Changes

The Continental Congress established the Committee of Secret Correspondence to communicate with sympathetic Britons and other Europeans early in the American Revolution. The committee coordinated diplomatic functions for the Continental Congress and directed transatlantic communication and public relations. The Committee of Secret Correspondence became the Committee of Foreign Affairs in April 1777 but retained its intelligence functions. As the first American government agency for both foreign intelligence and diplomatic representation, it may be regarded as a forerunner of both the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency, as well as Congress’s current intelligence oversight committees.

Thereafter, the Committee continued to correspond with Lee in London, and, after Congress appointed them in the fall of 1776, also with the commissioners in France. As the British Navy tightened its blockade, however, communication became increasingly difficult, especially after British forces seized Philadelphia in 1777. Once France formally signed an alliance with the United States in 1778, communications improved. With the alliance also came more duties for the Committee and the appointment of French Minister to the United States, Conrad-Alexandre Gérard de Rayneval.

The Committee also facilitated decisions to solve infighting among the American commissioners in Europe who clashed on financial matters. Lee suspected the early colonial agent in France, Silas Deane, of financial malfeasance and began a campaign to bring about his recall. Thomas Paine, who had become secretary of the Committee, sympathized with Lee. Paine published anonymous pamphlets in which he claimed that Congress possessed documentation of secret French aid that would affirm Lee’s version of events. French Minister Gérard intervened, explaining to the committee that France could not formally admit to providing such aid without risking war with Britain, which it was not ready to do. Congress passed a resolution denying that there had been French aid on January 12, 1778.