Defense Intelligence Agency

The mug says “Defense Intelligence Agency,” and it’s where I started my career. The Agency, that is, not the mug. Starting your career in a mug would be really hard, unless you’re the size of a naked mole rat; but that is a subject for a different day. We called it DIA. 

The DIA is the Agency that, more or less, coordinates the functions of all of the military and military-oriented intelligence activities. They try to herd the cats that are running hither and thither on missions assigned by the Army, Navy, and Air Force; and they also try to coordinate what all of those cats are doing with the CIA, NSA, and various other intelligence agencies (the United States has around a dozen or so). This is obviously something that should be done. It is also obvious that it is essentially impossible. At least, it was impossible back in the pre-9/11 days. 

None of that mattered to me, of course. As the lowest of the low (I entered the Army as a Private First Class), such overarching, strategic thinking wasn’t in my job description. I also wasn’t capable of it. It was a job. It got me a Top Secret security clearance, and some experience doing something. When I got back to Huntsville, that clearance and that experience got me a job that eventually landed me where I am now as a senior engineer. 

I’ve always been as vague as possible when discussing my time in intelligence, and I’m not going to break that tradition here; but I will tell you what my jobs were. I started my career at Fort Hood, Texas, as an Army Signal Intelligence analyst and Russian linguist. In addition to tactical missions, I translated and analyzed information that was intercepted by somebody who had antennas in Berlin. After I returned to Huntsville, I was part of the 20th Special Forces group, and I did whatever they told me to do. They were very excited to have a trained Russian linguist as part of the team, and I was glad to be part of a Special Forces unit. 

An interesting historical point: the general in charge of my Army organization was a guy named Colin Powell. He later made something of a name for himself.