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News | Oct. 31, 2017

DIA recruits the undead to staff watch centers

By DIA Office of Undead Recruiting

In a move to improve work-life balance and long-term health of its human workforce, DIA is now recruiting vampires, ghosts and other members of the undead realm to man the overnight or “graveyard” shifts of its 24-hour offices and watch centers.

“Members of the undead thrive at night, so this move makes perfect sense,” said DIA’s director of undead recruiting. “These officers ensure DIA is able to fully carry out its mission even in the dead of night and allow their human colleagues to be well rested and avoid some of the health impacts of shift work.”

In addition to filling watch and warning positions, the DIA undead use the quieter night hours to work on additional projects such as software development and partner nation engagement.

“There’s a reason it’s called Stone Ghost,” said Casper F. Ghost, a member of the Mission Services Operation Center at DIA Headquarters who built the Five Eyes network as a way to communicate with his cousin Slimer who works in a similar position at Canadian Forces Intelligence Command. “I originally just wanted a way to chat with friends to help past the long hours, but then figured expanding the system to all FVEY partners was the friendly thing to do.”

DIA’s Pentagon watch leverages the language skills of its undead watch standers to coordinate with partner nations when time differences are inconvenient to living officers. Count Chocula, who is originally from the eastern European region of Transylvania, coordinates intelligence assessments and provides briefings to NATO partners such as Romania, Hungary and Bulgaria.

“It’s a great privilege to be in a position to provide warning to U.S. forces while also assisting our allies in my old country as well,” Chocula said. “And being able to do all this while avoiding the sun is an added bonus.”

The arrival of vampires and walkers to DIA appears to have also coincided with a decrease in the number of rodents sighted in agency facilities.

Undead applicants go through a detailed background investigation and clearance process similar to their human coworkers that takes in to account past employment, education, criminal history and connections to illegal groups, but adjudication time lines can vary greatly.

“Some of our officers have been aliv—I mean undead for several hundred years, which can mean having to go through rather lengthy SF-86 packets,” said a member of DIA’s undead security investigation team. “But every undead officer is as trustworthy and dedicated to the DIA mission as our living workforce.

With shorter days and the holiday season coming up, DIA expects to further increase its undead hiring and human officers are encouraged to embrace their new colleagues and thank them for taking shifts no person wants.

“I’ve had nothing but good experiences working with the undead; zombies have a killer sense of humor,” said a watch officer for the Defense Combating Terrorism Warning and Fusion Center. “They’re just like us—committed to excellence—but also to avoiding daylight.”