Organization of Intelligence
Recognizing the need for foreign
intelligence and foreign alliances, the Second
Continental Congress created the Committee of Correspondence
(soon renamed the Committee of Secret Correspondence) by a resolution
of November 29, 1775:
RESOLVED, That a committee of five
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.
The Committee members-America's
first foreign intelligence directorate-were Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania,
Benjamin Harrison of Virginia and Thomas Johnson of Maryland. Subsequent
appointees included James Lovell, a teacher who had been arrested by
the British after the battle of Bunker Hill on charges of spying. He
had later been exchanged for a British prisoner and was then elected
to the Continental Congress. On the Committee of Secret Correspondence
he 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 Navy. It
met secretly in December 1775 with a French intelligence agent who visited
Philadelphia under cover as a Flemish merchant, and engaged in regular
communications with Britons and Scots who sympathized with the Patriots'
cause.
On April 17, 1777, the Committee
of Secret Correspondence was renamed the Committee of Foreign Affairs,
but kept with its intelligence function. Matters of diplomacy were conducted
by other committees or by the Congress as a whole. With the creation
of a Department of Foreign Affairs-the forerunner of the Department
of State-on January 10, 1781, correspondence "for the purpose of obtaining
the most extensive and useful information relative to foreign affairs"
was shifted to the new body, whose secretary was empowered to correspond
"with all other persons from whom he may expect to receive useful information."
The Secret Committee
Even before setting up the Committee
of Secret Correspondence, the Second Continental Congress had created
a Secret Committee by a resolution on September 18, 1775. The Committee
was given wide powers and large sums of money to obtain military supplies
in secret, and was charged with distributing the supplies and selling
gunpowder to privateers chartered by the Continental 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 the
Congress without the formal sanction of that body. The Committee kept
its transactions secret, and destroyed many of its records to assure
the confidentiality of its work.
The Secret Committee employed agents
overseas, often in cooperation with the Committee of Secret Correspondence.
It also gathered intelligence about Tory secret ammunition stores and
arranged to seize them. The Secret Committee sent missions to plunder
British supplies in the southern colonies. It arranged the purchase
of military stores through intermediaries so as to conceal the fact
that the Continental Congress was the true purchaser. The Secret Committee
used foreign flags to protect its 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 the Congress: Franklin, Robert Morris, Robert
Livingston, John Dickinson, Thomas Willing, Thomas McKean, John Langdon,
and Samuel Ward.
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 same
Committee was charged with revising the Articles of War in regard to
espionage directed against the patriot forces. The problem was an urgent
one; Dr. 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 military law did not provide punishment
severe enough to afford a deterrent, in the judgment of Washington and
other Patriot leaders. On November 7, 1775, the Continental Congress
added the death penalty for espionage to the Articles of War, but the
clause was not applied retroactively, and Dr. Church remained in jail.
On August 21, 1776, the Committee's
report was considered by the Continental Congress, which enacted the
first espionage act:
RESOLVED, That all persons not
members of, nor owing allegiance to, any of the United States of America,
as described in a resolution to the Congress of the 29th of June last,
who shall be found lurking as spies in or about the fortification or
encampments of the armies of the United States, or of any of them, shall
suffer death, according to the law and usage of nations, by sentence
of a court martial, or such ether punishment as such court martial may
direct.
It was resolved further that the
act "be printed at the end of the rules and articles of war." On February
27, 1778, the Continental Congress broadened the law to include any
"inhabitants of these states" whose intelligence activities aided the
enemy in capturing or killing Patriots.