Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives Number 1 LEGACY OF ASHES TRIAL BY FIRE The Origins of the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Cuban Missile Crisis Crucible Michael B Petersen DIA Historical Research Support Branch DEFENSE INTELLIGENCE AGENCY The ideas and opinions expressed in this publication are solely the author’s and do not reflect those of the Defense Intelligence Agency the Department of Defense or the United States Government Defense Intelligence Agency Historical Research Support Branch Washington DC 2011 Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives Number 1 LEGACY OF ASHES TRIAL BY FIRE The Origins of the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Cuban Missile Crisis Crucible Michael B Petersen DIA Historical Research Support Branch For the Patriots Major Robert P Perry USA Celeste M Brown Vivienne A Clark Dorothy M Curtiss Joan K Pray Doris J Watkins Colonel Charles R Ray USA Chief Warrant Officer Robert W Prescott USA Chief Warrant Officer Kenneth D Welch USA Petty Officer First Class Michael R Wagner USN Captain William E Nordeen USN Judith I Goldenberg Staff Sergeant Kenneth R Hobson II USA Master Sergeant William W Bultemeier USA Ret Shelley A Marshall Karl W Teepe Patricia E Mickley Robert J Hymel Rosa M Chapa Sandra N Foster Charles E Sabin Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives The history of the Defense Intelligence Agency is one that has not been fully told Scholarly monographs journalistic publications and first-person reminiscences on intelligence history have tended to focus on either the Central Intelligence Agency the National Security Agency or the Service intelligence branches As a result Intelligence Community IC personnel even those in DIA itself may only have some knowledge of the Agency’s history and its contributions—good and bad—over the last fifty years Outside the IC in academia and in the general public knowledge of DIA is only basic at best and the Agency’s story has remained incomplete in popular and scholarly literature There are many consequences of this In the first place lack of a rigorous historical analysis hinders the Agency’s ability to learn from the successes and failures of its past The failure to soberly reflect on the Agency’s history means that important lessons may go unexamined and unlearned If an organization is to improve its current practice it is incumbent upon that organization to pay heed to the importance of its past experiences Second without a better grasp of DIA’s history the Intelligence Community is left with an incomplete understanding of itself DIA played a significant role in U S intelligence during the last five decades but because of the substantial dearth of knowledge about the Agency that role has been either minimized or ignored inside and outside of the IC Intelligence scholars have tended to avoid discussions of the Agency’s place This absence of scholarship on DIA’s history opens the field to writers who comprise what historian Christopher Andrew has called the “airport bookstall” school authors for whom a good spy story is more important than historical accuracy As a result the Intelligence Community is left with a skewed understanding of its past and of the historical role played by one of its most prominent members Finally the absence of an awareness of DIA’s history has also stunted the development of the Agency’s institutional memory and historical culture Other intelligence agencies such as CIA and NSA have rich institutional memories that both inform the organizations’ activities and anchor their sense of “place” in the Intelligence Community Without these an agency’s sense of mission is unable to fully develop and the risk of institutional drift is increased With this knowledge an agency is better able to define itself and its role i Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives is an effort to begin addressing these problems Its goal is to provide an introduction to DIA’s participation in many of the salient military and intelligence issues of the last fifty years It focuses on key internal and external events that helped shape the Agency into what it is today and it explores the lessons for current and future intelligence professionals that are buried within those events While history does not repeat itself it does provide context framework and guideposts In some ways the challenges confronting today’s Intelligence Community personnel are in not dissimilar to those faced by their cohorts from earlier generations While they obviously differ in their specifics the basic questions surrounding such issues as agency organization and management and analytical decision making have not changed Management challenges such as definition of missions and roles and analytic pathologies such as groupthink mirror-imaging and status-quo thinking were all problems confronted by analysts in the Cold War and in the 1990s much as they are today in the Global War on Terrorism Examining the ways in which personnel from an earlier period recognized addressed and resolved these sorts of problems or failed at all three can inform and hopefully improve current intelligence practices In the end this monograph series attempts to serve a utilitarian function It is designed to inculcate in DIA and the IC workforce writ large a sense of DIA’s historical role during the last fifty years and to educate current and future analysts about the hard-won lessons learned by those who occupied their seats before them To neglect this story to ignore the lessons of the past is to invite failure ii Introduction The establishment of the Defense Intelligence Agency in 1961 was the result of a confluence of long-term and short-term trends Seen over the long duration the creation of DIA was a part of the extended process of centralization in the Department of Defense that had been taking place since the National Security Act created the department in 1947 It reflected the expanding influence and growing strength of the Secretary of Defense as he attempted over the years to consolidate control over his sprawling domain In the short term the Agency’s establishment was an attempt by John F Kennedy’s reform-minded Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara to refashion military intelligence to better serve the new strategic doctrine of “flexible response” by eliminating Service parochialism in intelligence estimates Years of backbiting and infighting among the Services badly hampered the Secretary of Defense’s ability to make informed decisions about U S force structure and resulted in a wasteful military intelligence establishment that was shot through with duplication and redundancy McNamara set out to change this But hostility to McNamara among military officers was deep and bitter His decrees were met with grudging agreement at best at worst with outright hostility The extent to which he could achieve his purposes for intelligence reform would depend on his subordinates’ willingness to challenge Service prerogatives and forcefully assert the new Agency’s role while taking over administrative control of many of its personnel and resources But the record would be a mixed one and a year after DIA’s founding the Cuban Missile Crisis would serve as a trial by fire revealing the potential and the problems the progress and the difficulties inherent in McNamara’s ambitious intelligence project iii Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives Number Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives Number 1 U S Military Intelligence in the Wake of World War II At the end of 1945 Europe lay in ruins Its colonial empire but for a few scattered outposts was in tatters The Soviet Union despite its military victory was ravaged by its catastrophic war against Nazi Germany In the Far East Japan and huge swaths of China and the Pacific islands were devastated The United States was the only major participant in the war to emerge relatively unscathed and it occupied a position of global power unequalled by any other nation As disagreements between East and West hardened and the Cold War began to take shape in the immediate post-war years American military intelligence capabilities declined At the end of World War II huge portions of the U S military demobilized In August 1945 the United States had more than twelve million troops under arms By mid-June 1947 less than two years later it had fewer than 1 6 million A rapid and poorly planned discharge of more than ten million people resulted in serious quantitative and qualitative shortages Military intelligence felt the pinch acutely Many talented individuals returned to civilian life and some of the most innovative intelligence organizations evaporated because of the lack of personnel As resources vanished the Services also began squabbling over defining their intelligence roles The more scarce those resources became the more sharply quiet differences devolved into outright internecine arguments and military intelligence in the years after World War II became increasingly balkanized 1 This decline in manpower and resources also had serious practical consequences When the Korean War broke out in 1950 the U S Eighth Army sent to defend South Korea had no photointerpreters A single reconnaissance squadron in Japan processed all of the photointerpretation work for both the Army and the Air Force It was not until the middle of 1952 that the theater command had an all-source targeting and damage assessment capability The Navy’s Seventh Fleet stationed in Japan had only one intelligence officer assigned to it in 1950 Fleet commanders had to scramble to assemble a qualified group of intelligence officers to support its operations in the conflict In the general area of human intelligence HUMINT in Europe and the Far East poor tradecraft of amateur spies employed by occupation forces desperate for intelligence on Soviet activities badly compromised many networks Thus military intelligence activities across the tactical operational and strategic levels suffered badly in the decade after World War II 2 Despite serious interservice rivalries and a dearth of resources an effort to establish a more unified authority structure in the military establishment blossomed in the postwar years The intelligence disaster at Pearl Harbor and the success of combined arms campaigns in World War II taught valuable lessons about the importance of unity of effort in the U S military Within the Truman Administration there was broad agreement that military and intelligence reform was necessary but few could agree on what shape that reform should take Moreover influential elements within the Services and some members of Congress opposed any radical solution that merged the military under one command because they feared overcentralization and diminished control of their own branches A period of intense negotiations between Congress the White House and the military departments ensued in the years after the war culminating in the National Security Act of 1947 3 1 Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives Number 1 Defense and Intelligence Reform The National Security Act was at its core an effort to find a new way to conduct a more coordinated military and national security policy while at the same time allowing the Services to retain their traditional independence from each other It created what it called the National Military Establishment NME which was neither a department nor agency but rather a nebulous bureaucratic formulation that created a loose confederation out of the Services Perhaps its most important reform was the creation of the Office of the Secretary of Defense OSD to exercise general control over the now three Army Navy and the new Air Force also established by the Act military branches which were given executive departmental status However it also strengthened the separate prerogatives of the individual Services a step taken to mollify the military and Congressional staffers who argued against centralization The Services retained a significant amount of autonomy and the Secretary of Defense had virtually no statutory authority to compel them to fall into line 4 By placing all of the individual Services at the executive departmental level the National Security Act broadened their responsibilities to meet national level requirements Unfortunately few in the Services could agree on what those requirements were Intelligence estimates were particularly problematic In 1948 a task force under Ferdinand Eberstadt which itself was supervised by a Presidential commission under former President Herbert Hoover noted “disturbing inadequacies” in the interservice estimating process According to Eberstadt the three Services offered consistently different estimates on the same topic “These separate estimates ” his task force report noted “have often been subjective and biased the capabilities of potential enemies have been interpreted as their intentions and a more comprehensive collection system better coordination and more mature experienced evaluation are imperative ” In conflating intentions with capabilities the report complained the Services also tended toward worst-case scenarios These particular themes would plague the estimating process throughout the Cold War 5 The slow process of addressing the flaws in the NME began with the passage of an amendment to the National Security Act in 1949 In short the amendment converted the vague concept of the NME into an executive department that would be known as the Department of Defense DoD and it changed the status of the Services from executive departments to military departments within DoD The amendment more effectively subordinated the Services to the Secretary of Defense and also created the position of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Though the Services still retained a great deal of bureaucratic independence it was an important step toward greater centralization and coordination within the U S military establishment 6 Nevertheless U S military intelligence branches could still operate independently of each other because no mechanism existed that could effectively coordinate their efforts or resolve Service bias 7 All three Services operated their own collection production and distribution mechanisms and as the Eberstadt Report pointed out their intelligence branches tended to look after the interests of their parent Service As a result three competing intelligence 2 Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives Number 1 agendas developed within DoD These manifested themselves first in the infamous “Bomber Gap” controversy in which the Air Force despite Army Navy and CIA protests to the contrary estimated that Soviet medium and heavy bomber production far outstripped U S production the junior Service then successfully lobbied Congress for an expanded U S bomber fleet A similar controversy erupted over Soviet ballistic missiles after the publication of the “Gaither Report” and the successful Sputnik launch in 1957 convinced many people that the Soviets had a substantial development and production lead in intercontinental ballistic missiles ICBMs The Air Force again seized on this to lobby for the expansion of its own ICBM program 8 These problems exposed the wholly uncoordinated state of military intelligence in the Pentagon They gave ammunition to DoD critics who believed that the Secretary of Defense lacked the authority to streamline the Services’ redundant duplicative and often competing work In 1958 Congress passed an amendment to the National Security Act that came to be known as the Reorganization Act The Act and its subsequent McCormack-Curtis Amendment also passed in 1958 gave the Secretary of Defense unprecedented authority to overhaul and streamline DoD generally but the Eisenhower Administration still lacked a blueprint for reform 9 DIA Historical Research Support Branch The Roadmap to DIA Hounded by criticism from some Congressional Democrats including future President John F Kennedy and convinced that the national military intelligence system was indeed failing President Eisenhower appointed a Joint Study Group JSG under the leadership of CIA Inspector General Lyman Kirkpatrick to examine the structure of U S foreign intelligence activities The JSG was made up of representatives from all of the Services the National Security Council NSC the State Department and the President’s Board of Consultants on Foreign Intelligence Activities The results of their work would lay the foundation for the establishment of the Defense Intelligence Agency 10 The JSG Report popularly known as the Kirkpatrick Report was completed on December 15 1960 It focused on the organizational and management aspects of the Intelligence Lyman Kirkpatrick head of the Joint Community The report contained forty-three recommendations Study Group Insofar as military intelligence was concerned the general thrust of the Kirkpatrick Report’s recommendations was the streamlining of intelligence management collection and production The Joint Study Group called for better managerial and budgetary control by the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff JCS as well as a centralization of the intelligence system Kirkpatrick later recalled that “What the Joint Study Group had found in the military intelligence system was a duplicative and cumbersome method for issuing requirements for intelligence collection with the result that each of the three services were often sending out identical requests for information to both their own collectors and to others ”11 3 Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives Number 1 The report’s findings on military intelligence were highly influential The Joint Study Group noted that the Secretary of Defense needed a stronger mechanism to exert control over military intelligence programs and recommended that budgeting matters be more firmly vested in this office It also recommended that more intelligence resources should be placed under the JCS in order to help them strengthen their authority over the Services and improve coordination Therefore while the OSD should according to the report exercise overall authority the JCS was responsible for coordinating the actual work of military intelligence In short on intelligence issues the authority of the Secretary of Defense should run through the JCS 12 Production of National Intelligence Estimates was another major concern in the Kirkpatrick Report In 1958 the National Security Council created the United States Intelligence Board USIB to serve as a governing body concerning all major intelligence matters including the formulation of NIEs Representatives from the State Department CIA FBI Atomic Energy Commission and fully six different elements from the Pentagon including the JCS all three Services the National Security Agency and the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations made up its membership The Kirkpatrick Report argued that there should be only a single Defense estimate presented to the USIB not a possible six Dissenting intelligence opinions should be reconciled before they reached the USIB not during USIB deliberations 13 Almost immediately after Kirkpatrick submitted his group’s report the Joint Chiefs of Staff protested to Secretary of Defense Thomas Gates that they were “gravely concerned” over many of the report’s recommendations Eisenhower however would have none of it In an NSC meeting on January 5 1961 he noted that the confused state of U S military intelligence “made little sense in managerial terms” and lamented that his inability to fix the mess would leave a “legacy of ashes” for the incoming Kennedy administration That same day Eisenhower’s NSC endorsed the Joint Study Group’s findings but the president would be out of office before he could act on the report 14 A New Intelligence Frontier Eisenhower’s place was taken by President John F Kennedy who was inaugurated on January 20 1961 The youngest man elected President in U S history Kennedy rode a reformist wave criticizing what he saw as the gray complacency of the Eisenhower Administration and promising a “New Frontier ” a break with the old ways of doing business He surrounded himself with young and energetic domestic and foreign policy experts “The best and the brightest ” as author David Halberstam would later write and empowered them to reform what he saw as an ossified Washington establishment Kennedy sought out minds he identified with —“quick confident incisive”—and for his Secretary of Defense he chose Robert McNamara who only one month earlier had risen to become President of Ford Motor Company 15 McNamara had overwhelming confidence in himself a penchant for micromanagement and a habit of challenging ingrained military habits all of which often rubbed the Pentagon brass the wrong way Empowered by Kennedy to remake the military bureaucracy he took an extraordinarily active role in reforming the Department of Defense His two primary objectives were to enhance the control that the Office of the Secretary of Defense had over DoD and to 4 Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives Number 1 improve the Department’s efficiency It rankled him that the Services could not come to an agreement on intelligence estimates that would allow him to conduct effective force planning to meet Soviet threats and for him the inefficiency of having three Services perform the same intelligence functions was self-evident Kennedy and McNamara also were harsh critics of the Eisenhower Administration’s reliance on the nuclear doctrine of massive retaliation an all-out nuclear assault in response to any form of Soviet aggression Both favored the emerging strategic concept known as “flexible response ” in which a graduated and varied reaction to different forms of Soviet aggression would be instituted Flexible response was a complex notion requiring dramatic improvements in intelligence analysis and targeting to accommodate the multiple attack options it demanded The Secretary of Defense needed to have clear unambiguous intelligence on Soviet intentions capabilities and targets if he was going to refine U S strategic concepts and make the changes in force structure such a move would necessitate He could not be held hostage by competing intelligence agendas that might paralyze planning 16 To resolve these issues McNamara a champion of rational management structures embraced the recommendations of the Joint Study Group He seized upon the authority conferred to him by the Reorganization Act of 1958 and began a major overhaul of DoD operations generally but the first area for reform under McNamara was intelligence In February McNamara wrote to General Lyman Lemnitzer the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff requesting the JCS to submit a draft concept for an integrated Defense Intelligence Agency a draft DoD directive for its authorization and a time-phased implementation schedule “I cannot emphasize too strongly the priority nature of this project ” he informed Lemnitzer 17 McNamara set precise but fairly broad parameters for the JCS to follow He did not order the Joint Chiefs to make the agency directly responsible to OSD but rather wrote only that “Careful consideration must be given as to where a Defense Intelligence Agency should be located in the Department of Defense ” He also noted that “The basic concept and charter of the Defense Intelligence Agency should be so comprehensive that there is no question as to its full responsibilities authority functions and facilities ” From the standpoint of the Agency’s broad conceptualization McNamara was willing to make room for the Joint Chiefs’ input even if the individual Services might not want DIA at all 18 But the devil was in the details More specific guidelines provided by the Secretary of Defense directly challenged Service prerogatives McNamara ordered that the draft concept include provisions for the “complete integration of all defense intelligence requirements and the assignment of priorities thereto ” and noted that “Present duplication in intelligence collection processing production estimating publication and so forth should be eliminated ” Both reforms would reduce the influence that any one Service branch had in the intelligence process and the Joint Chiefs recognized this immediately Worse from the JCS point of view was McNamara’s stipulation that “military department intelligence functions should be limited to training personnel and support responsibilities” and that intelligence staffing at the Service headquarters should be sharply reduced This meant the wholesale transfer of Service intelligence functions to DIA and a loss of direct control over valuable capabilities 19 5 Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives Number 1 The Joint Chiefs were of course reluctant to put the Services’ valuable intelligence functions under an agency they did not directly control If the agency were to be under the sole authority of the Secretary of Defense they argued its ability to provide military forces with tailored intelligence would be diminished leading to a loss of battlefield effectiveness They contended that the JCS should retain direct operational control of what they called a “Military Intelligence Agency” to ensure its responsiveness to the needs of the military Left unspoken of course was their unhappiness with the fact a new agency would not necessarily strongly represent their individual interests to national authorities In any case to help ensure the Agency’s responsiveness they also wanted to establish a Military Intelligence Board to advise its director and emphasized that in creating the new Agency “It is essential that the entire military intelligence structure to include NSA be embraced in the concept ” In practical terms the new Agency would essentially become a confederation of previously established intelligence and counterintelligence activities under the control of the Joint Chiefs of Staff not the single unitary agency envisioned by McNamara 20 Photo courtesy of the OSD History Staff Months of negotiation between the reticent Joint Chiefs and the Secretary of Defense followed McNamara was represented by his gifted and urbane deputy Roswell Gilpatric another one of Kennedy’s “best and brightest ” Gilpatric was a fierce and brilliant advocate for McNamara He was the driving force behind the sharpening of Kirkpatrick’s proposals as well as in the establishment of the agency itself In July he laid down the fundamental assumption for the new Agency “Mr McNamara and I ” he pointedly wrote to Lemnitzer and the Service Secretaries that month “desire to emphasize our intent that DIA will fully integrate the intelligence resources and functions assigned to its control It is not a confederation ” A DIA would assume direct control over some functions President John F Kennedy Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and would coordinate and supervise the and Assistant Secretary of Defense Roswell Gilpatric With Kennedy’s execution of others that were not transferred backing McNamara and Gilpatric set out to remake the Department to it The primary objectives of the Agency of Defense bureaucracy were “to obtain unity of effort among all components of the Department of Defense in developing military intelligence and a strengthening of the overall capacity of the Department of Defense for the collection production and dissemination of intelligence information Gilpatric also noted that efficient allocation of resources was a lesser priority “but certainly not of lesser importance ”21 6 Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives Number 1 Both sides eventually agreed that the new Defense Intelligence Agency a name selected to reflect the final authority of the Secretary of Defense would report to McNamara through the JCS That is the agency would act under the authority of the Secretary of Defense but the JCS would provide input and guidance and be a co-recipient of DIA intelligence products The National Security Agency would remain where it was Gilpatric accepted the idea of a Military Intelligence Board but only as an interim body to advise the DIA Director as necessary He was careful to stipulate that the Military Intelligence Board would meet only at the discretion of the Director and that it might be phased out once the Agency was fully functional 22 Gilpatric issued the final directive establishing DIA on August 1 1961 to be effective October 1 The directive would function as DIA’s charter for the next five years It established the chain of command from the OSD through the JCS and noted that guidance to the DIA Director would come from both the Secretary of Defense’s office and the Joint Chiefs an organizational arrangement that would put the DIA Director in the precarious position of having to report to two separate institutions that did not always agree At their broadest Agency functions were clear The very first task listed in the August directive was its most important It gave DIA responsibility for developing and producing all of the Department of Defense estimates and for making DoD contributions to National Intelligence Estimates Importantly it also directed DIA to design integrate and validate intelligence requirements and establish a single DoD collection requirements registry Other directives included providing all of DoD’s current intelligence establishing an indications center in the Pentagon and notably serving as the Department of Defense representative to the United States Intelligence Board These functions were all designed with an eye toward improving the Secretary of Defense’s ability to develop budgets and remake forces as he moved strategic doctrine away from massive retaliation and toward flexible response However buried once again in the functions assigned to the Agency was the task of coordinating and planning intelligence activities “to achieve maximum economy and efficiency” in Pentagon intelligence activities The two goals were of a piece The highest priority was given to bringing the estimating and planning process into line but in so doing economization of intelligence practices would follow 23 Through a Minefield Blindfolded To head the Agency McNamara selected Air Force Lieutenant General Joseph Carroll out of a pool of candidates provided by the Joint Chiefs Carroll a tall handsome Chicagoan with piercing blue eyes was born in 1910 to poor and only sporadically employed parents In 1934 after twelve years preparing to join the Catholic priesthood at St Mary’s Mundelein Seminary just outside Chicago Carroll declined ordination and went to work in the stockyards first as a steam fitter’s assistant then as a meat salesman for Swift Meat Company At night he studied law at Loyola University and completed his degree in 1940 The same year he joined the Federal Bureau of Investigation and worked in the Chicago field office In 1942 Carroll’s arrest of the infamous Chicago gangster Roger “The Terrible” Touhy after Touhy’s escape from prison brought him to the attention of J Edgar Hoover who ordered 7 Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives Number 1 the former seminarian and meat salesman to Washington to become the Bureau’s chief of kidnapping and bank robbery investigations DIA Historical Research Support Branch In 1947 Hoover lent Carroll to the newly formed U S Air Force USAF where Carroll set up the Office of Special Investigations responsible for investigative and counterintelligence functions In 1948 Carroll went on active duty with the Air Force at the rank of Brigadier General eventually rising to the post of Deputy Director General for Security which was responsible for formulating security policy for the Air Force In February 1960 Carroll received a promotion to Lieutenant General and became the Inspector General USAF which he would later characterize as “The best job that I ever had throughout my military career ” He remained in that position until August 1961 when McNamara appointed him DIA’s first Director Carroll first came to McNamara’s attention during the course of several leak investigations in the Pentagon The Secretary of Defense was impressed by Carroll’s discretion integrity and success at plugging leaks during his career with the Air Force McNamara knew that the Joint Chiefs insisted that any DIA Director come from the Services but he also needed assurance that anyone who assumed the post could be counted on to balance the conflicting Service requirements without favoring one department over another When the time came to select a DIA Director McNamara made it very clear that he wanted Carroll on the short list 24 When Air Force Lieutenant General Abbot Greenleaf who assisted McNamara with organizational and manpower issues approached Carroll about the possibility of becoming DIA Director Carroll wanted nothing to do with the post He argued that he was a Lieutenant General Joseph Carroll counterintelligence specialist who had virtually no experience in other aspects of foreign intelligence let alone managing an entire agency made up of the often quarrelsome Service elements Thirty-five years later Greenleaf recalled that “I carried that message back to McNamara and he said thank you now get word to the Air Force ” The Secretary of Defense was not about to take no for an answer Carroll was in some ways an inspired choice He was a strong supporter of his Irish Catholic President and a believer in the New Frontier Carroll also had a reputation as an impartial broker someone who did not put the interests of himself or his Service above others and was widely recognized by those who dealt with him as an honest man with great integrity It was a reputation he enjoyed throughout his career According to his son James as a relative outsider to the Air Force the elder Carroll was not imbued with the reflexive loyalty to his Service that many of his colleagues were The national interest was far more important to him Carroll “brought fervor to what he said and an open display of one naked feeling an unrestrained love of his country ” He was as his son later wrote “A fluent patriot a man of power ”25 But McNamara’s selection of Carroll was also problematic While his outsider’s status may have kept him relatively free of Service bias it also set him apart from his fellow officers in the 8 Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives Number 1 Pentagon Carroll had never served a day in uniform until he received his direct commission to Brigadier General The few campaign and award ribbons he wore on his uniform were only the most obvious display of his lack of martial experience compared to other flag officers in the Pentagon some of whom disparaged him as “that cop ”26 Carroll was also a believer in the adage that one catches more flies with honey than vinegar but in some cases a healthy dose of vinegar would be called for and Carroll would fail to supply it His nonconfrontational approach earned him a great deal of personal respect from those who knew him but it also made him unwilling to directly challenge Service personnel who proved intransigent and resisted his efforts to consolidate DIA’s authority once he became Director Years later Carroll himself would openly wonder if he should have challenged the Service chiefs more directly Carroll reluctantly assumed the Directorship on August 12 1961 Gilpatric put him on notice his first day “I am holding you personally responsible ” he wrote to the new Director “for the expeditious establishment of DIA and for the development of all plans necessary to its activation Such plans will be submitted to me for approval through the Joint Chiefs of Staff ”27 Nine days later Gilpatric notified President Kennedy of Carroll’s appointment 28 McNamara and Gilpatric selected the Agency’s senior leadership from three different Services Carroll’s Deputy Director was Army Lieutenant General William “Buffalo Bill” Quinn Quinn was the Army’s choice to head the Agency but McNamara rejected him because he did not know Quinn personally and his Chief of Staff was Navy Rear Admiral Samuel Frankel The three men had the difficult task of organizing a new agency virtually from scratch taking capabilities from Services who were loathe to give them up to an agency the Joint Chiefs gave only lukewarm support Andrew Goodpaster at the time the Special Assistant for Policy to Chairman of the JCS General Maxwell Taylor recalled years later that their task was “Like walking through a minefield blindfolded ”29 By the end of September Carroll and his staff had an Activation Plan in place for the new Agency As DIA absorbed new tasks “the Director DIA will become the principal staff advisor to the Joint Chiefs of Staff for substantive intelligence matters and acting through the Joint Chiefs of Staff the principal staff assistant to the Secretary of Defense for both substantive intelligence and managerial matters within his area of assigned responsibility ” The plan thus formalized the dual-reporting arrangement for DIA’s Director 30 The organizational framework for the Agency was designed to balance competing internal interests that might emerge The Activation Plan provided for a command group a headquarters staff and a group of line elements at the operating level The Agency would be horizontally organized into interdependent functions as a way to avoid vertical “stovepiping” and internal empire building that might allow one Service to dominate particular functions This decision while understandable had its drawbacks that would fundamentally impact DIA’s ability to perform its assigned tasks The horizontal organization stretched the span of control by increasing the number elements reporting directly to Carroll’s staff requiring the Director to make many decisions regarding operations that could be made at lower levels with a different organizational arrangement The interdependent nature of the line elements also necessitated close coordination across multiple offices and tended to tie the speed of responsiveness by DIA to that of its slowest organization This would create major problems in the future 31 9 Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives Number 1 DIRECTOR Lt Gen Carroll USAF SPECIAL ADVISORY GROUP DEPUTY DIRECTOR LTG Quinn USA CHIEF OF STAFF RADM Frankel USN SPECIAL SECURITY OFFICE ASSISTANT CHIEF OF STAFF ADMINISTRATION ASSISTANT CHIEF OF STAFF PLANS POLICY AND PROGRAMS ASSISTANT DIRECTOR FOR PROCESSING PERSONNEL DIVISION PLANS AND POLICY DIVISION PRODUCTION PLANNING GROUP SERVICES DIVISION PROGRAMS DIVISION ESTIMATES OFFICE SECURITY DIVISION TRAINING DIVISION CURRENT INTELLIGENCE AND INDICATIONS CENTER 10 10 Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives Number 1 Defense Intelligence Agency 1962 INSPECTOR GENERAL EXECUTIVE OFFICER SPECIAL ACTIVITIES OFFICE ASSISTANT DIRECTOR FOR ACQUISITION ASSISTANT CHIEF OF STAFF INTELLIGENCE SUPPORT SYSTEMS COMPTROLLER PLANS AND PROGRAMS OFFICE RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT DIVISION MANPOWER AND ORGANIZATION GROUP REQUIREMENTS OFFICE AUTOMATED DATA PROCESSING SYSTEMS DIVISION FINANCIAL SERVICES DIVISION COLLECTION MANAGEMENT OFFICE MANAGEMENT ANALYSIS DIVISION STATISTICAL SERVICES DIVISION 11 Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives Number 1 Service facilities and resources were to be transferred to DIA on a graduated basis in order to preserve the continuity of their operations Once the staffing and physical facilities were settled functions would follow Phasing of this extraordinarily complex process was key The timing depended not only on the character of the function being transferred from the Services to DIA but also on how it could be transferred from each individual organization without degrading performance during the changeover It was obvious to Carroll that there would have to be a considerable spread in the timing of DIA’s takeover of various tasks This also lent itself to abuse at the hands of the Service elements that did not wish to lose certain capabilities to DIA and delayed the handover of assets to the Agency Moreover the Activation Plan underestimated the complexity of the new Agency and its range of missions forcing Carroll’s staff to make even more unplanned claims on Service personnel and facilities and further antagonizing the resistant Service chiefs The need for practical accommodation to these realities meant that over the next several years DIA would develop unevenly and in different ways across its various responsibilities 32 From the perspective of DIA’s two major missions management and analysis the Activation Plan established two key directorates beneath the Command Element that were particularly important One Acquisitions validated all Pentagon intelligence requirements assigned collection priorities and designated resources to be used in collecting intelligence It also maintained an inventory of DoD-wide collection resources assigned collection tasks to intelligence gatherers and evaluated collection efforts Importantly however the establishment of this directorate did not mean the conferral of command authority over collection activities in the field The Agency could furnish guidance and support but could not direct Service-specific activities or those carried by the Unified and Specified Commands 33 The second directorate Processing managed the intelligence production staff as well as the estimating and current intelligence elements of DIA It was made up of three different organizations First a Current Intelligence Indications Center served the JCS the Secretary Defense the Services and the Unified and Specified Commands with current intelligence and spot reports Second an Estimates Office provided all of DoD’s intelligence estimates and made the Pentagon’s contributions to the National Intelligence Estimates Third a Production Center coordinated basic intelligence analysis and integrated the four daily intelligence products published by the various Services into two Two daily DIA intelligence cables to the Unified and Specified commanders replaced the five daily Service cables 34 These functions were to be slowly phased in over the course of the next few years McNamara approved the DIA Activation Plan at the end of September 1961 and on October 1 formally established the Defense Intelligence Agency But Carroll’s problems were just beginning The military Services in particular resisted DIA’s formation “The Services were dragged kicking and screaming into the idea of a centralized intelligence agency of relatively limited scope ” recalled David “Doc” Cook who as part of McNamara’s planning staff played an important role in backing the Agency’s establishment that summer At least initially General Jack Thomas the Air Force Intelligence Center’s chief had a “purely negative” interest in DIA and according to Lieutenant General Lincoln Faurer who would eventually rise to DIA’s Deputy Director for Intelligence and Vice Director for Production 12 Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives Number 1 “There was a great deal of not reluctance but outright fighting against the concept alone of DIA ”35 Carroll had to step very carefully and needed all of his political skills to navigate this minefield An exchange between him and members of the House Armed Services Committee in August 1962 over DIA’s Activation Plan was telling Mr Blandford What you have done is to bring to this organization…your composite view of what you considered to be the best type of an intelligence organization would that be a fair summary General Carroll A very accurate one sir Mr Bates And all the Services agree with this General Carroll Well this is the organizational structure that we devised in DIA and it was encompassed within the Activation Plan we submitted to the Joint Chiefs of Staff and thence to the Secretary of Defense The Services had an opportunity to comment at that time The exchange was more revealing for what Carroll did not say than for what he did 36 His problems were seemingly endless The Services were reluctant to send their most qualified personnel to his agency and they often slow-rolled the transfer of other resources Carroll’s difficulties in achieving agreements with the Services on these transfers led to a series of scheduling delays For example the original Activation Plan projected that basic intelligence analysis and production would be consolidated in the DIA Production Center by July 1962 but arguments over resources and sources of administrative support delayed the approval of the Production Center’s plan until December It was not until 1963 that the new Production Center would become active 37 Within the Pentagon bureaucracy petty obstruction could rear its head anywhere When DIA personnel took over space belonging to the Office of Naval Intelligence ONI and taped new signs to the doors ONI personnel dubbing themselves “Naval Resistance Forces” went through the offices at night and tore down the new signs “Guerilla warfare raged between the two organizations ” recalled one observer “Only sandbags and sniper fire were missing from the action on the Pentagon’s fifth floor ”38 Making matters worse in claiming personnel and resources Carroll ever the conciliator was reluctant to push the Services too hard for fear of a backlash which eventually came anyway when Service representatives complained before Congress that DIA could not and would not fulfill the purpose intended for it In an attempt to discredit the effort to establish the Agency the Services also accused DIA of taking too many resources out of their hands and crippling their intelligence capabilities General George Decker the Army’s Chief of Staff fed Congressional fears of a monolithic military intelligence product when he complained to the House Armed Services Committee that “Our people Army intelligence will have no way of knowing whether DIA’s intelligence product is valid or not because their evaluation capability is being removed ”39 13 Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives Number 1 Congress stoked by these complaints began raising questions about DIA’s consumption of resources and its ability to bring about any efficiencies In February 1962 members of the House Appropriations Committee pushed Carroll to outline the kinds of savings resulting from DIA’s foundation Because of his concerns about diminishing intelligence performance during the transfer period Carroll had been establishing the Agency with deliberate caution and it was still very much in development in early 1962 As a result he could not then highlight any specific improvements By that point the Indications Center was fully functional and DIA had started developing its requirements registry but only five months after the Agency’s establishment it was too early for Carroll to outline savings that had resulted In August 1962 Congress also echoed the Services’ concern that DIA would mute other DoD intelligence opinions 40 Nevertheless over the next several months DIA’s leadership made slow progress toward actually bringing the Agency to its feet On October 1 1961 Carroll’s agency was staffed with approximately twenty-five people most of whom were on loan from the Services On October 16 DIA received authorization for 500 billets By January 1962 710 people 432 military and 278 civilians had been assigned to the Agency Photo courtesy of the CIA History Staff Well into 1962 most of Carroll’s staff’s efforts were dedicated to acquiring office space mostly in the Pentagon but they were laying arrangements for other facilities as well obtaining personnel establishing policies and procedures and developing internal organizations By early 1962 the Estimates Office and Current Intelligence Indications Center were operational The Estimates Division of the former J-2 of the Joint Staff formed the nucleus of the DIA Estimates Office and the Indications Center likewise was created out of the J-2 Current Intelligence Division and the Air Force Warning and Indications Center in the Pentagon 41 Over the spring and summer DIA planners under orders from Gilpatric began laying the groundwork for the consolidation of the Army Strategic Intelligence School and the Naval Intelligence School into the Defense Intelligence School which would be formally established on November 1 That work would be completed by U S Army Colonel Clarence Langford the head of DIA’s Training Division Carroll’s staff also continued its extensive planning for the critical new Production Center that would integrate the analytical work of all three Services but Service resistance would delay the opening of the Production Center until 1963 In any case by the end of 1962 992 military and civilian personnel worked for DIA The USIB meets in January 1963 At left at the head of the table is DCI John McCone At right at the other end of the table is DIA Director Carroll 14 The establishment of DIA’s position within the U S Intelligence Community took time as well but the process was made Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives Number 1 considerably smoother by the active involvement of McNamara and Director of Central Intelligence DCI John McCone McCone himself contrary to his predecessor Allen Dulles supported the establishment of DIA and had a good relationship with Carroll and his staff At nearly the same time that Carroll was setting up DIA McCone was taking on the Services over a proposal by the Joint Study Group to reduce their membership on the USIB which had been set up by President Eisenhower as a forum for all of the intelligence chiefs to provide advice to the DCI McCone wanted membership reduced by five by removing the Services and the National Security Agency McNamara with McCone’s approval proposed that NSA keep its place and that DIA join as the representative of the Secretary of Defense and Joint Chiefs of Staff Because of the glacial pace of DIA’s establishment however the Services retained their full membership until 1964 Even after that they retained the right to send observers and register dissents in the formal National Intelligence Estimates 42 Thus even after a year of work DIA still had a long way to go before it could fully assume the functions envisioned for it by McNamara and Gilpatric But the world waited for no one and in 1962 DIA an agency that was in every way in its infancy was forced to confront a crisis that brought the world to the brink of nuclear war Trial by Fire The Cuban Missile Crisis Cuba had been a festering problem for the Kennedy Administration since the Bay of Pigs fiasco in April 1961 In the months following that debacle the U S began exploring other options designed to isolate and even remove Cuban leader Fidel Castro Operation MONGOOSE established by the president in November 1961 was the most provocative Under the leadership of Brigadier General Edward Lansdale McNamara’s Assistant for Special Operations MONGOOSE encompassed a variety of plans to get rid of Cuba’s nettlesome dictator ranging from fomenting an uprising in Cuba to even entertaining the possibility of assassination In early 1962 DIA with its still-meager resources found itself quietly drawn into Operation MONGOOSE On January 23 1962 Colonel John R Wright DIA’s Chief of the one-person Latin American Division in the Estimates Office received a cryptic call from his boss instructing him to report immediately to Brigadier General William H Craig of the Joint Staff Craig was the Deputy Chief of the Special Activities Division in the J-5 Strategic Plans and Operations of the Joint Staff and the Special Project Officer for Operation MONGOOSE When Wright arrived in Craig’s office he was told that he was chosen to be the DIA representative and Deputy Chief of the Joint Staff’s working group for the operation Wright had not even heard of MONGOOSE previously His job would be to provide from DIA the latest intelligence needed by the working group Only Carroll and Quinn were to know the specifics of his work In February Wright developed a list of twenty Essential Elements of Information EEI needed by the group which he brought to Quinn who told him that “The full facilities of the DIA were at my disposal on this project ” The EEIs went on to form the basis for an Intelligence Community-wide collection effort against Cuba to support Defense’s MONGOOSE requirements beginning in March and April 1962 43 15 Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives Number 1 The timing was propitious That same April Soviet Defense Minister Rodion Malinovsky visited his friend and patron Premier Nikita Khrushchev who was vacationing in his expansive dacha on the Black Sea After briefing Khrushchev on the progress of Soviet ICBM development—the Soviets were still years behind the United States despite its earlier success with Sputnik—Malinovsky gestured out over the water and mentioned to his boss that nuclear-tipped Jupiter missiles placed in Turkey by the United States were just becoming operational For years Khrushchev had railed against what he perceived as the U S flaunting its military and economic superiority and its fostering of a double-standard regarding nuclear deployment The Jupiter missiles were an insult and further strengthened an already substantial strategic advantage over his country Khrushchev wanted to turn the tables “Why not throw a hedgehog at Uncle Sam’s pants ” he is reported to have asked 45 At that point the question was little more than an idle musing but the notion stayed with Khrushchev In May he decided to put the idea of deploying medium range nuclear missiles in Castro’s Cuba before the Soviet Presidium and he received their approval at the end of the month The plan was both bold and dangerous Code-named Operation ANADYR it ultimately called for the secret placement in Cuba of five nuclear missile regiments SS-4 medium range ballistic missiles – MRBMs – and SS-5 intermediate range ballistic missiles – IRBMs complemented with a large combined-arms force that included tactical air assets tanks infantry and surface-to-air missile SAM batteries The Soviets would also send tactical nuclear weapons to Cuba in addition to the strategic nuclear weapons it placed there The force included two cruise missile regiments equipped with nuclear warheads and at least nine Luna surface to surface missiles FROGs – Free Rocket Over Ground – in NATO parlance also with nuclear warheads At no time during the crisis was anyone in the U S aware that tactical nuclear weapons were also on the island alongside the strategic missiles 46 In the U S at the end of July and the beginning of August John Wright began noting an upsurge in Soviet arms arriving at western Cuban ports Of particular interest was the possible SA-2 SAM systems being reported in debriefings of Cuban refugees arriving at the CIA’s Caribbean Admission Center in Opa Locka Florida 47 Wright asked members of DIA’s Special Activities Office which reported directly to Carroll’s staff and helped manage DIA reconnaissance requests to the USIB’s Committee on Overhead Reconnaissance COMOR to have photointerpreters at the new National Photographic Interpretation Center NPIC – photointerpreters here were from CIA DIA and the Services examine these areas after the next U-2 mission On August 17 the Special Activities Office notified Wright that the photography in the areas he requested revealed “long slim objects” and their transport vehicles in convoy formation Wright was convinced that these were SA-2 missiles The next day DIA analysts in the Indications Center reported the presence of electronic countermeasures ECM equipment on the island They could see little role for ECM equipment in Castro’s campaign against “counterrevolutionaries ” and to them it seemed to indicate that the Soviets were installing a complex integrated air defense system on Cuba The question was why 47 Wright’s suspicions about the air defense system were confirmed when a U-2 reconnaissance mission at the end of August captured images of seven separate SA-2 sites on the island 16 Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives Number 1 The presence of the SA-2s led Secretary of State Dean Rusk and National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy both of whom feared that a U-2 might be shot down to pressure the COMOR not to submit requests for overflights of Cuba to national leadership The result in mid-September was the curtailing of U-2 flights over the island and the opening of a major intelligence gap in Cuba The timing could not have been worse Just as the photoreconnaissance opportunities dried up in the middle of the month Soviet ballistic missiles began arriving 48 In lieu of the U-2 photography DIA’s Special Activities Office would later make a request to the COMOR to overfly western Cuba with a Corona satellite but that mission did not return photographs that were clear enough to provide any solid evidence of offensive missiles 49 On September 21 Wright received a report through DIA’s Indications Center from a Cuban refugee who claimed to have seen a convoy of twenty objects measuring between sixty-five and seventy-five feet far too large to be SA-2s 50 When Wright showed the report to analysts in DIA’s Estimates Office SNIE he was unable to convince them anything more than just the defensive SA-2 systems might be in Cuba They agreed with a Special National Intelligence Estimate SNIE published on September 19 arguing that the buildup in Cuba was purely defensive dismissing the notion that the buildup was offensive in nature and thereby cutting off the idea that strategic nuclear weapons were on the island 51 In any case by that point nearly fifteen SA-2 sites and Soviet military camps had been plotted in Cuba In Wright’s view at least three of the SA-2 sites in Piñar del Rio province in western Cuba had no obvious reason for being there When Wright and his assistant recalled a HUMINT report noting the presence of a trapezoidal-shaped restricted area cordoned off by Soviet troops in Piñar del Rio they discovered that it was guarded by the three SA-2 sites “Thus the pattern of the SA-2 sites the reported presence of MRBMs and the large restricted area in Piñar del Rio when put together led to the hypothesis that the Soviets could be setting up strategic missiles in Cuba ” Wright later wrote Their conclusions were deemed plausible enough that he was ordered to brief them to McNamara and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Maxwell Taylor on October 1 52 McNamara was convinced After Wright’s briefing the Secretary of Defense ordered Admiral Robert Dennison Commander-in-Chief of U S Atlantic Command to be prepared to institute a blockade against Cuba The next day McNamara sent a memorandum to the Joint Chiefs outlining several possible scenarios including the Soviets’ placement of offensive missiles in Cuba in which military action would be necessary and ordered them to begin contingency planning These events moved DIA into high gear On October 4 eleven days before the U S discovered the ballistic missiles Carroll set up a special Cuban Situation Room so that the Agency could provide twenty-four-hour coverage and better support JCS contingency planning Wright also returned to DIA’s Special Activities Office with a request that Piñar del Rio be made a priority target for overhead reconnaissance Using this justification DIA’s representatives to the USIB’s COMOR urgently recommended that the San Cristobal area in Piñar del Rio be put at the top of the reconnaissance target list At the same time Carroll pressed McNamara for increased U-2 flights over western Cuba 53 17 Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives Number 1 Gulf of Mexico Key West North Atlantic Ocean BAHAMAS Area of enlargement Gulf of Havana Mexico Key West BAHAMAS CUBA Ciego de Avila Camaguey Holguin Banes Moa Santa Cruz San Diego de los Banos Santa Lucia San Julian Caribbean Sea de Norte Havana Matanzas Mariel Bahia Honda Cayman Islands San Cristobal Los Palacios October 14 1962 Mission Santiago de Cuba JAMAICA U S Naval Base Guantanmo Bay U-2 flight path SA-2 SAM Sites MRBM Sites Camaguey Holguin Ba A week later Carroll notified McNamara and Taylor that DIA analysts using special crate analysis techniques “crateology” had detected the first hard evidence of Il-28 BEAGLE Caribbean Sea bombers in Cuba which Carroll considered offensive weapons At the same time the accumulating evidence forced Rusk and Bundy to relent on their objections to U-2 overflights Santiago de Cuba Strategic Air Command with McNamara’s and Gilpatric’s support wrestled control of U-2 flight path the flights away from CIA and received permission from Kennedy to conduct one “in and SA-2run SAM Sites path was a south to north pass over Piñar del Rio out” reconnaissance The selected through the center of the SA-2 MRBM Sitestriangle and the trapezoidal restricted area noted by Wright on 54 September 21 On October 14 a U-2 piloted by Air Force Major Richard Heyser arrived over Cuba where it JAMAICA photographed an MRBM convoy just before it pulled into a wooded area off a road near San Cristobal almost exactly the location where DIA analysts estimated that any missiles might be located 55 The next morning the photographs from Heyser’s mission arrived at NPIC The photointerpreters there discovered six cylindrical canvas-covered objects and determined that they were likely to be seventy-foot SS-4 MRBMs Colonel David Parker assigned by DIA to serve as NPIC’s Deputy Director immediately called John Hughes Carroll’s Special Assistant and asked him to come to the NPIC building in northwest Washington D C right away Hughes and his assistant John McLaughlin arrived there at 7 00 in the evening where they learned the astounding news 56 18 DIA Historical Research Support Branch Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives Number 1 This photo taken on October 14 revealed the presence of Soviet MRBMs in Cuba The missiles are visible at the bottom-right of the photo Hughes and McLaughlin immediately took the new intelligence to Carroll at his home on Bolling Air Force Base located hard on the Potomac River in Washington D C Carroll instructed both men to inform Roswell Gilpatric right away and called the Deputy Secretary of Defense at home to let them know his aides were on their way over Hughes and McLaughlin got back into Hughes’ beat-up yellow DeSoto and made their third cross-city journey of the evening to brief the Deputy Secretary of Defense at his home near the National Cathedral Gilpatric and Carroll had plans to attend a party at Maxwell Taylor’s home and Taylor would learn the news there from Carroll DCI McCone was on the west coast for his stepson’s funeral and would receive a call from Walter Elder his Executive Assistant that evening McNamara was attending a self-improvement seminar at Robert Kennedy’s estate at Hickory Hill so Gilpatric told Carroll and Hughes to be ready to brief the Secretary of Defense the next morning 57 At 7 30 a m the next day October 16 Carroll and Hughes showed McNamara the photographs of the missiles near San Cristobal The news hit like a thunderclap Gilpatric who arrived in the middle of the briefing recalled that McNamara “had that sort of taut look that 19 Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives Number 1 I came to recognize when something came upon him that he just felt he couldn’t you know handle didn’t have any immediate solution for ”58 The Secretary of Defense ordered Carroll to develop as much intelligence as he could using all the means at his disposal and Carroll immediately set to work Samuel Frankel Carroll’s Chief of Staff recalled—with only some hyperbole—that Carroll required that every agency including that portion of CIA that dealt with photography overflights be immediately responsive to his requirements Flights were laid on Navy ships were moved about for intelligence collection purposes special courier flights were established and the photographs processed and analyzed with such speed that I don’t think there was any photograph which was more than twelve hours late – within twelve hours after the picture was taken the information was available 59 Every morning for the rest of the crisis Hughes would arrive at NPIC to review the intelligence findings from the night before and he and Carroll would brief McNamara Taylor and the rest of the Joint Chiefs on the latest information DIA personnel in the Pentagon fed target intelligence developed by the reconnaissance photos to the military commanders ordered to plan for an invasion of Cuba and they published intelligence updates on the situation in Cuba and Soviet force preparedness worldwide for the Unified and Specified Commands 60 On October 16 President Kennedy set up the ExComm the Executive Committee of the National Security Council Its members included Secretary of Defense McNamara Secretary of State Rusk National Security Advisor Bundy Taylor Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul Nitze former Secretary of State Dean Acheson and Attorney General Robert Kennedy among others From the start the President’s advisors were deeply divided between hawks such as Taylor McCone and Nitze who favored swift and strong military reaction and the doves like McNamara Rusk and others who argued for moderation The debate between the two groups colored the ExComm’s deliberations throughout the crisis On the 17th photointerpreters at the NPIC discovered new SS-5 IRBMs at Guanajay just west of Havana These missiles had about the same yield as the SS-4s about 1 megaton but at 2200 miles nearly doubled their range In the next few days they discovered more MRBMs at Sagua la Grande and IRBMs at Remedios both located in north-central Cuba With that news Maxwell Taylor supported by McCone Nitze and the rest of the Joint Chiefs of Staff pushed for full invasion of Cuba Others including McNamara and Rusk supported a proposal by former Ambassador to the Soviet Union Llewellyn Thompson for a blockade backed by the threat of an invasion The president did not initially support this idea but by October 18 had come around to Thompson’s position From the start the Joint Chiefs of Staff believed that the Soviets were establishing a permanent base on Cuba and favored a vigorous military response They informed McNamara of this on the 16th and reiterated their preference for an immediate air assault on all known missile sites combat ships armored formations and potential nuclear warhead storage sites coupled with a complete blockade of Cuba the next day 61 20 Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives Number 1 Gulf of Mexico North Atlantic Ocean Key West San Cristobal MRBM Sites BAHAMAS Guanajay IRBM Sites Sagua La Grande MRBM Sites Remedios IRBM Sites CUBA Caribbean Sea SA-2 SAM Sites MRBM Sites Ground Force Installations IL-28 Airfields IRBM Sites MIG-21 Airfields DIA and the Joint Chiefs saw eye-to-eye on the issue of SovietJAMAICA basing in Cuba In a memorandum circulated on October 20 the Agency took the position that the magnitude of the combined arms buildup indicated that the Soviets were indeed establishing a “prime strategic base” on the island Their position was bolstered by a Special National Intelligence Estimate stating that “A major Soviet objective in their military buildup in Cuba is to demonstrate that the world balance of forces has shifted so far in their favor that the U S can no longer prevent the advance of Soviet offensive power even into its own hemisphere ” The SNIE also appeared to support the hawks on the question of military strikes arguing that since the Soviets had no formal treaty with Castro’s regime they would not risk a war with the U S over Cuba It acknowledged that the U S S R may strike the U S elsewhere to offset any potential losses there if the Americans attacked but that “the Soviet leaders would not deliberately initiate general war or take military measures which in their calculation would run the gravest risks of general war ” In short the Intelligence Community calculated that a military assault on Cuba would of course lead to local hostilities with Soviet forces but was not likely to lead to a global war 62 That same day however the ExComm voted in favor of a blockade and held direct military action in abeyance McNamara split with the JCS and fully backed a blockade The Secretary of Defense who had been a consistent advocate of forbearance voted for the blockade not 21 Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives Number 1 on the basis of intelligence produced by his new DIA which had not challenged the SNIE’s conclusions Rather after spending hours “wargaming” various scenarios with Gilpatric McNamara came away convinced that a military assault would lead to war There is no evidence that any reporting from DIA changed McNamara’s assumptions about the potential Soviet reaction at any point in the crisis 63 At 7 00 p m that Monday the 22nd in a televised address Kennedy announced the presence of nuclear-capable ballistic missiles in Cuba and that he was ordering a “quarantine” to arrest Soviet action The president was nevertheless keeping the military options open With Kennedy’s and McNamara’s approval and target intelligence from DIA the Joint Chiefs were polishing invasion plans if the quarantine did not work Military planners expected casualties in the area of 18 000-19 000 in ten days of combat Those casualties would probably have been worse than projected because of the failure to identify the tactical nuclear weapons brought to Cuba by the Soviets Moreover U S intelligence was not aware of an additional 20 000 Soviet combat troops on the island This key tactical intelligence only became apparent thirty years after the crisis 64 DIA Historical Research Support Branch Following Kennedy’s announcement of the quarantine Moscow announced that it was placing its military forces on a war footing This turned out to be little more than Khrushchev’s typical bluster Shortly after the Soviet announcement DIA analysts monitoring Soviet forces worldwide confirmed that Soviet and Eastern Bloc troops were on alert but not preparing for war 65 Low-level reconnaissance missions like this one over San Cristobal provided excellent intelligence on the readiness of the Soviet missile forces but increased the risk of escalation Nevertheless Kennedy’s public announcement set off a flurry of activity in Cuba Soviet troops and technicians rushed to unpack and assemble the Il-28 bombers and complete operational preparations for the missiles John Hughes reported to the Joint Chiefs that two of the six MRBM sites were operational with another two undergoing a crash setup and expected to be operational within days The two remaining launchers the Agency surmised would be operational within a week On October 23 lowlevel reconnaissance missions validated by DIA and conducted by the Air Force and Navy began rocketing over the Soviet positions with no warning jangling Soviet nerves and putting their troops on a hair trigger increasing the fear of war The flights provided extremely helpful intelligence but fed the fear on Cuba that the U S intended to invade 66 On the evening of October 23 NSA reported that Soviet ships appeared to be turning around The Navy thinking the course change was a ruse was skeptical but by October 25 agreed that the ships suspected of carrying missile parts were returning to the Soviet Union That same day 22 Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives Number 1 Kennedy rejected the offer of a summit from Khrushchev and maintained that he would accept nothing less than total capitulation from the Soviets After receiving Kennedy’s response it became clear to Khrushchev that he had underestimated the American President 67 DIA Historical Research Support Branch The quarantine appeared to be having the desired results Its operation however demonstrated the limits of DIA’s ability in 1962 to coordinate and manage intelligence collection activities with the Services and the Unified and Specified Commands The announced effort to board and search Soviet vessels provides a case in point The presence of U S sailors and Marines aboard Soviet military cargo vessels presented an excellent collection opportunity for the Americans Nevertheless in an October 26 meeting between DIA officials and representatives The USS Joseph P Kennedy stops and boards the Marucla a of the Service intelligence organizations Lebanese cargo ship under Soviet charter to Cuba Military it became apparent that there were no intelligence failed to capitalize on these opportunities to collect collection plans or collection operations information on the Soviet deployments being levied for the boarding parties According to the Air Force representative present “Operations in connection with quarantine and blockade are conducted in complete absence of intelligence collection operations ” While everyone present agreed that a coordinated intelligence gathering operation should take place “Less clear ” wrote the unnamed USAF officer “is who should take the initiative … Neither DIA nor the Services could dictate to CINCLANT Commander-in-Chief Atlantic Fleet how the collection operation should be conducted …”68 This type of collection operation was tailor-made for DIA It required the rapid coordination and validation of all of the Service intelligence requirements followed by a notice to CINCLANT from DIA that supplied planning and operational guidance for the naval boarding parties No one present at the meeting however would agree that DIA even had the authority to manage such a mission much less task CINCLANT to carry it out Long-standing Service traditions and Carroll’s unwillingness to challenge them also impeded this potentially useful intelligence The DIA Director himself admitted years later that he was unwilling to confront the Navy over issues related to the quarantine “Can you imagine me ” he recalled “an Air Force officer approving the Navy’s plan for a quarantine ” The new Agency was therefore relegated to little more than a bystander in the failed effort to coordinate collection requirements during the Navy’s quarantine operation The momentum it had built up at the beginning of the crisis was waning as war fears grew 69 On October 26 the text of a letter from Khrushchev arrived at the White House In it Khrushchev proposed removing the Soviet missiles from Cuba in exchange for a U S pledge not to invade the island The ExComm was in no mood for a deal however Low-level photography indicated 23 Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives Number 1 that Soviet troops on Cuba were maintaining their accelerated missile site preparations The next day a more confident Khrushchev sent a second letter demanding the withdrawal of the U S Jupiter missiles from Turkey in exchange for removing the missiles from Cuba Almost no one on the ExComm supported Khrushchev’s second proposal Such a deal was political suicide for Kennedy and worse no U S leader could accept a public deal that would undermine the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s confidence in the U S nuclear umbrella 70 The morning of the 27th Hughes informed the Joint Chiefs that five of the six MRBM sites were operational Analysis done by DIA also reiterated the Agency’s position that the Soviets put missiles in Cuba to both improve their nuclear attack capability against the U S and to demonstrate that the U S could not stop a Soviet advance into the western hemisphere This tense situation degenerated further at 10 00 that morning when an SA-2 missile shot down a U-2 piloted by Major Rudolph Anderson who was killed in the attack News of his death reached the White House that night Low-level reconnaissance flights were also receiving flak and small-arms fire Furious both Maxwell Taylor and McNamara argued—to no avail—in favor of air strikes on several different installations in Cuba 71 Just as the crisis began to spin out of control word reached the ExComm on October 28 that Khrushchev agreed to dismantle and remove the missiles from Cuba Prodded by the President Robert Kennedy had negotiated an agreement with Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin in which the U S would pledge not to invade Cuba in exchange for the removal of the Soviet missiles Kennedy and Dobrynin also secretly agreed to “consider” the issue of the Jupiter missiles in Turkey at a later date The secrecy was necessary to avoid the public impression of caving to Soviet blackmail Though the immediate fear of war receded tension over verifying the missiles’ removal remained 72 Because of the brief time lag in processing the raw intelligence collected by the reconnaissance flight DIA’s analysts were initially skeptical of the deal The day after the agreement Hughes reported to the Joint Chiefs that construction at the missile sites appeared to be continuing and that the operational status of the Il-28 bombers had remained the same though Khrushchev’s agreement did not mention the bombers Given this DIA’s analysts also continued to believe that the Soviets were still intent on finding ways to offset the U S strategic advantage They did not believe the agreement was genuine arguing that Khrushchev’s message “Appeared to be an attempt to ward off any contemplated U S action that might destroy the bases ” As late as October 31 Carroll could report to Gilpatric that there was no evidence indicating the dismantling of the missiles sites and that the Soviets may have even begun additional construction on the island Only on November 2 could the Agency confirm that the Soviets were abandoning the sites and bulldozing the construction As a harbinger of things to come however DIA’s analysts also noted that assembly of the Il-28 bombers continued 73 The issue of removing the bombers nearly torpedoed the entire agreement By 1962 the Il-28s were becoming outdated but were still considered a dangerous nuclear-capable offensive threat able to reach American shores from Cuba While DIA tracked the movement of missilerelated equipment on its way back to Cuban ports the Agency also reported that the bombers still remained on Cuban airfields in various states of assembly As diplomatic talks between the two nations proceeded DIA analysts repeatedly noted that the bomber force on Cuba was 24 Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives Number 1 growing as ground crews continued assembling more aircraft The number of fully assembled bombers—seven by November 1—was small but DIA personnel kept close track of them in the event the White House decided that an air strike was necessary 74 Moreover the Soviets dragged their feet removing their ground forces from Cuba On November 9 Carroll presented Taylor with an assessment pointing out that their continued presence “posed a potent source of influence on the internal political scene and that their retention would indicate that Moscow had not fully abandoned the concept of developing Cuba as a potential Soviet strategic base ” A week later the entire USIB concurred with DIA’s assessment 75 In their negotiations with the Soviets the White House chose to focus on the missiles and the bombers instead of the ground forces which posed little immediate danger to the United States After protracted negotiations during which the U S considered a covert sabotage operation against the bombers Khrushchev relented and agreed to remove them With that concession Kennedy agreed to lift the naval quarantine Finished intelligence provided by DIA to the Joint Chiefs confirmed that Soviet technicians began dismantling and crating the bombers by November 27 However as late as February 1963 DIA estimated that 17 000 Soviet troops remained in Cuba 76 DIA’s role in the crisis was not over however even if the prospect of war had passed Persistent rumors about an ongoing Soviet nuclear presence in Cuba continued into 1963 Finally on February 6 McNamara decided to take the classified case public to dispel rumors that the Soviets were still there In a coda to the dramatic events of October he scheduled a nationally televised briefing and ordered DIA’s John Hughes who first informed Carroll of the presence of Soviet missiles and had staked out a reputation as a masterful briefer during the crisis to conduct the briefing Standing in front of a massive projection screen in the State Department and using a makeshift pointer fashioned from two fishing poles to highlight imagery from the crisis the thirty-four-year-old Hughes provided a briefing which thrilled the President and put a stop to all but the most extreme rumor-mongering about Soviet missiles 77 DIA in the Cuban Missile Crisis An Assessment The Cuban Missile Crisis demonstrated in acute detail the potential and the limitations of the Defense Intelligence Agency in its formative years Initially the unified defense intelligence concept seemed to function well DIA analysts made persuasive arguments for levying key reconnaissance missions over Cuba and the Agency’s leadership was able to garner support for these controversial missions that were flown by the Air Force and led to the discovery of the Soviet missiles Carroll’s energetic early efforts were also the impetus behind the tasking and coordination of Air Force and Navy reconnaissance missions During September and October Agency personnel performed brilliantly piecing together bits of information to provide invaluable intelligence that offered fresh convincing analytical insights and influencing key policy and operational decisions DIA’s influence over tactical and operational issues waned however as the prospect of war increased Agency personnel were unable to coordinate or manage Service requirements which led to several lost opportunities In light of the failure 25 Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives Number 1 to discover tactical nuclear weapons on the island this failure is particularly egregious Ship inspections might have revealed the presence of such weapons which would have considerably altered war plans and policy decisions at the national level Aside from the erroneous September SNIE DIA’s strategic intelligence estimation was in retrospect fairly accurate Soviet documentation released in the 1990s indicates that Khrushchev’s gambit was intended to tilt the strategic balance in favor of the Soviet Union The Soviet Premier hated and feared U S nuclear superiority and was intent on ending it by expanding Soviet power into the western hemisphere much as DIA indicated he would Moreover given the scope of the Soviet buildup and the military hardware deployed in Operation ANADYR the Soviets clearly intended to establish a large and permanent military presence on Cuba an assertion made by DIA on October 20 Problematically not one agency in the Intelligence Community had any way of knowing Khrushchev’s intentions with any certainty U S intelligence had no sources in the highest levels of the Kremlin and therefore no way of knowing for sure what was on Khrushchev’s mind during the showdown Despite its accuracy DIA’s estimative analysis was in the end only one educated guess among many 78 Analysts and historians have often depicted the Cuban Missile Crisis as an intelligence triumph for the Central Intelligence Agency While this is true credit should also go to DIA for its early and penetrating intelligence analysis and its steady pressure for increased U-2 flights in the days before the missiles were discovered Overall the Agency also accurately portrayed the strategic dimensions of the crisis throughout October Even so the shortcomings in collection management and evident difficulties associated with intelligence production for combat forces made it clear that agency had serious problems in these key areas of intelligence support For DIA the Cuban Missile Crisis was ultimately a study on both the efficacy of the integrated defense intelligence concept with all its limitations and potential and the choices made by policymakers to either exploit or ignore intelligence produced for them Much of the Congressional resistance to the concept abated after the crisis but the Services continued to resist It would take another two years for the Agency to become fully operational and Service resentment lingered well after that In 1961 the establishment of the Defense Intelligence Agency was supposed to bring about a sea change in how the United States operated its military intelligence establishment Robert McNamara ever the rational manager envisioned an agency that would fully coordinate intelligence collection and analysis resolve analytic bias remove redundancy and report its results directly to him The Agency would serve as his foreign intelligence eyes and ears and with it he would remake U S strategic policy A year later the complexity of the organization and the difficulty of crafting an entirely new agency in the face entrenched bureaucratic resistance had provided a hard dose of reality On one hand Roswell Gilpatric and Joseph Carroll had indeed begun the most sweeping change in the structure of U S military intelligence since 1947 On the other hand the need to keep intelligence functions running during the transition period prolonged DIA’s development and 26 Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives Number 1 offered plenty of opportunities for intransigent military leadership to slow the process The Services fearful of losing personnel resources and influence used the phased development schedule as an excuse to delay prevaricate and attempt to undercut Carroll’s efforts to craft his new agency from their parts The JCS may have agreed in principal but in practice the Services were less than supportive The result was a new Agency beset with missed development deadlines and buffeted by military and Congressional criticism The Cuban Missile Crisis presented the hobbling young Agency with an opportunity to overcome much of this criticism Indeed in the summer and early fall of 1962 astute analysis and assertive management by individual DIA personnel led to important breakthroughs in Cuba and the Agency deserves credit for unmasking one of the most dangerous Soviet military deployments of the entire Cold War On the other hand it was also clear that the Agency still had maturing to do DIA’s inability to collect and validate requirements then task them to the Navy’s quarantine force closed off the potential opportunity to discover the tactical nuclear weapons components shipped by the Soviets and it opened the possibility of a terrible intelligence surprise in the form of the nuclear annihilation of thousands of Americans on the beaches of Cuba had an invasion taken place Some of the blame for this must rest with Joseph Carroll nonconfrontational and honorable to a fault who refused to challenge the Navy’s authority during the quarantine Thus DIA was off to a mixed start In less than a year McNamara Gilpatric and Carroll had planned and instituted a massive sweeping reform of defense intelligence In the face of great resistance a new intelligence agency was being born one that would go on to play a major role in U S national security issues for the next fifty years But it was that self-same resistance combined the occasional self-inflicted wound that delayed the full activation of the Agency and kept those parts of it that had been established from fully realizing their potential For the three men who served as the agency’s midwives only time would tell whether or not DIA would survive its difficult birth 27 Endnotes 1 Steven L Rearden History of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Volume I The Formative Years 1947-1950 Washington D C Historical Office Office of the Secretary of Defense 1984 12 Michael Warner “The Collapse of Intelligence Support for Air Power 1944-1952 ” Studies in Intelligence Vol 49 No 3 2005 42 Herman S Wolk Planning and Organizing the Postwar Air Force 1943-1947 Washington D C Office of Air Force History 1984 117 Walton S Moody Building a Strategic Air Force Washington D C Air Force History and Museums Program 1996 50 2 Warner “The Collapse of Intelligence Support for Air Power ” 44 Wyman H Packard A Century of Naval Intelligence Washington D C Department of the Navy 1996 28-29 On HUMINT failings see for example Goda “Tracking the Red Orchestra” in U S Intelligence and the Nazis Washington D C National Archives Trust Fund Board 2004 293-316 and Michael B Petersen “The Intelligence that Wasn’t CIA name Files the U S Army and Intelligence Gathering in Occupied Japan ” in Researching Japanese War Crimes Introductory Essays Washington D C Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Interagency Working Group 2006 3 Rearden History of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Vol I 17-23 4 Patrick Mescall “The Birth of the Defense Intelligence Agency ” in Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones North American Spies New Revisionist Essays Lawrence KA University of Kansas Press 1991 16 Rearden History of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Vol I 23-27 35-43 The National Security Act also established the National Security Council as a policy coordinating body and provided the legal authority to charter the CIA 5 Quoted in Deane J Allen “Overview of the Origins of DIA ” http dia ic gov homepage aboutdia History shorthistories orgins html accessed 12 December 2007 Eberstadt was a former Vice Chairman of the War Production Board and former Chairman of the Army Munitions Board 6 Rearden History of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Vol I 42-43 7 Allen “Overview of the Origins of DIA ” Deane J Allen “Organizational Relationship of DIA and the JCS J2 ” http www dia ic gov homepage aboutdia History shorthistories relationship html Since 1948 the Joint Chiefs of Staff received intelligence from a Joint Intelligence Group JIG composed of Army Navy and Air Force representatives Size limitations severely restricted the JIG which would eventually become the J-2 of the Joint Staff and forced it to rely almost completely on the Services for support The JIG could not act independently to provide intelligence assessments to the Joint Chiefs or the Secretary of Defense This arrangement meant that neither the Joint Staff nor the Services had a forum to resolve differences of opinion 8 Ronald Cole et al The History of the Unified Command Plan 1946-1999 Washington DC Joint History Office 2003 13 John Prados The Soviet Estimate U S Intelligence Analysis and Soviet Strategic Forces Princeton NJ Princeton University Press 1986 40-44 Raymond L Garthoff “Estimating Soviet Military Intentions and Capabilities ” in Gerald K Haines and Robert E Leggett eds Watching the Bear Essays on CIA’s Analysis of the Soviet Union http www csi cia gov books WatchingtheBear article05 html accessed 10 November 2007 The official title of the Gaither Report was “Deterrence and Survival in the Nuclear Age ” It was published by the Security Resources Panel of President Dwight Eisenhower’s Science Advisory Committee and named for the panel’s chairman Horace Rowan Gaither 29 Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives Number 1 9 Mescall “The Birth of the Defense Intelligence Agency ” 166-167 Cole et al The History of the Unified Command Plan 26 10 Prados The Soviet Estimate 123 Lyman Kirkpatrick The Real CIA New York The MacMillan Company 1968 217 221 11 Michael Warner and J Kenneth McDonald US Intelligence Community Reform Studies Since 1947 Washington D C Center for the Study of Intelligence 2005 17-19 Kirkpatrick The Real CIA 225 12 “The Joint Study Group Report on Foreign Intelligence Activities of the Unites States Government ” 15 December 1960 in Deane J Allen and Brian Shellum eds At the Creation Origination Documents of the Defense Intelligence Agency Washington D C DIA History Office 2002 13-14 13 “The Joint Study Group Report ” Allen and Shellum At the Creation 13 Allen “Overview of the Origins of DIA” Kirkpatrick The Real CIA 226-227 14 Memorandum of Discussion at the 473rd Meeting of the National Security Council 5 January 1961 Memorandum of Discussion with President Eisenhower 5 January 1961 Foreign Relations of the United States 1961-1963 Organization of Foreign Policy Information Policy United Nations Scientific Matters Washington D C GPO 2001 142-143 15 Lawrence Kaplan Ronald Landa and Edward Drea History of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Volume V The McNamara Ascendancy Washington D C Office of the Secretary of Defense 2006 4 16 Watson History of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Volume IV 474-475 Kaplan et al History of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Vol V 296 Mescall “The Birth of the Defense Intelligence Agency ” 178 The classic book on the subject of nuclear strategy is Lawrence Freedman The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy New York St Martin’s Press 1981 17 McNamara to Lemnitzer “Establishment of a Defense Intelligence Agency ” 8 February 1961 in Allen and Shellum eds At the Creation 22-25 18 Ibid 19 Ibid 20 JCS 2031 166 Memorandum by the Director Joint Staff for the Joint Chiefs of Staff on Establishment of a Defense Intelligence Agency 7 April 1961 in Allen and Shellum eds At the Creation 27-33 21 Gilpatric Memorandum “Establishment of Defense Intelligence Agency ” 5 July 1961 in Allen and Shellum eds At the Creation 39-40 22 Ibid 23 Department of Defense Directive 5105 21 1 August 1961 in Allen and Shellum eds At the Creation 43-45 24 Lieutenant General Abbot Greenleaf remarks in conference marking the 35th Anniversary of DIA 18 October 1996 DIA Historical Research Support Branch HRSB 25 James Carroll An American Requiem God My Father and the War that Came Between Us Boston Houghton Mifflin 1996 1 26 Ibid 54 27 Gilpatric to Carroll “Specific Responsibilities of the Director Defense Intelligence Agency ” 12 August 1961 in Allen and Shellum eds At the Creation 59 Andrew Goodpaster Remarks DIA 25th Anniversary Celebration undated HRSB Quinn was a Major General before coming to DIA but George Decker the Army Chief of Staff arranged a promotion for him if he served with the Agency See William W Quinn Buffalo Bill Remembers Truth and Courage Fowlerville MI Wilderness Adventure Books 1991 36 30 Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives Number 1 28 Gilpatric to Kennedy 21 August 1961 in Allen and Shellum eds At the Creation 61 29 Andrew Goodpaster Remarks DIA 25th Anniversary Celebration HRSB 30 Plan for the Activation of the Defense Intelligence Agency in Allen and Shellum eds At the Creation 71-110 Gilpatric Memorandum “Establishment of a Defense Intelligence Agency ” 5 July 1961 in Allen and Shellum eds At the Creation 39 Allen “Military Intelligence Board MIB ” http www dia ic gov homepage aboutdia History shorthistories mib html accessed 15 December 2007 31 “Establishment of the Defense Intelligence Agency ” 1965 HRSB 3 32 Ibid 33 Report of the Special Subcommittee on Defense Agencies Committee on Armed Services House of Representatives 87th Congress 2nd Session 13 August 1962 6603 34 Ibid Carroll testimony Hearings Before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations House of Representatives 87th Congress 2nd Session 1962 Hereafter HAC Hearings 87 2 810 35 Air Force representatives perhaps sensing the futility of obstruction and the advantages to being proactive while other Services dithered eventually became a key source of assistance They played a lead role in establishing DIA’s Current Intelligence and Indications Center and provided the physical space for its new Production Center 36 Carroll to McNamara “Establishment of the Defense Intelligence Agency ” 18 September 1961 in Allen and Shellum eds At the Creation 64 David Cook Remarks Faurer Remarks DIA 25th Anniversary Celebration HRSB Carroll testimony Hearings Before the Special Subcommittee on Defense Agencies Committee on Armed Service House of Representatives 87th Congress 2nd Session 1962 hereafter HASC Hearings 87 2 6770 37 “Establishment of the Defense Intelligence Agency ” 6 38 Author’s notes of discussion with A Denis Clift October 2007 39 Kaplan et al History of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Vol VI 23 Decker testimony HASC Hearings 87 2 6818 Decker’s criticism of DIA may have been disingenuous He himself selected LTG Quinn one of his best and most experienced intelligence officers to head the agency See Quinn Buffalo Bill Remembers 365 40 Elizabeth Jeszenszky “The Defense Intelligence Agency Jointness is Goodness ” American Intelligence Journal Summer 1992 81 Faurer Remarks DIA 25th Anniversary Celebration HRSB 41 Rear Admiral Donald Showers Remarks before the Armed Forces Staff College 21 March 1969 HRSB A former DIA analyst has argued that the practical effect of the new Current Intelligence and Indications Center was that the Air Force had essentially absorbed the Army’s and Navy’s current intelligence functions Army and Navy concerns were subsumed under the Air Force’s which was concerned mostly with strategic issues that is the Soviet nuclear threat See George Allen None So Blind A Personal Account of the Intelligence Failure in Vietnam Chicago Ivan R Dee 2001 130 42 HASC Hearings 87 2 6768 Prados The Soviet Estimate 179 43 John R Wright Diary Entry in John R Wright to Elie Abel 15 November 1966 Elie Abel Oral History Interview with Dennis O’Brien April 19 1970 Appendix John F Kennedy Library Oral History Program hereafter cited as Wright Diary 44 Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali One Hell of a Gamble Krushchev Castro and Kennedy 1958-1964 The Secret History of the Cuban Missile Crisis New York W W Norton 1997 171-172 Raymond Garthoff “The Cuban Missile Crisis An Overview ” in James A Nathan ed The Cuban Missile Crisis Revisited New York St Martin’s Press 1992 41-42 31 Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives Number 1 45 Garthoff “The Cuban Missile Crisis ” 41-43 Fursenko and Naftali One Hell of a Gamble 181-192 Michael Dobbs One Minute to Midnight Kennedy Khrushchev and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War New York Alfred A Knopf 2008 37 The Presidium was the executive committee of the Supreme Soviet which itself was the legislative body of the Soviet Union 46 Wright Diary Memorandum from the Chief of Operations Operation Mongoose Lansdale to the Special Group Augmented 25 July 1962 FRUS 1961-1963 Vol X Cuba Jan 1961-September 1962 Document 360 47 Wright Diary “Timetable of Soviet Military Buildup in Cuba July-October 1962 ” in Mary S McAuliffe ed CIA Documents on the Cuban Missile Crisis 1962 Washington D C Center for the Study of Intelligence 1992 7 Chronology of JCS Decisions concerning the Cuban Crisis 21 December 1962 in National Security Archives Cuban Missile Crisis 1962 microfiche collection Alexandria VA Chadwyck-Healy 1990 1-2 Carroll Testimony House Foreign Affairs Committee 88 1 “Castro-Communist Subversion in the Western Hemisphere ” 173 48 See Max Holland “The ‘Photo Gap’ that Delayed Discovery of Missiles Studies in Intelligence Vol 49 No 1 2005 49 President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board “Chronology of Specific Events Related to the Military Buildup in Cuba ” National Security Archive www gwu edu accessed 15 May 2011 hereafter cited as PFIAB Chronology 50 An article published in 2005 argues that Wright received this information from CIA officers in Task Force W the CIA element supporting Operation MONGOOSE who themselves received it in a coded message from a Cuban observer agent They informed Wright because they wanted him to push a request for a U-2 flight up his chain of command fearing that intelligence developed by CIA would be portrayed as the product of “a politicized overly aggressive or simply unreliable agency ” Wright’s own testimony offered in 1963 but uncited by the author of the article tracks a similar chronology but the 2005 article cites an oral history interview conducted some forty years later to note a different source of the information See Max Holland “The ‘Photo Gap’ that Delayed Discovery of Missiles ” In addition the chronology prepared for the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board notes that “The fact that CIA considered San Cristobal as a suspect MRBM site was not included in any of CIA’s current intelligence publications until after photographic confirmation was obtained in mid-October ” See PFIAB Chronology 38 51 SNIE 85-3-62 “The Military Buildup in Cuba ” 19 September 1962 in McAuliffe CIA Documents 9 52 Wright Diary FRUS 1961-1963 Vol X Cuba Jan 1961-September 1962 1054-1055 The HUMINT report has been declassified and released in McAuliffe ed CIA Documents on the Cuban Missile Crisis 1962 103-104 The briefing Wright delivered to McNamara and Taylor noted three SA-2 sites that he could not connect with any significant military installation but that three and possibly four others were also located in western Cuba See Wright Briefing Box 14 Cuba Cuba Intelligence Maxwell Taylor Papers National Defense University 53 Laurence Chang and Peter Kornbluh eds The Cuban Missile Crisis New York The New Press 1998 citing CINCLANT Historical Account of the Cuban Missile Crisis 29 April 1963 41-42 SAC backed by Carroll lobbied Gilpatric for control of the flights because of the growing military threat in Cuba The Kennedy White House supported the proposal because it was eager to avoid another incident similar to the Francis Gary Powers shootdown in May 1960 Powers was technically an employee of CIA on a covert intelligence gathering mission at the time An Air Force pilot could fly much less incendiary “military reconnaissance” flights JCS Chronology 3-4 54 Dino A Brugioni Eyeball to Eyeball The Inside Story of the Cuban Missile Crisis New York Random House 1990 151 181 55 Rear Admiral Samuel Frankel Oral History Interview National Security Archives Cuban Missile Crisis 1962 Document No 3258 hereafter cited as Frankel OHI JCS Chronology 5 Fursenko and Naftali One Hell of a Gamble 221 56 Brugioni Eyeball to Eyeball 208-209 Hughes and Clift “The San Cristobal Trapezoid ” 154 32 Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives Number 1 57 Brugioni Eyeball to Eyeball 209 Hughes and Clift “The San Cristobal Trapezoid ” 154-155 58 Roswell Gilpatric OHI National Security Archive The Cuban Missile Crisis 1962 Doc No 3253 59 Frankel OHI Hughes and Clift “The San Cristobal Trapezoid ” 155 Brugioni Eyeball to Eyeball 226-228 60 Hughes and Clift “The San Cristobal Trapezoid ” 158 61 Hughes and Clift “The San Cristobal Trapezoid ” 155 Brugioni Eyeball to Eyeball 251-259 Fursenko and Naftali One Hell of a Gamble 230-231 Garthoff “The Cuban Missile Crisis ” 47 62 JCS Chronology 23 SNIE 11-18-62 Soviet Reactions to Certain U S Courses of Action on Cuba in McAuliffe ed CIA Documents on the Cuban Missile Crisis 197-202 63 Fursenko and Naftali One Hell of a Gamble 236 Kaplan et al History of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Vol V 209 Gilpatric OHI 51 64 Kaplan et al History of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Vol V 213 Garthoff “The Cuban Missile Crisis ” 47 65 Adam Yarmolinsky “Department of Defense Operations during the Cuban Missile Crisis ” National Security Archive The Cuban Missile Crisis 1962 Doc No 2925 JCS Chronology 38-39 66 JCS Chronology 37 Fursenko and Naftali One Hell of a Gamble 254-255 67 Brugioni Eyeball to Eyeball 391-392 JCS Chronology 42 44 Fursenko and Naftali One Hell of a Gamble 260 68 Memorandum for the Record “DIA Meeting – Cuba ” National Security Archives Cuban Missile Crisis 1962 Doc No 1632 69 Joseph Carroll Oral History Interview with Deane Allen 13 August 1986 DIA HRSB 70 Fursenko and Naftali One Hell of a Gamble 266 271 Kaplan et al History of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Vol V 213-214 71 JCS Chronology 48 Brugioni Eyeball to Eyeball 462 Fursenko and Naftali One Hell of a Gamble 277-281 72 Kaplan et al History of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Vol V 214 73 JCS Chronology 55 60 64 74 Ibid 68 74 75 Hughes and Clift “The San Cristobal Trapezoid ” 162 JCS Chronology 85 95 106 76 This number is probably too low given the gross underestimation of the troops in Cuba at the peak of the crisis Kaplan et al History of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Vol V 216-217 JCS Chronology 112 Carroll Testimony House Foreign Affairs Committee 88 1 “Castro-Communist Subversion in the Western Hemisphere ” 160 77 Hughes and Clift “The San Cristobal Trapezoid ” 163-164 78 Oleg Penkovsky the West’s best source in the Soviet Union worked for the GRU but was not privy to the political deliberations in the Kremlin 33 About the Author Michael B Petersen is a Historian with the DIA Historical Research Support Branch He previously served on the staff of the National Security Council and with the Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group IWG at the National Archives and Records Administration He holds a Ph D in History from the University of Maryland College Park and is the author of Missiles for the Fatherland Peenemünde National Socialism and the V-2 Missile Cambridge University Press 2009 The DIA Historical Research Support Branch The Defense Intelligence Agency Historical Research Support Branch develops and preserves the institutional memory of DIA conducts historical research and analysis in support of the DIA mission and promotes historical awareness among the DIA workforce TO EXCELLENCE IN DEFENSE OF THE NATION One Mission One Team One Agency PCN 28125