Photo By Erin Thompson | Military Notes on Cuba, published by the MID from intelligence gained during the...... read more read more
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by Erin E. Thompson, USAICoE Staff Historian
1 APRIL 1909
On 1 April 1909, the War Department’s Military Intelligence Division (MID) closed its Havana branch office after two and a half years of operations. The closure of this office signaled the end of the 1906 Cuban Pacification Campaign that significantly altered the role of American military intervention in foreign policy.
The crisis facing Cuba in 1906 arose from the contested presidential election of Tomás Estrada Palma in December 1905. Many people from the Liberal party believed Palma’s win came about through illegal and immoral means, and uprisings against the government began almost immediately. American interests in the region brought these uprisings intense scrutiny from the U.S. government. Palma requested military intervention from the Americans to quell the uprisings. The rebels also desired American military intervention under the 1901 Platt Amendment, part of the Cuban-American Treaty of Relations of 1903. This amendment allowed the United States government and military to intervene in Cuban affairs to maintain adequate government control and preserve Cuban independence. Cuban liberals hoped the Americans would overturn the election results and institute a new, supervised election process.
The failure of the Cuban Rural Guard to stem the uprisings and the collapse of Estrada Palma’s government in September 1906 led Secretary of War William H. Taft to invoke the terms of the 1903 treaty and establish the Provisional Government of Cuba. In October, American troops began arriving on Cuban shores. Officers from the American First Expeditionary Force, later designated the Army of Cuban Pacification, served first in a supervisory role while changes within the Cuban Rural Guard were underway.
Maj. David Dubois Gaillard and his assistant, Capt. John W. Furlong, staff officers from the War Department MID, organized the MID branch office in Havana with a team of six clerks. [See This Week in MI History #110] Their duties included mapping the region, collecting intelligence on the Cuban military and political landscape, and eventually publishing a campaign history of Cuba. They reported to the War Department MID in Washington, D.C.
The Cuban Provisional Government ended after overseeing the successful presidential election of José Miguel Gómez in November 1908. He took office in late January of the next year and the U.S. military withdrew over the following weeks. The MID was one of the last offices to close in Havana on 1 April 1909, bringing an end to over two years of Cuban pacification operations. The MID produced two publications based on intelligence operations in Cuba, which were largely overlooked by the Army General Staff amid ongoing reorganizations through the early 1900s. In fact, the Army failed to maintain a proper intelligence organization until one was desperately needed again at the start of the First World War.
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| Date Taken: | 03.23.2023 |
| Date Posted: | 03.23.2023 18:36 |
| Story ID: | 441075 |
| Location: | US |
| Web Views: | 62 |
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