Intelligence, especially in our earlier history, was conducted on a fairly informal basis, with only the loosest kind of organization, and there is for the historian as well as the student of intelligence a dearth of coherent official records. Operations were often run out of a general’s hat or a diplomat’s pocket, so to speak. This guaranteed at the time a certain security sometimes lacking in later days when reports are filed in septuplicate or mimeographed and distributed to numerous officials often not directly concerned with the intelligence process. But it makes things rather difficult for the historian. At General Washington’s headquarters Alexander Hamilton was one of the few entrusted with “developing” and reading the messages received in secret inks and codes, and no copies were made. Washington, who keenly appreciated the need for secrecy, kept his operations so secret that we may never have the full history of them.
To be sure, two of his intelligence officers, Boudinot and Tallmadge, later wrote their memoirs, but they were exceedingly discreet. Even forty years after the war was over, when John Jay told James Fenimore Cooper the true story of a Revolutionary spy, which the latter then used in his novel The Spy, Jay refused to divulge the real name of the man. Much of what we know today about intelligence in both the Revolutionary and Civil Wars was only turned up many generations after these wars were over.
Intelligence costs money, and agents have to be paid. Since it is the government’s money which is being disbursed, even the most informal and swashbuckling general will usually put in some kind of chit for expenses incurred in the collection of information. Washington kept scrupulous records of money spent for the purchase of information. He generally advanced the money out of his own personal funds and then included the payment in the bill for all his expenses which he sent the Continental Congress. Since he itemized his expenses, we can see from his financial accountings that he spent around $17,000 on secret intelligence during the years of the Revolutionary War, a lot of money in those days. Walsingham, in England, two hundred years earlier, also kept such records, and it is from them that we have gleaned many of the details about his intelligence activities.
But the official accountings are not the only indicators that the pecuniary side of intelligence contributes to history. A singular attribute of intelligence work under war conditions is the delay between the completion of an agent’s work and his being paid for it. He may be installed behind the enemy lines and may not get home until the war is over. Or the military unit that employed him may have moved hastily from the scene in victory or retreat, leaving him high and dry and without his reward. Thus it may happen that not until years later, and sometimes only when the former agent or his heirs have fallen on hard times, is a claim made against the government to collect payment for past services rendered. Secret intelligence being what it is, there may be no living witnesses and absolutely no record to support the claim. In any case, such instances have often brought to light intelligence operations of some moment in our own history that otherwise might have remained entirely unknown.
In December, 1852, a certain Daniel Bryan went before a justice of the peace in Tioga County, New York, and made a deposition concerning his father, Alexander Bryan, who had died in 1825. Daniel Bryan stated that General Gates in the year 1777, just before the Battle of Saratoga, had told his father that he wished him “to go into Burgoyne’s Army as a spy as he wanted at that critical moment correct information as to the heft of the artillery of the enemy, the strength and number of his artillery and if possible information as to the contemplated movements of the enemy.” Bryan then “went into Burgoyne’s Army where he purchased a piece of cloth for a trowsers when he went stumbling about to find a tailor and thus he soon learned the strength of the artillery and the number of the Army as near as he could estimate the same and notwithstanding that the future movements of the Enemy were kept a secret, he learned that the next day the Enemy intended to take possession of Bemis heights.”
The deposition goes on to tell how Alexander Bryan got away from Burgoyne’s Army and reached the American lines and General Gates in time to deliver his information, with the result that Gates was on Bemis Heights the next morning “ready to receive Burgoyne’s Army.” As we know, the latter was soundly trounced, an action which was followed ten days later by the surrender of Burgoyne at Saratoga. According to the deposition, Bryan was never rewarded. His sick child died during the night he was away and his wife almost died too. Gates had promised to send a physician to Bryan’s family, but he had never got around to it. Seventy-five years later his son put the story on record, for reasons which are still not clear, as there is no record that any claim of recompense was filed.1
1The original of this deposition is in the Walter Pforzheimer Collection on Intelligence Service through whose courtesy the above passages have been cited.
Until accident or further research turns up additional information, we shall not know to what extent Gates’ victorious strategy, which helped greatly to turn the tide of the war and was so instrumental in persuading the French to assist us, was based on the information which Bryan delivered. Sporadic finds of this kind can only make us wonder who all the other unsung heroes may have been who risked their lives to collect information for the American cause.
The one spy hero of the Revolution about whom every American schoolboy does know is, of course, Nathan Hale. Even Hale, however, despite his sacrifice, suffered comparative oblivion for decades after his death and did not become a popular figure in American history until the mid-nineteenth century. In 1799, twenty-two years after his death, an early American historian, Hannah Adams, wrote, “It is scarcely known such a character existed.” In his own time, Hale’s misfortune had quite a special significance for the conduct of Colonial operations. Since Hale had been a volunteer, an amateur, mightily spurred on by patriotism but sadly equipped to carry out the dangerous work of spying, his death and the circumstances of it apparently brought home sharply to General Washington the need for more professional, more carefully prepared intelligence missions. After Hale’s loss, Washington decided to organize a secret intelligence bureau and chose as one of its chiefs Major Benjamin Tallmadge, who had been a classmate and friend of Nathan Hale at Yale and therefore had an additional motive in promoting the success of his new enterprise. His close collaborator was a certain Robert Townsend.
Townsend directed one of the most fruitful and complex espionage chains that existed on the Colonial side during the Revolution. At least we know of no other quite like it. Its target was the New York area, which was, of course, British headquarters. Its complexity lay not so much in its collection effort as in its communications. (I recall that General Donovan always impressed on me the vital significance of communications. It is useless to collect information unless you can quickly and accurately get it to the user.)
Since the British held New York, the Hudson and the harbor area firmly under their control, it was impossible or at least highly risky to slip through their defenses to Washington in Westchester. Information from Townsend’s agents in New York was therefore passed to Washington by a highly roundabout way, which for the times, however, was swift, efficient and secure. It was carried from New York to the North Shore of Long Island, thence across Long Island Sound by boat to the Connecticut shore, where Tallmadge picked it up and relayed it to General Washington.
The best-known spy story of the Revolution other than that of Hale is the story of Major John André and Benedict Arnold. These two gentlemen might never have been discovered, in which case the damage to the patriot cause would have been incalculable, had it not been for Townsend and Tallmadge, who were apparently as sharp in the business of counterintelligence as they were in the collection of military information.
One account claims that during a visit André paid to a British major quartered in Townsend’s house he aroused the suspicions of Townsend’s sister, who overheard his conversation and reported it to her brother. L
ater, when André was caught making his way through the American line on a pass Arnold had issued him, a series of blunders which Tallmadge was powerless to prevent were instrumental in giving Arnold warning that he had been discovered, thus triggering his hasty and successful escape.
A typical “brief” written by Washington himself for Townsend late in 1778 mentioned among other things the following: “. . . mix as much as possible among the officers and refugees, visit the Coffee Houses, and all public places [in New York.]” Washington then went on to enumerate particular targets and the information he wanted about them: “whether any works are thrown up on Harlem River, near Harlem Town, and whether Horn’s Hook is fortified. If so, how many men are kept at each place and what number and what sized Cannon are in those works.”
This is a model for an intelligence brief. It spells out exactly what is wanted and even tells the agent how to go about getting the information.
The actual collection of information against British headquarters in New York and Philadelphia seems to have been carried out by countless private citizens, tradesmen, booksellers, tavernkeepers and the like, who had daily contact with British officers, befriended them, listened to their conversations, masquerading as Tories in order to gain their confidence, The fact that the opposing sides were made up of people who spoke the same language, had the same heritage and differed only in political opinion made spying a different and in a sense a somewhat easier task than it is in conflicts between parties of alien nationality, language and even physical aspect. By the same token, the job of counterespionage is immensely difficult under such circumstances.
One typical unsung patriot of the time was a certain Hercules Mulligan, a New York tailor with a large British clientele. His neighbors thought him a Tory or at least a sympathizer and snubbed him and made life difficult for him. On General Washington’s first morning in New York after the war was over, he stopped off rather conspicuously at Mulligan’s house and, to the enormous surprise of Mulligan’s neighbors, breakfasted with him. After that, the neighbors understood about Mulligan. He had obviously gleaned vital information from his talkative British military customers and managed to pass it on to the General, possibly via Townsend’s network.
Intelligence during the Revolution was by no means limited to military espionage in the Colonies. A fancier game of international political spying was being played for high stakes in diplomatic circles, chiefly in France, where Benjamin Franklin headed an American mission whose purpose was to secure French assistance for the Colonial cause. It was of the utmost importance for the British to learn how Franklin’s negotiations were proceeding and what help the French were offering the Colonies. How many spies surrounded Franklin and how many he himself had in England we shall probably never know. He was a careful man and he was sitting in a foreign country and he himself published little about this period of his life. However, we do know a great deal about one man who apparently succeeded in double-crossing Franklin. Or did he? That is the question.
Dr. Edward Bancroft had been born in the Colonies in Westfield, Massachusetts, but had been educated in England. He was appointed as secretary to the American commission in Paris, wormed his way into Franklin’s confidence and become his “faithful” assistant and protégé for very little pay. He successfully simulated the part of a loyal and devoted American. He was able to manage nicely on his low salary from the Americans because he was being generously subsidized by the British—“£500 down, the same amount as yearly salary and a life pension.” Being privy, or so he thought, to all Franklin’s secret negotiations, he was no doubt a valuable agent to the British.
He passed his messages to the British Embassy in Paris by depositing them in a bottle hidden in the hollow root of a tree in the Tuileries Gardens. They were written in secret inks between the lines of love letters. Whenever he had more information than could be fitted into the bottle, or when he needed new directives from the British, he simply paid a visit to London—with Franklin’s blessing, for he persuaded Franklin that he could pick up valuable information for the Americans in London. The British obligingly supplied him with what we today call “chicken feed,” misleading information prepared for the opponents’ consumption. Bancroft was thus one of the first double agents in our history.
To deflect possible suspicion of their agent, the British once even arrested Bancroft as he was leaving England, an action intended to impress Franklin with his bona fides and with the dangers to which his devotion to the American cause exposed him. Everything depended, of course, on the acting ability of Dr. Bancroft, which was evidently so effective that when Franklin was later presented with evidence of his duplicity he refused to believe it.
Perhaps the wily Franklin really knew of it but did not want to let on that he did. In 1777, Franklin wrote to an American lady living in France, Juliana Ritchie, who had warned him that he was surrounded with spies:
I am much oblig’d to you for your kind Attention to my Welfare in the Information you give me. I have no doubt of its being well founded. But as it is impossible to . . . prevent being watch’d by Spies, when interested People may think proper to place them for that purpose; I have long observ’d one rule which prevents an Inconvenience from such Practices. It is simply this, to be concern’d in no Affairs that I should blush to have made publick; and to do nothing but what Spies may see and welcome. When a Man’s Actions are just and honourable, the more they are known, the more his Reputation is increas’d and establish’d. If I was sure therefore that my Valet de Place was a Spy, as probably he is, I think I should not discharge him for that, if in other Respects I lik’d him.
—B.F.2
2The original of this letter is in the collection of Franklin papers of the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia.
Once when the British lodged an official diplomatic protest with the French regarding the latter’s support of the American cause, they based the protest on a secret report of Bancroft’s, quoting facts and figures he had received from Franklin and even using Bancroft’s wording, a bit of a slip that happens from time to time in the intelligence world. Bancroft was mortally afraid that Franklin might smell a rat and suspect him. He even had the British give him a passport so that he could flee on a moment’s notice if necessary. Franklin did express the opinion on this occasion that “such precise information must have come from a source very near him,” but as far as we know he did nothing else about it.
The British, also, had reason to suspect Bancroft. George III does not seem to have fully trusted him or his reports since he caught him out investing his ill-gotten pounds in securities whose value would be enhanced by an American victory.
Bancroft’s duplicity was not clearly established until 1889, when certain papers in British archives pertaining to the Revolutionary period were made public. Among them, in a letter addressed to Lord Carmarthen, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, and written in 1784, Bancroft set down in summary form his activities as a British agent. It seems the British government had fallen behind in their payments to him and Bancroft was putting in a claim and reminding his employers of his past services. He closed with the words: “I make no Claim beyond the permanent pension of £500 pr an. for which the Faith of Government has often been pledged; and for which I have sacrificed near eight years of my life.”
Franklin’s own agents in London were apparently highly placed. Early in 1778 Franklin knew the contents of a report General Cornwallis submitted in London on the American situation less than a month after Cornwallis had delivered it. The gist of the report was that the conquest of America was impossible. If Franklin’s agents had penetrated the British government at this level, it is possible that they had caught wind of the intelligence Bancroft was feeding the British.
In the Civil War, even more than in the Revolution, the common heritage and language of the two parties to the conflict and the fact that many people geographically lo
cated on one side sympathized with the political aims of the other made the basic task of espionage relatively simple, while making the task of counterespionage all the more difficult. Yet the record seems to show that few highly competent continuous espionage operations, ones that can be compared in significance of achievement and technical excellence with those of the Revolution, existed on either side. No great battles were won or lost or evaded because of superior intelligence. Intelligence operations were limited for the most part to more or less localized and temporary targets. As one writer has put it, “There was probably more espionage in one year in any medieval Italian city than in the four-year War of Secession.”
The reasons for this are numerous. There was no existing intelligence organization on either side at the outbreak of the war nor was there any extensive intelligence experience among our military personnel of that day. Before the Revolution, the Colonial leaders had been conspiring and carrying out a limited secret war against the British for years and by the time of open conflict had a string of active “sources” working for them in England and moreover possessed tested techniques for functioning in secret at home. This was not the case in the North or the South before the Civil War. Washington was an outstandingly gifted intelligence chief. He himself directed the entire intelligence effort of the American forces, even to taking a hand personally in its more important operations. There was no general with a similar gift in the whole galaxy of Federal or Confederate generals. Lastly, the Civil War by its very nature was not a war of surprises and secrets. Large lumbering armies remained encamped in one place for long periods of time, and when they began to move word of their movements spread in advance almost automatically. Washington, with far smaller numbers of men could plant false information as to his strength and could move his troops so quickly that a planned British action wouldn’t find them where they had been the day before, especially when Washington through his networks knew in advance of the British move.
The Craft of Intelligence Page 4