Brief History of Army MI - Fort Huachuca - U.S. Army

A BRIEF HISTORY OF U.S. ARMY MILITARY INTELLIGENCEchological warfare mission, bombardingGerman troop concentrationswith 3 million propaganda leaflets deliveredby balloon, plane and infantrypatrols.Perhaps a tribute to its versatilecapabilities, G-2 also collected somemarginal missions, like publishing thenew Stars and Stripes newspaper, considereda morale builder, supervisingeight Army artists in the theater, andbeing the principal section for pressrelations. Having the department responsiblefor keeping the Army’s secretsalso charged with releasing informationto the press was not asound idea. It would foster distrustand hamper Army press relations inthe years to come.Like Van Deman’s organizationback in Washington, Pershing’s AEFG2 would be a model for supportingtactical organizations. In his book,Military Intelligence: A New Weaponin War, published after the war, WalterC. Sweeney wrote:There is nothing new in a recognitionof the necessity of having ampleinformation of the enemy uponwhich to base military plans. The successfulplan of campaign always hasbeen and always will be based uponknowledge of the strength, situation,plans and intentions of the enemy.What is new, however, is that inrecent years there has been such anincrease in the amount of informationof the enemy to be gathered, andso many changes in the means andmethods of collecting and utilizing it,as to make necessary the creation ofan entirely new organization or systemto keep track of it....Before America entered theWorld War, the Military IntelligenceService, as a coordinated and cooperatingsystem, did not exist in our militaryestablishment.... There was noconception of the modern IntelligenceService which, with specially trainedpersonnel, would make systematicand continuous effort to find out andrecord the strength, position, situation,and movements of the enemy....During the World War, under thename of Military Intelligence, therewas built up in the American forces acarefully organized system representedby an Intelligence Service group at everyheadquarters from that of the battalionon up to include the War Department.On 1 February 1918 in Nogales,Arizona, Lothar Witzke, carrying aRussian passport identifying him asPablo Waberski, was taken into custodyas a suspected German spy andsaboteur. He was arrested at gunpointby two U.S. Army agents, membersof Van Deman’s Military IntelligenceSection. Upon his person was an encodedletter from the German consulin Mexico City charging him withundercover operations in the UnitedStates. In fact this German naval officerhad been responsible for severalincidents of sabotage, including thefamed Black Tom explosion. It wasthis message, decrypted in Washingtonby MI-8, the code and cipherssection of the Military IntelligenceSection, that led to his conviction forspying. The damning message read:“The bearer of this is a subject of theEmpire who travels as a Russian underthe name of Pablo Waberski. Heis a German secret agent. Please furnishhim on request protection andassistance; also advance him on demandup to 1,000 pesos of Mexicangold and send his code telegrams tothis embassy as official consular dispatches.”Convicted by a militarycourt, his death sentence, the only oneto be handed down during WorldWar I, was later commuted by PresidentWilson to life imprisonment.Witzke was released fromLeavenworth prison in 1923, owingin part to his heroism during a boilerexplosion incident.The Witzke case was not only anexample of good Army counter intelligence,but was illustrative of oneof the more dubious functions of theMIS, the “counterespionage amongthe civilian population” charged to theMI-4 subsection. Encroaching on civilianjurisdictions, domestic securitybecame one of the largest areas of MISoperations during and after the war.One of the areas in which the Armyfocused was “Negro subversion andpolitical demagoguery,” disseminatingcounterpropaganda in black communitiesin the Southeast. The Armyinvestigated what they considered tobe anarchist or revolutionary organizationslike the Industrial Workers ofthe World, the Communist party, theCommunist Labor Party, and theUnion of Russian Workers. After anincident in October 1922 in Oregonin which the American Federation ofLabor was included among these organizations,a wave of protests wassparked and field commands wereordered by the War Department notto involve themselves in the collectionof unauthorized domestic intelligence.After the war, GeneralMarlborough Churchill, the successorto Van Deman as Director ofMilitary Intelligence in Washington,made the case for a separate intelligenceorganization within the WarDepartment.At present, the Military IntelligenceDivision is one of four coordinatedivisions of the General Staff....Write Fort Huachuca Museums; U.S. Army Intelligence Center and Fort Huachuca; ATTN: ATZS-PAM; Fort Huachuca, AZ 85613-6000.21