A new agency reports for duty with twenty-five people and borrowed desks

For sixteen years after World War II, the Army, Navy, and Air Force each ran their own intelligence shops, often duplicating effort and handing Robert McNamara conflicting estimates. On October 1, 1961, the Defense Intelligence Agency began operations in borrowed office space inside the Pentagon with a staff of about 25, under Air Force Lieutenant General Joseph Carroll. It was the country's first centralized military intelligence organization, reporting to McNamara through the Joint Chiefs of Staff rather than through any single service. The 25-person staff was meant to grow into a single national-level intelligence operation…