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by Erin E. Thompson, USAICoE Staff Historian
On February 24, 1941, the U.S. Army Corps of Intelligence Police (CIP) Investigator Training School opened at the Army War College in Washington, D.C. The opening of the school marked the beginning of a long history of Army counterintelligence training. Over the next eight months, the school graduated six classes of trained counterintelligence officers.
The Army established the CIP in France in 1917, when General John J. Pershing and his staff determined they needed a counterespionage section to operate with American Expeditionary Forces in France. The initial CIP group consisted of fifty French-speaking agents, primarily from New Orleans and New York City. After World War I, the CIP faced the same downsizing as the rest of the U.S. armed forces. For the next few years, the number of CIP agents dwindled, and the authorized strength of the CIP fluctuated frequently. In 1939, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed a proclamation allowing the CIP to expand its organization and, by the end of 1940, the CIP had more than 200 agents. With this influx of new agents, the need for a formal training school grew.
In January 1941, Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson ordered a counterintelligence training school be established in Washington, D.C. This served two purposes: first, inexperienced officers could be trained in a formal setting and by experienced CIP and intelligence instructors. Second, the school could provide a standardized methodology for its investigative work across the entire agency. On February 24, 1941, the doors to the new Corps of Intelligence Police Investigator Training School opened under the command of Maj. Garland Williams. It was initially located at the Army War College in Washington, D.C., a site later designated Fort Lesley J. McNair.
The location of the training school was strategically set up near the facilities of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), whose own agents occasionally helped instruct the new school on its methods of investigation. Thus, the origins of the CIP Investigator Training School was inextricably linked with the FBI. The first training session took place within one room with five instructors. No textbooks or manuals existed for CIP training, and the leadership limited instructors to handwritten lesson notes to be mimeographed at a later date.
The Army required all potential CIP agents to have a minimum of a high school diploma and be between the ages of twenty-three and thirty-four. Although prior military training and/or investigative experience was preferred, it was not required for recruits. Over a four-week period, trainees learned about the general principles of investigative procedures; methods of observation and description; immigrant registration laws; methods of surveillance; undercover work; interrogation tactics; fingerprinting; codes and ciphers; various laws of search and seizure, arrest, evidence gathering, and court procedures; and motives and methods of arsonists, burglars, saboteurs, espionage, and extremist organizations. The CIP listed sixty-one different courses in its initial session, totaling approximately 179 hours of coursework, practical experience, and examinations.
Of the 48 students, both officers, and noncommissioned officers, who entered the first session on February 24, 1941, thirty-nine successfully completed their training and graduated as CIP agents on March 22. A total of 298 men graduated from the CIP Investigator Training School by the end of its sixth session at Fort McNair around October 1941. At the request of the assistant chief of staff, G-2, the school moved to the Tower Town Club in Chicago on November 10, 1941 and was renamed the Counter Intelligence Corps Advanced Training School.
| Date Taken: | 02.20.2023 |
| Date Posted: | 02.22.2023 10:17 |
| Story ID: | 438932 |
| Location: | FORT HUACHUCA, ARIZONA, US |
| Web Views: | 236 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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