S. were having a negligible impact on the anti-communist campaign
there. As the U.S. continued to commit more resources to the ill-fated
government in Saigon, the country found itself drawn deeper and deeper
into the maelstrom.
For DIA, the looming war in Southeast Asia would
expose major problems in its organization and performance. Especially in
the period from 1961 to 1969, DIA, either because of structural
weaknesses or leadership failures, often failed to energetically seize
opportunities to assert itself in the major intelligence questions
involving the conflict there. This tendency was exacerbated by national
military leadership’s predilection for ignoring or undercutting the
Agency’s authority. In turn, this opened up DIA to severe criticism by
Congress and other national policymakers, some of whom even considered
abolishing the Agency. During the war, McNamara’s great hope for
reforming military intelligence would be swept up in quarrels between
powerful domestic adversaries, and DIA’s performance left the Secretary
of Defense deeply embittered toward his creation. It was only at the end
of the war that DIA assumed a more influential role in Southeast Asia.
Until then, however, the Agency was consigned to the wilderness when it
came to questions about the Vietnam conflict.
OBTAIN DOCUMENT: The Vietnam Cauldron Defense Intelligence in the War for Southeast Asia
