Word: dias
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...division of the DIA will be given a bland name: the Defense Humint Service (humint is spy jargon for human intelligence -- that is, information collected by agents on the ground). The CIA will oversee the intelligence targets of this new branch of agents. "They'll send a lot of guys out who just look like military men in suits," sniffed one veteran cia officer. Still, the military's spy operations have delivered crucial intelligence to the Pentagon in the past...
After the war ended in 1975, reports kept trickling into the CIA's Bangkok station that Americans had been seen among the prisoners working on Laotian road and irrigation projects. In 1979 a Laotian informant for the DIA named Phimmachack claimed that 18 Americans had been moved to a cave north of Nhommarath. He identified one of them as Lieut. Colonel Paul W. Mercland, but no Mercland was listed as missing. There was, however, a Lieut. Colonel Paul W. Bannon who had been shot down over Laos in 1969. Pentagon intelligence analysts suspected Mercland was a garbled version...
...Pentagon officers who had worked with the Thai unit considered the report an important bit of evidence. DIA documents say the National Security Agency confirmed that a plane had left Attopu on the day reported. Another CIA cable from Bangkok said the agency's source in Vientiane, W/1, had delivered a similar report: "starving" prisoners were being moved out of the province because the Laotians were worried that "foreigners" might detect them...
These reports convinced the DIA's Tuttle, who had served as a naval aviator in Vietnam, that American POWS were still alive in Laos. He was also persuaded ; by a Dec. 30, 1980, satellite photo of the camp that showed a large "52" carved on the ground near the compound's perimeter. He thought it might mean B-52 for a bomber crew. Photo interpreters also pointed to what they believed was a "K," a standard distress signal pilots on the ground used, next to the 52. Other analysts who have seen the photo subsequently argue that...
...January 1981, the Joint Chiefs of Staff told the super-secret Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), which oversees counterterrorist units like the Delta Force, to devise a rescue operation. Tuttle says the DIA built a tabletop-size model of the Laotian camp based on satellite photos and took it to Fort Bragg in North Carolina to help the JSOC with its planning. Members of the Delta Force say the commandos then planned to construct a full-scale mock- up in the Philippines to practice its raid; as cover, it would pretend to be a Hollywood company shooting a commando movie...