All the Brains I Can Borrow: Woodrow Wilson and Intelligence Gathering in Mexico, 1913-15

By Mark E. Benbow

A mere two weeks before Woodrow Wilson became president of the United States, Mexico's Gen. Victoriano Huerta overthrew his country's elected president, Francisco Madero, who would later be assassinated. Wilson was concerned because he feared that foreign policy issues might prove a distraction from the domestic reform measures he wanted to pass through Congress. In fact, during the period 1913-15, Mexico was one of Wilson's main foreign policy concerns, and after June 1914 it was second only to the war in Europe.¹

Throughout this period, Wilson struggled not only with forming a policy toward Mexico but more fundamentally with learning what was happening in Mexico's revolution. Wilson did not believe he could trust his usually primary source of information, the Department of State. Instead of relying on diplomatic reporting, Wilson cobbled together a network of formal and informal sources to observe and report on events.

In the process, Wilson's efforts illustrate some of the difficulties presidents faced when gathering intelligence for policymaking before a more formal intelligence-gathering structure was established with the Coordinator of Information in 1941.²

Confronted with the revolution in a neighboring country, Wilson had to judge numerous parties in an ever-changing political and military situation as each faction vied for support inside Mexico and from the United States. In this paper, I will examine the types of intelligence Wilson used to evaluate events in Mexico, their limitations and their strengths, and how Wilson identified and dealt with bias among his sources. I will also examine how Wilson evaluated the information from his various informants. In short, how did Wilson, as a consumer of intelligence, deal with the issues normally presented to intelligence collectors and analysts?

Of the numerous types of intelligence, or "INTs," as they are recognized by the Intelligence Community today, some, such as MASINT (Measurement And Signatures Intelligence) rely on technology that did not exist in 1913 while others, IMINT (Imagery Intelligence) and SIGINT (Signals Intelligence) were of limited use during the crisis in Mexico. SIGINT was used for counterintelligence purposes during this period, and it would be useful again later, in 1916 during Pershing's intervention to catch Pancho Villa, but it was of little value in supporting the political analysis Wilson needed during 1913-15. The other major INTs, HUMINT (Human Intelligence) and OSINT (Open Source Intelligence) both played important roles in Wilson's informal intelligence network. But how useful were these types of sources, and how reliable did they prove to be for Wilson?³

President Wilson (seated) with his private secretary, Joseph Tumulty, a key gatekeeper in passing information to the president. (© CORBIS)<br />

HUMINT was Wilson's most valuable source. Traditionally, presidents before Wilson received their information about overseas events through the State Department. This took the form of reports from ambassadors, ministers, and consuls. Consuls were often US citizens already living overseas, usually for business purposes, rather than foreign service professionals. Consuls received stipends, official titles, and reported on events in their regions and promoted US businesses in their area.

Cables sent by US diplomats in Mexico City and by consuls around the country were received in the State Department, then located in the Executive Office Building next to the White House. In the department they would be hand-carried to the geographical divisions within the building and to the Division of Information, a predecessor of the current Bureau of Intelligence and Research. If judged to be of sufficient importance, a cable could then be forwarded to the secretary of state or to an undersecretary, or even to the president.⁴

The many conflicting perspectives flowing into Washington from US representatives in Mexico during the crisis only clouded the president's view of events there. The ambassador and the consuls all had their own interpretations of what was happening. Some praised Huerta. Others lauded the revolutionaries, known as the "Constitutionalists." As a result, President Wilson came to distrust much of the diplomatic reporting from Mexico. But he especially distrusted the reports of his ambassador.

The US ambassador in Mexico City, Henry Lane Wilson, was a conservative Republican and an appointee of Wilson's predecessor, William Howard Taft. Ambassador Wilson strongly advocated US recognition of the Huerta government. He also actively assisted the plotters who overthrew President Madero in February 1913.

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Wilson's "Confidential Men"

Just three days after President Wilson was inaugurated on 4 March 1913, the New York World published a front page story revealing Ambassador Wilson's role in Huerta's coup. The World was the president's strongest supporter in the press and it was the newspaper he most trusted. The World's report reinforced the president's decision to delay recognition of Huerta's government, despite the ambassador's strenuous lobbying. Also as a result of the World's reports, President Wilson considered any information coming from the US embassy in Mexico to be tainted.⁵

Presented with conflicting information and distrustful of State reporting, Wilson looked for more reliable sources. First he turned to a reporter, William Bayard Hale, who had been an Episcopalian priest. Hale wrote for the progressive journal World's Work and had written Wilson's campaign biography in 1912. Hale would become the first of several reporters, or "confidential men," picked to go to Mexico to get the "exact facts." The president asked Hale to "tour" the Latin American states--even though he spoke no Spanish--"ostensibly on your own hook" and report "just what is going on down there."⁶

Hale reached Mexico City on 24 May, accompanied by rumors that he was there to investigate the New York World's reports. Hale denied the rumors and claimed that he was only there to research a series of magazine articles. President Wilson also issued a statement denying that Hale was investigating Ambassador Wilson's role in the coup. The type of information Hale reported to the president indicated that he probably did seek information about Ambassador Wilson's role in the February 1913 coup, but the president also sought information on Huerta's legitimacy.

The US ambassador to Mexico, Henry Lane Wilson (© CORBIS)

Hale sent his first report to the President Wilson on 18 June 1913. His conclusions confirmed Wilson's worst fears. President Madero was overthrown in a coup begun by those opposed to his reforms. The coup would have failed if Gen. Huerta, Madero's own commander, had not betrayed him. To make matters worse, Huerta acted only because he had the active support of Ambassador Wilson. Hale's report indicated that the official US representative, in fact, had engaged in a plot against an elected government and was directly responsible for the coup's success. As Hale wrote,

There was not a moment during [the coup] when it would not have been possible to end the distressing situation [and] put a stop to this unnecessary bloodshed by a stern warning from the American embassy to the traitorous army officers that the United States would countenance no methods but peaceful constitutional ones.... President Madero was not betrayed and arrested by his officers until it had been asserted that the American ambassador had no objection.

Hale concluded that "thousands of Mexicans believe that the Ambassador acted on instructions from Washington and looked upon his retention under the new American President as a mark of approval, blaming the United States for the chaos into which [Mexico] has fallen.⁷

Hale also sought to undermine the Wilson administration's policy by trying to create the specter of armed intervention.

Hale also revealed how the ambassador sought to undermine the Wilson administration's policy by trying to create the specter of armed intervention by suggesting that Wilson's policies would inevitably lead to a war in Mexico. Moreover, Hale reported, Ambassador Wilson was noisily attacking President Wilson's administration calling it "a pack of vicious fools." As for Huerta, Hale described him as "an ape-like old man...said to subsist on alcohol⁸ and interested in holding power only for the abuses the position allowed him to inflict.⁹

Suspecting what the reporter was doing, Ambassador Wilson attacked Hales' reports in embassy cables to Washington. Falling back on the tactic he used against Madero in his messages to the Taft administration, the ambassador attacked his adversary's [Hale's] sanity: "His mind appears to me to be unevenly balanced." Furthermore, the ambassador continued, while "some" [like Hale] were trying to describe Madero as "a martyr to democratic ideals," the former Mexican president had actually been corrupt and robbed his own government, emptying the country's treasury. The ambassador concluded one of his messages by claiming that "all of the true and secret history of [Madero's] brief rule in Mexico and prior thereto is known to no one but to me."¹⁰

On the basis of Hale's reports, President Wilson recalled Ambassador Wilson in mid-July 1913 to confer with him and Secretary of State Bryan. The ambassador arrived in Washington ready to personally lobby the administration to extend formal recognition to Huerta's regime. Wilson and Bryan listened for an hour to the man the president once called "that unspeakable person." As he spoke, Ambassador Wilson realized that his audience was only giving him cursory attention, and he resigned soon after the meeting. His resignation left Nelson O'Shaughnessy as the US representative in charge at the embassy. However, O'Shaughnessy was also on friendly terms with Huerta, and his reporting remained tainted in the president's estimation, although Wilson considered him "honest," if somewhat biased.¹¹

Hale remained in Mexico, reporting first from Mexico City and then from Constitutionalist territory in northern Mexico, until January 1914.

Hale had been joined in August 1913 by John Lind, a former governor of Minnesota and member of the US House of Representatives. Like Hale, Lind spoke no Spanish and carried strong Protestant, anti-Catholic prejudices into the overwhelmingly Catholic Mexico. Unlike Hale, however, Lind was empowered to negotiate with Mexican officials. Wilson had instructed Lind to press Huerta's government for "an immediate cessation of fighting throughout Mexico," an "early and free election" in which all parties could participate, a promise from Huerta not to be a candidate, and an agreement by all parties to respect the results of the election. In return, the United States promised to recognize the newly elected government. The Huerta regime met with Lind but refused to accede to Wilson's demands.¹²

The Material Wilson received was a blend of analysis and raw data. His representatives not only told him what they had learned but also included their judgments and recommendations.

Lind left Mexico City for the port of Veracruz, where he continued to gather information and report to Washington. Lind sent his reports to Wilson via official cable channels. His reports were a mixture of HUMINT and OSINT. Lind's data came from human sources, including some who did not wish to be identified, and from the Mexican press. Lind also met with diplomats of other countries anxious to pass their impressions of Mexico to Washington.

Lind was prone to trying to influence policy by suggesting courses of action; seeking to direct, in addition to informing. In the spring of 1914, Lind urged Wilson to intervene militarily in Veracruz, assuring Wilson that US troops would be greeted as liberators. Wilson usually disregarded such suggestions and concentrated on the information his agents reported.

Veracruz proved to be an exception, however. Wilson accepted Lind's judgment that "To dispose of the present regular army will be an easy task. If the officers in command `break ranks' and say `shoo' they will scatter and never be heard of again except as inmates of jails and almshouses," and the president authorized an occupation of Veracruz. When Mexican civilians resisted the occupation, which resulted in the deaths of 19 Americans and several hundred Mexicans, Wilson was shocked. After that experience, he viewed such analysis more skeptically, and Lind's influence was sharply curtailed.¹³

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Other Sources

Wilson's other "confidential men" were openly known to be US representatives, despite some like Hale, who acted under a thin cover story. They all solicited information from official and unofficial sources alike, meeting with Mexican government officials and revolutionary leaders as well as with unofficial supporters and opponents of the Huerta regime. The material they sent to Wilson was a blend of analysis and raw data. His representatives not only told him what they had learned but also included their judgments and sometimes recommendations for action.

Wilson did not rely solely on his confidential men. He also sought information from businessmen and friends with contacts in Mexico. He read unsolicited reports from people trying to influence his policies. He received a flood of mail from many unofficially credentialed, self-credentialed, and non-credentialed representatives, all aimed at garnering Wilson's support for the Mexican leader of their choice. Potentially useful material flooded the White House mail room along with a profusion of crank mail. The president's secretary, Joseph Tumulty, sorted through it all and forwarded a large representative sample to Wilson.¹⁴

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 Wilson used all his sources to search for consistent elements in a plethora of information to eliminate his own uncertainties.

 

Wilson's Analytical Method

Wilson used all these sources to search for consistent elements in a plethora of information to eliminate his own uncertainties about which Mexican revolutionary faction to support. He believed that pieces of truth would fit together as a whole. The trick was to tease the facts from the propaganda and lies in a rudimentary form of content analysis. As he noted in early 1915,

Things that are not so do not match. If you hear enough of them, you see there is no pattern whatever; it is a crazy quilt, whereas the truth always matches, piece by piece, with other parts of the truth. No man can lie consistently, and he cannot lie about everything if he talks to you too long. I would guarantee that if enough liars talked to you, you would get the truth; because the parts that they did not invent would match each other, and the parts that they did invent would not match one another. Talk long enough, therefore, and see the connections clearly enough, and you can patch together the case as a whole. I had somewhat that experience about Mexico, and that was about the only way in which I learned anything that was true about it, for there had been vivid imaginations and many special interests which depicted things as they wished me to believe them to be.¹⁵

This sorting of information for consistency applied to the press as well as to the mail Wilson received. He distrusted much of the Washington press corps. As he wrote to a friend in September 1913,

Do not believe anything you read in the papers. If you read the papers I see, they are utterly untrustworthy.... Read the editorial page and you will know what you will find in the news columns. For unless they are grossly careless the two always support each other. Their lying is shameless and colossal!¹⁶

Wilson held the press of William Randolph Hearst in particular contempt. The Hearst papers were among the loudest of those trying to influence Wilson's Mexico policy, with the New York American and the San Francisco Examiner leading the way. These papers regularly brandished lurid headlines to discredit the Constitutionalists, accusing them of a wide range of atrocities, including murder, looting and rape. At one point, Hearst's New York American published photos of children playing on a beach in British Honduras-photos that had originally appeared in the New York Tribune in 1912-with a caption falsely claiming they were children in Mexico lined up to be shot by revolutionaries, "proof of an almost unbelievable state of barbarity." Wilson ignored such reports. He had little use for Hearst, but the stories contaminated the public debate and so may have influenced reports Wilson received from other sources.¹⁷

Throughout the crisis, the notable exception to Wilson's attitude toward the press remained the New York World. Wilson wrote to the World's publisher, Ralph Pulitzer, in 1914,

Let me say that every day I open the editorial page of the World expecting to find what I do, a real vision of things as they are.

Wilson also held the Springfield (Massachusetts) Republican in high regard. Secretary Tumulty pasted together long sheets with selected editorials and stories from other newspapers for Wilson's reading. But, while Wilson discounted much of the press coverage on Mexico, a small group of reporters--perceived to be accurate--were called to Washington for personal interviews with Wilson. In this select group was World reporter John Reed, who met Wilson in 1914 to give the president his first hand impressions. Reed emphasized the revolution as a justified fight against powerful landowners and a corrupt Catholic Church, and he painted Pancho Villa in a very positive light. Wilson told his ambassador to Britain to read Reed's articles on Mexico because he "had it right."¹⁸

Wilson did not trust reporting from businessmen with interests in Mexico because of their biases.

Much less reliable as sources for Wilson were American businessmen who tended to back whichever faction posed the least threat to their property or whichever faction their business rivals opposed. For example, American mine owners, the dominant US business in Mexico, generally favored Pancho Villa because he controlled much of the area in which US-owned mines were located and he had promised to protect the mines so long as their owners advanced him large "loans."

The Phelps-Dodge Corporation, headed by Wilson's good friend from Princeton, Cleveland Dodge, however, favored Venustiano Carranza, head of the Constitutionalists, as did Samuel Gompers and the American Federation of Labor. American oil interests also preferred Carranza, who controlled many of the oil-producing areas in northeast Mexico. They also hoped to benefit if Carranza ousted Huerta, who had the backing of rival British oil companies. The expatriate American business community in Mexico City supported Huerta, but Wilson largely ignored them because he did not trust anyone who supported Huerta. No significant international business group supported another contestant for power, Emiliano Zapata, most likely because he controlled a region in which there was no significant US business interest.¹⁹

Venustiano Carranza, the leader if the Constitutionalists. (© CORBIS)

Although Wilson did not trust reporting from businessmen with interests in Mexico because of their biases, he did read some of the reports businessmen sent to him or to his cabinet members, particularly if they came from men with ties to political allies or to Princeton.

Wilson had a strict view of his cabinet's role, and he expected its members to stay within the well-defined bounds of their parameters.

One Princetonian businessman, John Silliman, actually enlisted as a representative. Silliman happened to be vice consul in Coahuila and had known Carranza before the revolution. Unfortunately for Wilson, his old colleague was a less-than-perfect choice. Silliman was timid and spoke Spanish so poorly that Carranza never took him seriously. Some of Carranza's staff began calling the envoy "silly man." In at least one case, Carranza made Silliman read one of Wilson's messages in Spanish to embarrass him. Nonetheless, Wilson kept him in his position, not wanting to humiliate him with a recall. Wilson judged that Silliman was doing a capable job just passing messages back and forth. The State Department, however, did send a translator to work with him.²⁰

The US military was notably absent from Wilson's list of intelligence collectors. Their role, in the president's mind, was to plan the tactical details of the military operations they were ordered to undertake.

An important exception was Gen. Hugh Scott, commander of the Army's Southern Department. Wilson consulted Scott, but only about Villa and Carranza, especially since Scott had met Villa several times.

Wilson chose not to tap Scott's superior, Secretary of War Lindley Garrison, an officer the president did not know well. Garrison was chosen for the cabinet position only because Wilson's secretary, Tumulty, knew Garrison from service in the New Jersey state government. Garrison turned out to be a vocal hawk favoring military intervention in cabinet meetings, basing his comments and reports on information he received from officers stationed along the US-Mexican border. Garrison soon realized, however, that Wilson did not often take his advice on foreign policy questions. The secretary of war, like the generals he managed, was consigned to tactical and administrative issues on Mexico.²¹

Another exception was Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels, who was a member of Wilson's inner circle.²² Wilson knew him well and because Daniels, unlike Garrison, was not an interventionist, Wilson trusted his judgment. In addition, because the United States maintained a naval presence in Mexican ports, a practice begun by President Taft, Daniels was getting information from navy officers on the scene.²³

Wilson had a strict view of his cabinet's role, and he expected its members to stay within the well-defined bounds of their departments. Thus, in keeping diplomatic and strategic initiatives in his office, even members Wilson trusted were isolated from decisionmaking on Mexico--and thus of no intelligence value to the president. For example, he complained to his fiance, Edith Galt, that his son-in-law, Secretary of the Treasury William McAdoo, was trying to influence his Mexican policies, which were, in the president's words, "none of his business." Only Secretary of State Bryan and, to a lesser extent, Daniels advised Wilson on Mexico. Bryan was included because US policy toward Mexico was in his portfolio of duties.

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IMINT and SIGINT, Lesser Players

Types of intelligence other than HUMINT and OSINT had only minor roles in informing Wilson's policies. IMINT was limited to ground photography used as tactical intelligence for the military.²⁴ In preparation for possible armed intervention in 1914, the US Navy sent officers into Mexico to photograph bridges and railways. One Marine officer even passed himself off as a US businessman writing a guide book for Mexico City and received a tour of the Mexican Presidential Palace and its defenses. These missions played no role in White House decisions.²⁵

SIGINT played an important part, but it was largely a counterintelligence tool, used to monitor the activities of foreign intelligence services in the United States.

SIGINT played an important part, but it was largely a counterintelligence tool, used to monitor the activities of foreign intelligence services in the United States. It was limited at the time to tapping telephone lines and telegraph cables, and intercepting wireless radio communications. SIGINT, in contrast to Wilson's HUMINT and OSINT, came mostly through official channels, rather than through the informal ones Wilson had established.

SIGINT turned out to be especially useful in the spring of 1915 in preventing Huerta's return to Mexico from exile in Spain, to which he had fled in July 1914. The Germans, eager to embroil the United States in a war with Mexico, courted Huerta. In February 1915, a German naval officer, Captain Franz von Rintelen, visited Huerta in Spain and offered to back him in a counterrevolution. Encouraged by fighting then underway between Villa and Carranza, Huerta agreed to consider the idea and went to New York, landing on 12 April 1915. His reception by a crowd of Mexican supporters bolstered the former dictator's plans. He was greeted by admirers everywhere he went. The atmosphere, at least in the exile community, seemed to favor his return.²⁶

Gen. Victoriano Huerta (center) on his arrival in New York City. (© Bettmann/CORBIS)

Treasury Secretary William McAdoo's men tapped German and Austrian diplomatic telephones in Washington and New York and relayed the reports to Wilson. These reports focused more on the activities of German and Austrian diplomats and their possible complicity in sabotage in the United States than they did on Mexico, but they did include information about German plotting in Mexico.²⁷

By 24 June 1915, mistakenly thinking he had shaken pursuers, Huerta boarded a train in New York bound for San Francisco, switching later to one for El Paso. At the same time, Villa's representative in Washington reported to the Wilson administration that numerous former Huertista officers were on their way to El Paso from places of exile in the United States. The next day, United States marshals arrested Huerta as he stepped from his train in Newman, Texas, only a few miles from the border. Supporters waiting in a car to drive him across the border were also arrested.²⁸

Because Wilson insisted on concrete information before acting, he was frustrated by the lack of definitive information.

Officials in El Paso kept President Wilson informed through frequent cables. Zach Lamar Cobb, the US customs collector there, had built a small intelligence network of his own, including railroad employees. These sources reported Huerta's movements, which Cobb relayed to Washington. Cobb also organized the group that arrested Huerta. Once Huerta was arrested, Wilson ordered the Justice Department to detained him and keep him from returning to Mexico, orders the department followed until Huerta's death in custody from complications of alcoholism.²⁹

SIGINT thus provided "actionable" information about Huerta's plotting just as Hale's HUMINT had given the president the information he needed to dismiss a US ambassador. Wilson's other sources provided less definitive information. Some reports improved his awareness of key issues, most notably land reform. However, much of the reporting simply made him cautious in choosing one factional leader over another. In his notes to Secretary of State Bryan, Wilson demonstrated a willingness to recognize whichever revolutionary faction could demonstrate that it had gained Mexican public support.

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Wishing for More Information

However, until late 1915 the information Wilson was receiving could not help him come to a conclusion. For example, Wilson once complained that US consuls reporting from Mexico "sent me only a small batch of `flimsies' [telegrams printed on very thin paper] and they contained nothing but multiplied details--and very small details at that--of the chaos that is Mexico."

In all likelihood, Wilson's ambivalence was also influenced by the efforts of those vying for power in Mexico. The Mexicans were well aware of Wilson's actions and each political and military faction did its best to influence his interpretation of events, through lobbying, personal contacts, and in the US press. Huerta had considerable support in the United States, especially among business leaders, but Wilson's negative opinion of Huerta was firmly set. Carranza and Villa, however, both had fairly sophisticated public relations campaigns aimed at the United States and the White House. Carranza had a press office in New York and Washington DC, which issued regular releases to reporters and to members of Congress. Villa encouraged reporters, like Reed, who gave him favorable coverage, and his military train included a press car in which reporters could sleep and eat. He also allowed them to use the Mexican telegraph system, often free of charge, to contact newspapers at home.

Because Wilson insisted on concrete information before acting, he was frustrated by the lack of definitive reporting. As he would tell Edith Galt, "The fact is, I never have had any patience with `ifs' and conjectural cases. My mind insists always upon waiting until something actually does happen and then discussing what is to be done about that."³⁰

Wilson's frustration with the lack of actionable intelligence is neither hard to understand not uncommon to presidents, as they and other policymakers often expect and demand more from intelligence than it can deliver.³¹ To be fair to Wilson's sources, it was not until 1915 that any faction in Mexico gained enough dominance to legitimately earn US recognition.

In the end, Wilson's system produced mixed results, with more problems than would be acceptable in a professionalized system.

Lack of definitive judgments on Wilson's part reflected the lack of a stable reality on the ground. By late summer 1915, however, it was clear that Carranza led the most powerful revolutionary faction, and, in October 1915, Wilson extended recognition to Carranza's government.

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An Assessment of Wilson's System

In the end, Wilson's system produced mixed results, with more problems than would be acceptable in a professionalized system. Wilson received a lot of good information, particularly from American reporters in Mexico and from the US consuls who had built personal ties to Mexico's revolutionary leaders. Wilson did trust some official State Department reporting, but only from sources that seemed to him to be accurate.

The informality of Wilson's system made his method cumbersome, but, possibly worse, his approach to assessing the reliability of reports by determining its consistency with other facts was itself unreliable. As future intelligence failures would demonstrate, Wilson was wrong to believe that only the truth could be consistent. Falsehoods we now know can also seem logical and factually consistent if key contradictory information remains unknown, ignored, or analyzed on the basis of faulty assumptions.

Fortunately for Wilson, his initial assumption that Huerta's government lacked popular support relative to the Constitutionalist revolutionaries was based on accurate information--including the New York World's reporting--and so provided a firm foundation for judging later information. The quality of the World's reporting helped Wilson. In hindsight it appears to have been accurate in comparison to other major US newspapers, the Hearst chain in particular. Had Wilson based his judgments on the reporting of Ambassador Wilson or on the Hearst newspapers, his system would have served only to reinforce erroneous assumptions.³²

Wilson tapped sources that were diverse, decentralized, and with different kinds of expertise. Because of this variety, no one source could dominate Wilson's thinking and he was able to avoid the traps of groupthink. Because Wilson's policies were still forming, he also heard different viewpoints about the Mexican factions, although he did ignore most of Huerta's supporters. The end result of this information flow may have been chaotic, but it gave Wilson a wide range of opinions and information.

Wilson was also sensitive to the proclivity of his sources to suggest policy. Although he sometimes took that advice--as he did Lind's urging to occupy Veracruz in early 1914--in general, Wilson dismissed the policy suggestions of his reporters.

After World War I ended, Wilson took another approach to gathering intelligence and created a new organization, the Inquiry, to pull together information and provide analysis on the issues raised at the Versailles Peace Conference. The Inquiry consisted of area experts--including members of the military, academics, and reporters--who knew the different regions and populations affected by the war.

In establishing the Inquiry, Wilson elected to use a more formal structure of intelligence collection and analytic expertise than he had employed in trying to understand Mexico. The Inquiry was disbanded immediately after the Versailles conference ended, but it demonstrated that Wilson had learned from his efforts to understand events in Mexico, including the lesson that foreign information had to come from more places than the usual State Department channels.³³

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Bibliography

 

Manuscript Collections

Woodrow Wilson Papers. Manuscript Division. Library of Congress.

Hugh Scott Papers. Manuscript Division. Library of Congress.

John Lind Papers (Microfilm). Zimmerman Library, University of New Mexico.

Records Group 59. Records of the Department of State Relating to Internal Affairs of Mexico, 1910-1929. M-274. National Archives.

 

Books and Articles

Anderson, Mark Cronlund. Pancho Villa's Revolution by Headline. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2000.

Andrews, Gregg. Shoulder to Shoulder? The American Federation of Labor, The United States, and the Mexican Revolution, 1910-1924. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991.

Baker, Ray Stannard. Woodrow Wilson: Life and Letters-President, 1913-1914. New York: Doubleday, Doran & Co., 1931.

Challener, Richard D. Admirals, Generals and American Foreign Policy, 1898-1914. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973.

Daniel, Robert L. "The Friendship of Woodrow Wilson and Cleveland H. Dodge," Mid-America 43 (1961).

Gilderhus, Mark T. Diplomacy and Revolution: U.S.-Mexican Relations under Wilson and Carranza. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1977.

Gompers, Samuel. Seventy Years of Life and labor: An Autobiography. New York: Augustus M. Kelly, 1967.

Heuer, Richards J. Psychology of Intelligence Analysis. Washington, D.C.: Center for the Study of Intelligence, 1999.

Hill, Larry. Emissaries to a Revolution: Woodrow Wilson's Executive Agents in Mexico. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1973.

------. "The Progressive Politician as a Diplomat: The Case of John Lind in Mexico," The Americas 27 (1971).

Knight, Alan. The Mexican Revolution, Volume I: Porfirians, Liberals and Peasants. Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1986.

Knudson, Jerry W. "John Reed: A Reporter in Revolutionary Mexico." Journalism History 29:2 (Summer 2003).

Landau, Henry. The Enemy Within: The Inside Story of German Sabotage in America. New York: G. Putnam's Sons, 1937.

Lawrence, David. The True Story of Woodrow Wilson. New York: George H. Doran, 1924.

Link, Arthur, ed. The Papers of Woodrow Wilson Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1966-1996.

------.Woodrow Wilson: The New Freedom. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1956.

Lowenthal, Mark M. Intelligence: From Secrets to Policy. Washington, DC: CQ Press, 2000.

Lundberg, Ferdinand. Imperial Hearst: A Social Biography. New York: Equinox Cooperative Press, 1936.

Lyon, Jessie. "Diplomatic Relations Between the United States, Mexico, and Japan: 1913-1917," Ph.D. diss. Claremont College, 1975.

Mahoney, Henry Thayer and Marjorie Locke Mahoney, Espionage in Mexico: The Twentieth Century. San Francisco: Austin & Winfield, 1997.

McAdoo, William G. Crowded Years: The Reminiscences of William G. McAdoo. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1931.

Meyers, William K. "Pancho Villa and the Multinationals: United States Mining Interests in Villista Mexico, 1913-1915," Journal of Latin American Studies, 23 (1991).

O' Toole, G.J.A. Honorable Treachery: A History of U.S. Intelligence, Espionage, and Covert Action from the American Revolution to the C.I.A. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1991.

Quirk, Robert E. An Affair of Honor: Woodrow Wilson and the Occupation of Veracruz. New York: Norton, 1967.

Rausch, Jr., George J. "The Exile and Death of Victoriano Huerta," Hispanic American Historical Review 42 (1962).

Startt, James D. Woodrow Wilson and the Press. New York: Palgrave-MacMillan, 2004.

Stephenson, George M. John Lind of Minnesota Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1935.

Stuart, Graham H. The Department of State: A History of Its Organization, Procedure, and Personnel. New York: MacMillan, 1949.

Tuchman, Barbara. The Zimmermann Telegram. New York: Dell Publishing, 1963.

Von Kleist, Franz Rintelen. The Dark Invader: Wartime Reminiscences of a German Naval Intelligence Officer. London: Lovat Dickson, 1933.

Werking, Richard Hume. The Master Architects: Building the United States Foreign Service, 1890-1913. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1977.

Westerfield, H. Bradford, ed. Inside CIA's Private World: Declassified Articles from the Agency's Internal Journal, 1955-1992. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995.

Wilson, Henry Lane. Diplomatic Episodes in Mexico and Chile. New York: Doubleday, Page & Co. 1927.

Wristen, Henry Merritt. Executive Agents in American Foreign Relations Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1967.

 

Press

The New York World. 1913-1915.

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Footnotes

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