War Department Stands Up Military Intelligence Section (3 MAY 1917)

Photo By Lori Stewart | Ralph Van Deman, the "Father of American Military Intelligence"  

UNITED STATES

04.26.2024

Story by Lori Stewart 

U.S. Army Intelligence Center of Excellence

by Lori S. Stewart, USAICoE Command Historian

WAR DEPARTMENT STANDS UP MILITARY INTELLIGENCE SECTION
On 3 May 1917, the War Department established a Military Intelligence Section (MIS) in the War College to handle intelligence policy and planning as the U.S. prepared to enter World War I. Spearheaded primarily by Maj. Ralph Van Deman, the MIS morphed into the Military Intelligence Division on the War Department General Staff by the end of the war. For his efforts to establish the first effective, professional intelligence organization within the Army, Ralph Van Deman is recognized as the “Father of American Military Intelligence.”

When the United States declared war on Germany on 6 April 1917, the U.S. Army’s intelligence efforts were nearly non-existent. Early attempts to gather information about foreign armies resulted in the creation of a Military Information Division in 1885. In 1903, the division transferred from the Adjutant General’s Office to the Office of the Chief of Staff, where it became the Second Division of the General Staff. However, by 1908, the Second Division had been absorbed by the Third (War College) Division, and the Army’s intelligence functions had been relegated to a committee. [For more information on this series of events, see This Week in MI History #s 13 (9 October 1885), 53 (15 August 1903), and 140 (24 June 1908).]

Intelligence activities declined over the next several years due to insufficient personnel and appropriations as well as limited interest or understanding of its importance. By early 1917, “personnel and appropriations were limited, the powers of the committee were narrow and its accomplishments, though valuable, were necessarily meager. Such was the situation at the time war was declared.” Change, however, was coming.

In 1915, Major (later Maj. Gen.) Ralph Van Deman arrived at the War College. A native of Delaware, Ohio, he had attended both law and medical schools before accepting an infantry commission in 1891. Over the next two decades, he gained valuable intelligence experience in Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and China. In Manila, Van Deman established an intelligence organization to conduct terrain analysis, mapping, and counterintelligence. By the time he arrived at the War College, Van Deman was one of few experienced intelligence officers in the Army. He immediately grasped the implications of the United States’ lack of a military intelligence organization and resolved to reverse the situation.

Van Deman wrote numerous memoranda criticizing the ineffectual nature of the War College’s committee. He stated, “To call a chair a table does not make it a table—it still remains a chair. And to call the personnel of the War College Division a Military Information Committee does not make it one” [emphasis in original]. His appeals for the creation of a competent organization were essentially ignored. One week after the U.S. declared war on Germany, bringing the American military into World War I, Van Deman pled his case to Maj. Gen. Hugh Scott, the Army chief of staff, who refused to consider the proposal on the grounds it would only duplicate British and French efforts.

Persisting, Van Deman enlisted the aid of a female novelist and the Washington D.C. chief of police, both friends of Secretary of War Newton Baker. Either because of or coincident to these outside interventions, Secretary Baker summoned Van Deman to his office on 30 April 1917, to explain the state of U.S. military intelligence. Just three days later, on 3 May, the War College received an order to create an intelligence organization and detail an officer to “take up the work of military intelligence for the Army.” Van Deman, of course, was the perfect choice to lead the newly established Military Intelligence Section (MIS). By 1918, the MIS had been renamed the Military Intelligence Division and had taken position as one of four equal divisions on the War Department’s General Staff, a position it maintains to this day as the deputy chief of staff, G-2.


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• Date Taken: 04.26.2024
• Date Posted: 04.26.2024 15:04
• Story ID: 469663
• Location: US