40 Years of Nearly Useless Trivia
I will be the first to admit, my interests in this book are not aligned with the intended audience. Despite that fact, I do not see how this book would be of use to anybody not planning on entering a trivia contest about the DIA.
After receiving the book, I immediately turned to the sections on Human Intelligence and National Intelligence Support Teams. I found nothing useful. Instead of information on examples of operations, current structure, or relation to the rest of the armed forces and intelligence community, I found information regarding the budgetary constraints of 1994 that lead to a bureaucratic reshuffle.
In hopes of finding useful information, I proceeded to slog through the text. Scanlon spends far more time detailing the resumes of incoming Directors of the DIA than the agency’s operations. Analysis about the role of the DIA is almost entirely absent. Most What remains consists of the permutations of the line: “Once again, DIA lived up to its motto of “Committed to Excellence in Defense of the Nation.”” Perhaps one benefit of the book is that after suffering through its 300+ large text pages, the reader will be forced into familiarity with the plethora of acronyms surrounding the DIA, much in the same way an prisoner may be forced to become familiar with his cellmate. Also, accidental humor can be found in misplaced phrases or byzantine photos and ideas about technology. Who knew our age was called the “Post-Cold war-techno-info era”?
Considering the entire dearth about information on the DIA, this book does provide at least a better outline than Wikipedia or the agency’s own website. However, any real information about the recent history of the agency remains unreported, a gap we can only hope will be filled by Still Broken, or another book.