As part of our celebration of America at 250, we’ve started a weekly newsletter by historian Jonathan Horn. Learn what happened this week in American history, why it matters, and what else you should see and read in The Free Press and beyond. This week Jonathan looks at one of the most audacious raids in American military history. To get this newsletter in your inbox every week, sign up here. —The Editors
They traveled by gunboat and foot instead of helicopter; gained entry by forging letters instead of breaching computer systems; donned disguises instead of night-vision goggles; and communicated with smoke signals and flags instead of livestream. Long before the operation to extract Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro, a band of U.S. soldiers and their Filipino allies pulled off one of the most daring ruses in military history and captured the Philippine insurgent leader Emilio Aguinaldo. The 125th anniversary of the raid this week is a reminder that such missions require cunning and courage—and rarely come without controversy.
It was hardly obvious in 1898, when the Spanish-American War first brought U.S. forces to the Philippines (then a Spanish colony), that Aguinaldo would become America’s most-wanted man in the archipelago. Not yet 30 years old but already the head of the Philippine nationalist movement, Aguinaldo had hoped that the country famous for the Declaration of Independence would support a declaration of independence for the Philippines. When President William McKinley dashed those hopes by claiming the islands for the United States at the end of the war (there was reason to think the Germans or Japanese might have seized the islands otherwise), Aguinaldo shifted from fighting the Spanish to fighting the Americans.
With U.S. forces putting the squeeze on the nationalist army in late 1899, Aguinaldo turned to guerrilla tactics and dispersed his men. The bloody Philippine-American War would drag on as Aguinaldo disappeared into the mountainous northeast of the Philippines’ largest island, Luzon.
The breakthrough in the search for Aguinaldo came in January 1901 via the same means that would later lead Navy SEALs to Osama bin Laden: a courier. When a messenger carrying dispatches from Aguinaldo surrendered to American forces, Brigadier General Frederick Funston took personal charge of the questioning. A diminutive Kansan known for making big headlines (he had received the Medal of Honor for his actions during a battle in 1899), Funston would deny ever employing an interrogation technique known as the “water cure.” Whatever the truth, Funston gained two key pieces of information: that Aguinaldo resided in a village called Palanan by Luzon’s northeast coast, and that he was hoping to receive reinforcements there shortly.
