War in the Shadows
Students of insurgencies have long understood the need to
deprive the insurgents of external support. In the course of history, few
insurgencies or rebellions have succeeded without outside help, which could
take the form of moral support, funding, training, weapons, equipment,
supplies, political support, and military forces.
Early on in the insurgency that would explode into rebellion
after Lexington and Concord, the Americans established a means to maintain
dialogue and coordination among the colonies and later states. It soon became
clear America would need to reach across the Atlantic as well. Winning over
Americans were just one piece of the complex struggle now underway. Tapping
support in Britain, building alliances with sympathetic countrymen, would also
be an important component in gaining recognition for the new nation. And the
European powers would also provide a fertile ground for support, if properly
“tilled.”
A Secret Committee
By the time the Second Continental Congress met in
Philadelphia in 1775, this need for international support resulted in the
formation of the Committee of Secret Correspondence via two resolutions of 29
November:
RESOLVED, That a committee...would be appointed for the
sole purpose of corresponding with our friends in Great Britain, and other
parts of the world, and that they lay their correspondence before Congress when
directed.
RESOLVED, That this Congress will make provision to
defray all such expenses as they may arise by carrying on such correspondence,
and for the payment of such agents as the said Committee may send on this
service.
Due to the secret nature of the work involved, the members
soon added the word “Secret” to its name. The committee received considerable
authority from Congress to perform multiple functions: public and secret
diplomacy, intelligence gathering, and public relations/influencing opinion. In
many ways, it operated as a State Department and CIA. It was the Continental
Congress’s eyes and ears in Europe and would soon become its arm in Europe.
First Members
Congress did a good job selecting the initial members of the committee, coming up with such luminaries as Benjamin Franklin, Benjamin
Harrison, Thomas Johnson, John Dickinson, John Jay, and Robert Morris. Others
were added later, including James Lovell, former schoolmaster, Bunker Hill
veteran (arrested by the British for spying), and member of Congress, who
developed the committee’s first codes and ciphers. One must surmise Dr. Benjamin Franklin, who
for many years represented the American colonies with the British government,
provided a trove of ideas and actions based on his experience abroad. John Jay
and likely the others had experience organizing secret meetings and activities
along the road to rebellion while surrounded by rings of Tories anxious to root
them out.
The Committee at Work
Tactics and Tradecraft
It is a tribute to the American leaders of the age that they
were so quick to learn and adopt the most sophisticated techniques and
practices so long employed by the great powers of Europe. They used clandestine
agents overseas, employed covert actions, created codes and ciphers, employed
propaganda, and conducted covert postal surveillance of official and private
mail. They employed open-source intelligence by purchasing foreign publications,
which they analyzed. Most significantly,
they put in place an elaborate communication system, using a variety of
couriers. Another critical innovation
was establishing a maritime capability separate from the Continental Navy, for
purposes of smuggling, moving agents, and correspondence and interdicting
British ships.
First Actions
The committee moved quickly. They initiated regular correspondence
with English Whigs and Scots who supported the ideas if not all the actions, of
the Americans. The experienced and
worldly Benjamin Franklin was the most active, initiating correspondence with a wide array of contacts he had developed in Britain and Europe in a
sophisticated campaign to build sympathy for the patriot cause.
Franklin initiated secret correspondence with Spain, via Don Gabriel de Bourbon, a member of the Spanish royal family and an associate of Franklin. Franklin gave not so subtle reference to advantages to Spain, an American alliance might yield.
Agents at Home
But curiously, it was France who reached out first
dispatching Julien Alexandre Achard de Bonvouloir to Philadelphia to examine
the feasibility of covert aid and political support.
In December 1775, the committee members Benjamin Franklin and John Jay staged a secret meeting with the French intelligence agent, de Bonvouloir, who was using the cover of a Flemish merchant.
Franklin and Jay wanted to know if France would aid America, and at what price. They stressed an urgent need for arms and munitions, which would be exchanged for American tobacco, rice, and other crops. De Bonvouloir advised the French government eschewed any role in transactions with the rebels. Instead, private merchants would be used.
Father of American Counterintelligence - John Jay
Franklin assured de Bonvouloir America would not reconcile with Britain and that once it declared independence, France should form an alliance. This was the beginning of a long term campaign to bring not only French aid but also French arms into the struggle.
Agents Abroad
Franklin and Jay were heartened by French interest in the
American cause. In early March 1776, the Secret Committee appointed Connecticut
lawyer Silas Deane as a special envoy to negotiate in Paris with the French
government. His mission was to establish covert aid and gain political support
through Charles Gravier, Comte de Vergennes, Louis XVI’s Foreign Minister. Vergennes was a master of public and secret diplomacy for the French king and ran both with a steady hand.
The committee eventually included an American living in London. Arthur Lee, a member of the famed Lee family of Virginia. Lee had contact with the French playwright Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais, a polymath, playwright, clockmaker, and diplomat who was also a secret French agent. Using a letter sent by the committee, Lee provided Beaumarchais with information about American successes – much of which was propaganda to influence French thinking. As an interesting aside, people today might recognize Beaumarchais, not for his devotion to freedom (and money-making) but for his composing the Figaro plays Le Barbier de Séville, Le Mariage de Figaro, and La Mère coupable. These later became adapted as operas that are still enjoyed today.
But Beaumarchais was a champion of the American cause and needed no puffed-up reports to stir his passion for freedom. Working with Deane back in Paris, he helped influence French Foreign Minister Charles Gravier, Comte de Vergennes, and King Louis XVI to provide the colonies with clandestine shipments of gunpowder and war material. Support critical in the early years of what was now, a war. The vehicle was the front company Rodrigue y Hortalez (R&H), chartered as a Spanish trading company. R&H was the vehicle for shipping surplus French arms and munitions to the West Indies (primarily the Dutch colony Saint Eustatius), where American agricultural products were exchanged for the war goods.
Deane was responsible for the earliest aid to America’s struggling army resulted from his efforts. Besides arranging for clandestine shipments (R&H was just one covert operation), he recruited French officers, made introductions, sought out ships for privateering, and touted the American cause with the French cognoscenti. Some of the officers recruited by Deane included the Marquis de Lafayette, Baron Johann de Kalb, Thomas Conway, Casimir Pulaski, and Baron von Steuben. A who's who of ex-pat freedom fighters.
The American commissioners in Paris rode a whirlwind of intrigue as they wooed and seduced the French and fended off Sir William Eden’s British secret service. Eden had dispatched an American named Paul Wentworth to Paris when Silas Deane arrived. Deane was acquainted with Wentworth and soon he was reporting on Deane’s activities and later, Franklin’s. Wentworth also recruited the American Commission's secretary, Edward Bancroft.
But Lee was now in Paris. So was Benjamin Franklin himself,
who sailed for France in December 1776. Throughout 1777 the full-court (sic)
press was on. The British and French were opening the American commission's
mail in a variety of clandestine operations. Servants and friends were
recruited to spy, influence, and report. Bancroft provided inside reporting to Wentworth
and Eden. And so it went. Meanwhile, Franklin charmed all men and women in sight, was the
toast of Paris and continued to influence. He knew his every word and gesture were
reaching Versailles and London and every step he took had that in mind.
What's in Name?
The Committee of Secret Correspondence became the Committee
of Foreign Affairs in April 1777 but retained its intelligence functions. As
the first American government agency for both foreign intelligence and diplomatic
representation, it was essentially the forerunner of both the State Department
and the Central Intelligence Agency, as well as today's Congressional intelligence
oversight committees. Despite the name change, the Foreign Affairs Committee still served an essential and critical
function for Congress, as the eyes and ears of the country in Europe.
Note: Perhaps to confuse the British, Congress created a separate "Secret Committee" in 1775 to obtain supplies, which by its nature needed cloaking from British eyes and British ships. Many of its members also served on the Committee of Secret Correspondence. It became the Committee of Commerce around the same time as its 'sister" committee became the Committee of Foreign Affairs.
Payoff
The Committee of Secret Correspondence/Secret/Foreign Affairs Committee’s efforts paid off in a
big way when an American army, using arms and munitions covertly provided by
France forced the surrender of a British army at Saratoga in October 1777. No
one in France could recall the last time a British army surrendered to the
French. The long and winding road to a treaty with France
was now a superhighway. But the committee was not done. The details of an
alliance, future loans to America, the basis for negotiations and peace, were
all work to be accomplished by the committee. The capitals of Europe were also
a target as the commission sought to bring Netherlands, Prussia, Spain, and
Russia to the side of the cause. But these are tales for another time.
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