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[[File:John_Jay_(Gilbert_Stuart_portrait).jpg|thumbnail|270px|left| John Jay, Member of the Committee]]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. The Committee served an essential and critical function for Congress, it became the eyes and ears of the country in Europe.
====Congress Communicates with Allies in Europe through the Committee====
Of the initial members of the committee, Benjamin Franklin was the most active. Drawing on his extensive European contacts, he began a campaign to rally international support of the American cause. On December 12, 1775, Franklin wrote to Don Gabriel de Bourbon, a prince of the Spanish royal family and one of Franklin's scholarly associates. In his letter, Franklin strongly hinted at the advantages of a Spanish alliance with the American revolutionaries. Franklin dispatched similar letters to American sympathizers in France. He sent these letters through associates whom he trusted to protect the communications from interception by the British.
[[File:BenFranklinDuplessis.jpg |thumbnail|left|270px| Benjamin Franklin, c. 1785]]
Franklin, the only member with experience in foreign affairs, dominated the Committee, corresponding with friends in Europe and sounding out the possibility of an alliance with America. The French soon dispatched Julien Alexandre Achard de Bonvouloir to America to examine the feasibility of covert aid and political support, and the Committee sent its own secret agent, Silas Deane, to France for the same purposes in April 1776. Franklin himself left for Paris in late 1776 on his famous, and ultimately successful, mission to forge an alliance with France.
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====Committee resolved disputes between American foreign agents in Europe====
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.
* Article: [https://history.state.gov/milestones/1776-1783/secret-committee| Secret Committee of Correspondence/ Committee for Foreign Affairs, 1775–1777] and [https://www.cia.gov/news-information/featured-story-archive/2011-featured-story-archive/intelligence-and-the-committee-of-secret-correspondence.html| A Look Back ... Intelligence and the Committee of Secret Correspondence]
[[Category:US State Department]] [[Category:Wikis]][[Category:United States History]] [[Category:Colonial American History]] [[Category:18th Century History]] [[Category:Political History]][[Category:Diplomatic History]]
