COURTING A RELUCTANT ALLY - National Intelligence University

mation and it was only distributed to a chosen few, which limited its utility as asource of information to inform operational planners and tactical forces.Internecine Conflict and Its Effect on ONIPatrick Beesly, who worked in the British Admiralty’s Operational IntelligenceCenter (OIC) during World War II, has noted that one of the main deficiencies ofONI was its lack of any capability to provide operational intelligence (OPINTEL)support. He notes that the roots of this problem lay in World War I, when theNaval Intelligence Division (NID) of legendary British Rear Admiral Sir Reginald“Blinker” Hall, rather than ONI, provided the intelligence for the British andAmerican operating forces. While the Royal Navy allowed its OPINTEL capabilityto lapse in the interwar period, it was able to reconstitute it quickly owing tothe tradition initiated by Hall, whereas ONI had no such tradition to fall backon. 31 Another major difference between the NID and ONI, however, was that, onthe eve of the war, ONI lacked direct access to key policymakers whereas theNID had direct access to the senior civilian and military leaders of the RoyalNavy (the First Lord and the First Sea Lord of the Admiralty). 32 For the Americans,this situation also had its roots in the U.S. Navy’s World War I experienceand was largely a function of the personalities at the top of the Navy’s hierarchy.In August 1939, Admiral William Leahy was relieved by Admiral Harold“Betty” Stark as the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO). Stark was an officer inAdmiral William Sims’ planning cell during World War I and his ideas on howbest to plan for naval operations were formed from that experience. ADM Simshad essentially created a miniature ONI to support planning done by his staff inLondon. For this reason, Stark accepted a model proposed by the Director ofNaval War Plans, Rear Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner, which gave the WarPlans Division the primary responsibility for evaluating intelligence. 33 Turner’sreasoning was based on the fact that an intelligence assessment might cause anoperational commander to take a specific course of action and, since potentialship movements fell under the purview of operators, they should have the finalcheck on intelligence. Thus, in the period just prior to the war, the War PlansDivision had primary responsibility for producing and disseminating intelligence31 Patrick Beesly, Very Special Intelligence: The Story of the Admiralty’s Operational IntelligenceCenter 1939-1945 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, INC., 1977), 111-112. Citedhereafter as Beesly, Very Special Intelligence.32Bath, 4-5.33 Samuel E. Morison, The Rising Sun in the Pacific, 1931-April 1942, vol. 3 of The History ofUnited States Naval Operations in World War II (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, and Company, 1948),134-135, cited hereafter as Morison, Rising Sun; Jeffery M. Dorwart, Office of Naval Intelligence: TheBirth of America’s First Intelligence Agency 1865-1918 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1979),124-125, cited hereafter as Dorwart, ONI; Dorwart, Conflict of Duty, 117; Packard, 16; Bath, 7.8