During the American Revolutionary War, the Continental Army and British Army conducted espionage operations against one another to collect military intelligence to inform military operations. In addition, both sides conducted political action, covert action, counterintelligence, deception, and propaganda operations as part of their overall strategies.
American intelligence was monitored and sanctioned by the Continental Congress to provide military intelligence to the Continental Army to aid them in fighting the British during the American Revolutionary War. Congress created a Secret Committee for domestic intelligence, a Committee of Secret Correspondence for foreign intelligence, and a committee on spies, for tracking spies within the Patriot movement.
British espionage efforts were overseen by the British Army and focused primarily on gathering military intelligence to support military operations.
American organizations involved in espionage
Secret Committee The Second Continental Congress created a Secret Committee on September 18, 1775. The committee was not, however, a true intelligence agency, since the Committee of Secret Correspondence with which it often worked was mainly concerned with obtaining military supplies in secret and distributing them, and selling gunpowder to privateers chartered by the Congress. The committee also took over and administered on a uniform basis the secret contracts for arms and gunpowder previously negotiated by certain members of Congress without the formal sanction of that body. The Committee kept its transactions secret and destroyed many of its records to ensure the confidentiality of its work.
The Secret Committee employed agents overseas, often in cooperation with the Committee of Secret Correspondence. It gathered intelligence about secret Loyalist ammunition stores and arranged to seize them. The committee also sent missions to seize British supplies in the Southern Colonies. It arranged the purchase of military stores through intermediaries to conceal the fact that Congress was the true purchaser. They then used foreign flags to attempt to protect the vessels from the British fleet.
The members of the Continental Congress appointed to the Committee included some of the most influential and responsible members of Congress: Benjamin Franklin, Robert Morris, Robert Livingston, John Dickinson, Thomas Willing, Thomas McKean, John Langdon, and Samuel Ward.
Committee of (Secret) Correspondence
The Second Continental Congress recognized the need for foreign intelligence and foreign alliances and created the Committee of Correspondence (soon renamed the Committee of Secret Correspondence) by a resolution of November 29, 1775. The original Committee members—America's first foreign intelligence agency—were Benjamin Franklin, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Johnson and subsequently included James Lovell, who became the Congress' expert on codes and ciphers and has been called the father of American cryptanalysis.
The committee employed secret agents abroad, conducted covert operations, devised codes and ciphers, funded propaganda activities, authorized the opening of private mail, acquired foreign publications for use in analysis, established a courier system, and developed a maritime capability apart from that of the Continental Navy, and engaged in regular communications with Britons and Scots who sympathized with the American cause. It met secretly in December 1775 with a French intelligence agent who visited Philadelphia undercover as a Flemish merchant.
On April 17, 1777, the Committee of Secret Correspondence renamed the Committee of Foreign Affairs but kept with its intelligence function. Matters of diplomacy were conducted by other committees or by Congress as a whole. On January 10, 1781, the Department of Foreign Affairs—the forerunner of the Department of State—was created and tasked with "obtaining the most extensive and useful information relative to foreign affairs", the head of which was empowered to correspond "with all other persons from whom he may expect to receive useful information."
Committee on Spies On June 5, 1776, the Congress appointed John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Edward Rutledge, James Wilson, and Robert Livingston "to consider what is proper to be done with persons giving intelligence to the enemy or supplying them with provisions." They were charged with revising the Articles of War regarding espionage directed against the American forces. The problem was an urgent one: Benjamin Church, chief physician of the Continental Army, had already been seized and imprisoned as a British agent, but there was no civilian espionage act, and George Washington thought the existing military law did not provide punishment severe enough to afford a deterrent. On November 7, 1775, the death penalty was added for espionage to the Articles of War, but the clause was not applied retroactively, and Church escaped execution. On August 21, 1776, the committee's report was considered by Congress, which enacted the first espionage act. It was resolved further that the act "be printed at the end of the rules and articles of war." On February 27, 1778, the law was broadened to include any "inhabitants of these states" whose intelligence activities aided the enemy in capturing or killing revolutionary forces.
British organizations involved in espionage Compared to American espionage efforts, British efforts were limited during the first four years of the war. General Henry Clinton was nominally in charge of the British Army's espionage efforts, which had minimal impact on British military operations. In May 1779, Clinton appointed his aide-de-camp John André as the head of British espionage operations in North America. André began to develop a more formalized espionage apparatus, including creating a spy network that expanded outside New York City and employed cipher codes to protect communications with spies.
Counterintelligence Probably the first organization under the Articles of Confederation created for counterintelligence purposes was the Committee for Detecting and Defeating Conspiracies, later the commission. It was made up of a series of groups established in New York between June 1776 and January 1778 to collect intelligence, apprehend British spies and couriers, and examine suspected British sympathizers. It was created as a "secret service" which had the power to arrest, convict, to grant bail, parole, or imprison or deport. A company of militia was placed under its command. The Committee heard over 500 cases involving disloyalty and subversion. John Jay has been called the first chief of American counterintelligence because of his role in the committee.
William Duer,Duer is sometimes called "Colonel" Duer but he declined a militia commission, apparently because he feared the British would confiscate property held jointly by him and his brother in Dominica. Jones, Robert Francis. "The King of the Alley": William Duer, Politician, Entrepreneur, and Speculator, 1768-1799. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1992. . p. 11. a New York planter and politician, and Nathaniel Sackett, an agent suggested by Duer to George Washington, were particularly successful in ferreting out British agents, but found their greatest success in the missions of one of the dozen or so agents of their own, Enoch Crosby. Crosby, a veteran of the Continental Army, had been mistaken by a Westchester County Loyalist as being someone who shared his views. He confided to Crosby that a secret enemy military company was being formed and introduced him to the group. Crosby reported the plot to the committee and was taken with the group. He managed to "escape" and, as directed, infiltrated another secret Tory unit. This unit, including Crosby, was also taken and escaped once more. He repeated the operation at least two more times before the loyalists started to get wise to his "escaping" and he retired. Crosby was the model for the central character in James Fenimore Cooper's book The Spy (1821), the first espionage novel written in English.
Another successful American agent was Captain David Gray from the Province of Massachusetts Bay. Posing as a deserter, Gray entered the service of Colonel Beverly Robinson, a Tory intelligence officer, and became Robinson's courier. As a result, the contents of each of Robinson's dispatches were read by the Americans before their delivery. Gray eventually became the courier for Major Oliver DeLancey Jr., the head of the British secret service in New York. For two years, Gray, as DeLancey's courier to Canada, successfully penetrated the principal communications link of the British secret service. Upon completing his assignment, Gray returned to the ranks of the Continental Army, and his name was struck from the deserter list, where it had been placed at the beginning of the operation.
Major Benjamin Tallmadge, a senior intelligence officer under Continental Army commander George Washington, played a key role in the capture of Major John André, who preceded DeLancey as chief of the British secret service in New York. Although he declined to discuss the episode in his memoirs, it is said that one of Tallmadge's agents had reported to him that Major André was in contact with a "John Anderson" who was expecting the surrender of a major installation. Learning that a certain John Anderson had been captured by three Militiamen, Tallmadge hurried to the post where André was being held. John Paulding, Isaac Van Wert, and David Williams had been on sentry trying to catch loyalist "Cow-Boys" that had been preying on people in Westchester County, New York.
André mistakenly assumed that the men were aligned with the British and declared himself to be a British officer. Then, upon realizing the mistake, he tried to use a pass provided by Arnold. They searched André and found papers hidden in his socks. Paulding understood the papers revealed "Anderson" to be a spy and stated that no amount of money would be enough to let André go. As Tallmadge arrived at the post, he found that the acting Post Commander had sent André, under guard, back to General Arnold. After extensive and animated lobbying by Tallmadge, the commander, Jamieson, ordered that "Anderson" be returned for interrogation. "Anderson" admitted to his true identity (that he was André) and was tried, convicted, and executed as a spy. Arnold, learning that André had been taken and that his treachery was no doubt exposed, fled West Point before he could be captured, and joined the British forces.
General Washington demanded effective counterintelligence work from his subordinates. On March 24, 1776, for example, he wrote: "There is one evil I dread, and that is, their spies. I could wish, therefore, the most attentive watch be kept... I wish a dozen or more of honest, sensible, and diligent men, were employed... to question, cross-question, etc., all such persons as are unknown, and cannot give an account of themselves in a straight and satisfactory line... I think it a matter of importance to prevent them from obtaining intelligence of our situation."
Washington occasionally had to deal with rogue intelligence officers in his ranks who used their positions for personal gain or undertook unauthorized or illegal operations that might have compromised parts of his intelligence apparatus. Once Washington discovered that two of his agents who supposedly were collecting intelligence on Long Island were "mere plundering parties." He set up a special team to investigate and arrest the renegade operatives.
Techniques
Foreign intelligence