Defense Clandestine Service or DCS has been compared with a militarized CIA. What it is exactly is hard to say for sure, we are not even allowed to know basic information like how many personnel is staffing the service and how much it costs?
As a reporter when you try and get information as a reporter on the Defense Clandestine Service (DCS) it is very hard to do.
Even basic questions like how many military personnel are staffing the new agency is apparently a secret, because nobody is saying.
We do know the DCS is an intelligence agency of the Department of Defense – call it a militarized Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for lack of a better term.
It was announced on 23 April 2012 by the Pentagon to increase spying operations against high-priority targets such as Iran , China, Russia, under an intelligence reorganization aimed at expanding on the military’s espionage efforts “beyond war zones.”
The new spy service will supposedly work closely with the CIA, and other spy agencies in an effort to increase espionage operations overseas.
The plan was hatched in response to a “classified study” completed in 2011 by the Director of National Intelligence that concluded that the military’s espionage efforts needed to be more focused on major targets “beyond the tactical considerations of Iraq and Afghanistan.”
While the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) was effectively conducting its traditional, and much larger, mission of providing intelligence to troops and commanders in war zones, it needed to focus more attention on “outside the battlefields” . On what is called “national intelligence” – gathering and distributing information on global issues and sharing that intelligence with other agencies.
This is apparently where the DCS come in (see article: Defense Department Plans New Intelligence Gathering Service http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/24/world/asia/defense-department-plans-new-spy-service.html?_r=1 ).
If it sounds confusing it is. The DIA and DCS will basically act to compliment each other.
The “realignment” as it is sometimes called is expected to affect several hundred military operatives who already work in spying assignments abroad, mostly as case officers for the DIA, which serves as the Pentagon’s main source of human intelligence and analysis.
Agents for the new Pentagon spy service will work out of U.S. Embassies and from military bases and outposts all over the world. It is unclear if they will be working under official cover or non official cover or both?
The new service is expected to increase from several hundred to almost a thousand operatives in the coming years.
How much will all this cost?
Nobody really knows for sure. Estimate range all over the place, depending on who you ask, anywhere from a few hundred million to a $1 billion or more?
That is also part of the problem.
At a time of budget cutbacks, particularly in the military, it’s unclear how the Defense Department has been able to shuffle around the money to afford a new agency.
The Pentagon of course, refused to get into specifics saying only that the so-called “Defense Clandestine Service” wouldn’t involve “significant new resource requirements.” But if that was the case why won’t it admit its cost? It simply doesn’t make any sense…
What we know so far is that about “15% of the DIA’s case officers will be part of the Defense Clandestine Service.”
Others will be recruited from other agencies and from the U.S. military services directly”, according to one source at the Pentagon.
The new military spy agency is authorized to conduct a broad level of espionage, including clandestine operations in the field.
Rumors indicate it will not be restricted like the CIA which cannot spy on Americans at home.
The creation of a new espionage unit by the Pentagon called the Defense Clandestine Service is driven by a “desire to continue a policy of aggression around the world and destabilization” by the U.S., says Webster Tarpley (see video: Webster Tarpley on the Pentagon’s Defense Clandestine Servicehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U56vU1ZugVw ).
See also: DOD’s New Spy Service, Another CIA? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hjx_wySV6_0
My question is do we really need another spy service?
Apparently the answer according to the Pentagon is “yes”.