The Civil War was a watershed for U. S. intelligence, for it exposed the risks of haphazard intelligence operations. The beginning of the modern American intelligence structure can be traced to the period immediately after the Civil War. Technological developments were the main impetus for the growth of America’s nascent intelligence apparatus, incorporating such techniques as collecting aerial intelligence by means of surveillance balloons and other types of craft. Moreover, innovations in the communications industry, such as the development of the telegraph, sparked interest in encryption and decoding capabilities. The navy established a permanent intelligence unit—the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) — in 1882, and the army’s intelligence unit—the Military Intelligence Division (MID) — came into being in 1885.
During the World War I, U. S. intelligence efforts were limited to supporting the new American foreign policy doctrine of “open diplomacy,” reflecting the openness that permeated the thinking of U. S. policymakers at the time. To promote this new way of doing things, the State Department assumed the responsibility of coordinating all intelligence information, an effort that lasted until 1927. Even though there is general agreement that intelligence barely made an impression on policy leaders, many precedents were set in these early years, including civilian control of intelligence.
In the interwar years between 1918 and 1941, code making and code breaking became important enterprises, involving the State Department, the army, and the navy, all of which concentrated on breaking the codes of foreign governments in order to read their secret correspondence and to make their own more secure. The State Department established the “Black Chamber” in New York City for such a purpose, and this operation managed to decode or decipher more than 45,000 telegrams from 19 countries over a period of 12 years. Secretary of State Henry Stimp-son was informed of the operation in 1929, upon which he ordered the closure of the Black Chamber, claiming that gentlemen do not read each other’s mail. This assertion has become part of American intelligence folklore, and intelligence officials today often allude to Stimpson’s claim as an illustration of the politicians’ naivete and folly. After Stimp-son closed the Black Chamber, its director, Herbert O. Yardley, wrote a book revealing the secrets of American code-breaking operations, prompting the Japanese — who were deemed the main threat to the United States — to change their codes.
The army and the navy surreptitiously continued interception programs despite the closing of the State Department’s cryptologic program, and they successfully broke the Japanese codes once again. The U. S. government gave the acronym MAGIC to the intercepted Japanese material. In 1941, MAGIC provided information that a Japanese attack was imminent, but did not say where or when. The ensuing Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor and the failure of U. S. intelligence to detect it ahead of time shocked the American people and provided the impetus for the establishment of a centrally organized civilian intelligence organization after the war.
However, before the Japanese attack, the British had persuaded President Franklin D. Roosevelt to establish the Office of the Coordinator of Information (COI), which was to carry out “when requested by the President, such supplementary activities as may facilitate the securing of information important for national security not now available to the Government.” The president appointed William Donovan to be COI, whose mandate was to gather intelligence information, but Donovan considered analytical work only a “cover” for secret operations. In early 1942, soon after America’s entrance into the war, President Roosevelt established the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and designated Donovan to head it. Donovan employed the OSS principally for operations like infiltrations and sabotage, although he also commissioned some notable analytic efforts that were later published and made available to the public.
World History
