Fourth Estate (Department of Defense)
The Fourth Estate is a jargon term for the portions of the United States Department of Defense that are not the military Services or Intelligence Community agencies including:
Fourth Estate entities are all organizational entities in DoD that are not in the military departments, IC agencies, or combatant commands. These include the
Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Staff, the Office of the Inspector General of DoD, the defense agencies, and DoD field activities.
They are organized under Washington Headquarters Services. Together they consumed 18% of the Department of Defense budget in 2018.Footnotes
