The Defense Intelligence Agency Memorial Wall, commonly known as the Patriots Memorial, is a memorial at DIA Headquarters in Washington, D.C., dedicated to those agency employees who lost their lives in the line of their intelligence work [1] and whose deaths are not classified.
The wall was first dedicated on 14 December 1988 by Director Leonard Perroots at the DIA Headquarters, honoring those DIA personnel "who died in the service of the United States". It "commemorates the profound individual sacrifices made on behalf of the United States by DIA members and acts as a reminder of the selflessness, dedication, and courage required to confront national challenges..." [1]
The DIA does not provide detailed criteria on who is eligible for inclusion on the memorial. The wall is presumably not exhaustive due to omission of DIA personnel with links to classified missions, such as DIA officer Charles Dennis McKee, who died as a result of the Lockerbie bombing. [2] McKee is notably absent on the DIA wall, whereas his CIA partner Matthew Gannon is honored on the CIA Memorial Wall. The majority of the disclosed DIA fatalities are either a result of terrorist attacks or accidents and acts of violence directed against overt employees. [3] While CIA has a practice of marking the deaths of its private contractors on its memorial wall, [4] the number of DIA contractor losses, if any, is unknown.
Unlike the more expansive memorial at the DIA's fellow defense agency the NSA – which includes members of all military elements operating on behalf of or assigned to the NSA – the DIA's interpretation of "personnel" and what it means to die in the line of duty has remained opaque to the public. During Operation Babylift, the U.S. Defense Attache Office (DAO), a branch of the DIA, lost 35 personnel, but of these the DIA included only five individuals on its memorial wall, excluding the remaining 30 deaths of DAO staff. [5] [6] This type of unclear accounting led to some controversy before the DIA memorial was even created. In 1983, American citizen Jim Poulton threatened to sue the U.S. government for records after repeatedly failing to confirm whether his parents Orin Poulton and June Poulton, who perished during Operation Babylift, were DIA employees. Following years of wrangling, it was revealed that Orin, although working for the DIA's Defense Attache Office at the time, was actually being paid by the U.S. Navy, and as such was not considered a member DIA personnel for bookkeeping purposes. Similarly, June Poulton was a civilian paid by the U.S. Army. Kenneth E. Geisen, the DIA spokesperson at the time, said "I'm not denying it. I'm not confirming it...DIA would have no reason to cover up anything". When asked about honoring these civilians on war memorials, the DIA spokesperson said that "Well, [dying while] coming back on an airplane [during the Vietnam War] is just like getting killed on the Beltway here in a car accident". The Poulton family was billed thousands of dollars for coffins and transportation for the bodies of Orin and June, but they refused to pay; in the end, the government did not insist on payment. [7] [ full citation needed ]
The National Security Agency (NSA) is an intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collection, and processing of information and data for foreign and domestic intelligence and counterintelligence purposes, specializing in a discipline known as signals intelligence (SIGINT). The NSA is also tasked with the protection of U.S. communications networks and information systems. The NSA relies on a variety of measures to accomplish its mission, the majority of which are clandestine. The NSA has roughly 32,000 employees.
The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) is an intelligence agency and combat support agency of the United States Department of Defense, specializing in defense and military intelligence.
The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) is a member of the United States Intelligence Community and an agency of the United States Department of Defense which designs, builds, launches, and operates the reconnaissance satellites of the U.S. federal government, and provides satellite intelligence to several government agencies, particularly signals intelligence (SIGINT) to the NSA, imagery intelligence (IMINT) to the NGA, and measurement and signature intelligence (MASINT) to the DIA. The NRO announced in 2023 that it plans within the following decade to quadruple the number of satellites it operates and increase the number of signals and images it delivers by a factor of ten.
The National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal (NIDSM) is a decoration awarded for service to the United States Intelligence Community. The decoration is awarded to any member or contributor to the National Intelligence Community, either civilian or military, who distinguishes themselves by meritorious actions to the betterment of national security in the United States of America, through sustained and selfless service of the highest order.
The Defense Attaché System is an arm of the Defense Intelligence Agency tasked with representing the United States in defense and military related matters with foreign governments around the world. Defense Attache Offices (DAO) operate from U.S. embassies in more than a hundred locations globally. DAOs are composed of both civilian and military employees, most of whom receive specialized training at Joint Military Attache School before their appointment.
Operation Babylift was the name given to the mass evacuation of children from South Vietnam to the United States and other western countries at the end of the Vietnam War, on April 3–26, 1975. By the final American flight out of South Vietnam, over 3,300 infants and children had been airlifted, although the actual number has been variously reported. Along with Operation New Life, over 110,000 refugees were evacuated from South Vietnam at the end of the Vietnam War. Thousands of children were airlifted from Vietnam and adopted by families around the world.
Awards and decorations of the United States government are civilian awards of the U.S. federal government which are typically issued for sustained meritorious service, in a civilian capacity, while serving in the U.S. federal government. Certain U.S. government awards may also be issued to military personnel of the United States Armed Forces and be worn in conjunction with awards and decorations of the United States military. In order of precedence, those U.S. non-military awards and decorations authorized for wear are worn after U.S. military personal decorations and unit awards and before U.S. military campaign and service awards.
Project SHAMROCK was the sister project to Project MINARET, an espionage exercise started in August 1945. Project MINARET involved the accumulation of all telegraphic data that entered or exited the United States. The Armed Forces Security Agency (AFSA) and its successor, the National Security Agency (NSA), were given direct access to daily microfilm copies of all incoming, outgoing, and transiting telegrams via the Western Union and its associates RCA and ITT. NSA did the operational interception, and, if there was information that would be of interest to other intelligence agencies, the material was passed to them. Intercepted messages were disseminated to the FBI, CIA, Secret Service, Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (BNDD), and the Department of Defense. No court authorized the operation and there were no warrants.
The Intelligence Star is an award given by the Central Intelligence Agency to its officers for "voluntary acts of courage performed under hazardous conditions or for outstanding achievements or services rendered with distinction under conditions of grave risk". The award citation is from the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency and specifically cites actions of "extraordinary heroism". It is the third-highest award given by the Central Intelligence Agency, behind the Distinguished Intelligence Cross and Distinguished Intelligence Medal, and is analogous to the Silver Star, the US military award for extraordinary heroism in combat. Only a few dozen people have received this award, making it one of the rarest valor awards awarded by the US government.
The under secretary of defense for intelligence and security or USD(I&S) is a high-ranking civilian position in the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) within the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) that acts as the principal civilian advisor and deputy to the secretary of defense (SecDef) and deputy secretary of defense (DepSecDef) on matters relating to military intelligence and security. The under secretary is appointed as a civilian by the president and confirmed by the Senate to serve at the pleasure of the president.
James Robert Clapper Jr. is a retired lieutenant general in the United States Air Force and former Director of National Intelligence. Clapper has held several key positions within the United States Intelligence Community. He served as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) from 1992 until 1995. He was the first director of defense intelligence within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and simultaneously the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence. He served as the director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) from September 2001 until June 2006.
The Defense Intelligence Agency Headquarters is the main operating center of the Defense Intelligence Agency. It is located on the premises of Joint Base Anacostia–Bolling in Washington, D.C.
Mario Montoya Uribe is a former Colombian military General and Commander of the Colombian National Army until his resignation on November 4, 2008 following the 'false positives' scandal involving the deaths of 11 civilians at the hands of the military. Montoya holds a graduate title in Top management from the Los Andes University (Colombia). He has trained in armored vehicles courses in Fort Knox, Kentucky and served as the Army, Navy and Air Attaché in the Colombian Embassy at the United Kingdom in London, England. Montoya was succeeded by General Óscar González on November 6, 2008 as Commander of the Colombian National Army.
The Memorial Wall is a memorial at the Central Intelligence Agency headquarters in Langley, Virginia. It honors 140 CIA employees who died in service to their nation.
Outsourcing intelligence is a method by which a country contracts out intelligence activities such as collection, analysis, and dissemination to non-governmental employees. In the United States of America, approximately 70% of the intelligence budget was spent on contracts in 2006.
The CIA publishes organizational charts of its agency. Here are a few examples.
The Defense Intelligence Community Whistleblower Program (DICWP) is a sub-mission of the Department of Defense Whistleblower Program. In administering the DICWP, the Office of the Inspector General, U.S. Department of Defense (DoDIG) balances the competing national security and separation of powers interests raised by whistleblowing within the Defense Intelligence Community.The DoDIG provides a safe, authorized conduit for Defense Department whistleblowers to disclose classified information. The Inspector General also has authority to investigate whistleblowing reprisal allegations filed by civilian and military members of the Defense Intelligence Community. It therefore accepts the disclosures and provides source protection for those providing the information. The Department of Defense funds and supervises much of the Republic's intelligence gathering. DoD IG accordingly provides protection to a large number of civilian and military intelligence personnel.
The Defense Clandestine Service (DCS) is an arm of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), which conducts clandestine espionage, intelligence gathering activities and classified operations around the world to provide insights and answer national-level defense objectives for senior U.S. policymakers and American military leaders. Staffed by civilian and military personnel, DCS is part of DIA's Directorate of Operations and works in conjunction with the Central Intelligence Agency's Directorate of Operations and the U.S. military's Joint Special Operations Command. DCS consists of about 500 clandestine operatives, which is roughly how many case officers the CIA maintained in the early 2000s prior to its expansion.
The Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2014 is a U.S. public law that authorizes appropriations for fiscal year 2014 for intelligence activities of the U.S. government. The law authorizes there to be funding for intelligence agencies such as the Central Intelligence Agency or the National Security Agency, but a separate appropriations bill would also have to pass in order for those agencies to receive any money.
The Defense Attaché Office, Saigon was a joint-service command and military attaché branch of the United States Department of Defense (DOD) under the control of United States Support Activities Group (USSAG). It assumed all DOD responsibilities in South Vietnam following the disestablishment of Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV) in March 1973. The DAO was responsible for administering military assistance and support to the South Vietnamese armed forces, the gathering and distribution of military intelligence and the performance of normal Defense Attaché functions. The DAO remained in existence until August 1975.
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