US Army Military Intelligence History: A Sourcebook - Fort Huachuca ...

Spanish-American WarWorld War I EraDespite the reorganization of Army by Secretary of the Army Elihu Root and the creation of a generalstaff after the turn of the century, intelligence, originally the Second Division of the general staff, wasincreasingly ignored in favor of the more robust Third Division, or plans division. There were too fewvoices defending the importance of intelligence to an Army leadership absorbed with plans and operations.One of the few advocates of a stronger military intelligence organization within the U.S. Army,Ralph van Deman, would be recognized only when the United States was on the brink of a war. But beforehe could be heard, another Army commander was conducting a rehearsal along the uneasy Mexicanborder for the full-scale war in Europe. In the mountains of northern Mexico, John J. Pershing wouldlearn some things about intelligence.Political instability in Mexico, which often spilled across the border in the form of bandit raids andrefugee exoduses, resulted in a troop buildup along that border as early as 1911. In 1914 it was proposedby the Chief, Army War College Division, who also chaired the Military Information Committee of theWar College, that some officers along the border be invested with intelligence duties. This was adoptedbut with the proviso that they not cross into Mexico, limiting their work to the interrogation of refugees.That ban was lifted after Pershing mounted his Punitive Expedition.We know that at least one intelligence officer crossed into Mexico. In 1916 a lieutenant of the FirstArizona Infantry, Sidney F. Mashbir, was asked by the Department Commander, Brig. Gen. FrederickFunston, to conduct a secret reconnaissance of northern Mexico to check out persistent rumors of a sizableJapanese military presence. Mashbir, an Arizonan familiar with the Sonoran desert, with the help of hisPapago (today Tohono Oodham) spies, found Japanese ration tins and Kanji written on rock faces thatconfirmed that Japanese military exercises were being conducted and that Japanese patrols may have evencrossed into the United States to obtain water.During the Punitive Expedition into Mexico in 1916 led by General John J. Pershing, human intelligence(HUMINT) and signals intelligence (SIGINT) took on new proportions. Although an embryo intelligencestaff had been organized in 1903 as part of the Army’s General Staff, it was up to GeneralPershing to organize his own field intelligence network. He realized that good intelligence was necessaryif he was to track down the bandit/revolutionary Pancho Villa. Pershing appointed an intelligence officerto his staff, Major James A. Ryan, 13th Cavalry, and started an “Information Department.” Later, whenfive separate districts were established in the Mexican theater of operations, he instructed the districtcommanders “to organize [their] own agents and establish as far as possible [their] own service of information.”The Information Department employed a network of agents who were reported to have penetratedVilla’s camp. The department reported in 1917 that it “soon was able to decipher any code used inNorthern Mexico. Thereafter, by tapping the various telegraph and telephone wires and picking upwireless messages we were able to get practically all the information passing between the various leadersin Mexico.”The use of the newly developed military asset, the airplane, for reconnaissance missions was firstundertaken along the Mexican border between 1913 and 1915. Later, during Pershing’s 1916 PunitiveExpedition into Mexico, the First Aero Squadron was deployed to support Pershing with aerial reconnaissance.Their purpose was thwarted however, when the planes were unable to reach the altitudes necessaryin the mountains of northern Chihuahua. Instead the aviators were relegated to a role of flyingdispatches from headquarters to the roving columns of cavalry.Apache scouts from Fort Huachuca accompanied the 10th Cavalry and others from Fort Apache joinedthe 11th Cavalry on their long scouts into Mexico in search of the bandit/revolutionary, Pancho Villa. Itwas the last time Indian Scouts were used in U.S. Army operations, though they remained as part of theU.S. Army until 1947.79