History

Benjamin Franklin

Secret Committees To Gain Information and Supplies

The Committee of Secret Correspondence was really this country's first foreign intelligence directorate. We employed many secret agents abroad and established a courier system to relay information and even set up a secret Navy to get information and supplies to us. The Secret Committee was established a few months before the Committee of Secret Correspondence to obtain military supplies in secret, distribute those supplies, and sell gunpowder to privateers hired by the Continental Congress. We also secretly contracted for arms and gunpowder. We were so secret we destroyed many of our papers so no records were left behind.

Early Intelligence Operations

When I went to France with Silas Deane and Dr. Arthur Lee to negotiate a French-American alliance for the war, the mission involved more than diplomacy. We gathered intelligence, distributed propaganda, coordinated aid from America's secret allies, and recruited new people to the cause. I also had my share of counterintelligence woes when I discovered that several of my employees, including a secretary and a courier, were British agents.

I remember a bit of propaganda I produced to discourage the Hessian mercenaries fighting us. I concocted a letter from a German prince to the commander of his mercenaries stating the commander should leave his wounded for dead rather than have them unfit to serve their prince. At the same time, to their homeland I wrote a news article detailing the horrible deaths of these soldiers and others at the hands of the Indians. I think these items, plus the leaflets I disguised as tobacco packets that promised land grants to deserting Hessian soldiers, quickly got the Hessians out of the war and weakened our enemy further. Yes, I have had a long and full life, but I shall always remember my time as a "spy"!


Sources:

O'Toole, G.J.A. Encyclopedia of American Intelligence and Espionage. New York and Oxford: Facts on File, 1988.

Intelligence in the War of Independence. Central Intelligence Agency, 1997.

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