Threat Reduction Agency Stands Up

 


 By Jim Garamone

 
American Forces Press Service




 DULLES INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, Va. -- Defense Secretary William 

 S. Cohen presided here Oct. 1 over the establishment of the 

 Defense Threat Reduction Agency.

 

 The new agency will affect all service members in its role as 

 DoD's focal point for force protection and counterproliferation 

 programs. It was created by merging three other related DoD 

 agencies.

 

 Two of the merged units -- the Defense Special Weapons Agency 

 and the On-Site Inspection Agency -- were inactivated during the 

 ceremony. The third, the Defense Technology Security 

 Administration, transferred to the agency, as did some related 

 Pentagon offices. The new agency is based in facilities adjacent 

 to the airport.

 

 Cohen called the Defense Threat Reduction Agency the result of a 

 "pivot point" in history. "Fifty years ago, science split the 

 atom and ideology split the world," he said. "The United States 

 answered by unifying the armed forces into the Department of 

 Defense." He said the sum of the parts was greater than each 

 service alone, and that synergy helped the United States win the 

 Cold War.

 

 "Today we are at another pivot point, and we again unify three 

 related agencies to combat a new threat posed by new types of 

 terror," he said. The simple world of East-West confrontation 

 has been replaced, Cohen said, by threats from rogue regimes and 

 fanatical groups capable of buying or developing weapons of mass 

 destruction and willing to use them.

 

 The agency's mission is to combat present threats and prepare 

 for the threats of the future. "By bringing you together we are 

 elevating and enhancing your status," Cohen told the assembly. 

 "You are performing the vital national security mission in our 

 nation."

 

 Agency Director Jay Davis echoed these sentiments. He said the 

 component organizations of the new agency had been doing their 

 jobs successfully. "What we're expecting in the future is the 

 synergy, integration and outreach that was not required of these 

 agencies as individual components," he said.

 

 "The creation of the agency comes at a very significant time for 

 the United States, having very successfully out-fought, out-

 created and out-lasted a focused ideological threat and physical 

 threat in terms of communism," Davis said. "We now have to deal 

 with a much less focused threat."

 

 He said he was impressed by the cooperation and enthusiasm he 

 has found since coming to the area from the Lawrence Livermore 

 Laboratory in California. "This is an immensely difficult job," 

 Davis said. "I think it's one that will take us a decade to do 

 and we're well started on it today."