watch be kept... I wish a dozen or more of honest, sensible, and diligent men, were employed... to question, cross-question, etc., all such persons as are unknown, and cannot give an account of themselves in a straight and satisfactory line... I think it a matter of importance to prevent them from obtaining intelligence of our situation." Washington occasionally had to deal with rogue intelligence officers in his ranks who used their positions for personal gain or undertook unauthorized or illegal operations that might have compromised parts of his intelligence apparatus. Once Washington discovered that two of his agents who supposedly were collecting intelligence on Long Island were "mere plundering parties." He set up a special team to investigate and arrest the renegade operatives. Techniques Foreign intelligence The first intelligence agent enlisted by the Secret Correspondence Committee was Arthur Lee, then living in London. On November 30, 1775, the day after its founding, the Committee appointed Dr. Lee as its agent in England and told him that "it is considered of the utmost consequence to the cause of liberty that the Committee is kept informed of developments in Europe." Following the first Congressional appropriation for the work of the Committee on December 11, 1775, two hundred pounds was forwarded to Lee with the urging that he finds out the "disposition of foreign powers towards us, and the admonition that we need not hint that great circumspection and impenetrable security are necessary." The next agent recruited abroad by the committee was Charles W. F. Dumas, a Swiss journalist at The Hague. Dumas was briefed personally by Thomas Story, a courier of the committee, and instructed on the use of cover names and letter drops to be used for his reports to the committee and communication with Dr. Lee in London. He also planted stories in a Dutch newspaper, Gazette de Leide, intended to give the United States a favorable rating in Dutch credit markets. On March 1, 1776, the Committee appointed Silas Deane, a former delegate to Congress and future ambassador to France, as its agent there. He was instructed to pose as a Bermudian merchant dealing in Indian goods. He was also charged with making secret purchases and with attempting to gain secret assistance from the French crown. Later, both Deane and Lee would be converted from agents to commissioners to the French Crown, albeit secret ones, until the open and