Dorwart's History of the Office of Naval Intelligence, 1865–1945

This is the history of the founding in 1882 and operation through two world wars of America's first permanent intelligence agency, the Office of Naval Intelligence. In this study Dr. Jeffery M. Dorwart shows how and why a tiny late 19th century U.S. Navy bureau created to collect information about foreign warship design became during two world wars a complex and sometimes troubled domestic and worldwide intelligence agency. More significantly, this history of O.N.I. demonstrates how the founders and first generations of U.S. naval officers trained to man warships at sea confronted what seemed an inherent dilemma in new missions that interfered with providing technical and operational information to their navy. Dorwart explains the forces that created this dilemma and how ONI officers responded in different ways to their intelligence mission. This history recounts how from the very beginning ONI duty during the last decades of the 19th century seemed conflicting. Some found the new assignment very rewarding in collecting and collating data for the U.S. to build a «New Navy» of steel and steam-powered warships armed with the latest rifled ordnance. But other naval officers saw assignment to this tiny office as a monotonous dead-end assignment endangering their careers as shipboard operators. Dorwart shows how the first and second world wars and interwar period dramatically accelerated the naval intelligence office's dilemma. The threats in both oceans from powerful enemy navies equipped with the latest technology and weaponry gave an urgency to the collection of information on the strategies, warships, submarines, and aircraft development of potential and actual naval enemies. But at the same time ONI was asked to provide information of possible domestic threats from suspected enemy spies, terrorists, saboteurs or anti-war opponents. This led ONI officers to wiretap, break and enter, pursue surveillance of all types of people from foreign agents to Americans suspected of opposition to strengthening the U.S. Navy or becoming involved in world wars. This history explains that many ONI directors and officers were highly motivated to collect as much information as possible about the naval-military capabilities and strategies of Germany, Italy, Japan, and even allies. ONI officers understood that code-breaking was part of their job as well. But this all led some to become deeply involved in domestic spying, wiretapping, breaking and entering on private property. These extralegal and at times illegal operations, Dorwart argues, confused some ONI officers, leading to too much information that clouded vital intelligence such as Japanese plans to attack American naval bases. In the end, this study demonstrates the dilemma confronted between 1882 and 1945 by dedicated U.S. naval officers attached to or collecting information worldwide for the Office of Naval Intelligence.
Jeffery M. Dorwart is Professor Emeritus of History at Rutgers University. He received his B.A. from the University of Connecticut and M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Dorwart taught history at Rutgers University from 1971 to 2009, during which time he published histories ofU.S, involvement in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95, two histories of the Office of Naval Intelligence, 1882-1945 and a study of James F orrestal and Ferdinand Eberstadt. He also published local and regional histories including books on Cape May County, and Camden County, New Jersey, on War in the Delaware Valley, 1621-1815, and definitive histories of Fort Mifflin on the Delaware River and the Philadelphia Navy Yard. After retirement, Dorwart wrote a history of Elizabeth Haddon Estaugh and the building of the Quaker community of Haddonfield, New Jersey.