Masked Dispatches: Cryptograms and Cryptology in American History, 1775-1900

Chapter 6. General George Washington's Tradecraft

The necessity of procuring good Intelligence is apparent and need not be further urged. All that remains for me to add is, that you keep the whole matter as secret as possible. For upon secrecy, success depends in Most Enterprises of the kind, and for want of it, they are generally defeated, however well planned and promising a favorable issue.^[73]

These closing comments from General Washington in a 1777 dispatch to Colonel Elias Dayton brilliantly summarized the instructions Washington had given Dayton: obtain secretly the enemy strength on Staten Island, together with the location and strength of their guards. And little more than a year later, Washington, like a case officer for a modern intelligence ...