The US Department of Defence will send hundreds of additional spies overseas as part of an ambitious plan to assemble an espionage network that rivals the CIA in size, US officials said. The project is aimed at transforming the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) which has been dominated for the past decade by the demands of two wars, into a spy service focused on emerging threats and more closely aligned with the CIA and elite military commando units. When the expansion is complete, the DIA is expected to have as many as 1,600 “collectors” in positions around the world, an unprecedented total for an agency whose presence abroad numbered in the triple digits in recent years. The total includes military attachés and others who do not work undercover. But US officials said the growth will be driven over a five-year period by the deployment of a new generation of clandestine operatives. They will be trained by the CIA and often work with the US Joint Special Operations Command, but they will get their spying assignments from the Department of Defense. Officials said among the Pentagon’s top intelligence priorities are militant groups in Africa, weapons transfers by North Korea and Iran, and military modernisation underway in China. “This is not a marginal adjustment for DIA,” the agency’s director, Lt Gen Michael T Flynn, said at a recent conference, during which he outlined the changes but did not describe them in detail. “This is a major adjustment for national security.” The sharp increase in DIA undercover operatives is part of a far-reaching trend: a convergence of the military and intelligence agencies that has blurred their once-distinct missions, capabilities and even their leadership ranks. Through its drone programme, the CIA now accounts for a majority of lethal US operations outside the Afghan war zone. At the same time, the Pentagon’s plan to create what it calls the Defence Clandestine Service, or DCS, reflects the military’s latest and largest foray into secret intelligence work. The DIA overhaul — combined with the growth of the CIA since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks will create a spy network of unprecedented size. The plan reflects the Obama administration’s affinity for espionage and covert action over conventional force. It also fits in with the administration’s efforts to codify its counterterrorism policies for a sustained conflict and assemble the pieces abroad necessary to carry it out.
