Defining the Mission

Reviews / Votes

"Scott A. Moseman provides an informative and detailed account of the origin and evolution of the American armed forces' strategic intelligence agencies from the Gilded Age to the start of the Cold War. This book will be of great interest to scholars of military organization, intelligence, and national security."- Brian McAllister Linn, author of Real Soldiering: The US Army in the Aftermath of War, 1815-1980"Scott Moseman's Finding Purpose: United States Strategic Military Organizations from 1882-1947, provides key missing steps in the evolution of American intelligence organizations. Going beyond the base facts of how intelligence bodies developed structurally, he provides not only the personalities but also the politics, both partisan and bureaucratic, responsible for the halting growth of military and later political agencies through the 1940s. In peace and war, Moseman provides a fascinated description of the structure and functions of these agencies. As such, Finding Purpose should be essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the early development of the intelligence community."- Jonathan House, author of Intelligence and the State: Analysts and Decision Makers

"Moseman provides an excellent analysis of the development of the military intelligence services inside the US Army and the US Navy prior to creation of the modern intelligence community in 1947. Well done!"- John T. Kuehn, author of Strategy in Crisis: The Pacific War, 1937-1945

"Finding Purpose surveys American military intelligence from its Gilded Age origins to the postOCoWorld War II establishment of a national security system. Doing so, it offers an indispensable guide to the halting efforts of the armed services to develop accurate, usable information and analysis for an emerging great power."- Mark Shulman, author of Navalism and the Emergence of American Sea Power, 1882-1893

"In Defining the Mission, Scott Moseman has made a tremendous contribution to the history of US military intelligence (MI) from the 1880s through World War II. In addition to significant detail on navy, army, and Marine Corps intelligence organizations, Moseman places the evolution and growth of MI in the context of US history-especially the managerial and bureaucratic 'awakenings' that allowed the growth in the size and scope of the entire government. Moseman addresses the services' desires to apply European general staff models after the Franco-Prussian War and especially after the WWI experience, but how they were countered by the reality of the US focus on 'small wars' and the Great Depression's impact on budgets in the ten years leading to WWII. MI professionals will find this a useful addition to their bookshelves."- Michael H. Decker, former Director of Intelligence, US Marine Corps, 2004-2005 and former assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Oversight, 2009-2014.

"This book is a historic treasure that colorfully maps the stutter-start rise of military intelligence as it slowly bloomed to ultimately help America achieve great power status. Scott Moseman, a premier naval intelligence professional himself, reanimates the evolution of intelligence from its formative years in the late nineteenth century through the crucible tests of world wars. This meticulously researched work offers a deep and personalized understanding of how a dedicated cadre of unsung intelligence advocates in the US Navy and US Army struggled against all odds and missteps to deliver advantages to our nation in peacetime, protection to our homeland in crisis, and pivotal victories in the toughest trials of combat. A superb addition to extant military and intelligence historiography."- Rear Admiral Mike Studeman, author of Might of the Chain: Forging Leaders of Iron Integrity