CIA: A Look Back At George Washington, Spymaster

The CIA website looks back at General George Washington, our country's first spymaster.

Long before General William Donovan recruited spies to advance the American war efforts during World War II as Director of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), predecessor to the CIA, General George Washington mastered the art of intelligence as Commander of the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War.

Washington was a skilled manager of intelligence. He utilized agents behind enemy lines, recruited both Tory and Patriot sources, interrogated travelers for intelligence information, and launched scores of agents on both intelligence and counterintelligence missions. He was adept at deception operations and tradecraft and was a skilled propagandist. He also practiced sound operational security. Washington fully understood the value of accurate intelligence, employing many of the same techniques later used by the OSS and CIA.

As we celebrate the 284th birthday of the first American President, we highlight some of the tradecraft employed to secure our independence from the British and offer insights on its use today. Were it not for the use of secret writing, concealment devises, propaganda, and intercepted communications, there may have been a very different outcome to the War of Independence.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

https://www.cia.gov/news-information/featured-story-archive/2016-featured-story-archive/the-spymasters-toolkit.html

George Washington: More Than A General And A President, He Was America's First Intelligence Chief

The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) offers a piece on George Washington's contributions to America's intelligence history.

Not only was George Washington the first president of the United States, he was also America’s first intelligence chief. During the revolutionary war, Washington spent more than 10 percent of military funding on intelligence-related activities. These activities included managing individual spies, running spy rings, and establishing special units for the collection of military intelligence.

Washington himself established agent networks in Boston, New York and Philadelphia.

In the early years of the war, Washington personally supervised the recruitment, training, and running of intelligence agents. The Culper Ring, established in the summer of 1778 in New York and made up of about 20 people, was the most sophisticated of Washington's agent networks, using aliases, coded writing, dead drops and other tradecraft.  

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.dia.mil/News/Articles/tabid/3092/Article/8690/george-washington-more-than-a-general-and-a-president.aspx

You can also read an earlier post on the AMC series Turn, which dramatizes Washington's Culper spy ring via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2014/01/amcs-turn-tells-revolutionary-wars-real.html

George Washington's Spy Letter Returns To International Spy Museum

The International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C. is offering a glimpse at the letter from America's first spymaster - General George Washington.

The museum released the below:

WASHINGTON—In annual recognition of America’s first Spymaster, the International Spy Museum has re-installed one of the institution’s most revered and guarded artifacts: an original letter written by George Washington initiating a fledgling nation’s first spy network.

The letter, which is privately stored offsite ten months out of the year – with an exact replica in its place – to preserve its fragile state, is now once again on public display just in time for President’s Day Weekend.

Penned on February 4, 1777 while he served as Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army, then-General Washington engaged his covert request to trusted confidant Nathaniel Sackett, commissioning the New York merchant to spy for his country as Washington’s “intelligence director.”

Sackett was enlisted at the price of $50 per month to create a spy network in New York – for which he was awarded a $500 bonus upfront – to pass along disinformation to British intelligence and collectively harass the enemy. It was this letter, written 237 years ago this month, which served as the launching point for an intricate and secretive intelligence network known as the Culper Spy Ring that would in large part save the American Revolution.

For the scores of decades since it was written, the document remained in Nathaniel Sackett’s family until it was acquired by the International Spy Museum and publicly exhibited for the first time in 2002. To insure its preservation for future generations, the letter has undergone extensive conservation treatments over a 12-month period. Due to its age and fragility, it is exhibited under a low light and can be displayed for only two months each year.

To allow visitors the opportunity to experience this rare artifact while time lasts, the Museum is extending public hours this President’s Day Weekend: February 15-16, 9:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m.; and February 17, 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.

General admission tickets can be purchased online at spymuseum.org/tickets.

For more information, please visit spymuseum.org. 

You can read more about the International Spy Museum in two of my Counterterrorism magazine pieces via the below links:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2013/06/a-look-back-at-myth-mystique-and.html

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2010/03/weapons-of-mass-disruption-cyber.html