Naval Intelligence became a secretive shadow staff

The Naval Intelligence Department began with foreign intelligence, then accumulated mobilization planning, war strategy, defence, and merchant-shipping protection. This gave the Royal Navy a de facto staff inside an intelligence organization. Protecting sources and concealing plans encouraged intelligence officers to withhold information, including the fact that they possessed it. The Second, Third, and Fourth Sea Lords could explain personnel, construction, and supply requirements to the press or Parliament. Naval strategy sat in an office reluctant to communicate in the same way. The criticism concerns where staff work was placed and how it reached government, rather than the absence of planning.