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by Erin E. Thompson, USAICoE Staff Historian
NATION'S FIRST CI ORGANIZATION ESTABLISHED IN NEW YORK
On 21 September 1776, the New York Provincial Congress established the Committee for Detecting and Defeating Conspiracies to collect intelligence on enemies of the colonies. The committee served as the nation’s first counterintelligence group and investigated more than five hundred cases of espionage and treason during the Revolutionary War.
As the British colonial government began to collapse in the mid-1770s, the Continental Congress recommended each of the thirteen colonies establish a Committee of Safety to oversee civil disputes and emergency situations when the larger colonial legislatures (such as the New York Provincial Congress) were adjourned. In July 1775, the New York Committee of Safety was established under the provincial congress and tasked with “responding to government letters, executing resolutions, obliging Continental Army officials,” and “directing the military when in New York.” By 1776, the Committee of Safety held vast executive power over New York and even began legislating and adjudicating New York citizens suspected of disloyalty to the Patriots. According to historian Joshua Canale, “New York’s leaders attempted to instill legitimacy and security not only by punishing those who assisted the British, but also by limiting people’s ability to oppose or deny” their authority. Committees of Safety “enforced social order when traditional authority collapsed.”
When British forces arrived in New York in June 1776, the Continental Congress wanted to increase measures “for detecting, restraining, and punishing [the] disaffected,” further increasing the committee’s civil authority over matters of disloyalty. A smaller committee was formed, the first Committee for Detecting Conspiracies, and was immediately actioned to unearth a plot to kill Washington in New York. The committee was headed by John Jay, a thirty-year-old lawyer and politician who had served on the New York Committee of Correspondence, as a delegate to the First Continental Congress in 1774, and on the Second Continental Congress’ Committee of Secret Correspondence. [See This Week in MI History #214 29 November 1775] The Committee for Detecting Conspiracies was tasked to “investigate the activities of known Loyalists, those disaffected with the American cause, and those who might be threats to the revolution,” as well as suspected counterfeiting operations, which had the potential to bankrupt the fledgling republic.
Although this secret committee began operating in mid-1776, the Patriot-aligned New York Provincial Congress did not formally establish the Committee for Detecting and Defeating Conspiracies (CDDC) until 21 September 1776, after the colonies had declared independence and New York had fallen to the British. The New York legislature selected John Jay, William Duer, Charles De Witt, Leonard Gansevoort, Zephaniah Platt, and Nathaniel Sackett to lead the organization and swore them to secrecy. They were given the authority to raise a militia, employ secret agents, and investigate, interrogate, imprison, and deport Loyalists and saboteurs. The CDDC, therefore, became America’s first counterintelligence agency and John Jay the first chief of American counterintelligence. By the end of the revolution, the CDDC had investigated more than five hundred reports of espionage and sedition in New York.
The CDDC ceased operations at the end of the war in 1782, after which John Jay was selected to represent the new nation at peace negotiations in France. Jay’s experiences with counterintelligence and the secrecy with which the CDDC operated became the inspiration for some of his later writings in The Federalist Papers, including advocacy for secrecy and discretion in matters of foreign affairs and intelligence operations. Jay wrote in Federalist No. 64, “the most useful intelligence may be obtained, if the persons possessing it can be relieved from apprehensions of discovery,” and the president should be allowed to “manage the business of intelligence in such a manner as prudence may suggest.”
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| Date Taken: | 09.13.2024 |
| Date Posted: | 09.13.2024 15:00 |
| Story ID: | 480834 |
| Location: | US |
| Web Views: | 111 |
| Downloads: | 1 |
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