World War I was a seminal event for American national security and foreign policy, as the United States deployed nearly two million soldiers and sailors to Europe and engaged in the most intense overseas combat in its history up to that point. Yet the development of modern American intelligence just before and during the war, and even the magnitude of the war itself, have been largely forgotten by the US public.

David Priess spoke with historian and former intelligence officer Mark Stout, author of the new book World War I and the Foundations of American Intelligence, about early steps toward peacetime US military intelligence in the 1880s and 1890s, the importance of Arthur Wagner and his late 19th century textbook about information collection, the intelligence impact on and from the Spanish-American War and the Philippine insurgency, how the war in Europe spurred intelligence advances in the mid-1910s, German sabotage in the United States, how General John Pershing and the American Expeditionary Forces used intelligence in combat, the growth of domestic intelligence during the war, the scholarly group gathered by President Woodrow Wilson called "The Inquiry," and why World War I generally fails to resonate with Amercians today.

Among the works mentioned in this episode:

The book World War I and the Foundations of American Intelligence by Mark Stout

The book Classified: Secrecy and the State in Modern Britain by Christopher Moran

The movie Gone with the Wind (1939)

The book Wasteland: The Great War and the Origins of Modern Horror by W. Scott Poole

The Chatter podcast episode The JFK Assassination and Conspiracy Culture with Gerald Posner

The book Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carré

The movie Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (2011)

Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Megan Nadolski and Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.

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