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Chapter 16

MILITARY INTELLIGENCE

One of the first needs of a nation at war is to have as much useful information about its enemy as possible; and concurrently to conceal from him similar information about itself. In modern total war, which enlists all the energies and resources of combatant nations, the categories of facts which are useful from the military angle are many and comprehensive. Moreover, a nation today cannot afford to wait for the outbreak of war before beginning to collect such data. It must have available, at all times, reliable and up-to-date information on which to base advance plans for what to do if it or its allies should be attacked or otherwise forced into war.

Military intelligence may be loosely described as any information about a present or possible enemy, or theater of operations, which has been checked for accuracy as far as possible, and which is, or might be, useful to the Armed Forces. It is the task of Army intelligence agencies to collect, check, and make available such data. Counterintelligence may be loosely described as action taken to prevent a present or possible enemy, and its agents, from getting key information about ourselves, or otherwise endangering national security by "underground" activities. Intelligence in the broad sense includes counterintelligence as one of its ele

ments'.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

The history of Army intelligence is as old as the Army itself. George Washington was keenly aware of its importance to military plans and operations. He constantly exhorted his subordinate commanders to spare neither expense nor effort in obtaining information of the enemy's strength. dispositions, and movements. He personally directed a large network of agents,

whose identity he carefully concealed for security reasons. (This anonymity of Washington's agents was later a central theme in James Fenimore Cooper's novel, The Spy.)

After the Revolution a full century elapsed before Army intelligence was established on a permanent basis. With the advent of a war, intelligence would appear on an organized basis, only to

1 The Army's formal definition of "intelligence" is "evaluated and interpreted information concerning an actual enemy, or area of operations (including weather and terrain) together with the conclusions drawn therefrom and to include "deductions concerning current enemy capabilities or possible courses of action open to him that can effect the accomplishment of our mission."

The Army's formal definition of "counterintelligence" (spelled as a single word) is "that aspect of intelligence relating to all security control measures, both active and passive, designed to insure the safeguarding of information, personnel, equipment, and installations against the espionage, sabotage, or subversive activities of foreign powers and disaffected or dissident groups or individuals which constitute a threat to the national security.

In military phraseology there is a sharp distinction between the terms "information" and "intelligence."' Any alleged fact which comes to the attention of appropriate Army agencies is a piece of information. It becomes intelligence only after it has been checked and otherwise processed, as described in this chapter.

2 Washington's ledgers show expenditures of some $17,000 for intelligence and information purposes (chiefly payments to spies).

disappear with the return to peace. Between wars there were sporadic Army activities of an intelligence nature, such as exploring and mapping the West, and the occasional official publication of an Army officer's report on foreign armies.

At the outset of the Civil War both intelligence and counterintelligence responsibilities for the Union forces were entrusted chiefly to Allan Pinkerton, a famous detective of that period. He operated for most of the time under the cover of an Army major. Maj. Gen. McClellan, who for a while commanded the Army of the Potomac, was Pinkerton's principal sponsor; and McClellan's relief by Hooker, in the latter part of 1862, was followed by the withdrawal of Pinkerton from this field. A more effective intelligence effort than that of Pinkerton was made by the Bureau of Information, directed by Colonel George H. Sharpe, Assistant Provost Marshal of the Army of the Potomac, from early in 1863 to the close of the war. Sharpe-a New York lawyer, who had commanded a regiment of volunteers in combat-appreciated the necessity of efficient, systematic collection of information from all sources, and also the vital importance of bringing together the individual reports for evaluation and collation.

An interesting anticipation of modern aerial reconnaissance and photography was the Signal Corps' employment of balloons and cameras for observation purposes during the Civil War.

Military intelligence as a permanent and continuing activity in our Army began in 1885, when an intelligence unit of a few clerks was established in the office of The Adjutant General. In 1889 the Military Intelligence Division was enlarged to include a military attache system. By 1898, when the SpanishAmerican War broke out, there were 11 officers and 12 civilians in the Division in Washington and 16 attaches abroad.

With the creation of the War Department General Staff in 1903, intelligence was transferred to that agency and became its "Second Division," with 6 officers and a small civilian staff. However, it soon lost its identity as a separate division; and as the General

Staff suffered severe personnel cuts and passed through various reorganizations, intelligence was relegated to a place of minor importance. How minor may be judged by the fact that in May of 1917, a month after we entered World War I, the Military Intelligence Section (the only intelligence unit in the General Staff) consisted of 3 officers and 2 civilians.

With the progress of the war, intelligence activities expanded enormously. The General Staff intelligence agency was redesignated "Military Intelligence Division" in August of 1918. By the date of the Armistice it had a strength of 282 officers and 1159 civilians. Many of the officers were specialists in one or another field who had been commissioned directly from civil life. There were similar specialists among the civilian personnel, since by World War I the need for them had become plain. Even during the Civil War the influence of modern inventions and industry upon both warfare and intelligence had been evident in the military employment of railways, telegraph lines, and cameras; and World War I added improved weapons and means of transport and communication. The net effect of these developments in weapons and equipment was to complicate the problems of military intelligence, while simultaneously adding to the capacity of intelligence to solve them.

During the drastic reduction in the size of the Army which followed World War I, the strength of the War Department G2 (as it was then called) shrank to 20 officers and 48 civilians. The outbreak of World War II reversed the trend. At the peak of its strength in World War II, G2 numbered 622 officers and 921 civilians. There were also large Army intelligence and counterintelligence organizations elsewhere in the United States, and at various command levels overseas.

After the war, intelligence agencies suffered the inevitable reduction. However, it was by no means as drastic as that which followed World War I; nor has it resulted, as was repeatedly the case in the past, in crippling our defense effort in that field. Our Army as a whole is being maintained today at a greater strength, and a higher

level of combat readiness, than was ever the case in peacetime before World War II. This necessitates, and

has resulted in, an efficient military intelligence organization and a strong and continuous intelligence effort.

NATURE AND TYPES OF INTELLIGENCE

The Army, the Navy, and the Air Force-while cooperating effectively among themselves, and with other agencies, in the intelligence field-each have their own intelligence agencies and activities. Army intelligence may be divided into three broad categories: strategic intelligence, combat intelligence, and counterintelligence.

STRATEGIC INTELLIGENCE. This deals with the manifold aspects of foreign war potentials. It is used by the Army in planning and executing national security measures in time of peace and military operations in time of war. It is ordinarily the product of large high-level staffs, which assemble and study enormous masses of detailed information, much of it of a fundamental and more or less unchanging character.

COMBAT INTELLIGENCE. This is used in planning and conducting tactical operations. It is concerned with the enemy, the terrain, and the weather in a relatively limited area and situation. It is largely produced by the lower command levels on the basis of up-todate data gathered locally. It is characterized in a high degree by rapid analysis of information received and prompt dissemination of the resulting intelligence.

RELATIONSHIP

OF STRATEGIC AND COMBAT INTELLIGENCE. Broadly speaking, it may be said that strategic intelligence is typically of a "big picture" character, for the use of high commanders and staffs in preparing overall war plans and operational directives; and that tactical intelligence is typically of a more detailed nature, to be used by lower command agencies for their short-term plans and activities. But this is true only in a general way, and subject to many qualifications. No exact line can be drawn between the two, as regards either the data with which they deal or the agencies which use them.

For example, strategic intelligence

includes, among other things, maps and charts; descriptions and studies of beaches, ports, rivers, towns, and other terrain features; data on climate and hydrography; studies of governments, industries, cultures, transportation, and

telecommunications; and miscellaneous reports, manuals, and handbooks on the order of battle of the enemy army, navy, and air force. These are of course vital to a commander-in-chief when working up his overall plans. But also, many of them are of interest to a field commander in direct contact with the enemy in war. They supplement the combat intelligence which his staff gathers and digests from day to day; and at the outbreak of war, and in its early stages, they may be his only source of information in such fields.

On the other hand, data of an extremely local and restricted type, which would normally be classified as combat intelligence, may be needed for planning purposes at the highest levels. For instance a decision on whether to invade an enemy country at a certain time might turn on whether it was practicable to land and maintain a large force on his coast. A determination of this, in turn, might call for the study of extremely detailed and up-todate data on tides, currents, winds, weather, flying conditions, beaches, terrain, roads, bridges, and so on.

Again, captured documents and prisoners of war, both of which are characteristic sources of combat intelligence, will also furnish strategic intelligence with much valuable information on political and economic conditions inside the enemy country. Identifications of enemy units, and the characteristics of newly encountered weapons, are other examples of information which pertains to both strategic and combat intelligence.

The distinction between the two, in short, is essentially in scope and in point of view. Both are concerned with knowledge of foreign nations and of

areas of actual or possible military operations. Both are produced by application of the same fundamental techniques.

COUNTERINTELLIGENCE. This covers all those activities which are designed to prevent espionage, subversion, or sabotage in the Army establishment. It also includes the detection of treason, sedition, and disaffection among the military and civilian personnel of the Army. It is related to the other types of intelligence previously described, but is carried on largely as a separate activity under common staff supervision. Nevertheless the two operate in liaison and each provides support for the other.

OTHER CLASSIFICATIONS OF INTELLIGENCE. With the growing complexity of war, many other categories of intelligence have come to be recognized and designated by specific names. They are not in addition to the main classifications of "strategic" and "tactical"; nor are they, in general, subclasses of those. Rather they deal with data in specialized fields, which may pertain to either or to both.

Some of these specialized designations relate to the conditions and activities

with which the intelligence deals, such as geographic, sociological, political, economic, scientific, transportation, and telecommunications intelligence. Others are derived from a very broad characteristic of the content, such as current and basic intelligence. The use for which the material is produced may also determine the name, as in staff. joint, and national intelligence.

Three of the best-known specialized categories are order-of-battle, technical, and communications intelligence. Orderof-battle intelligence is concerned with the strength, identification, dispositions, organization, equipment, tactics, combat effectiveness, history, and key personalities of enemy units. Technical intelligence (which, in an age of tremendous scientific advances, has tended to transcend all other forms of intelligence in importance) is concerned with foreign technological developments having a practical application to military weapons and equipment; and, specifically, with the principles of design and operation, physical characteristics, performance, and limitations of foreign materiel. Communications intelligence is derived from the study of enemy signal communications.

INTELLIGENCE TECHNIQUES

Army intelligence activities are carried on at all levels, from the groups of skilled specialists on the Army General Staff who study the war potentials of foreign nations to the battalion commander on a maneuver who sends out a reconnaissance party to report on road conditions. Nevertheless. widely as they vary in scope and subject matter, they all involve the same fundamental process consisting of three phases: collection, production, and dissemination.

Although these procedures are different and successive with respect to any particular item of intelligence, they are all going on, continuously and concurrently, in every agency which has intelligence responsibilities. The reason is evident. While some of the facts and phenomena with which intelligence is concerned (for example, major topographical features) are unchanging in terms of human time, most of them do

change; some slowly, some rapidly. The nation which, a few years ago, could not have supplied and maintained an army of ten thousand men on a certain potential fighting front, may since then have built a strategic railway and road net that would permit it to support twenty divisions on the same front. The bridge that, a month ago, was strong enough to carry a convoy of heavy trucks, may have been weakened or destroyed by last week's flood. The enemy tank battalion that was observed in its bivouac at dawn may be fifty miles away by noon. These are random illustrations of the fundamental maxim that intelligence is useless, and even dangerous, unless it is kept up to date; and that, therefore, its production and revision must be continuous.

COLLECTION. As regards collecting the information on which Army intelligence is based, there are three points to

be considered

What kind of information is to be collected.

Where and how it can be collected.
Who is to collect it.

Kind of Information to be Collected. The very scope and diversity of the data that a modern army needs make it essential to specify clearly what its intelligence agencies are to look for, lest they be swamped by a mass of data which are not needed. Therefore, when a headquarters gives any such agency a collecting job, it lists as fully as possible what items of information are to be collected, on what subjects, within what territorial area, and so on. These are called "essential elements of information," commonly abbreviated to "EEI."

Just what data constitute EEI will depend entirely on who wants the information, and why. Suppose, for example, that an army is about to force a crossing over an unfordable river against enemy resistance, using assault boats and military bridging equipment. A number of items of information about the river at once become EEI to the army commander and his subordinates: for example, its width, depth, speed of current, and kind of bottom; how high, steep, and firm its banks are; whether it is subject to sudden flooding; whether there is floating ice; and so on. Suppose next that, a few months later, the fighting front has advanced a hundred miles, and that a military hospital is to be built near the same river. From the viewpoint of the builders most of the facts which were formerly EEI are of no interest; but data on the purity and dependability of the river as a source of water supply become EEI in their turn.

Sources of Information and Collecting Agencies. A great deal of information on nations all over the world is available to the Army in peacetime, in the form of books, magazines, newspapers, maps, census reports, trade reports, and scientific and technical reports in the fields of meteorology. geology, geography, oceanography, sociology, agriculture, mining, medicine, the various branches of engineering, and

so on. Extensive use is made of these by high-level intelligence agencies which have a large volume of heterogeneous demands to satisfy. Military attaches and oversea command headquarters are important collecting agencies for such data.

In wartime, collection activities are greatly expanded by the opening up of sources of information which exist to only a limited degree, or not at all, in peacetime. Examples are: censorship of mail; prisoners of war; civilians, including defectors, refugees, and the inhabitants of occupied territory; captured enemy weapons, equipment, and installations; and captured enemy documents of all sorts, such as military orders, personal diaries, and letters. Most important of all, perhaps, is battlefield surveillance, carried out by the interception of enemy communications, by radar, acoustic devices, ground observation and reconnaissance, and by air observation and photography. (The latter, of course, may under favorable conditions be carried into the enemy's country far behind the battlefield.)

PRODUCTION OF INTELLIGENCE. The second phase in the overall intelligence process is the conversion of the collected information into intelligencethe "production" of intelligence, as it is called in the Army. It involves receiving and recording the data. and then subjecting them to processes technically known as evaluation, collation. integration, and interpretation. “Evaluation" of an item of information is based on the known or estimated reliability of the source, and on the intrinsic probability of the item being true or the reverse. "Collation" is the critical comparison of the item with all previous reports on the same subject. "Integration" is the combining of selected data to form patterns or hypotheses which explain the data, and which also give a basis for further analysis. "Interpretation" is an assessment of the item's significance, against the background of other intelligence.

Collation and integration become increasingly difficult in the higher command echelons, as the volume of information grows larger. Elaborate cross

3 In some intelligence agencies the process is known by other names, such as research and analysis.

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