Intelligence in the American Revolutionary War
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.
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."
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.
Following the first Congressional appropriation for the work of the Committee on December 11, 1775, two hundred pounds was forwarded to Lee with the urging that he finds out the "disposition of foreign powers towards us, and the admonition that we need not hint that great circumspection and impenetrable security are necessary."
The required oath read: I do solemnly swear, that I will not directly or indirectly divulge any manner or thing which shall come to my knowledge as (clerk, secretary) of the board of War and Ordnance for the United Colonies.
Congress dismissed Paine, and by public resolution denied having received such aid, resolving that "His Most Christian Majesty, the great and generous ally of the United States, did not preface his alliance with any supplies whatever sent to America."
When Major Benjamin Tallmadge, who directed Townsend's espionage work, insisted that he disengage himself from his cover business to devote more time to intelligence gathering, General Washington overruled him.
In January 1778, Nancy Morgan Hart, who was tall, muscular, and cross-eyed, disguised herself as a "touched" or emotionally disturbed man, and entered Augusta, Georgia, to obtain intelligence on British defenses.
In June 1778, General Washington instructed Henry "Light Horse Harry" Lee to send an agent into the British fort at Stony Point, New York, to gather intelligence on the exact size of the garrison and the progress it was making in building defenses.
While serving in Paris as an agent of the Committee of Secret Correspondence, Silas Deane is known to have used a heat-developing invisible ink—a compound of cobalt chloride, glycerine, and water—for some of his intelligence reports back to America.
Washington instructed his agents in the use of the "sympathetic stain," noting in connection with "Culper Junior" that the ink "will not only render his communications less exposed to detection, but relieve the fears of such persons as may be entrusted in its conveyance."
Washington especially recommended that agents conceal their reports by using the ink in correspondence: "A much better way is to write a letter in the Tory stile with some mixture of family matters and between the lines and on the remaining part of the sheet communicate with the Stain the intended intelligence."
Even though the Patriots took great care to write sensitive messages in invisible ink, or code or cipher, it is estimated that the British intercepted and decrypted over half of America's secret correspondence during the war.
On November 20, 1775, it received some intercepted letters from Cork, Ireland, and appointed a committee made up of John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Johnson, Robert Livingston, Edward Rutledge, James Wilson and George Wythe "to select such parts of them as may be proper to publish."
By early 1776, abuses were noted in the practice, and Congress resolved that only the councils or committees of the safety of each colony, and their designees, could henceforth open the mail or detain any letters from the post.
Perhaps the American Patriots' most advanced application of technology was in David Bushnell's Turtle, a one-man submarine created for affixing watchword-timed explosive charges to the bottoms of enemy ships.
He had army procurement officers make false purchases of large quantities of supplies in places picked to convince the British that a sizable rebel force was massing.
Benjamin Franklin, who joined the committee to implement the operation, arranged for the leaflets to be disguised as tobacco packets to make sure they would fall into the hands of ordinary Hessian soldiers.
Franklin also produced a newspaper report purporting to describe the transmittal of scalps of soldiers, settlers, women, and children to the Royal Governor of Canada by Britain's Indian allies.
An example of George Washington's interest in intelligence analysis and estimates can be found in instructions he wrote to General Putnam in August 1777: "Deserters and people of that class always speak of number.
On another occasion, in thanking James Lovell for a piece of intelligence, Washington wrote: "It is by comparing a variety of information, we are frequently enabled to investigate facts, which were so intricate or hidden, that no single clue could have led to the knowledge of them.
... you might make out a table or something in the way of columns, under which you might range, their magazines of forage, grain and the like, the different corps and regiments, the Works, were thrown up, their connexion, kind and extent, the officers commanding, with the numbers of guns &ca.
On March 30, 1778, Franklin, Lee, and Deane were received at the French Court as representatives of the United States of America, and on July 7 Comte d'Estaing's fleet cast anchor in the Delaware River.
During the summer of 1776 Luis de Unzaga y Amezaga, the governor of New Spain at New Orleans, had privately delivered five tons of gunpowder, out of the King's stores, to Captain George Gibson and Lieutenant Linn of the Virginia Council of Defense.
When Spain formally entered the war on the American side on June 21, 1779, Oliver Pollock—who suffered bankruptcy in funding the purchase of supplies for the cause of independence—rode as aide-de-camp to Galvez in the capture of Baton Rouge, Natchez, Mobile, and Pensacola.
A Dutch free port set in the midst of English, French, Danish and Spanish colonies, St. Eustatia (now Sint Eustatius) became—in the words of a British intelligence document of the period—"the rendezvous of everything and everybody meant to be clandestinely conveyed to America."
[11] On the basis of information received by the Secret Correspondence Committee, on February 15, 1776, the Second Continental Congress, meeting in Philadelphia, authorized a covert action plan to urge the Canadians to become a "sister colony" in the struggle against the British.
Champe, now wearing a British uniform and having obtained freedom of movement in British-occupied New York City, made contact with American agents there and laid plans for Arnold's capture.
A second plan, devised by Thomas Jefferson, called for General John Peter Muhlenberg to send hand-picked soldiers "to seize and bring off this greatest of traitors" at Portsmouth, Virginia.
Aitken produced crudely drawn but accurate plans of the Royal Navy Dockyards in England and proposed to sabotage them by utilizing a unique incendiary device of his own design.
