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How did the Dreyfus affair weaken French intelligence before World War I?

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George W. Bush and Porter J. Goss at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. — intelligence U.S. Pres. George W. Bush (front) and Porter J. Goss, director (2004–06) of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), heading to a press conference at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, March 3, 2005.

The Dreyfus affair weakened French intelligence by exposing deep-seated corruption, professional misconduct, and a lack of accountability within the army's intelligence section, known as the Deuxième Bureau.12

The crisis revealed that high-ranking officers had fabricated evidence and forged documents to secure the conviction of Captain Alfred Dreyfus and to protect the actual spy, Ferdinand Walsin-Esterhazy. When Colonel Georges Picquart, the chief of counterintelligence, uncovered the truth, his superiors suppressed his findings and removed him from his post to maintain the army's reputation.342

The subsequent exposure of these forgeries—most notably by Major Hubert-Joseph Henry—shattered public and political trust in the military establishment. In the aftermath, the government sought to prevent such independent, unchecked military power by placing the army under more rigorous civilian control. This shift in authority and the intense internal political divisions caused by the affair significantly impacted the cohesion and operational focus of French military institutions in the years leading up to World War I.342