NEWS

DIA Receives Eighth Joint Meritorious Unit Award for Exceptional Service

10/13/2011

Coinciding with the agency's 50-year anniversary event Sept. 29 at the Defense Intelligence Analysis Center, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta awarded DIA the Joint Meritorious Unit Award (JMUA) for exceptional achievement from Aug. 1, 2008 to July 31, 2011.

"The extraordinary dedication of agency personnel was directly responsible for the identification, pursuit, and capture or death of key adversaries, as well as the provision of vital information essential to maintaining our national security," according to the secretary's award citation.

Panetta recognized through the award presentation vital support DIA provided military commanders and policymakers at the defense and national levels during a period of profound complexity, risk and operational urgency.

The secretary highlighted DIA's establishment of rapid response elements to address some of the most demanding intelligence issues since the end of the Cold War. He also named the agency's coordination efforts to provide humanitarian and disaster relief, sustained global deployments alongside warfighters and completed organizational transformation initiatives among the contributions that warranted the award.

In the last year alone, DIA stood up elements to manage emerging threats related to North Korean aggression against South Korea, the Arab Spring and the Libya crisis that has consumed North Africa and the Middle East. A DIA team supported humanitarian and disaster relief efforts tied to tsunami after-effects on Japan's Fukushima nuclear power plant.

The agency also led an interagency task force responsible for evaluating the unprecedented disclosure of hundreds of thousands of DoD documents on the WikiLeaks web site.

Beyond meeting the challenges of developing global issues, the defense secretary praised DIA for continuing to transform itself amidst these challenges.

During the award period, the agency aligned DoD's counterintelligence and human intelligence functions with the integration of the former Counterintelligence Field Activity in to a new Defense CI and HUMINT Center. DIA also added 4,000 military and civilian intelligence personnel to its workforce with the transfer of all Combatant Command civilian intelligence personnel.

The JMUA award is DIA's eighth received in a half century of service. DIA's subordinate organizations received another 20 in the same period of time.

Click here to read the full text of the Joint Meritorius Unit Award for Exceptional Service »

DIA is the nation’s premier all-source military intelligence organization.

It provides the nation’s most authoritative assessments of foreign military intentions and capabilities. The agency’s four core competencies -- human intelligence, all-source analysis, counterintelligence and technical intelligence -- enable military operations while also informing policy-makers at the defense and national levels.

DIA’s mission is unique and no other agency matches its military expertise across such a broad range of intelligence disciplines.