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(Prior to U.S. involvement in World War I) |
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(Prior to U.S. involvement in World War I) |
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The 1900s start off with further leaps in communications technology. In 1901 the first transatlantic radio signal is sent by Guglielmo Marconi. (All radio is AM at this time). In 1906 Lee Deforest invents the audion tube for radios. This allows live radio broadcasting, improves radio signals amplification and enhances signal reception. DeForest is known as the father of radio. By 1912 further refinements to radio equipment made by Edwin Armstrong improves the radios amplification by 1,000 times. He later (1933) invents FM radio.
In 1903, when the Army created a General Staff, the Military Information Division was upgraded in status and became the General Staff's Second Division. The MID continued to collect military and topographic information on potential enemies. However, in 1908, things took a turn for the worse. The War College moved to Washington Barracks (Fort McNair) on the outskirts of the city. Second Division officers, fearing the Division would lose its independence, objected to the move, but to no avail. After the move the General Staff was reorganized. The Second and Third Division were consolidated as the Second Division (war plans and training). The intelligence functions of the MID were assigned to the Military Information Committee on 27 July 1908. The intelligence function on the General Staff soon lapsed.
This was also a period marked not by expanded use of intelligence for foreign policy purposes, but by an expansion of domestic intelligence capabilities. The forerunner of the FBI is established in 1908. The Signal Corps constructs the Washington-Alaska Military Cable and Telegraph system, introducing the first wireless telegraph in the Western Hemisphere.
Radio communications, or wireless telegraphy as these communications were known then, were quickly put into use by the world's military and naval forces. Just days before the outbreak of World War I a Marconi engineer in England, Maurice Wright, was experimenting with a new triode vacuum tube in a radio receiving circuit when he received German wireless traffic. His experiment had made the interception of long range communications possible for the first time.
The Army operated Direction Finding equipment from mobile as well as fixed installations in the early 1900s. The early 'DF Tractor' had a DF antenna, which was turned by hand from the inside. By measuring the angle of entry and the skip of a signal coming in and bouncing off the ionosphere, an operator could pinpoint the distance the radio wave had traveled - rather advanced for the times.
On the morning of June 28, 1914, while traveling in a motorcade through Sarajevo, Archduke Francis Ferdinand and his wife Sophie were assassinated by a Serbian nationalist. The Archduke was chosen as a target because Serbians feared that after his ascension to the throne, he would continue and even heighten the persecution of Serbs living within the Austro-Hungarian empire.
Austrian reaction to the assassination was swift, as the Sarajevo crisis was seen as the Empire's last chance to assert its supremacy in the Balkans. On July 23 1914, Austria-Hungary presented Serbia with a lengthy list of demands. Minutes before the July 25th deadline, Serbia issued a conciliatory reply to the demands. This conciliation was rejected and on July 28, 1914, Austria-Hungary, along with German support, declared war on Serbia. World War I had begun. The U.S. would not join the war for 3 years but it could no longer ignore world events.
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In order to divert U.S. attentions and troops from the war in Europe, Germany encourages unrest in Mexico, which has been wracked by revolution since 1910. In 1915 Germany financed the comeback of deposed Mexican strongman, General Victoriano Huerta. It is also suspected that the Germans manipulated Pancho Villa's infamous raid on Columbus, New Mexico in 1916. Several solders and civilians were killed. President Wilson reacted to this brazen violation of American sovereignty by ordering John Pershing to pursue Villa in what came to be called the 'Punitive Expedition'. General Pershing had to organize his own field intelligence network and staff. Pershing appointed an intelligence officer to his staff, Major James A. Ryan, 13th Cavalry, and started an "Information Department." The Information Department employed a network of agents who were reported to have penetrated Villa's camp. It soon was able to decipher any code used in Northern Mexico. By tapping the various telegraph lines and telephone wires and picking up wireless messages it was able to get practically all the information passing between various leaders in Mexico. Pershing's intelligence assets included the new DF tractor. |
Prior to the U.S. joining the fight in World War I, U.S. intelligence sources on the war consisted of attaches and intelligence provided by the British intelligence Chief in Washington. British intelligence played a major role in bringing the U.S. into World War I. It's public revelations of German intelligence attempts to prevent the U.S. from assisting Britain with war materials and financial aid greatly angered the American public.
In 1917 British intelligence also presented President Wilson with a copy of the "Zimmerman Telegram", an intercepted German diplomatic message offering Mexico back the territory it lost in the Mexican-American war, if it would join Germany against the U.S. Of course this infuriated President Wilson and provided him with a compelling reason to urge that the U.S. declare war on Germany.
On the eve of its involvement in World War I the U.S. intelligence organization was less prepared to conduct operations than it had been in 1898 (Spanish American War). In 1917, when the United States entered World War I, the Army was effectively without an intelligence organization. The Signal Corps had no formal signals intercept arm and very little equipment or operators. The U.S. was not prepared to exploit the intelligence value of the new technology of radio.
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