Episode Overview

Podcast: New Books Network
Host: New Books
Guest: Dr. Mark Stout
Book Discussed: World War I and the Foundations of American Intelligence (University Press of Kansas, 2023)
Date: February 11, 2026

This episode dives into Dr. Mark Stout’s exploration of how World War I laid the groundwork for what we recognize today as modern American intelligence. Drawing from his long tenure in the intelligence community and his deep historical research, Stout discusses the emergence, evolution, and legacy of intelligence practices in the U.S. from the late 19th century through the world wars, highlighting the sometimes quirky, often controversial, and always urgent push for effective intelligence and counterintelligence.

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. How the Book Came About & The Core Argument

• Catalyst for Research: Stout’s transition between intelligence agencies revealed cultural differences, inspiring him to explore why those differences existed despite a shared OSS heritage. A suggestion by historian David Alvarez to study American intelligence during World War I resulted in a deep dive into a neglected but fertile historical field.

  “Almost anything you wanted to write on American intelligence in that war was new... it’s a very much wide open field.” (03:11)

• Central Thesis: While the legal and institutional bases of US intelligence derive primarily from the National Security Act of 1947 and WWII’s OSS, the practices, disciplines, and cultures of modern intelligence—clandestine operations, signals intelligence, analysis, counterintelligence, covert action—emerged during and even before WWI:

  “A reasonably savvy American intelligence officer on November 11, 1918, could have a professional conversation with an American intelligence officer of 1945, or probably even of 1955.” (06:26)

2. Pre-WWI Precursors: Spanish-American War and Punitive Expedition in Mexico

• Institutions Born from Reform: The Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI, 1883) and the Military Intelligence Division (MID, 1885) were set up after observing European powers and recognizing the growing centrality of information in warfare.

  • Both focused on collecting and compiling, rather than analyzing, intelligence at first.
  • Military and Naval attachés functioned as early overt human collectors embedded overseas. (08:01-11:38)

• Arthur L. Wagner’s Influence: Wagner’s Service of Security and Information (1893) constituted the first American how-to manual on intelligence, emphasizing not just field scouting but also signals, counterespionage, deception, and even early aerial reconnaissance.

  “He talks about the need to have intelligence at the level of the War Department or the level of Washington gathered in peacetime... open source intelligence, signals intelligence... reconnaissance with cameras from balloons…” (11:45-13:05)

• Covert Action in Mexico: During the 1916 punitive expedition after Pancho Villa’s raid, American intelligence officers attempted to assassinate Villa using recruited Japanese agents—a formative if ethically questionable act of “covert action”:

  “$50,000 in gold for Pancho Villa’s head... four Japanese spies... Two of them... poison Villa’s coffee. Pancho Villa... doesn’t drink enough... gets sick. He doesn’t die... After a suitable amount of time for doing the investigation, quote, unquote, Pershing reports back. No idea what at all you’re talking about. Nothing happened here.” (15:20-18:55)

3. Key Figures in American Intelligence Foundations

• General John J. Pershing:

  • Started as a cavalry officer, “the eyes and ears of a commander,” instilling an innate appreciation for intelligence.
  • Integrated air reconnaissance and codebreaking, skills honed in Mexico, into the AEF (American Expeditionary Forces) in WWI:

    “When he sets up his staff in France... Major, later Brigadier General, Dennis Nolan, to be his G2... Nolan will give Pershing a one on one intelligence briefing every morning.” (22:14-23:48)

• Ralph Van Deman, the “father of American military intelligence”:

  • From counterinsurgency in the Philippines to leading MID in WWI.
  • Introduced systematized intelligence through card files and information-sharing hierarchies, and after WWI became a controversial private anti-leftist investigator.

    “He looked like Abraham Lincoln without a beard... when the US enters World War I in 1917... he’s finally able to convince the Army Chief of Staff... that we really need to have a military intelligence effort here in Washington...” (25:07-27:38)

4. International Collaboration and Neutral Powers

• Learning from Allies:

  • The US entered WWI far behind the French, British, and Germans in intelligence sophistication.
  • The Allies “read the riot act” about counterintelligence, trained US officers, and shared critical techniques in aerial reconnaissance, cryptology, and counterespionage.

    “British and French bring to us the idea that it’s really important to have robust aerial reconnaissance... they help us get that up and going all the way down to the training camps...” (30:07-32:18)

  • Direct joint and combined operations (i.e., creating pro-Allied news agencies in Sweden as covert action).

• Danish Cooperation:

  • The US Naval attaché in Denmark maintained clandestine reporting relationships with Danish authorities.

    “He called the Danish military Intelligence service ‘the truest friends a fellow could ever wish for.’” (36:20)

5. The Unexpected Role of Private Business

• Businesses as Covers and Collectors:
  • With the shift toward “total war,” intelligence needed insights into foreign industries, morale, and industrial capacity—areas often inaccessible to obvious government operatives.
  • U.S. Military Intelligence recruited not only individual businessmen but entire firms (e.g., United Fruit, US Steel, Standard Oil, Singer) as collectors in neutral countries.

  “If we recruit the senior executives... the people lower down in those companies don’t even need to know that they’re actually acting as collectors for the US Military or the US Government...” (41:28-43:25)

  • Novel, sometimes ineffectual efforts included sending a filmmaker on an espionage mission and using actual traveling salesmen as informants.

6. Cryptology’s Eccentric Emergence: Riverbank Laboratories

• Riverbank Labs’ Wacky Origins:
  • Run by eccentric millionaire George Fabian, whose primary interest was proving Shakespeare was a fraud via finding “hidden codes.”
  • Despite the odd foundation, Riverbank’s cryptanalysts (notably William and Elizabeth Friedman) became the backbone of American codebreaking during and after WWI.

    “They actually had people... trained to have real code breaking skills... William Friedman... brought over to the Shakespeare codebreaking side, ended up marrying Elizabeth Smith...” (45:05-47:14)

  • The War Department used Riverbank to build its own codebreaking capacity, until Fabian’s eccentricity and loose lips made him a liability.

7. Rethinking Domestic Intelligence: Counterintelligence “Boomerang” & Motivation

• Beyond the Boomerang Effect:
  • Stout critiques two dominant scholarly explanations:
    1. The “boomerang effect”— that techniques from colonial wars (esp. in the Philippines) returned to be used domestically.
    2. That domestic intelligence was aimed primarily at racial/ethnic minorities and labor.
  • While not wrong, Stout argues these are incomplete.

    “It doesn’t necessarily fully explain why the army not only... imposed this system... on the US public, but also on themselves...” (52:18)

  • The dominant military culture had come to see war as a total, industrial contest including morale at home, making internal surveillance as much a prudent extension of wartime defense as an exercise in repression.

8. Presidents and Intelligence: Reluctance and Evolution

• Presidential Disengagement:
  • Up until WWII, intelligence was handled by departments (War, Navy, State, Justice) and often viewed with suspicion, even distaste, by presidents.

    “President Wilson... finds this whole topic of intelligence, which he basically conflates with espionage, to be distasteful...” (57:47)

  • Wilson in particular avoided decisions that would have clarified or centralized intelligence control.
  • FDR: Unique in being intensely interested in intelligence, catalyzing the creation of new organizations (Coordinator of Information, OSS) due in part to his earlier involvement as Asst. Secretary of the Navy.

9. Post-WWI Legacy: Institutional, Doctrinal, and Personal Continuity

• Downsizing but Not Disappearance:

  • As after WWII, U.S. intelligence massively shrank post-1918, but the core institutions and disciplines persisted.
  • All the core intelligence disciplines (except perhaps for covert action, interwar) continued unbroken.

  “There will never again be a time in which the army and actually for that matter the Navy, does not have at least some aerial reconnaissance capability, cameras and photo interpreters and all of that sort of good stuff...” (62:40)

• Personnel Bridges:

  • Key individuals (e.g., William Friedman, Alan Dulles, Joseph Stilwell, J. Edgar Hoover) linked the formative WWI era to WWII and beyond.

• Doctrinal Memory:

  • “Field service regulations” incorporating intelligence practices from 1906 onward, institutionalized through classified histories and handed to new officers as training materials.

    “In 1923, the US army sat down for its first big sort of lessons learned and rewrite of doctrine... the majority of people in it came out of Army Intel.” (64:01)

  • Social/intelligence clubs and the emergence of a self-identified intelligence officer community.

• Enduring Culture:

  • Stout returns to his opening metaphor:

    “An intelligence officer in November 1918 would consider himself among peers... if he spoke with an intelligence officer of World War II or the early Cold War.” (67:40)

Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• On Perennial Reforms:

  “You get honorable mention... for the Office of Strategic Services during World War II. Fine... But if by modern American intelligence, what you're referring to is the various sub disciplines and general types of practices... that's all there by the end of World War I.” (05:28)

• On the Use of Private Business for Espionage:

  “If we recruit the senior executives to help out... the people lower down in those companies don't even need to know that they're actually acting as collectors for the US Military or the US Government.” (42:28)

• On the Eccentric Beginnings of Codebreaking:

  “Fabian believed that the works of Shakespeare had not in fact been written by William Shakespeare. They'd been written by Sir Francis Bacon...[but] they actually had people who... had real code breaking skills working on this.” (46:03)

Timestamps for Key Segments

• Introduction, Author Background, Book Purpose: 00:05–03:50
• Foundations of Modern Intelligence Argument: 04:41–06:56
• American Intelligence Institutions Pre-WWI: 07:26–14:37
• Covert Action and Pershing in Mexico: 14:37–20:01
• Lessons Brought from Mexico to the AEF (Pershing, Nolan, Fouloi): 20:01–24:13
• Ralph Van Deman’s Influence and Card Files: 24:13–29:27
• Collaboration with European Allies and Neutrals (Denmark): 29:27–37:48
• Private Business’s Role in Intelligence: 37:48–44:39
• Riverbank Labs and Cryptology: 44:39–50:21
• WWI Counterintelligence, Domestic Surveillance, and the ‘Boomerang’: 50:40–56:41
• Presidents’ Relationship to Intelligence: 56:41–60:49
• Postwar Legacy and Institutional Continuity: 60:49–68:06

Conclusion

Mark Stout’s research locates the true origins of America’s intelligence system not in the Cold War or post-war institutional boom, but in the creative, contested, and at times chaotic era of World War I. By tracing the emergence of core practices, cultures, and even quirks, Stout’s work makes clear how much of modern intelligence—its dilemmas, its innovations, even its controversies—was already vividly present a century ago.

Host closing:

“The book is called World War I and the Foundations of American Intelligence. Grab it. It’s a great read and is still very relevant today more than 100 years later.” (68:16)