Pentagon new spy service

Pentagon Creates New Spy Service in Revamp

By ADAM ENTOUS

The U.S. is getting a new spy service.

The Defense Clandestine Service is being created through a Pentagon reorganization, using existing personnel and funds, to increase the Defense Department's role in the collection of sensitive intelligence about threats to the U.S.

Those areas of spycraft have long been associated with the clandestine service at the Central Intelligence Agency. A senior defense official said the work of the new service would complement, rather than compete with, the CIA.

The restructuring is part of a broader shift in emphasis by the military after a decade of expensive, troop-intensive land wars. The Pentagon's existing Defense Intelligence Agency focuses mainly on collecting tactical and operational intelligence used day to day by battlefield troops. The defense official said those areas would remain the agency's focus. But the Pentagon concluded there was "room for improvement" at the DIA in collecting intelligence outside the war zones on a wider range of threats to the nation, from Iran and global terrorism to weapons of mass destruction. A classified 2011 study by the office of the Director of National Intelligence found that the Defense Department needed to broaden intelligence-collection efforts.

Details about the focus, role and size of the new service, launched last week by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, are sketchy. The defense official said it would be composed of several hundred case officers and would be funded within the Pentagon's existing budget. The service will require no new manpower and no new legal authorities.

"This is principally a realignment within the Defense Intelligence Agency," the official said. "This is basically trying to make more effective or efficient what we're already doing."

Relations between the Pentagon and CIA have been rocky at times since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, which saw the creation of an intelligence czar at the Pentagon. Their clandestine activities are more closely aligned today, as evidenced by last year's raid in Pakistan that killed al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.