Capturing wartime history to forge postwar intelligence liaison: Telford Taylor’s battle with the US Navy over the future of Anglo-American signals intelligence

Abstract

ABSTRACT Telford Taylor was not a career military intelligence officer, but his short career in military intelligence during World War Two had an outsized impact on the development of American interservice as well as Anglo-American signals intelligence. Near the end of the war, Taylor put forth a visionary proposal to harness wartime lessons learned against Germany and Japan in order to prepare for postwar collaboration against likely rivals, particularly the Soviets. While his British interlocutors were amenable to such a project, the US Navy was not.