Intelligence in the American Revolutionary War

Intelligence in the American Revolutionary War was essentially monitored and sanctioned by the Continental Congress to provide military intelligence to the Continental Army to aid them in fighting the British during the American Revolutionary War. Congress created a Secret Committee for domestic intelligence, a Committee of Secret Correspondence for foreign intelligence, and a committee on spies, for tracking spies within the Patriot movement.

The Second Continental Congress created a Secret Committee by a resolution on September 18, 1775. The Committee was not, however, a true intelligence agency, since the Committee of Secret Correspondence with which it often worked was mainly concerned with obtaining military supplies in secret and distributing them, and selling gunpowder to privateers chartered by the Congress. The Committee also took over and administered on a uniform basis the secret contracts for arms and gunpowder previously negotiated by certain members of the Congress without the formal sanction of that body. The Committee kept its transactions secret and destroyed many of its records to ensure the confidentiality of its work.

The Secret Committee employed agents overseas, often in cooperation with the Committee of Secret Correspondence. It gathered intelligence about secret Loyalist ammunition stores and arranged to seize them. The Committee also sent missions to seize British supplies in the southern colonies. It arranged the purchase of military stores through intermediaries to conceal the fact that Congress was the true purchaser. They then used foreign flags to attempt to protect the vessels from the British fleet.

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