The Patriots Memorial honors DIA employees who died in service of the United States. The memorial lies at the center of DIA Headquarters at Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling. It commemorates the profound individual sacrifices made on behalf of the United States by DIA members, and acts as a reminder of the selflessness, dedication and courage required to confront national challenges in the past, present and future. DIA Director Lt. Gen. Leonard Perroots dedicated the memorial on December 14, 1988. In March 2009, the memorial was redesigned and moved to its present location.

The stories behind the names in the memorial are monuments to the bravery of those who serve in harm's way. Maj. Robert Perry was the assistant Army attaché in Amman, Jordan, in 1970. He was killed when fighting broke out between the Jordanian Army and Palestinian refugees who had taken shelter in Amman. After the incident, the United States considered sending troops to Jordan on a contingency operation to quell the violence, but fighting subsided a few days later.

The memory of five civilian women who served in the Defense Attaché Office in Saigon, Vietnam, is also enshrined in the memorial. In April 1975, a U.S. Air Force transport plane carrying 250 Vietnam War orphans crashed outside of Saigon, killing 100 of the children and many others. Among the dead were Celeste Brown, Vivienne Clark, Dorothy Curtiss, Joan Pray and Doris Watkins — who were tasked with caring for the children during the flight.