The necessity of procuring good Intelligence is apparent & need not be further urged-All that remains for me to add, is, that you keep the whole matter as secret as possible. For upon Secrecy, Success depends in most Enterprizes of the kind, and for want of it, they are generally defeated, however well planned & promising a favourable issue.
To Colonel Elias Dayton, 26 July 1777; cited in Helgerson, CIA Briefings (1996). When President Kennedy visited CIA in January 1961 he saw this letter on display and asked for a copy of it. He later wrote to DCI Allen Dulles, "The letter is both a fine memento of my visit with you and a continuing reminder of the role of intelligence in national policy."
