The Legacy Today - Military Intelligence Corps

"There is nothing more necessary than good intelligence to frustrate a designing enemy, & nothing requires greater pains to obtain."
--George Washington

The Yankee Doodle Spies series serves in part as a tribute to the United States’ first army—the Continental Army—and its initial intelligence agency. In a sense, it also honors today’s Army and contemporary Army intelligence.

Unlike today’s Army, the Continental Army lacked a holistic intelligence structure. Instead, various militia units and Continental forces scattered across the states recruited their own local spy networks and attempted to detect British and Loyalist spy networks with varying degrees of success. In 1775, Congress created a Committee of Secret Correspondence to oversee all intelligence activities – essentially America’s first intelligence entity (I hesitate to say agency). Benjamin Franklin was a member. A year later, Congress established a Committee on Spies. John Adams was a member of that one. Additionally, New York’s “Committee to Detect Conspiracies” oversaw counterespionage operations in and around New York City, famously uncovering a plot to assassinate George Washington. John Jay was the committee’s original Chairman.

                                                                                                                                                                                

John Jay

Regarding military intelligence, Washington directed much of the intelligence activity centered on the main Continental Army. He was both the consumer and the producer of intelligence. His action arm was initially under the direction of Thomas Knowlton and later Benjamin Tallmadge. Both play cameo roles in the Yankee Doodle Spies series. As commander in chief, he personally spent a considerable amount of time fretting over and developing sources of information, including spies, informants, prisoners, intercepted correspondence, and even what we today call “open source.”

Benjamin Tallmadge

But after the war, there was no comprehensive intelligence organization for most of the Army’s history. Instead, the function fluctuated. The Army eventually adopted the modern staff system with intelligence centralized around an appointed G2 and intelligence officers assigned from other Army branches. In wartime, tasks were completed effectively, but intelligence must be involved in both peace and war.

Fortunately, 50 years ago this year, the Army finally resolved the issue by establishing Military Intelligence as a branch, professionalizing its intelligence officer corps for the first time. Twenty-five years ago, the Army took it a step further by forming the Military Intelligence Corps, integrating its enlisted cadre into a professional body to enhance the quality of intelligence provided to the United States Army.

The benefits of creating the MI Branch and Corps were numerous, but foremost among them was a trained and dedicated cadre of men and women advocating for the service branch that George Washington valued so highly.