This unique reference presents 59 biographies of people who were key to the sea services being reasonably prepared to fight the Japanese Empire when the Second World War broke out, and whose advanced work proved crucial. These intelligence pioneers invented techniques, procedures, and equipment from scratch, not only allowing the United States to hold its own in the Pacific despite the loss of most of its Fleet at Pearl Harbor, but also laying the foundation of today's intelligence methods and agencies. One-hundred years ago, in what was clearly an unsophisticated pre-information era, naval intelligence (and foreign intelligence in general) existed in rudimentary forms almost incomprehensible to us today. Founded in 1882, the U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI)-the modern world's "oldest continuously operating intelligence agency"-functioned for at least its first forty years with low manning, small budgets, low priority, and no prestige. The navy's early steps into communications intelligence (COMINT), which included activities such as radio interception, radio traffic analysis, and cryptology, came with the 1916 establishment of the Code and Signals Section within the navy's Division of Communications and with the 1924 creation of the "Research Desk" as part of the Section. Like ONI, this COMINT organization suffered from low budgets, manning, priority, and prestige. The dictionary focuses on these pioneers, many of whom went on, even after World War II, to important positions in the Navy, the State Department, the Armed Forces Security Agency, the National Security Agency, and the Central Intelligence Agency. It reveals the work and innovations of well and lesser-known individuals who created the foundations of today's intelligence apparatus and analysis.

In today's world of satellites and electronic eavesdropping, it is hard to appreciate the difficulties involved two centuries ago in collecting and disseminating secret intelligence in time of war. This book treats readers to a close-up look at the ingenious methods used to obtain and analyse secret material and deliver it to operational forces at sea. It brings together information from a variety of sources to provide the first concise analysis of the use and development of intelligence in the days of fighting sail. The British experience from 1793 to 1815 is the book's main focus, but it also includes French and American activity. In addition the book examines how commanders used the information to develop strategy and tactics and win--or sometime lose--battles. A naval intelligence officer himself, author Steven Maffeo illustrates the role of this ""dark craft"" by concentrating on the experiences of Lord Nelson and his contemporaries. A profoundly complex figure, Nelson epitomised the active acquisition of intelligence and the bold execution of decisions based on an understanding of the material, and Maffeo offers fresh and illuminating information that supports the admiral's high regard for intelligence work. Reading at times like a cloak-and-dagger mystery, the story is filled with examples of how Nelson and his associates dealt with intelligence obstacles and how the outcomes affected their own futures, and, in some cases, the history of the modern world. Maffeo's anecdotes give marvellous insight into the thoughts of the era's important figures, Bonaparte, Pitt, Spencer, and Cochrane--not to mention C.S. Forester's Horatio Hornblower and Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey and Maturin. The author's winning combination of vibrant narrative and zeal for accuracy assures this book a place in the libraries of military and intelligence professionals, historians, and Forester and O'Brian aficionados.