Spies, Patriots, and Traitors: American Intelligence in the Revolutionary War

Preface

PREFACE While I was a senior case officer in the Clandestine Service of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), one of my managerial responsibilities during a headquarters assignment was to create a suite of conference rooms for use with foreign intelligence liaison visitors to the headquarters complex . In assessing the requirements for this effort, I learned that many foreign intelligence services, especially those having been in existence for centuries in one form or another, often looked upon the agency as being new to the game. While they recognized our skills in the use of cutting-edge technology and respected our other resources, there seemed to be doubts about our experience level and practical understanding of how intelligence activities were conducted. Having a graduate degree in history, I was aware that as a country, the United States does have more than two hundred years of intelligence experience , including activities during the era of the American Revolution at home and abroad, with successes in all three of the traditional intelligence disciplines: foreign intelligence collection, counterintelligence, and covert action. I decided to name each of the three separate conference rooms after a Revolutionary War figure who had demonstrated success in one of those disciplines. To educate foreign liaison personnel regarding our history in intelligence, I also authored a pamphlet explaining the reasons for the rooms’ names and providing a brief description of each of the three individuals’ intelligence activities. George Washington represented foreign intelligence collection, John Jay represented counterintelligence, and Benjamin Franklin represented covert action. Copies of this pamphlet, The Founding Fathers of American Intelligence, were provided to our foreign liaison visitors, and the positive impression it conveyed caused the agency to make the pamphlet available to the public on its xiv PREFACE website. This was in 1999, and it has remained a popular download publication ever since. Its content, though quite general compared to the information in this book, has also been used as source material by authors and educators. This book expands the objective of that pamphlet to educate the general public on the role intelligence activities played in the American Revolution. Covering the period from 1765 to 1783—from the organization of the Sons of Liberty to the British withdrawal from New York City—it discusses how intelligence techniques, operations, and individuals contributed to the cause of American independence. Much of the book describes intelligence-collection activities against the British by various American agents during the war. Individual chapters describe intelligence efforts in British-occupied Boston, Philadelphia, and New York, and in areas of Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Particular attention is given to the Culper Ring, the best-documented American intelligence network of the war, which operated in and about New York City. However, the book also provides details of George Washington’s background in intelligence, which started prior to the French and Indian War and gave him the mindset and experience to organize and direct intelligence activities while commander of the Continental Army. Also, in an area of the Revolutionary War not well covered previously from the intelligence perspective, Gen. Nathanael Greene’s intelligence activities, especially as commander of the Southern Army, are discussed and analyzed. Counterintelligence operations, both running and detecting enemy spies, are covered in several chapters, including separate ones devoted to in-depth analysis of the tradecraft, or lack thereof, of the two most famous Revolutionary War spies: Nathan Hale and Benedict Arnold. Another chapter deals with John Jay’s efforts, at least for a few months, to develop a responsible counterintelligence program above New York City in the Hudson Valley. American counterintelligence failures are noted, with a chapter on how the British successfully penetrated the inner circles of the American Commission in Paris, the country’s first diplomatic mission abroad. Covert action of all types, including paramilitary, political action, and propaganda , is described as conducted in the American colonies and overseas. In this vein the Sons of Liberty’s activities are reviewed from the perspective of the political-action role the organization played, under the direction of its radical leaders, in moving colonial public opinion from financial independence to political independence from Britain. Various propaganda efforts are highlighted , and paramilitary actions conducted at American direction in Europe xv PREFACE and elsewhere are described, including John Paul Jones’s attack on seaports in England and Scotland. I have also included a chapter on the role that African Americans played in Revolution-era American intelligence...