Photo By Erin Thompson | Christopher H. Pyle, former U.S. Army Intelligence Command (USAINTC) agent, testifies...... read more read more
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by Erin E. Thompson, USAICoE Staff Historian
DEFENSE INVESTIGATIVE REVIEW COUNCIL CENTRALIZES CI INVESTIGATIONS
On 1 March 1970, the Department of Defense (DoD) established the Defense Investigative Review Council to take a supervisory role over all counterintelligence (CI) activities in the U.S. armed forces. The creation of this council led to the centralization of military background checks and CI investigations under civilian leadership and ultimately to the dissolution of the U.S. Army Intelligence Command (USAINTC).
The need for more oversight of the Army’s CI activities arose during Project SECURITY SHIELD in the mid-1960s. This study found serious problems with the decentralized nature of Army CI activities and led to a complete reorganization of the Army’s CI structure under a new organization—USAINTC—in July 1965. [See "This Week in MI History" #96 1 July 1965] However, domestic intelligence concerns changed the trajectory of USAINTC’s objectives. Low public support for the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement led USAINTC to expand its activities to include investigations into individuals and domestic groups who actively opposed the work of the DoD under a project USAINTC called the Civil Disturbance Collection Plan.
More problems began plaguing USAINTC as the Army’s troop strength was beginning to decline and numerous scandals within the Department of the Army (DA) and DoD placed a spotlight on USAINTC’s activities. These problems were exacerbated by two incidents in the early 1970s. The first was a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) against the DA and USAINTC for illegal surveillance and investigations of U.S. citizens. Meanwhile, former Army intelligence officer Christopher Pyle published an article in January 1970 exposing the Army’s Civil Disturbance Collection Plan. A congressional inquiry was quickly launched to investigate the claims.
In response to public outcry against the Army’s domestic surveillance, on 1 March 1970, supervision for all CI activities in the U.S. armed forces was centralized under a new organization called the Defense Investigative Review Council with Assistant Secretary of Defense Robert F. Froehlke serving as council chairman. The council began reviewing the processes by which the Army performed background investigations. Over the next two years, it determined that a complete reorganization was required for these activities and created the Defense Investigative Service (DIS) to “centralize all service-connected background investigations under a new civilian body.”
The DIS became operational in October 1972 and quickly took over a large portion of USAINTC’s work. Over the next few years, the Army was forced to release 1,400 personnel spaces to the new service, deactivate three separate MI groups, and reduce its field offices from approximately three hundred to just fifty. Although USAINTC remained responsible for maintaining CI records, its criminal investigation records were transferred to a separate U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command. Stripped of most of its duties, USAINTC was dissolved on 30 June 1974. Its three remaining MI groups were reassigned to the Army Imagery Interpretation Center and the Special Research Detachment to the Assistant Chief of Staff, Intelligence (ACSI).
All remaining responsibilities held by USAINTC at the time of its discontinuation were given to the U.S. Army Intelligence Agency (USAINTA), a field operations agency directly subordinated to ACSI. These responsibilities included technical service activities that provided polygraph testing, technical service countermeasures, and computer security assistance; the U.S. Army Counterintelligence Support Activity, which included the Investigative Records Repository and the Personnel Security Group; and the Administrative Survey Detachment. These responsibilities, as well as the entirety of USAINTA, would be absorbed into the U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM) upon its creation in 1977. [See "This Week in MI History" #21 1 January 1977]
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| Date Taken: | 02.23.2024 |
| Date Posted: | 02.23.2024 16:22 |
| Story ID: | 464606 |
| Location: | US |
| Web Views: | 132 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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