Fort Huachuca, Arizona - By an Act of Congress effective Aug. 15, 1903, the War Department created a general staff system. This act abolished the Office of the Commanding General of the Army and replaced it with the Army Chief of Staff who would oversee the work of the general staff.
The new general staff consisted of just three divisions. The First was for administration, training, and mobilization of the U.S. Army. The Third was for the preparation of war plans, military education, technical manuals and permanent fortifications and harbor defense. It also included the newly established War College and was better known as the War College Division.
The Second Division was designated for Military Information. Its establishment on a coequal footing with other major functions of military command seemed finally to herald the Army's acceptance of the role intelligence played in military planning. Unfortunately, it unintentionally caused its slide into oblivion on the eve of the United States' entry into the war in Europe.
When stood up in 1903, the Second Division absorbed the existing Military Information Division (MID), the War Department's first official peacetime intelligence organization. The adjutant general had created the MID within the Military Reservations Division of its Miscellaneous Branch in 1885. The MID's duties included collecting information of military interest specifically about foreign armies.
With limited resources, the MID operated more or less like a library, cataloging reports and information in a card system for easy retrieval when needed. In 1889, the MID reported directly to the adjutant general and was given oversight for the U.S. Army's Military Attaché System.
Having a peacetime intelligence collection agency meant that, when the United States went to war with Spain in April 1898, the Army entered into a conflict with at least a semblance of intelligence preparation for the first time. MID had already collected terrain and order of battle intelligence on the situation in Cuba and had prepared detailed maps of the island. The attaché in Spain and military observers in Cuba and Puerto Rico provided specific information on the enemy's plans and capabilities. In addition, a Division of Military Information (DMI) created in the Philippines collected and provided information about Filipino forces.
The MID's performance during the war earned it a measure of respect, which in turn probably contributed to its position on the general staff in 1903. For a few years, the Second Division, under the leadership of Maj. William D. Beach (later promoted to brigadier general), found its services in high demand. It had a library of 6,000 maps and 300,000 items of military value within its card system. It also regularly exchanged information with diplomatic officers, the U.S. Navy, military schools, Army headquarters, and the chiefs of various military bureaus and had assumed responsibility for the DMI in the Philippines.
Beach's division published articles in professional military newspapers and journals, as well as official papers circulated within the War Department, and completed work on a military map of the United States and mapping projects in China. In 1907, the division prepared a weekly bulletin on activities and "apparent intentions of the Japanese all over the world" for President Theodore Roosevelt.
Unfortunately, the favorable position of the Second Division on the general staff was not to last. As time passed and the memory of war faded, consciousness of the importance of intelligence also began to fade in the minds of the Army's senior leaders.
In 1907, the War College (Third) Division moved out of Washington, D.C. proper to larger facilities at Washington Barracks (now Fort McNair, Washington). Its dependence on the library and files of the Second Division led the War College president to recommend the Second Division move as well. Chief of Staff, Maj. Gen. Franklin Bell, agreed.
Initially, the two divisions were to retain their independence. However, shortly after the move, the War College president complained about the impracticality of keeping the divisions separate and recommended the two be combined. Bell, rumored to be no fan of intelligence work due to a dispute he had with the staff of the Philippines DMI, acquiesced. Consequently, the Second Division became the Military Information Committee within the War College. Its library and files were scattered throughout the college and the committee rarely met as an organized body.
Like many senior leaders at the time, Bell had little understanding or appreciation of the role intelligence should play in military planning or decision making. The intelligence organization ceased to function in support of the U.S. Army and instead supported only War College efforts. Due to Bell's disastrous decision, between 1908 and 1917, little work of an intelligence nature was accomplished, a tragic situation at a time when the United States struggled to maintain its neutrality during the Great War in Europe.
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