Relatively Unknown U.S. Intelligence Agency with 16,000 Employees

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) is both a combat support agency, under the United States Department of Defense, and an intelligence agency of the United States Intelligence Community, with the primary mission of collecting, analyzing, and distributing geospatial intelligence (GEOINT) in support of national security. NGA was known as the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) until 2003.

NGA headquarters is located at Fort Belvoir in Springfield, Virginia, and operates major facilities in the St. Louis, Missouri area, as well as support and liaison offices worldwide. The NGA campus, at 2.3 million square feet (214,000 m²), is the third-largest government building in the Washington metropolitan area after The Pentagon and the Ronald Reagan Building.

In addition to using GEOINT for U.S. military and intelligence efforts, the NGA provides assistance during natural and man-made disasters, and security planning for major events such as the Olympic Games.

 

NGA Campus East is the headquarters of the agency. The building features trapezoidal windows, color-coded interior sections, and is bisected by an atrium that is large enough to hold the Statue of Liberty.

National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA)

NIMA was established on October 1, 1996, by the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1997.^[18] The creation of NIMA followed more than a year of study, debate, and planning by the defense, intelligence, and policy-making communities (as well as the Congress) and continuing consultations with customer organizations. The creation of NIMA centralized responsibility for imagery and mapping.

NIMA combined the DMA, the Central Imagery Office (CIO), and the Defense Dissemination Program Office (DDPO) in their entirety, and the mission and functions of the NPIC. Also merged into NIMA were the imagery exploitation, dissemination, and processing elements of the Defense Intelligence Agency, National Reconnaissance Office, and the Defense Airborne Reconnaissance Office.

NIMA’s creation was clouded by the natural reluctance of cultures to merge and the fear that their respective missions—mapping in support of defense activities versus intelligence production, principally in support of national policymakers—would be subordinated, each to the other.^[19]

NGA

With the enactment of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2004 on November 24, 2003, NIMA was renamed NGA to better reflect its primary mission in the area of GEOINT. As a part of the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) process, all major Washington, D.C.-area NGA facilities, including those in Bethesda, Maryland; Reston, Virginia; and Washington, D.C., would be consolidated at a new facility at the Fort Belvoir proving grounds. This new facility, called the NGA Campus East houses several thousand people and is situated on the former Engineer Proving Ground site near Fort Belvoir. NGA facilities in St. Louis were not affected by the 2005 BRAC process.

The cost of the new center, as of March 2009, was expected to be $2.4 billion. The center’s campus is approximately 2,400,000 square feet (220,000 m²) and was completed in September 2011.

NGA employs professionals in aeronautical analysis, cartography, geospatial analysis, imagery analysis, marine analysis, the physical sciences, geodesy, computer and telecommunication engineering, and photogrammetry, as well as those in the national security and law enforcement fields.

The NGA is one segment of the vast United States Intelligence Community.

The United States Intelligence Community (IC) is a federation of 16 separate United States government agencies that work separately and together to conduct intelligence activities considered necessary for the conduct of foreign relations and national security of the United States. Member organizations of the IC include intelligence agencies, military intelligence, and civilian intelligence and analysis offices within federal executive departments. The IC is headed by the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), who reports to the President of the United States.

Among their varied responsibilities, the members of the Community collect and produce foreign and domestic intelligence, contribute to military planning, and perform espionage. The IC was established by Executive Order 12333, signed on December 4, 1981, by U.S. President Ronald Reagan.

 

C.I.A. Headquarters

 

Sixteen agencies:

Agency	Parent Agency	Federal Department	Date est.
Twenty-Fifth Air Force	United States Air Force	Defense	1948
Intelligence and Security Command	United States Army	Defense	1977
Central Intelligence Agency	none	Independent agency	1947
Coast Guard Intelligence	United States Coast Guard	Homeland Security	1915
Defense Intelligence Agency	none	Defense	1961
Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence	none	Energy	1977
Office of Intelligence and Analysis	none	Homeland Security	2007
Bureau of Intelligence and Research	none	State	1945
Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence	none	Treasury	2004
Office of National Security Intelligence	Drug Enforcement Administration	Justice	2006
Intelligence Branch	Federal Bureau of Investigation	Justice	2005
Marine Corps Intelligence	United States Marine Corps	Defense	1978
National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency	none	Defense	1996
National Reconnaissance Office	none	Defense	1961
National Security Agency/Central Security Service	none	Defense	1952
Office of Naval Intelligence	United States Navy	Defense	1882

Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) Headquarters

 

National Security Agency (NSA) Headquarters

 

The U.S. intelligence budget (excluding the Military Intelligence Program) in fiscal year 2013 was appropriated as $52.7 billion, and reduced by the amount sequestered to $49.0 billion. In fiscal year 2012 it peaked at $53.9 billion, according to a disclosure required under a recent law implementing recommendations of the 9/11 Commission. The 2012 figure was up from $53.1 billion in 2010, $49.8 billion in 2009, $47.5 billion in 2008, $43.5 billion in 2007, and $40.9 billion in 2006.

Wikipedia

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An enormous amount of resources is provided to U.S. intelligence. These are life-long professionals who have the best interests of the country at heart. The president-elect should maybe listen to what it has to say.

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