The DIA and the military services maintain a large number of military attachés and a much smaller network of clandestine case officers to satisfy foreign intelligence requirements. The Defense HUMINT Service became operational October 1, 1995, to consolidate the human intelligence (HUMINT) capabilities of the DIA, Army, Navy, and Air Force.

The proposed section extends to the DIA the language of the CIA Information Act of 1984, which exempted certain files in the CIA's directorate of operations from the Freedom of Information Act on the basis of an extensive public record, multiple hearings, and specificity as to exactly which files would be covered. Unlike the CIA Act, however, there were no public hearings on the proposed DIA exemption, no debate, no testimony, and no public record other than a misleading five-paragraph "background paper" from the DIA. And while the CIA had argued in 1984 that the operational exemption would actually produce a net increase in released material, it is clear that the application of such an exemption to the DIA would drastically reduce the number of documents currently being released.

Released Documents that would be Withheld under the Proposed Legislation

Excerpt of a February 1976 report from the U.S. defense (DATT) and Air Force (AIRA) attachés in Santiago, Chile.

HUMINT Reports on Human Rights Abuses in Chile and Guatemala HUMINT Reports on other Political and Military Issues The State Department's Electronic Reading Room If passed by the full Congress the legislation would effectively shield the activities of foreign death squads, torturers and kidnappers from public scrutiny and would greatly undermine the efforts of official truth commissions  many of which have been aided by the declassification of such records  to clarify responsibility for human rights violations. Below are examples of the kinds of military HUMINT reports that would be exempt from release if the Senate language is included in the final bill. The first eleven documents  released through FOIA and special declassification projects  contain important information on human rights abuses committed by Chilean and Guatemalan security forces. The next set of documents cover a range of political and military matters and are included to illustrate the broad range of topics covered by defense intelligence operational reports. These records are just a small sample of the hundreds of DIA HUMINT reports that the Archive has obtained. There are also many more of these kinds of DIA documents available at the State Department's Electronic Reading Room, including dozens of additional reports about human rights violations in Chile and Guatemala.

HUMINT Reports on Human Rights Abuses in Chile and Guatemala

U.S. Defense Attaché, Santiago, "DINA, Its Operations and Power," February 6, 1974.

The reporting officer ("R.O.") relates a conversation he had with an undisclosed source about a pending legal matter in Chile shortly after the military coup led by Gen. Augusto Pinochet. Referring to a matter unrelated to intelligence, the source tells the officer that it can be accomplished as long as the Chilean National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) approves. The source explains that there are three souces of power in Chile: "Pinochet, God, and DINA."

U.S. Defense Attaché, Santiago, to DIA, "Activity at Suspected Chilean Air Force Interrogation Building," February 2, 1976.

The U.S. Defense and Air Force attachés provide an eyewitness account of the beating of detainees outside a suspected Chilean Air Force interrogation building in Santiago. The officers report that guards "armed with police type billy clubs" repeatedly struck prisoners "most frequently at the rear of knee joints." Another source reports that one of the prisoners, a small boy, was repeatedly struck by the guards, who also banged the head of an elderly man against the wall.

U.S. Defense Attaché, Santiago, to DIA, "Disappearance of Eduardo and Julio Budnick," August 5, 1976.

A source confirms to the U.S. Air Force attaché that two Jewish businessmen, Eduardo and Julio Budnick, have been detained by the Chilean government. "Based on source's position" and on information from a separate source, the reporting officer believes that the Budnicks are being held by Chilean intelligence.

U.S. Navy Defense Attaché, Santiago, "Covert Countersubversive Activities in Chile," November 5, 1977. [Best Copy Available]

The U.S. Defense attaché in Santiago provides information concerning recent covert intelligence operations carried out by Chilean security forces. The operations, the source reports, are intended "to deal with the threat, real or imagined, of extremist subversion." The report details the involvement of Chilean security forces in kidnappings and robberies designed to appear to be the work of leftist subversives, and in bombings directed against safe houses used by the left. A source explains that the military intelligence chiefs had determined that "the best way to deal with the safe house problem was blowing them up, if possible, with the terrorists present."

DIA, "Suspected Presence of Clandestine Cemeteries on a Military Installation," April 11, 1994. [Guatemala]

Sources tell U.S. military intelligence officials that from 1984-86, the army's intelligence directorate (D-2) coordinated the counterinsurgency campaign in southwest Guatemala from the southern airbase at Retalhuleu, using it as both an operations post and an interrogation center. Small buildings that were once used as interrogation cells have since been destroyed, and pits "that were once filled with water and used to hold prisoners" have been filled with concrete. To dispose of the prisoners after interrogation, D-2 personnel would fly them out over the ocean and push them  sometimes still alive  out of the aircraft. "In this way, the D-2 has been able to remove the majority of evidence showing that the prisoners had been tortured and killed." Officers currently stationed at Retalhuleu wishing to grow plots of vegetables have been denied permission to cultivate certain areas "because the locations . . . were burial sites that had been used by the D-2 during the mid-eighties."

DIA, "The Fate of Those Captured," November 3, 1994. [Guatemala]

An informant attests that guerrillas captured by the Guatemalan military must work with military intelligence (D-2) against their former units or face summary execution. Only those with significant "propaganda value" are paraded before the media, while most all others are interrogated extensively, and then either recruited by the D-2 or killed. The source adds that this has been a long-standing practice that has not changed under the army's current leadership.

DIA, "The Rising Impact of the Bamaca Case on the Guatemalan Military Establishment," November 24, 1994. [Guatemala]

A source within the Guatemalan military describes the army's response to increasing U.S. pressure to clarify the fate of captured rebel leader Efraín Bámaca Velásquez  the husband of an American lawyer. The army high command, the source states, has ordered military personnel to destroy any "incriminating evidence . . . which could compromise the security or status of any member of the Guatemalan military." The destruction of documents, holding pens and interrogation facilities has already been accomplished at the Retalhuleu air base, and the army has designed a strategy to block future "United Nations investigating commissions" from entering bases to examine army files. The author of the cable asserts that, "All written records concerning this case and probably a thousand others like it have, by now, been destroyed."

DIA, "Problems with Military History," February 24, 1995. [Guatemala]

The Guatemalan army vice chief of staff has reportedly prevented an army historical commission  charged with writing an official history of the internal conflict  from gaining access to the Guatemalan army archives. In doing so, Pineda has defied orders from his immediate superiors, and is said to be working with officers from the Intelligence Directorate (D-2) "to keep embarrassing' events from reaching public scrutiny." The source is concerned "that some records may disappear' as a result of BG Pineda and friends [sic] efforts."

Memorandum for Director of Operations, US Army Foreign Intelligence Activity, "Operational Summary of Intelligence Information [Excised] RE: Efraín Bamaca, Michael DeVine, and Colonel Julio Alpirez," April 17, 1995. [Guatemala]

An undisclosed source provides information on the involvement of Guatemalan Col. Julio Alpirez in the murders of U.S. citizen Michael DeVine and guerrilla commander Efraín Bámaca Velásquez, the husband of an American lawyer. Bámaca, who was captured by the army in 1989, was placed in a full body cast to prevent escape, and later executed. DeVine, an innkeeper, was picked-up by an army patrol investigating his ties to arms and narcotics trafficking. He "was tortured and murdered" by one of the soldiers who reportedly "wanted to rob him of what he carried."

DIA, "HUMINT to Suffer with Loss of Military Commissioners," July 20, 1995. [Guatemala]

A source tells the reporting officer that a recent decision by the Guatemalan president to disband a nation-wide network of civilian intelligence informants will dramatically weaken the army's HUMINT capability. The military commissioners have historically "formed the backbone of the G-2's HUMINT networks," but have also been involved in activities "which could have been labeled as illegal by current human rights standards," such as "the elimination of individuals viewed to be a threat to the government and the army."

DIA, "Transition of the Military Commissioners," August 29, 1995. [Guatemala]

Although the network of some 35,000 Guatemalan military commissioners is to be formally decommissioned [see previous document], more than 25,000 will be secretly retained as "army collaborators" and "will continue to have an invisible role within the army." This arrangement, according to the source, "allows the army total deniability if and when they are asked if the military commissioners have been totally disbanded."

HUMINT Reports on other Political and Military Issues

Below are examples of defense intelligence operational reports obtained through the Freedom of Information Act on a range of other subjects. Such information, routinely declassified in the past, would also be withheld under the proposed legislation.

DIA, "Various Attitudes on MLA" [Military Coup in Pakistan], Ca. July 1977.

U.S. Defense Attaché, Moscow, "Sov[iet] Communist Party Member's Views on Polish Crisis," October 22, 1980.

U.S. Defense Attaché, Bucharest, "Soviet Estimates on Polish Intervention Forces," November 4, 1980.

U.S. Defense Attaché, Moscow, "Chinese View on Polish Crisis," November 18, 1980.

U.S. Defense Attaché, Bonn, "Weekend of 28-29 March Ominous for Poland," March 27, 1981.

U.S. Defense Attaché, Belgrade, "Yugoslavia/Military Intelligence Chief Comments on Poland and Kosovo," April 7, 1981.

DIA, "Nicaragua: Refugee Exodus," August 22, 1983.

Commander, U.S. Army Operations Group, "Iranian Travel Controls," May 29, 1986.

Commander, U.S. Army Operations Group, "Impact of the Stinger Missile on Soviet and Resistance Tactics in AF [Afghanistan]," Ca. 1987.

DIA, "[Pakistan's] Nuclear Industry," Ca. 1987.

DIA, [Alleged Transfer of Patriot Missile Technology from Israel to China], March 26, 1992.

DIA, "Cuban Facilities Associated with Biotechnology," March 1993.

DIA, "Biological and Chemical Defense [in Cuba]," March 1992.

DIA, "Members of the Cuban Biological Front," March 1992.

Further Information on the Defense HUMINT Service

For more information on the evolution and consolidation of the Defense HUMINT Service see, Richelson, Jeffrey T., "From MONARCH EAGLE to MODERN AGE: The Consolidation of U.S. Defense HUMINT," International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, Vol.10, No.2, pp. 131-164.

Chart: Country and Subjects of Army HUMINT Intelligence Information Reports, FY 1992-93

Sources: Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, Annual Historical Review, 1 October 1991 to 30 September 1992 (Washington, D.C.: ODCSI, 1995), pp. 4-3 and 4-18; Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, Annual Historical Review, 1 October 1992 to 30 September 1993 (Washington, D.C.: ODCSI 1995), pp. 4-32 to 4-43. Table compiled by Jeffrey T. Richelson.

Defense HUMINT Service Organizational Chart

Source: DIA Unclassified release.

Proposed Legislation

S.2549

National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2001

(passed by the Senate July 14, 2000)