DIA Scales Back Plans for Expanded Defense Clandestine Service...Sort Of

Those of you interested in the organization of the Intelligence Community may recall a major initiative launched by the Defense Intelligence Agency, in 2012, to expand the size and focus of its HUMINT collection activities (rebranding that aspect of its operation as the Defense Clandestine Service). The basic idea: ramp up the number of spies deployed overseas, and thereby enable an expansion in focus beyond the battlefield in order to encompass long-term topics of special concern to DOD (e.g., Chinese military modernization). CIA apparently was on board, for reasons Greg Miller explained lucidly in the Post at the time. The proposal met resistance in Congress, however, and there have been signals since then that the effort might not pan out. Against this backdrop comes word from Greg Miller that the proposal will be scaled back considerably. [Hat tip to Jens Ohlin at OJ for flagging Greg's story] Is this retrenchment a missed opportunity for the IC, from an institutional design perspective? That's extremely hard to judge without an insider's appreciation for the extent and quality of CIA coverage of the topics that DIA proposed to add to its ledger, as well as an appreciation for whether the drawdown of the US deployment in Afghanistan will have the effect of freeing up existing DIA collection personnel. Having said that, it's not clear to me just how much the original plan is being scaled back. I say this for two reasons that Greg highlights in his piece. First, the number of additional DIA personnel has indeed been cut back from 1000 to 500, but: (i) the methodology for counting those personnel also has changed, such that only deployed officers engaged in collection will count now...meaning the delta between the two figures is surely something much less than 500; and (ii) as I note above, there may be some number of existing DIA personnel who are becoming newly available for fresh missions thanks to the ongoing drawdown of our combat deployment in Afghanistan. Second, and perhaps more significantly, the idea of expanding the substantive scope of DIA collection priorities perhaps has not been abandoned altogether. Greg's article notes that

most of those involved will be given assignments that are more narrowly focused on the DIA’s traditional mission of gathering intelligence for the Defense Department.

That of course leaves open the possibility that, in at least a few key areas, DIA collection priorities might be widened a bit after all.