The Secret War for the Union: The Untold Story of Military Intelligence in the Civil War

The former chief intelligence reporter for the National Security Agency brings his professional expertise to bear in this detailed analysis, which makes a notable contribution to Civil War literature as the first major study to present the war's campaigns from an intelligence perspective. Focusing on intelligence work in the eastern theater, 1861-1863, Fishel plays down the role of individual agents like James Longstreet's famous ""scout,"" Henry Harrison, concentrating instead on the increasingly sophisticated development of intelligence systems by both sides. Fishel treats intelligence as a continuum, one that in the Civil War included cavalry reconnaissance and the systematic interrogation of prisoners and deserters, as well as the use of local sympathizers to observe and report on enemy forces. Above all, he shows, intelligence required record-keeping--the compilation and cross-checking of fragments of information furnished by a broad variety of sources. Here, the bureaucratized Union army had an advantage over its more casual Confederate counterpart. But if the South was inferior in the collection and interpretation of intelligence, it possessed in Lee a commander gifted in applying the information he did possess. The result, as Fishel shows in this expertly written, organized and researched work, was a rough balance of forces in the intelligence war, a balance that contributed to the bloody, head-down fighting as both sides sought to gain on the battlefield an advantage unobtainable in the war's more subtle areas. (Aug.)