The Secret WWI Sabotage School on American Soil
Few Americans know a hidden New Jersey estate helped shape modern espionage and sabotage tactics that influenced the course of World War I.
In the dense woods of Bernardsville, New Jersey, sits what was once an ordinary country estate called Kingsland. But in 1917, as the United States prepared to enter World War I, the estate took on a far more remarkable role. The American military and the British Secret Service covertly selected Kingsland as a secret training ground to teach the art of sabotage—a pivotal response to the threat posed by Imperial Germany’s covert operations on American soil.
In the years before America entered the war, German agents were already active across the United States. Their operations included bombings, arson, and efforts to disrupt munitions manufacturing. The infamous 1916 Black Tom explosion in Jersey City destroyed over $20 million in war supplies destined for the Allies, sending shockwaves through the government and public alike. The incident underscored the need for the U.S. to prepare for clandestine warfare—and to defend its home front from within.
Enter the Kingsland estate. Wreathed in secrecy, it became the epicenter of an experimental joint venture between the U.S. Army, the fledgling U.S. intelligence services, and the British MI6. The property’s labyrinthine halls and secluded fields became classrooms for an unconventional kind of warfare. American recruits—some military, others civilians—were brought to Kingsland by confidential invitation. None were to speak of what they saw or did there; strict secrecy was enforced by threat of severe consequences.
The trainees studied the principles of sabotage refined by the British in occupied Europe. Instruction included how to construct incendiary devices from household materials, derail railway cars, cut telegraph lines, and sabotage industrial machinery. Handmade booby traps and caches of explosives were concealed throughout the grounds for practical exercises. The students learned to improvise with what little they could carry, emphasizing innovation over brute force—a precursor to the methods later adopted by the Office of Strategic Services and, eventually, the CIA.
One especially gripping lesson at Kingsland was learning to blend in, to pass oneself off as a worker or traveler while carrying out sabotage missions. The instructors, many of whom had risked their own lives behind German lines, drilled students on methods of avoiding detection, establishing cover stories, and even counter-surveillance tactics. Language classes sometimes included German and Polish, reflecting a fear of foreign infiltrators as much as a desire to train operatives for Europe.
By late 1917, as the U.S. joined the Great War, many of the Kingsland graduates were dispatched into American industry as undercover agents. Some were sent overseas as part of joint missions with the British or French. The precise number of individuals trained at Kingsland remains classified, but historians estimate that more than a hundred Americans passed through its gates during the war.
The Kingsland program left a permanent mark, though its existence remained unacknowledged for decades. During World War II, many principles honed at the estate would resurface, influencing how America’s spy and covert operations evolved. Several OSS founders had passed through the program or learned from its instructors.
Though the main manor house at Kingsland still stands today as a private residence, no monument marks the estate’s wartime service. Its significance is known only to a handful of historians and former intelligence officers. The story of Kingsland—America’s first formal sabotage school—remains a secret chapter in the nation’s response to the shadowy world of covert warfare, a reminder that even in quiet corners, history has unfolded in extraordinary ways.
###END###
