Into the State: How American Reporters Came to Work For the US Government

Abstract

What a reporter is and does, and does not do, and the integrity of that idea, has always been an unsettled question, interrogated on the blurred, unregulated borders between journalism and the state. In embattled liminal spaces, reporters—negotiating a nebulous terrain of high-stakes reporting that tested and revised their emerging, unstable journalistic norms—fought in war, collaborated with US intelligence, and engaged in secret diplomacy. This article, focusing on the careers of two reporters, Sylvester Scovel in Cuba and William Bayard Hale in Mexico, explains how and why reporters came to work for the state, a neglected tradition conceptualized here as “state work,” from the 1890s to 1920s. That history is an argument for scholars of journalism and political history to study what reporters did, not just what they published, to better understand the role of journalism in US democracy.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Edward Barrett letter to Abraham Rosenthal, May 20, 1974, box 62, folder 19, Abraham Rosenthal Papers, New York Times Company Papers, New York Public Library.

2 Stansfield Turner memo to Lloyd Cutler, January 25, 1980, Carter Presidential Papers, Staff Offices, Counsel, Cutler, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), October 1979-January 1980.

3 AR letter to John Henry Faulk, May 6, 1980, box 63, folder 5, Rosenthal Papers. Rosenthal detailed his trip to Washington, DC, and his meeting with President Carter in a lengthy memo to Times publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Sr., titled, “Reconstruction of the conservation with the President on April 21, 1980, at noon,” box 63, folder 5, Abraham Rosenthal Papers.

4 Journalism scholars and press freedom groups have defined “journalist,” as a broad category that includes everyone involved in producing news, such as an editor and photographer, while also attempting to define the shifting idea of the “report.” A “reporter” initially meant anyone who provided an account of events, such as a diplomat or eyewitness. A functional definition of a reporter emerged around the 1830s as someone whose occupation was gathering and communicating news, typically through published articles. By the early twentieth century, reporting was defined through its vocational training and professional organizations. This definition overlaps with “correspondent,” which could be anyone writing to a newspaper, or a full-time newspaper employee reporting abroad. To date, there exists no historical analysis of the evolving definition of the reporter. Forde, Kathy Roberts, and Katherine A. Foss. “‘The Facts—the Color!—The Facts’: The Idea of a Report in American Print Culture, 1885—1910,” Book History 15 (2012): 123–51; Christopher B. Daly, Covering America: A Narrative History of a Nation's Journalism (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2012); Robert E. Park, “The Natural History of the Newspaper,” American Journal of Sociology 29, no. 3 (November, 1923): 373-400; John Maxwell Hamilton, Journalism's Roving Eye: A History of American Foreign Reporting (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2009).

5 The phrase “folk theory of a free press,” is taken from Ruth Palmer, Bejamin Toff, and Rasmus Nielson, “The Media Covers Up a Lot of Things”: Watchdog Ideals Meet Folk Theories of Journalism,” Journalism Studies 21, no. 14 (August 2020): 1973-1989. See also Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels, Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016). For a recent history debunking the myth of a pre-New Deal weak state see William J. Novak, New Democracy: The Creation of the Modern American State (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2022).

6 The phrase “government out of sight” is taken from Brian Balogh, A Government Out of Sight: The Mystery of National Authority in Nineteenth Century America (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009). See also Gary Gerstle, Liberty and Coercion: The Paradox of American Government from the Founding to the Present (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017); Balogh, The Associational State: American Governance in the Twentieth Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015); Daniel Carpenter, The Forging of Bureaucratic Autonomy: Reputations, Networks, and Policy Innovation in Executive Agencies, 1862-1928 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2020).

7 Though beyond the scope of this project, historians of diplomacy and/or intelligence should reexamine the role of news media not only as an obstacle or contributing factor, but as a consistent source and method that has contributed to the development of both professions.

8 Two important accounts of Sylvester Scovel’s career were first told in Joyce Milton’s The Yellow Kids Foreign Correspondents in the Heyday of Yellow Journalism (New York: HarperCollins, 1989), then W. Joseph Campbell’s The Year That Defined American Journalism: 1897 and the Clash of Paradigms (New York: Routledge, 2006).

9 See David Greenberg, Republic of Spin (New York: W.W. Norton, 2016); Kathryn Brownell, Showbiz Politics: Hollywood in American Political Life (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014); Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanof, The Race Beat: The Press, The Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation (New York: Vintage Books, 2006); Aniko Bodroghkozy, Equal Time: Television and the Civil Rights Movement (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2012); Sid Bedingfield, Newspaper Wars: Civil Rights and White Resistance in South Carolina, 1935-1965 (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2017); Jim Willis, The Media Effect: How the News Influences Politics and Government (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2007).

10 For Cazneau biography, see Linda S. Hudson, Mistress of Manifest Destiny: A Biography of Jane McManus Storm Cazneau, 1807-1878 (Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 2001).

11 Quoted from James Randall and Richard Current, Lincoln the President: Last Full Measure (Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 2000), 41.

12 Quoted from, Ronald R. Rodgers, “‘Journalism Is a Loose-Jointed Thing’: A Content Analysis of Editor & Publisher’s Discussion of Journalistic Conduct Prior to the Canons of Journalism, 1901–1922,” Journalism of Mass Media Ethics 22, no. 1 (December 2007).

13 About 400 reporters, including photographers and artists, operated from Florida—its coast about 100 miles from Cuba—while about 165 reported in Cuba. In the National Archives, RG 107/E.80 there are about 400 war correspondent passes. See Stephen Bottomore “Filming, Faking and Propaganda: The Origins of the War Film, 1897-1902” (PhD diss., Utrecht University, 2007), 34. John D. Miley claimed that about eighty-nine reporters traveled to Cuba with the US expedition, while war reporter James F. J. Archibald claimed more than 150. See John D. Miley, In Cuba with Shafter (New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1899), 45, and James Francis Jewell Archibald, “The War Correspondents of to-Day,” Overland Monthly, March 1901, 37.

14 For an overview of yellow reporting in Cuba, see Christopher B. Daly, Covering America: A Narrative History of a Nation's Journalism (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2012); Joseph Campbell, Yellow Journalism: Puncturing the Myths, Defining the Legacies (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2001; Jason Skog, Yellow Journalism (Minneapolis: Compass Point Books, 2007); Charles H. Brown, The Correspondents' War: Journalists in the Spanish-American War (New York: Scribner's, 1967); and Judith Spencer and David Ralph Spencer, The Yellow Journalism: The Press and America's Emergence as a World Power (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2007).

15 In previous wars, spies were, or posed as reporters, who occasionally impersonated others. By 1898, war reporting was increasingly regulated, as militaries “immensely restricted” reporters’ “freedom of action in the field,” one reporter complained. Meanwhile, however, Scovel was in Cuba performing masculine public spectacles as a self-appointed humanitarian and government agent of the public interest. Breaking new military regulations meant risking the same (occasionally true) charges of espionage or combatant. Archibald, “My Campaign,” The Universal Review, March 1889, 2-3; British Periodicals, 373. For examples, see Brian Best, Fighting for the News: The Adventures of the First War Correspondents from Bonaparte to the Boers (Barnsley, UK: Pen and Sword Books, 2016), and Angus Hamilton, “Captured War Correspondents,” The Fortnightly Review, January 1913.

16 In a related case, in 1895, Cuba, the State Department secured the freedom of World reporter Manuel Fuentes, a US citizen born in Cuba, who was arrested and released without incident.

17 Undated cable from World to Scovel, box 4, folder 40, Scovel Papers, Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis, Missouri (hereafter Scovel Papers).

18 For example, Richard Harding Davis, probably the most famous reporter of the day, claimed that Scovel, in the “legitimate pursuit” of news, was a non-combatant. Richard Harding Davis, “His Death Will Free Cuba,” The World, February 18, 1871.

19 Weyler had declared martial law and forcibly corralled civilians on penalty of death into fortified, unsanitary camps lacking food and medicine. Then, to suppress the insurgency, Spanish troops demolished crops and property. Weyler’s policy likely killed about 150,000 people, though an exact number is difficult to calculate.

20 Quoted in John Lawrence Tone, War and Genocide in Cuba, 1895-1898 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 220.

21 Frederic Remington, “Fred Remington to The World,” The World, February 21, 1897.

22 “Killing of Charles Govin by Spanish Soldiers,” Office of the Historian, accessed May 1, 2022. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1896/ch102.

23 Private letter from T.G. Alvord to the editor of the World, undated, box 4, folder 36, Scovel Papers.

24 “Interior of the World’s War Correspondent’s Prison,” World clipping, box 4, folder 4B Scrapbook, Scovel Papers.

25 Undated Niles News clipping, box 4, folder 48, Scovel Papers.

26 Bradford Merrill to Scovel, March 9, 11, and December 1, 1896, box 2, folder, “Correspondence to Scovel, Jan 17, 1896 – Feb. 27, 1897, Scovel Papers. Another World letter ordered Scovel not to “improperly aid either of the contesting parties.” See World to Scovel, January 17, 1896, box 2, folder 3, Scovel Papers.

27 Bradford Merrill to Fitzhugh Lee, November 6, 1897, box 4, folder 40, Scovel Papers.

28 Letter from T.G. Alvord to the editor of the World, undated, box 4, folder 36, Scovel Papers. For an account of Scovel advising Gomez, see Grover Flint, Marching with Gomez (Norwood, UK: Norwood Press, 1898), 195.

29 Charles H. Brown, The Correspondents’ War: Journalists in the Spanish-American War (New York: Scribner's, 1967), vi.

30 Brown, The Correspondents’ War, 83.

31 Quoted from “Report of the Committee on Foreign Relations, Relative to Affairs in Cuba,” April 13, 1898, (US Government Printing Office, 1898), 333. The collection also contains official US deliberation of Scovel’s case, on pages 247, 257-262, and 377. At one point, it seems that Scovel considered arguing he had not used his fake name publicly, but only for travel, and had therefore not violated the law. See Letter from T.G. Alvord, March 1, 1897, box 4, folder 41, Scovel Papers.

32 Undated Indictment of Scovel, box 4, folder 41, Scovel Papers.

33 For forged papers see document dated March 5, 1897, box 2, folder 1, Scovel papers.

34 Previously, reporters had occasionally also served in military. See Roger Stearn, “War images and image makers in the Victorian era : aspects of British visual and written portrayal of war and defence c.1866-1906,” Dissertation, King’s College London, 1987.

35 For a contemporary example, see Andrew Draper, The Rescue of Cuba: An Episode in the Growth of Free Government (New York: Silver, Burdett, and Company), 1899. For a scholarly analysis, see Chapter 2 of Kristin Hoganson,  Fighting for American Manhood: How Gender Politics Provoked the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press), 1998.

36 Richard Harding Davis, “Our War Correspondents in Cuba and Puerto Rico,” Harper’s Magazine, May 1899. For additional examples, see Joan M. Jensen Army Surveillance in America, 1775-1980 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1991), 81, which notes President McKinley sent a reporter to study tariffs and currency, 81. And, James F.J. Archibald, a veteran war reporter, volunteered as aide-de-camp, and was shot in the arm while on a scouting expedition near Havana.

37 Scovel to Captain Frederick R. Chadwick, March 19, 1900, box 6, folder, “1898-1899, Photographs of letters of Army and Navy personnel testifying to Scovel’s service during the Spanish-American War,” Scovel Papers. It is likely Scovel mistyped the name of his correspondent, and meant former Rear Admiral French Ensor Chadwick USN, who served in the war of 1898, and who had in interest in its history while President of the Naval War College from 1900-1903.

38 French Ensor Chadwick, The Relations of the United States and Spain: The Spanish-American War, Vol. 1 (New York: Charles Scribner’s & Sons, 1911). The Army’s Military Intelligence Division (MID), in addition to its own attaché system, had local agents in Cuba collect information from rebels and obtain topography and military information. In 1898, MID had only sixteen attachés, twelve officers, ten clerks, and about forty officers in the National Guard. The ONI recruited a few agents in Europe to gather intelligence, including the absurd, part-time journalist Edward Breck. The Naval Attaché in Spain, the State Department, and the ONI all relied heavy on the press for basic information.

39 For a more complete account of Rea’s espionage, see Leslie Eaton Clark, George Bronson Rea, Propagandist: The Life and Times of a Mercenary Journalist (Vancouver, CA: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2017), 61-64.

40 “War Correspondent for an American Newspaper a Prisoner of Porto Rico,” Illustrated American, August 12, 1898, 105.

41 Clark, George Bronson Rea, 62.

42 Ralph Pain, a reporter with the Philadelphia Press, later complained of Scovel’s double duty. “I admired Sylvester Scovel the magnificent, it was to wish that he might have attended more strictly to the newspaper game and left the management of the war to the Admiral.” See Ralph Paine, Roads of Adventure (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1922), 200.

43 The World, May 10, 1898.

44 “Slaughter at San Juan was Needless,” Pittsburgh Dispatch, December 25, 1898, clipping in box 5, folder 6, Scovel Papers; “Rear Admiral T. Sampson, Commander, North Atlantic Squadron, to Lieutenant John C. Fremont, April 30, 1898, Naval History and Heritage Command, accessed May 1, 2022.

45 Milton, Yellow Kids, 252.

46 In May 1898, Scovel allegedly stowed away on the Uncas during a prisoner exchange. His services were not needed, and he was expelled from travel on US Navy ships. However, Scovel later claimed he received approval from Lt. Brainard, an officer on the boat.

47 The World to Scovel, September 8, 1898, expense account, box 6. Scovel also wrote a lengthy letter about his war service, see Scovel to Captain Frederick R. Chadwick March 19, 1900, box 6, folder, “1898-199, photographs of letters of army and navy personnel testifying to Scovel’s service during the Spanish-American War,” Scovel Papers.

48 Scovel saved the rental contract, dated March 14, 1898, box 6, Scovel Papers.

49 Sylvester Scovel, “Under the guns of the Morro," World, New York, April 19, 1898, 1.

50 James Creelman, “My Experience at Santiago,” Review of Reviews 18, no. 5 (November 1898): 542-546.

51 David Nasaw, The Chief (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2001), 138-139.

52 “Character Sketch: Mr. James Creelman, War Correspondent,” Review of Reviews 339, accessed May 1, 2022; Richard Harding Davis, “Our War Correspondents in Cuba and Puerto Rico,” Harper’s Magazine 97, no. 599 (May 1899): 938-948, accessed May 1, 2022.

53 Chadwick, The Relations of the United States and Spain, Vol. 1, 153.

54 “Putting Yellow Journalism in its Place,” Puck Magazine, August 17, 1898, accessed May 1, 2022, Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2012647450/.

55 For example, see “The Noisy Detectives’ Work,” July 1, 1897, 6. The New York Times called the World’s Guldensuppe murder stunt “indecent newspaper detective work.”

56 “How to Punish Scovel,” July 21, box 5, folder 9 “newsclips,” Scovel Papers.

57 Quoted from American State Papers and Documents, Legislative and Executive, of the Congress of the United States, Vol. XIII (Washington, DC: Gales and Seaton, 1834), 269.

58 Then, after the war, reporter Murat Halstead observed, the US press “assumed airs of authority as to its management, its object.” See Murat Halstead, Full Official History of the War with Spain (New Haven, CT: Butler and Alger, 1899), 20.

59 Undated clipping, box 5, folder 9 “Newsclips” Scovel Papers.

60 See Scovel to Captain Frederick R. Chadwick, March 19, 1900, box 6, folder, “1898-1999, Photographs of letters of army and navy personnel testifying to Scovel’s service during the Spanish-American War,” Scovel Papers.

61 See, The Abridgment … Containing the Annual Message of the President of the United States to the Two Houses of Congress … with Reports of Departments and Selections from Accompanying Papers, Vol. 1 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1899), 433, accessed May 1, 2022, Google Books.

62 At Key West, Florida, the signals corps, monitoring the Havana cable, learned from Domingo Villaverde, a US agent and Havana telegraph operator, the location of Cervera’s Spanish fleet. Squires possibly told the story for credit and attention, and probably funding, too. During the war, the corps had ten officers and fifty enlisted soldiers. In 1903, it had thirty-five officers and 860 enlisted. See Britton, Cables, Crises, and the Press, 297; Rebecca Raines, “Manifesting Its Destiny: The U.S. Army Signal Corps in the Spanish-American War,” Army History, no. 46 (Fall 1998–Winter 1999): 14-21.

63 Scovel had failed at least three times to serve President McKinley. See letters from Scovel to McKinley, McKinley Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, series 1, 2, and 3.

64 Milton’s Yellow Kids, Campbell’s 1897, and other accounts focus on Scovel almost exclusively as a “Yellow” reporter.

65 Yearbook of the Empire State Society: Sons of the American Revolution (New York City, Empire State Society, 1910); “Lights and Shadows on Current News,” in Richard Spillane, Commerce and Finance, December 11, 1918.

66 Edward M. House, The Intimate Papers of Colonel House (New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin, 1926), 11.

67 Quoted from Charles Neu, Colonel House: A Biography of Woodrow Wilson’s Silent Partner (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 7.

68 “Diary,” March 1, 1913, Edward Mandell House Papers, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut. Diplomatic immunity was not codified until after World War I. See J. Craig Barker, Protection of Diplomatic Personnel (London: Ashgate Publishing, 2006), 53-61.

69 Ray Stannard Baker, Woodrow Wilson, Life and Letters, Vol. 4 (New York: Doubleday, 1927), 243-244.

70 In Mexico, at least seven other US agencies operated, infectively, including the Post Office, Customs, and Treasury. Wilson’s first agent was likely professor Henry Jones Ford, a friend and former Princeton colleague, who made “quiet investigation” of the Philippines. Ray Stannard Baker, Woodrow Wilson, Vol. 3 (New York: Doubleday, 1923), 217.

71 Quoted from, “Colonel E. House, the silent member of President Wilson’s unofficial cabinet….” The Sun, June 1, 1913, Chronicling America, accessed May 1, 2022. The phrase, quoted from a newspaper, was a common way to describe Wilson’s private sources of information. A few presidents had unofficial cabinets, including Andrew Jackson’s “kitchen cabinet,” and Theodore’s exercise club, the “tennis cabinet.”

72 Christopher Wilson, The Labor of Words: Literary Professionalism in the Progressive Era (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2010).

73 Reporters were unofficial envoys, explained an early biography of Victor Lawson, the Daily’s publisher and editor. See Charles Dennis, Victor Lawson: His Time and His Work, (‎Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Publishing, 2007).

74 For examples of voluminous scholarship on Roosevelt and the press, see Goodwin, The Bully Pulpit; David Greenberg, Republic of Spin: An Inside History of the American Presidency (New York: W. W. Norton, 2016); Harold Holzer, The Presidents Vs. the Press: The Endless Battle Between the White House and the Media—from the Founding Fathers to Fake News (New York: Penguin Publishing Group, 2021).

75 James F. J. Archibald to Theodore Roosevelt, 1904, Theodore Roosevelt Papers, Library of Congress Manuscript Division, Dickinson State University.

76 Ray Stannard Baker to Theodore Roosevelt, January 14, 1905, Theodore Roosevelt Papers, Library of Congress Manuscript Division, Theodore Roosevelt Digital Library, Dickinson State University, https://www.theodorerooseveltcenter.org/Research/Digital-Library/Record?libID=o48497.

77 John Callan O’Laughlin to Theodore Roosevelt, June 7, 1905. Theodore Roosevelt Papers, Library of Congress Manuscript Division, Theodore Roosevelt Digital Library, Dickinson State University, https://www.theodorerooseveltcenter.org/Research/Digital-Library/Record?libID=o49464. See also Stanley Wien, Ambassador for Peace: How Theodore Roosevelt Won the Nobel Peace Prize (Morrisville, NC: Lulu Publishing, 2017).

78 William Allen White, The Autobiography of William Allen White (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1990).

79 William Bayard Hale, “The Disorder of Haiti,” Timely Topics 6, no. 38 (May 1902): 603.

80 Hale to Roosevelt, February 24, 1901, Theodore Roosevelt Papers, Series 1: Letters and Related Material, -1919, February 15-March 6, 1901, https://www.loc.gov/item/mss382990009/.

81 For a general account, see Ralph Menning and Carol Bresnahan Menning, “‘Baseless Allegations’: Wilhelm II and the Hale Interview of 1908,” Central European History, 16, no. 4 (December 1983): 368-397. In a July 7 letter to Reick, Hale claimed to have a friend on Wilhelm’s yacht, who informed him of the ship’s course, which is how he found it. See scrapbook, “Dr. William Bayard Hale and the Kaiser, Interviews, July and August 1908,” box, 15, vol. A, Adolph S. Ochs papers, New York Times Company Papers, New York (hereafter Ochs Papers).

82 Lewis Wiley, December 7, 1908, Kaiser scrapbook, Ochs Papers.

83 In Hale’s summary of the interview, “H” stands for Wilhelm and “I” for Roosevelt.

84 Hale Letter to Reick, July 20, 1908, Kaiser scrapbook, Ochs Volume A, Ochs Papers, New York Times Company Papers, New York. Nine years later, the World claimed Wilhelm knew Hale was a reporter. “The World is able to state that the Kaiser knew full well with whom we was talking and that the interview was arranged,” the World claimed. Then, a World reported knocked on Hale’s door, and Hale issued a typed statement. See “World’s Story of the Interview: Not an Analysis of Century’s article, but of an Earlier Definition,” World, December 26, 1917.

85 Elting Morison and John Blum eds., The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt, Vol. 6 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), 1163.

86 Morison and Blum eds., The Letters, 376.

87 Kaiser scrapbook, box 15, vol. A, Ochs Papers.

88 April 2, 1909, in Gibraltar, Hale, left and dressed in long coat without a hat, followed Roosevelt on his post-presidential trip. box 2 folder 20, William Bayard Hale Papers, Yale University, New Haven, CT; William Bayard Hale, “Ready for Trouble: Mr. Roosevelt Talked on Ship of Danger of an Attack,” Washington Post, April 18, 1909.

89 The muckraking era was ebbing, and “there is an ever-growing public interest in this interpretation,” the World’s Work observed. Quoted from World Work 26, no. 3 (July 1913): 270.

90 Wilson and World’s Work established a symbiotic relationship. Wilson routinely published articles in World’s Work. And, in 1913, Wilson appointed Walter Hines Page as ambassador to Great Britain.

91 “I gave the Governor one piece of advice,” Hale wrote to Olga, “to ‘release’ his speech earlier.” Hale to Olga, August 8, 1912, box 1, folder 3, Hale Papers.

92 In three letters, in April 1913, about a month before the Mexico mission, Hale advised Wilson on the Alien Land Legislation Act. Hale to Wilson, Woodrow Wilson Papers: Series 4: Executive Office File, 1912-1921; 272A, 1913, March – April, Library of Congress, accessed May 1, 2022, http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.mss/ms009194.mss46029.00375; Hale to Wilson, April 18, 1913, Woodrow Wilson Papers: Series 3: Letter books, 1913-1921; Vol. 2, 1913, March 30 - April 24, Library of Congress, accessed May 1, 2022, http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.mss/ms009194.mss46029.00136; Hale to Wilson, April 17, 1913, Woodrow Wilson Papers: Series 4: Executive Office File, 1912-1921; 272A, 1913, March-April, Library of Congress, accessed May 1, 2022, http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.mss/ms009194.mss46029.00375.

93 In early 1915, Wilson lied about House’s mission. Quoted from Marquise De Fontenoy, “‘Personal Agent’ is Bane of Diplomats,” Washington Post, February 20, 1915.

94 James D. Startt, “Colonel Edward M. House and the Journalists,” American Journalism 27, no. 3 (2010): 27-58.

95 The Sun, June 1, 1913, Chronicling America, accessed May 1, 2022, https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030272/1913-06-01/ed-1/seq-49/; See also House Diary, MS 466, Edward Mandell House Papers, Series II, Diaries, 2, vol. 4, accessed May 1, 2022, http://hdl.handle.net/10079/fa/mssa.ms.0466. “I told Roy Howard of the United Press of this and he is to forestall any possible action by a statement regarding my departure though his correspondents at Washington giving the real facts,” House wrote.

96 For a detailed account of Madero’s murder, see Michael C. Meyer, Huerta: A Political Portrait (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1972).

97 First Inaugural Address of Woodrow Wilson, March 4, 1913, The Avalon Project, accessed May 1, 2022, https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/wilson1.asp

98 In 1913, the State Department had 213 people in Washington, DC, and 450 diplomats and consuls abroad. And, until WWI, “most of the information that the attaches collected and then sent back to Washington was on the capabilities of their host countries’ armies and navies,” noted one scholar. See Charles Neu, Colonel House: A Biography of Woodrow Wilson's Silent Partner (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 92; David Alexander Walker, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Creation of the United States Intelligence Community (Davis: University of California, Davis, 2000), 35-36; G.J.A. O’Toole, Honorable Treachery: A History of U.S. Intelligence, Espionage, and Covert Action from the American Revolution to the CIA (New York: Grove Atlantic, 2014), 262.

99 Joseph Patrick Tumulty, Wilson’s private secretary from 1911-1921, recalled that the president “kept in touch with the affairs and opinion of the country and the world through the newspapers.” In the White House Looking Glass, 1, box 120, Joseph P. Tumulty Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

100 Wilson also ordered naval ships to the Bay of Tampico, on the Gulf of Mexico, to gather intelligence.

101 Ray Stannard Baker, Woodrow Wilson, 243.

102 Hale and Olga married in 1909. “Dr. WM. Bayard Hale Weds,” New York Times, October 6, 1909.

103 Hale to Olga, May 14, 1913, and letter (1913), box 1, folder 3, Hale Papers.

104 Hale to Olga, May 27, 1913, box 1 folder 3, Hale Papers.

105 Hale to Olga, June 4, 1913, box 1, folder 3, Hale Papers.

106 Remarks at a Press Conference, May 29, 1913, 483, Woodrow Wilson Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

107 “Demands Truth About Mexico, President Wilson Declines to Act on Stories He Had Been Unable to Confirm About Mexico,” New York Times, July 18, 1913; “Will get Line on Mexico,” New York Times, May 29, 1913. The Times reported Wilson and the State Department were both “exceedingly reticent” on Hale, “the writer, who is now in Mexico City.”

108 “Special Advisors on the Mexican Situation,” Literary Digest 47, no. 6, August 9, 1913.

109 “Wilson Asked to Tell Who Pays Hale,” El Paso Herald, August 15, 1913; Congressional Record: Proceedings and Debates of the Sixty Third Congress, First Session, Vol. L (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1913), Google Books, accessed May 1, 2022, https://www.google.com/books/edition/Congressional_Record/WXFKTOJbcVMC?gbpv=0.

110 “Hale Says Huerta Can Pacify Mexico,” New York Times, August 18, 1913; “Demand Hale’s Expulsion,” Washington Post, August 18, 1913.

111 “The bearer of this card, Mr. William Bayard Hale, my personal friend, is traveling at my request, and any courtesies shown him or assistance rendered him I would deeply appreciate,” the letter stated. Undated letter, box 1, folder 9, Hale Papers.

112 Hale letter to Bryan, October 30, 1913, Woodrow Wilson Papers: Series 2: Family and General Correspondence, 1786-1924; 1913, Sept. 14-circa Oct., accessed May 1, 2022, https://www.loc.gov/resource/mss46029.mss46029-051_0018_1128/?sp=1076; Hale to Wilson, October 22, 1913, Woodrow Wilson Papers: Series 2: Family and General Correspondence, 1786-1924, accessed May 1, 2022, https://www.loc.gov/resource/mss46029.mss46029-051_0018_1128/?sp=816. Still, Hale believed, “that I could get to Hermosillo,” a city in Mexico, “without attracting attention” he told Wilson.

113 “Carranza Expects Dr. Hale, But Washington Denies Sending Any Envoy to the Rebels,” New York Times, November 6, 1913; “Bayard Hale in Tucson and Silent,” New York Times, November 9, 1913; “Silent on Hale Mission. But Bryan Promises a Mexican Statement Soon,” New York Times, November 13, 1913; “Optimism at the White House: Advises at State Department Justify Wilson’s Hopes,” New York Times, November 15, 1913.

114 Hale to Wilson, January 13, 1914, Woodrow Wilson Papers: Series 2: Family and General Correspondence, 1786-1924, reel 53, image 663-664, Library of Congress.

115 Friedrich Katz, The Life and Times of Poncho Villa (Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998), 506.

116 Hale letter Olga, June 4, 1913, box 1, folder 3, Hale Papers.

117 Garrett to Ochs, May 29, 1916, box 13 folder 2, Ochs Papers.

118 Quoted in Stratt, Woodrow Wilson, 105.

119 Howard to House, December 9, 1916, box 63 folder 1991, House Papers.

120 See, Alton Earl Ingram, The Root Mission to Russia, 1917, LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses, 1970. William Bullitt, for example worked for the State Department, and he had reporter credentials. But he was not officially authorized to formally negotiate relations, claimed Secretary of State Robert Lansing. See John M. Thompson, Russia Bolshevism, and the Versailles Peace (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1967), 156l; George F. Kennan, Russia Leaves the War: Soviet American Relations, 1917-1920 Vol. 1 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989), 48; Arthur Bullard, Mobilizing America (New York: Macmillan, 1917), 43.

121 Hale to Wilson, February 7, 1918, box 3 folder 24, Hale Papers.

122 Capozzola, Uncle Sam Wants You, 10.

123 James R. Mock, “The Creel Committee in Latin America,” The Hispanic American Historical Review 22, no. 2 (May 1942): 262-279. The CPI required publicity and regional expertise of reporters. CPI posts in Chile, Argentina, and Brazil, for example, were run by journalists. In another example, Carl Crow, a reporter, was the CPI’s Far Eastern representative.

124 Quoted in Robert Cuff, “Ernest Poole: Novelist as Propagandist, 1917-1918: A Note,” Canadian Review of American Studies 19, no. 2 (Summer 1988): 193.

125 A partial list includes, George R. Cooksey M. Brice Clagett (Treasury), John R. Sutter (Department of Justice), Gerrard Harris (Commerce) John P. Miller (Post Office), George W. Wharton (Agriculture), E. R. Sartwell (Fuel Administration), Frank B. Lord (Shipping Emergency Board), Jocelyn P. Yoder (Army Surgeon General Curtis Hitchcock (Council of National Defense), John W. Jenkins (Navy Department), Arthur Sweetser (Signal Reserve Corps), Sevelon Brown (Bureau of Ordnance), Ben S. Allen (Food Administration), Willard Straight (Army), Frederick Palmer (American Expeditionary Force).

126 Editor & Publisher, June 30, 1917, 9.

127 Quoted in Hamilton, Masses, 110.

128 The Wilson administration expanded the culture of secrecy in American diplomacy. See Daniel Larsen, “Creating an American Culture Of Secrecy: Cryptography In Wilson-Era Diplomacy,” Diplomatic History, 44 no. 1 (January 2020): 102-132.

129 See Joseph Hayden, Negotiating in the Press: American Journalism and Diplomacy, 1918-1919 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University, 2010), 164-167.

130 Quoted in Startt, Woodrow Wilson, the Great War, and the Fourth Estate, 263.

131 Meanwhile, Irish Americans had pushed Wilson to support Irish independence, and in 1919, Wilson sent Creel to investigate. Then, after the CPI disbanded, Wilson sent Creel, who had returned to journalism, to secretly negotiate diplomatic relations with Mexico. The press found out. “Mr. Creel, traveling incognito, has been lost somewhere between El Paso and the Mexican interior,” the Herald reported. The mission failed, and Creel published a book, The People Next Door: An Interpretive History of Mexico and the Mexicans. Masses, 407; Washington Herald, October 24, 1920, Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Library of Congress. <https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045433/1920-10-24/ed-1/seq-16/>; Evening Public Ledger October 4, 1919, Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Library of Congress. <https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045211/1919-10-04/ed-1/seq-4/>.

132 The reporter was Carl Ackerman, and his error was ironic. During WWI, he secretly reported for the State Department. “Reporting for the State Department: Carl W. Ackerman's Cooperation with Government during WWI, Dr. Meghan Menard McCune,” Master’s thesis, LSU; Ochs to Grasty, June 10, box 14, folder 5, Ochs Papers.

133 “President Wilson has Special envoy in Ireland Now,” Public Ledger, undated, box 14, folder 5, Ochs Papers; News Letter of the Friends of Irish Freedom, National Bureau of Information 2, no. 1, July 3, 1920 (Washington DC: National Bureau of Information): 49-55.

134 “Waking the Aircrafters,” C.W. Gilbert New-York Tribune, May 9, 1918, Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Library of Congress, <https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030214/1918-05-09/ed-1/seq-12/>.

135 Generally, the “secret state” is a combination of cooperating federal, state, and municipal surveillance, intelligence, and policing agencies, partnering with vigilantes and the so-called information state, which produced propaganda and conducted secret diplomacy. For examples of scholarship on inaugurating the secret state, see Alfred W. McCoy, Policing America's Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2009); John Maxwell Hamilton, Manipulating the Masses: Woodrow Wilson and the Birth of American Propaganda (New Orleans: LSU Press, 2020). Christopher Capozzola, Uncle Sam Wants You: World War I and the Making of the Modern American Citizen, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).

136 For changing standards of journalism in the nineteenth century see Hazel Dicken-Garcia, Journalistic Standards in Nineteenth-century America (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989).

137 For an example of biographies with state work, see Marc Perrusquia, A Spy in Canaan (New York: Melville House, 2018); Larry Berman, The Perfect Spy: The Incredible Double Life of Pham Xuan An: Time Magazine Reporter and Vietnamese Communist Agent (New York: Harper Collins, 2008); and Own Matthews, An Impeccable Spy: Richard Sorge, Stalin’s Master Agent (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019). Dr. Meghan Elizabeth Menard’s doctoral thesis, “At the Service of the Government”: American Journalists in the Great War and the Agent Model of Government-Press Relations,” embargoed until August 2028, appears to contend directly with the tradition I call “state work,” and will surely have much to contribute.

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Daniel DeFraia

Daniel DeFraia is a visiting professor at Emerson College and a freelance investigative reporter with a PhD (2022) from Boston University. Currently, he is writing a book, titled Shadow Press, which excavates the history of an idea—journalistic independence—told through the lives of several reporters and their secret work for the US state. Previously, he was a Steiger Fellow at the Committee to Protect Journalists and worked in their journalist assistance program. Before that he reported for GlobalPost and other news outlets.