http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1035531/posts The Pearl Harbor Deception antiwar.com ^ | December 7, 2003 | Robert Stinnett Posted on 12/07/2003 1:02:21 AM PST by Destro The Pearl Harbor Deception by Robert Stinnett Independent Institute December 7, 2003 Two questions about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor have ignited a controversy that has burned for 60 years: Did U.S. naval cryptographers crack the Japanese naval codes before the attack? Did Japanese warships and their commanding admirals break radio silence at sea before the attack? If the answer to both is "no," then Pearl Harbor was indeed a surprise attack described by President Franklin D. Roosevelt as a "Day of Infamy." The integrity of the U.S. government regarding Pearl Harbor remains solid. But if the answer is "yes," then hundreds of books, articles, movies, and TV documentaries based on the "no" answer – and the integrity of the federal government – go down the drain. If the Japanese naval codes were intercepted, decoded, and translated into English by U.S. naval cryptographers prior to Pearl Harbor, then the Japanese naval attacks on American Pacific military bases were known in advance among the highest levels of the American government. During the 60 years, the truthful answers were secreted in bomb-proof vaults, withheld from two congressional Pearl Harbor investigations and from the American people. As recently as 1995, the Joint Congressional Investigation conducted by Sen. Strom Thurmond and Rep. Floyd Spence, was denied access to a naval storage vault in Crane, Indiana, containing documents that could settle the questions. Americans were told of U.S. cryptographers' success in cracking pre–Pearl Harbor Japanese diplomatic codes, but not a word has been officially uttered about their success in cracking Japanese military codes. In the mid-1980s I learned that none of the hundreds of thousands of Japanese military messages obtained by the U.S. monitor stations prior to Pearl Harbor were introduced or discussed during the congressional investigation of 1945-46. Determined to penetrate the secrets of Pearl Harbor, I filed Freedom of Information (FOIA) requests with the US Navy. Navy officials in Washington released a few pre-Pearl Harbor documents to me in 1985. Not satisfied by the minuscule release, I continued filing FOIAs. Finally in 1993, the U.S. Naval Security Group Command, the custodian of the Crane Files, agreed to transfer the records to National Archives in Washington, D.C. In the winter of 1993-94 the files were transported by truck convoy to a new government facility built on the College Park campus of the University of Maryland inside the Washington Beltway, named Archives II. Mr. Clarence Lyons, then head of the Military Reference Branch, released the first batch of Crane Files to me in the Steny Hoyer Research Center at Archives II in January 1995. Apparently, the pre-Pearl Harbor records had not been seen or reviewed since 1941. Though refiled in pH-safe archival boxes by Lyons' staff, some of the Crane documents were covered with dust, tightly bunched together in the boxes and tied with unusual waxed twine. Lyons confirmed the records were received from the U.S. Navy in that condition. It took me a year to evaluate the records. The information revealed in the files was astonishing. It disclosed a Pearl Harbor story hidden from the public. I believed the story should be told to the American people. The editors of Simon & Schuster/The Free Press published Day of Deceit: The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1999. Day of Deceit was well received by media book reviews and the on-line booksellers, Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.com, earning a 70 percent public approval rating. Day of Deceit continues among the top ten bestsellers in the non-fiction Pearl Harbor book category, according to Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.com. About 30 percent of the reviews have discounted the book's revelations. The leaders of the dispute include Stephen Budiansky, Edward Drea, and David Kahn, all of whom have authored books or articles on code breaking. To bolster their pre-Pearl Harbor theories, the trio violated journalistic ethics and distorted the U.S. Navy's pre-Pearl Harbor paper trail. Their efforts cannot be ignored. The trio has close ties to the National Security Agency, the overseer of U.S. naval communications files. Kahn has appeared before NSA seminars. The NSA has not honored my FOIA requests to disclose honorariums paid the seminar participants but has released records that confirm Kahn has been a participant. Immediately after Day of Deceit appeared in bookstores in 1999, NSA began withdrawing pre-Pearl Harbor documents from the Crane Files housed in Archives II. This means the government decided to continue 60 years of Pearl Harbor censorship. As of January 2002, over two dozen NSA withdrawal notices have triggered the removal of Pearl Harbor documents from public inspection. The number of pages in the withdrawn documents appears to be in the hundreds. Among the records withdrawn are those of Admiral Harold R. Stark, the 1941 Chief of Naval Operations, as well as crypto records authored by Commander Joseph J. Rochefort, the chief cryptographer for the Pacific Fleet at the time of Pearl Harbor. Under the Crane File transfer agreement with National Archives, NSA has the legal right to withdraw any document based on national defense concerns. Concurrent with the NSA withdrawals, Budiansky, with the aid of Kahn and Drea, began a two-year media campaign to discredit the paper trail of the U.S. naval documents that form the backbone of Day of Deceit. One of the most egregious examples of ethical violations appeared in an article by Kahn published in the New York Review of Books on November 2, 2000. In that article, Kahn attempted to bolster his contention that Japanese admirals and warships observed radio silence while en route to attack American Pacific bases. Kahn broke basic journalism ethics and rewrote a U.S. Naval Communication Summary prepared by Commander Rochefort at his crypto center located in the Pearl Harbor Naval Yard. About 1,000 intercepted Japanese naval radio messages formed the basis of each Daily Summary written by Rochefort and his staff. The Japanese communication intelligence data contained in the messages was summarized and delivered daily to Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, Commander-in-Chief of the Pacific Fleet. Rochefort's summary of November 25, 1941 (Hawaii time) was not to Kahn's liking. It revealed the Commander Carriers of the Imperial Japanese Navy were not observing radio silence but were in "extensive communications" with other Japanese naval forces whose admirals directly commanded the forces involved in the Pearl Harbor attack. Because of the International Dateline, the "extensive communications" mentioned in the summary took place on November 26, 1941, Japan time, the exact day the Japanese carrier force began its journey to Hawaii. In its entirety the Rochefort summary reads: "FOURTH FLEET – CinC. Fourth Fleet is still holding extensive communications with the commander Submarine Fleet, the forces at Jaluit and Commander Carriers. His other communications are with the Third, Fourth, and Fifth Base Forces." The meaning of the summary is unequivocal: The commanders of the powerful Japanese invasion, submarine, and carrier forces did not observe radio silence as they maneuvered toward U.S. bases in Hawaii, Wake, and Guam Islands in the Central Pacific. Instead they used radio transmitters aboard their flagships and coordinated strategy and tactics with each other. The summary corroborates earlier findings by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian John Toland. In the late 1970s, Toland interviewed personnel and obtained U.S. naval documents from San Francisco's Twelfth Naval District that disclosed that the "extensive communications" were intercepted by the radio direction finders of the U.S. Navy's West Coast Communications Intelligence Network. Doubleday published Toland's account in 1982 as Infamy: Pearl Harbor and its Aftermath. Yet in his NYRoB article Kahn deleted portions of the Rochefort summary in the middle of the first sentence, profoundly diminishing its significance. Kahn's version: "Fourth Fleet is still holding extensive communications with the Commander Submarine Fleet." Kahn violated basic journalism rules by deleting crucial words and not using ellipsis to indicate a deletion. When I cited these ethical violations to the editors of the NYRoB, Kahn offered an excuse and implied that Rochefort's summary was too long. "I had to condense my review," he wrote. Kahn probably believes his deletion was insignificant because he denies that the Commander Carriers were involved in the Pearl Harbor attack. "The force that attacked Hawaii was not that of the Commander Carriers but the First Air Fleet," he wrote in his reply to my Letter to the Editor of the NYRoB (February 8, 2001). Kahn revealed his ignorance of the Japanese naval organization. The First Air Fleet operated under Commander Carriers, that is, Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo, who was in charge of the entire Hawaii Operation. Captain A. James McCollum, USNR (Ret), who served in San Francisco's Twelfth Naval District intelligence office (and later on the intelligence staff of Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz) accused Kahn of committing "journalistic crimes." "That critic, David Kahn, seems to have deliberately distorted some facts and even altered quotations...," McCollum wrote in his letter to the editors of the NYRoB on February 14, 2001. The letter was never published. Stephen Budiansky continued his media blitz in the Wall Street Journal. In a December 27, 2001 Letter to the Editor of the Journal, Budiansky praised Kahn as "...widely regarded as the world's leading authority on the history of code breaking..." Then in following paragraphs, Budiansky mimicked Kahn and misreported the facts concerning the U.S. naval monitor station on Corregidor, known as CAST. He challenged the Day of Deceit account and wrote that CAST was located in Cavite, Philippines. Budiansky's errors involving CAST reveal a poor understanding of U.S. naval communications intelligence operations. CAST was temporarily located at the Cavite Naval Base in 1936, then moved to Mariveles on the Bataan Peninsula. In October 1940, the station was relocated to Corregidor. The new quarters were located in an underground crypto center carved from the rock of Corregidor. CAST remained on the rock until the spring of 1942 when advancing Japanese troops forced its removal to Australia. Budiansky did not differentiate between the 1940-41 U.S. naval broadcast radio center at Cavite and the U.S. navy cryptographic monitor station on Corregidor. The mistakes of the Budiansky-Drea-Kahn team concerning Station CAST worsen. In the same Wall Street Journal edition, Edward J. Drea, a retired U.S. Army historian, also wrote a misleading account of the crypto operations at CAST in November 1941. Mr. Drea challenged a CAST report dated November 16, 1941, by its commanding officer Lieutenant John M. Lietwiler who reported to Washington that his staff was "current" in intercepting, decoding, and translating the Japanese navy's Operation Code. Lietwiler was a highly trained crypto expert in deciphering the Japanese navy's main operation code known to Japan in the fall of 1941 as the Kaigun Ango-sho D, Ransuhyo nana (Navy Code Book D, random numbers table seven). He spent 1940 and most of 1941 learning the principles of decoding Code Book D from Agnes Meyer Driscoll, the brilliant Chief Civilian Cryptanalyst for the U.S. Navy. Ms. Driscoll was the first American to discover the solution of Code Book D, soon after Japan introduced it in June 1939. Upon completing the Code Book D crypto course, Lietwiler was dispatched to CAST with the latest decoding details of Table Seven. He arrived and took command of CAST in September 1941. Lietwiler's expertise and devotion to his crypto duty meant nothing to Drea. In his letter, Drea demoted Lieutenant Lietwiler and described him as a "1941 writer." Challenging my interpretation of Lietwiler's letter, Drea states: "Nowhere in the cited communications is the Japanese naval code mentioned." Drea is correct in the narrowest sense. To understand that Lietwiler was discussing the Japanese naval operations code requires a broader context. Mr. Drea failed to comprehend Lietwiler's technical crypto language used in the letter. It was addressed to Lietwiler's counterpart in Washington, D.C., Lieutenant Lee W. Parke, another of the U.S. Navy's brilliant cryptographers. Parke had devised a crypto machine that automatically decoded the additive/subtractive columnar tables of Table Seven. Parke called his invention the JEEP IV and sent it to CAST by officer courier. It arrived on Corregidor on October 6, 1941, via the armed U.S. naval transport U.S.S. Henderson. The construction of JEEP IV was specifically authorized by Rear Admiral Royal Ingersoll, Acting Chief of Naval Operations. In a memo dated October 4, 1940, Ingersoll wrote, referring to Code Book D: "an additive key cipher is employed in this code, and, although the method of recovery is well defined, the process is a laborious one, requiring from an hour to several days for each message. A machine is under construction which will aide in the mechanical part of the solution, but it must be accepted that current information will seldom be available immediately..." The Ingersoll memo directly connects the Lietwiler memo to the Japanese naval operations code. Lietwiler refers explicitly to JEEP IV in the letter and adds that his Crypto Yeoman Albert Myers Jr., bypassed JEEP IV and was able to "walk across" the many columnar tables of Code Book D. Readers of the Wall Street Journal should know that Code Book D used columnar random number Table Seven in the fall of 1941. If Mr. Drea had done more crypto homework, he would have known the purpose of JEEP IV. It is fully spelled out in U.S. Navy files. JEEP IV is derived from Parke's unit whose secret navy crypto designator was GYP (phonetic = jeep). But he failed to understand the esoteric language used by the two code breakers. I could point out more errors by the trio, but I will limit myself to one more. They refer to errors in dates in Day of Deceit. The so-called date "errors" they cite are not "errors" but are related to the geography of the International Date Line. Like many easterners who have never been west of the Hudson River, the trio does not realize that November 25 in Hawaii is November 26 in Japan. The mid-ocean date change between America and Japan is known throughout the world. It is the result of geographers establishing the Date Line in the Mid-Pacific. America's day begins in Guam, not New York. ---------- Robert B. Stinnett is a Media Fellow at The Independent Institute in Oakland, California, and author of Day of Deceit: The Truth about FDR and Pearl Harbor (Touchstone, 2001). "Robert B. Stinnett served in the United States Navy under Lieutenant George Bush from 1942 to 1946, where he earned ten battle stars and a Presidential Unit Citation. He worked as a photographer and journalist for the Oakland Tribune until 1986, after which he resigned as a full-time employee to devote himself to this book. He is a consultant on the Pacific War for the BBC and for Asahi and NHK Television in Japan. He divides his time between Oakland and Hawaii." http://anythingarkansas.com/arkapedia/pedia/Attack_on_Pearl_Harbor/ There has been considerable debate ever since December 8, 1941, as to how and why the United States had been caught unaware, and how much and when American officials knew of Japanese plans and related topics. Some have argued that various parties (in some theories Roosevelt and/or other American officials, or Churchill and the British, in others all of the above, or additional players) knew of the attack in advance and may even have let it happen, or encouraged it, in order to force America into war. For instance, one position -- prominently discussed in Stinnet's recent book -- suggests that a memorandum prepared by Office of Naval Intelligence Lieutenant Commander Arthur McCollum for its Director, and passed to Captains Walter Anderson and Dudley Knox, two of Roosevelt's military advisors on October 7, 1940 was central to US Government policy in the immediate pre-war period. The memo suggests that only a direct attack on US interests would sway the American public to favor direct involvement in the European war, specifically in support of the British. Anderson and Knox offered eight specific plans to aggrieve the Japanese Empire, writing: "If by these means Japan could be led to commit an overt act of war, so much the better." . remember pearl harbor by brian (No verified email address) Current rating: 0 10 Nov 2002 Modified: 11 Aug 2003 for years pearl harbor was seen as the treacherous attack by cowardly japanese.Although they would froce US ito the war when they had studiously avoided antagonising he hithreto neutra americans is odd. Howewver,it turns out FR delibrately set up pearl harbor, planted the fleet in an exposed port, over the objections of senior naval personnel. The real story can be read in Robert Stinnet's book Day of Deceit: Robert Stinnet's Day of Deceit is a fascinating and timely book that should hold a high place in the library of anybody interested in the truth behind American history. Through more than 10 years of research on declassified files surrounding the Pearl Harbor Attack, Stinnet shows without question that FDR and his top advisors not only knew about the Japanese "sneak" attack, but in fact, caused it to happen in order to push the American people into the war. Far from being the traditional "conspiracy nut" our mass media loves to deride and sweep under the rug, Stinnet firmly believes that allowing the "surprise attack" was necessary to force the "isolationist" people of America into the war against Fascism. Some people may explain away the lies by saying that the 50 year cover-up of the truth by our government was also necessary to protect our National Security from the communist menace during the Cold War. Today it is likely that self proclaimed patriots will want to continue the lies in order to protect the security of our nation from "internal dissent." Where do the lies to protect our freedom end? In more lies and death. The truth will only be told when we force our politicians to tell the truth. http://www.hempfarm.org/Papers/DayofDeceitBOW.html Thousands died in Pear Harbor thanks to FDR http://www.radio4all.net/index.php?op=result&action=series&series=Mind%20Over%20Matters&nav=& http://prisonplanet.com/files_prove_fdr_fore_knowledge_pearl_harbor.html Do Freedom of Information Act Files Prove FDR Had Foreknowledge of Pearl Harbor? An interview with Robert B. Stinnett, author of Day of Deceit: The Truth about FDR and Pearl Harbor (paperback edition, Touchstone, 2001) By Douglas Cirignano (A shorter version of this interview appeared on www.disinfo.com. Reprinted by permission of the author.) Original Link: http://www.independent.org/tii/news/020311Cirignano.html On November 25, 1941 Japan’s Admiral Yamamoto sent a radio message to the group of Japanese warships that would attack Pearl Harbor on December 7. Newly released naval records prove that from November 17 to 25 the United States Navy intercepted eighty-three messages that Yamamoto sent to his carriers. Part of the November 25 message read: "…the task force, keeping its movements strictly secret and maintaining close guard against submarines and aircraft, shall advance into Hawaiian waters, and upon the very opening of hostilities shall attack the main force of the United States fleet in Hawaii and deal it a mortal blow…" One might wonder if the theory that President Franklin Roosevelt had a foreknowledge of the Pearl Harbor attack would have been alluded to in this summer’s movie, Pearl Harbor. Since World War II many people have suspected that Washington knew the attack was coming. When Thomas Dewey was running for president against Roosevelt in 1944 he found out about America’s ability to intercept Japan’s radio messages, and thought this knowledge would enable him to defeat the popular FDR. In the fall of that year, Dewey planned a series of speeches charging FDR with foreknowledge of the attack. Ultimately, General George Marshall, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, persuaded Dewey not to make the speeches. Japan’s naval leaders did not realize America had cracked their codes, and Dewey’s speeches could have sacrificed America’s code-breaking advantage. So, Dewey said nothing, and in November FDR was elected president for the fourth time. Now, though, according to Robert Stinnett, author of Simon & Schuster’s Day Of Deceit, we have the proof. Stinnett’s book is dedicated to Congressman John Moss, the author of America’s Freedom of Information Act. According to Stinnett, the answers to the mysteries of Pearl Harbor can be found in the extraordinary number of documents he was able to attain through Freedom of Information Act requests. Cable after cable of decryptions, scores of military messages that America was intercepting, clearly showed that Japanese ships were preparing for war and heading straight for Hawaii. Stinnett, an author, journalist, and World War II veteran, spent sixteen years delving into the National Archives. He poured over more than 200,000 documents, and conducted dozens of interviews. This meticulous research led Stinnet to a firmly held conclusion: FDR knew. "Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars, " was Roosevelt’s famous campaign statement of 1940. He wasn’t being ingenuous. FDR’s military and State Department leaders were agreeing that a victorious Nazi Germany would threaten the national security of the United States. In White House meetings the strong feeling was that America needed a call to action. This is not what the public wanted, though. Eighty to ninety percent of the American people wanted nothing to do with Europe’s war. So, according to Stinnett, Roosevelt provoked Japan to attack us, let it happen at Pearl Harbor, and thus galvanized the country to war. Many who came into contact with Roosevelt during that time hinted that FDR wasn’t being forthright about his intentions in Europe. After the attack, on the Sunday evening of December 7, 1941, Roosevelt had a brief meeting in the White House with Edward R. Murrow, the famed journalist, and William Donovan, the founder of the Office of Strategic Services. Later Donovan told an assistant the he believed FDR welcomed the attack and didn’t seem surprised. The only thing Roosevelt seemed to care about, Donovan felt, was if the public would now support a declaration of war. According to Day of Deceit, in October 1940 FDR adopted a specific strategy to incite Japan to commit an overt act of war. Part of the strategy was to move America’s Pacific fleet out of California and anchor it in Pearl Harbor. Admiral James Richardson, the commander of the Pacific fleet, strongly opposed keeping the ships in harm’s way in Hawaii. He expressed this to Roosevelt, and so the President relieved him of his command. Later Richardson quoted Roosevelt as saying: "Sooner or later the Japanese will commit an overt act against the United States and the nation will be willing to enter the war." To those who believe that government conspiracies can’t possibly happen, Day Of Deceit could prove to them otherwise. Stinnett’s well-documented book makes a convincing case that the highest officials of the government---including the highest official---fooled and deceived millions of Americans about one of the most important days in the history of the country. It now has to be considered one of the most definitive---if not the definitive---book on the subject. Gore Vidal has said, "…Robert Stinnet has come up with most of the smoking guns. Day Of Deceit shows that the famous ‘surprise’ attack was no surprise to our war-minded rulers…" And John Toland, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the Pearl Harbor book, Infamy, said, "Step by step, Stinnett goes through the prelude to war, using new documents to reveal the terrible secrets that have never been disclosed to the public. It is disturbing that eleven presidents, including those I admired, kept the truth from the public until Stinnett’s Freedom of Information Act requests finally persuaded the Navy to release the evidence." What led you to write a book about Pearl Harbor? Stinnett: Well, I was in the navy in World War II. I was on an aircraft carrier. With George Bush, believe it or not. You wrote a book about that. Stinnett: Yes, that’s right. So, we were always told that Japanese targets, the warships, were sighted by United States submarines. We were never told about breaking the Japanese codes. Okay. So, in 1982 I read a book by a Professor Prange called At Dawn We Slept. And in that book it said that there was a secret US Navy monitoring station at Pearl Harbor intercepting Japanese naval codes prior to December 7. Well, that was a bombshell to me. That was the first time I had heard about that. I worked at The Oakland Tribune at that time….So I went over to Hawaii to see the station to confirm it. And, then, to make a long story short, I met the cryptographers involved, and they steered me to other sources, documents that would support all of their information. And so that started me going. My primary purpose was to learn about the intercept procedures. And so I filed Freedom of Information Act requests with the Navy because communications intelligence is very difficult. It’s a no-no. They don’t want to discuss it. But the Navy did let me, gave me permission to go to Hawaii and they showed me the station….So that started me on it. And then I would ask for certain information, this is now, we’re talking about in the 1980’s, the late 1980’s. And they’re very reluctant to give me more information. I’m getting a little bit. Historians and government officials who claim that Washington didn’t have a foreknowledge of the Pearl Harbor attack have always contended that America wasn’t intercepting and hadn’t cracked Japan’s important military codes in the months and days preceding the attack. The crux of your book is that your research proves that is absolutely untrue. We were reading most all of Japan’s radio messages. Correct? Stinnett: That is correct. And I believed that, too. You know, because, Life magazine in September 1945, right after Japan surrendered, suggested that this was the case, that Roosevelt engineered Pearl Harbor. But that was discarded as an anti-Roosevelt tract, and I believed it, also. Another claim at the heart of the Pearl Harbor surprise-attack lore is that Japan’s ships kept radio silence as they approached Hawaii. That’s absolutely untrue, also? Stinnett: That is correct. And this was all withheld from Congress, so nobody knew about all this. Until the Freedom of Information Act. Stinnett: Yes. Is this statement true?---If America was intercepting and decoding Japan’s military messages then Washington and FDR knew that Japan was going to attack Pearl Harbor. Stinnett: Oh, absolutely. You feel it’s as simple as that? Stinnett: That is right. And that was their plan. It was their "overt act of war" plan that I talk about in my book that President Roosevelt adopted on October 7, 1940. You write that in late November 1941 an order was sent out to all US military commanders that stated: "The United States desires that Japan commit the first overt act." According to Secretary of War Stimson, the order came directly from President Roosevelt. Was FDR’s cabinet on record for supporting this policy of provoking Japan to commit the first overt act of war? Stinnett: I don’t know that he revealed it to the cabinet. He may have revealed it to Harry Hopkins, his close confidant, but there’s no evidence that anybody in the cabinet knew about this. I thought you wrote in your book that they did…That some of them were on record for… Stinnett: Well, some did. Secretary of War Stimson knew, based on his diary, and also probably Frank Knox, the Secretary of Navy knew. But Frank Knox died before the investigation started. So all we have really is Stimson, his diary. And he reveals a lot in there, and I do cite it in my book…You must mean his war cabinet. Yes. Stimson’s diary reveals that nine people in the war cabinet---the military people---knew about the provocation policy. Even though Roosevelt made contrary statements to the public, didn’t he and his advisors feel that America was eventually going to have to get into the war? Stinnett: That is right. Well, his statement was, "I won’t send your boys to war unless we are attacked." So then he engineered this attack---to get us into war really against Germany. But I think that was his only option. I express that in the book. Who was Lieutenant Commander Arthur McCollum and what was his connection to the Pearl Harbor attack? Stinnett: He worked for Naval intelligence in Washington. He also was the communications routing officer for President Roosevelt. So all these intercepts would go to Commander McCollum and then he would route them to the President. There’s no question about that. He also was the author of this plan to provoke Japan into attacking us at Pearl Harbor. And he was born and raised in Japan. McCollum wrote this plan, this memorandum, in October 1940. It was addressed to two of Roosevelt’s closest advisors. In the memo McCollum is expressing that it’s inevitable that Japan and America are going to go to war, and that Nazi Germany’s going to become a threat to America’s security. McCollum is saying that America’s going to have to get into the war. But he also says that public opinion is against that. So, McCollum then suggests eight specific things that America should do to provoke Japan to become more hostile, to attack us, so that the public would be behind a war effort. And because he was born and raised in Japan, he understood the Japanese mentality and how the Japanese would react. Stinnett: Yes. Exactly. Has the existence of this memo from Commander McCollum ever been revealed to the public before your book came out? Stinnett: No, no. I received that as pursuant to my FOIA request on January 1995 from the National Archives. I had no idea it existed. FDR and his military advisors knew that if McCollum’s eight actions were implemented---things like keeping the Pacific fleet in Pearl Harbor, and crippling Japan’s economy with an embargo---there was no question in their minds that this would cause Japan---whose government was very militant---to attack the United States. Correct? Stinnett: That is correct, and that is what Commander McCollum said. He said, "If you adopt these policies then Japan will commit an overt act of war." Is there any proof that FDR saw McCollum’s memorandum? Stinnett: There’s no proof that he actually saw the memorandum, but he adopted all eight of the provocations---including where he signed executive orders…And other information in Navy files offers conclusive evidence that he did see it. The memo is addressed to two of Roosevelt’s top advisors, and you include the document where one of them is agreeing with McCollum’s suggested course of action. Stinnett: Yes, Dudley Knox, who was his very close associate. The "splendid arrangement" was a phrase that FDR’s military leaders used to describe America’s situation in the Pacific. Can you explain what the "splendid arrangement" was? Stinnett: The "splendid arrangement" was the system of twenty-two monitoring stations in the Pacific that were operated by the United States, Britain, and the Dutch. These extended along the west coast of the United States, up to Alaska, then down to Southeast Asia, and into the Central Pacific. These radio monitoring stations allowed us to intercept and read all of Japan’s messages, right? Stinnett: Absolutely. We had Japan wired for sound. You claim that the "splendid arrangement" was so adept that ever since the 1920’s Washington always knew what Japan’s government was doing. So to assert that we didn’t know the Japanese were going to bomb Pearl Harbor would be illogical? Stinnett: That is correct. Your book claims that in 1941 Japan had a spy residing in the Japanese consulate in Honolulu. Stinnett: Japan secreted this spy---he was a Japanese naval officer---in Honolulu. He arrived there in March 1941 under an assumed name, and he was attached to the Japanese consulate there. But when the FBI checked on him they found out he was not listed in the Japanese foreign registry, so they were suspicious immediately. They put a tail on him. And then the spy started filing messages to Japan that we were intercepting. This was in a diplomatic code now. And so the FBI continued to tail him, and so did Naval intelligence. Naval intelligence, the FBI, and Roosevelt knew this man was spying on the fleet in Pearl Harbor, and they let the espionage go on. The policy of FDR’s government then was to look the other way and let Japan prepare itself for attacking us? Stinnett: That’s right. That is correct. He was providing a timetable for the attack. The spy was even sending bomb plots of Pearl Harbor? Stinnett: Yes. From March to August he was giving a census of the US Pacific fleet. Then starting in August he started preparing bomb plots of Pearl Harbor, where our ships were anchored and so forth. And Roosevelt even saw those bomb plots, right? Stinnett: Yes, that is correct. You claim that twice during the week of December 1 to 6 the spy indicated that Pearl Harbor would be attacked. According to a Japanese commander, the message on December 2 was: "No changes observed by afternoon of 2 December. So far they do not seem to have been alerted." And on the morning of December 6 the message was: "There are no barrage balloons up and there is an opportunity left for a surprise attack against these places." These messages were intercepted by the Navy, right? Did Roosevelt know about these messages? Stinnett: They were intercepted. That is correct. They were sent by RCA communications. And Roosevelt had sent David Sarnoff, who was head of RCA, to Honolulu so that this would facilitate getting these messages even faster. Though we were also intercepting them off the airways, anyway. And on December 2 and on December 6 the spy indicated that Pearl was going to be the target. And the December 2 message was intercepted, decoded, and translated prior to December 5. The December 6 message…there’s really no proof that it was…it was intercepted, but there’s all sorts of cover stories on whether or not that reached the President. But he received other information that it was going to happen the next day, anyway. You saw the records of those intercepts yourself? Stinnett: Yes. I have those. And all these other messages that the Navy was constantly intercepting showed exactly where the Japanese ships were, that they were preparing for war, and that they were heading straight for Hawaii. Right? Stinnett: That’s right. Our radio direction finders located the Japanese warships. You say Roosevelt regularly received copies of these intercepts. How were they delivered to him? Stinnett: By Commander McCollum routing the information to him. They were prepared in monograph form. They called it monograph….it was sent to the President through Commander McCollum who dispatched it through the naval aide to the President. On page 203 of the hardcover edition of your book it reads, "Seven Japanese naval broadcasts intercepted between November 28 and December 6 confirmed that Japan intended to start the war and that it would begin in Pearl Harbor." Did you see the records of those intercepts yourself? Stinnett: Yes. And also we have new information about other intercepts in the current edition that’s coming out in May 2001….There’s no question about it. According to Day Of Deceit, on November 25 Admiral Yamamoto sent a radio message to the Japanese fleet. Part of the message read: "The task force, keeping its movements strictly secret and maintaining close guard against submarines and aircraft, shall advance into Hawaiian waters, and upon the very opening of hostilities shall attack the main force of the United States fleet in Hawaii and deal it a mortal blow…" What’s the proof that the record of that intercept exists? Did you see it yourself? Again, did Roosevelt know about it? Stinnett: The English version of that message has been released by the United States, a government book. The Japanese version---the raw message---has not been released by the U.S. I have copies of the Station H radio logs---a monitoring station in Hawaii. They prove that the Navy intercepted eight-three messages that Yamamoto sent between November seventeenth and twenty-fifth. I have those records, but not the raw intercepts, eighty-six percent of which have not been released by the government…As far as Roosevelt, early in November 1941 Roosevelt ordered that Japanese raw intercepts be delivered directly to him by his naval aide, Captain Beardall. Sometimes if McCollum felt a message was particularly hot he would deliver it himself to FDR. Late on December 6 and in the very early morning hours of December 7 the United States intercepted messages sent to the Japanese ambassador in Washington. These messages were basically a declaration of war---Japan was saying it was breaking off negotiations with America. At those times, General Marshall and President Roosevelt were shown the intercepts. When FDR read them he said, "This means war." When the last intercept was shown to Roosevelt it was still hours before the Pearl Harbor attack. In that last intercept Japan gave the deadline for when it was breaking off relations with the U.S.---the deadline was the exact hour when Pearl Harbor was attacked. FDR and Marshall should have then sent an emergency warning to Admiral Kimmel in Pearl Harbor. But they acted nonchalantly and didn’t get a warning to Kimmel. Stinnett: Yes. This is a message sent from the Japanese foreign office to the Japanese ambassador in Washington DC. And in it he directed….it broke off relations with the United States and set a timetable of 1:00 PM on Sunday, December 7, eastern time. Which was the exact time that Pearl Harbor was bombed. Stinnett: That’s right. So they realized, with all their information, this is it. And then General Marshall, though, sat on the message for about fifteen hours because he didn’t want to send…he didn’t want to warn the Hawaiian commanders in time….he didn’t want them to interfere with the overt act. Eventually they did send it but it didn’t arrive until way after the attack. Roosevelt saw it too. They should have sent an emergency warning to Admiral Kimmel in Hawaii, right? Stinnett: That’s right. But you see they wanted the successful overt act by Japan. It unified the American people. This seems like a classic case of higher-ups doing something questionable, and then getting the people below them to take the blame for it. Admiral Husband Kimmel was in charge of the fleet in Pearl Harbor, and he was demoted and took the blame for the attack. Was that justified? Stinnett: No, it was not. And Congress, you know, last October of 2000 voted to exonerate him because the information was withheld from them. That’s very important. But it was subject to implementation by President Clinton who did not sign it. But at least Congress filed it, made the finding. You claim that Admiral Kimmel and General Short---who headed up the army in Hawaii---were denied by Washington of the information that would have let them know the attack was coming. In what ways were Kimmel and Short denied intelligence? Stinnett: Well, they were just cut off…They were not told that the spy was there, and they were not given these crucial documents, the radio direction finder information. All this information was going to everybody but Kimmel and Short. That’s very clear…. At one point Kimmel specifically requested that Washington let him know immediately about any important developments, but they did not do that. Kimmel was given some information, because two weeks before the attack he sent the Pacific fleet north of Hawaii on a reconnaissance exercise to look for Japanese carriers. When White House military officials learned of this what was their reaction? Stinnett: Admiral Kimmel tried a number of occasions to do something to defend Pearl Harbor. And, right, two weeks before the attack, on November 23, Kimmel sent nearly one hundred warships of the Pacific fleet to the exact site where Japan planned to launch the attack. Kimmel meant business. He was looking for the Japanese. His actions indicated that he wanted to be thoroughly prepared for action if he encountered a Japanese carrier force. When White House officials learned this, they directed to Kimmel that he was "complicating the situation"….You see, the White House wanted a clean cut overt act of war by Japan. Isolationists would have charged FDR was precipitating Japanese action by allowing the Pacific fleet in the North Pacific…So, minutes after Kimmel got the White House directive he canceled the exercise and returned the fleet to its anchorage in Pearl Harbor…That’s where the Japanese found it on December 7, 1941. The White House was handcuffing Kimmel? They wanted him to be completely passive? Stinnett: That is right. FDR did send a war warning to Kimmel on November 28. Was that enough of a warning? Stinnett: Well, that was a warning, but also in there they directed Admiral Kimmel and all the Pacific commanders to stand aside, don’t go on the offensive, and remain in a defensive position, and let Japan commit the first overt act. That’s right in the message, and it’s in my book. And Admiral Kimmel, the message he received, it was repeated twice….stand aside and let Japan commit the first overt act, the exact wording is in my book. Your book makes it abundantly clear that FDR and his advisors knew Japan was preparing for war, and knew that Japan was eventually going to attack. But can it be said that FDR knew that the attack was going to take place specifically on the morning of December 7 at Pearl Harbor? Stinnett: Yes…..Absolutely. Through the radio intercepts. Stinnett: Through the radio intercepts. Right. Both military and diplomatic. Did America’s ambassador in Japan, Ambassador Joseph Grew, have any indications that Japan was planning a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor? Stinnett: The information is that he did. I do quote him in the book, and he warned Washington to be on the alert because he couldn’t give them the last minute information. Well, according to your book Ambassador Grew had a reliable source in the Japanese embassy tell him that Japan was planning the attack, and then Grew sent dire warnings to the White House that an attack on Hawaii was a very real possibility. Stinnett: Yes, well, he was the first one to---after President Roosevelt adopted this eight action memo---Ambassador Grew learned about the Pearl Harbor attack in January1941. And then Commander McCollum was asked to evaluate this, and he said, "Oh, there’s nothing to it."---even though it was his plan! He was being disingenuous, McCollum. Stinnett: Yea. Exactly. On December 5 the Navy intercepted a message telling Japanese embassies around the world to burn their code books. What does it mean when a government is telling its embassies to burn their code books? Stinnett: That means war is coming within a day or two. That’s common knowledge in the military. And the military officials in Washington saw this intercept and the meaning of it wasn’t lost on them. Stinnett: Yes. That’s right. FDR and Washington also knew that Japan had recalled from sea all its merchant ships. What does that mean? Stinnett: It’s known in government and the military that if a nation recalls its merchant ships then those ships are needed to transport soldiers and supplies for war. So, in your opinion, if there had been no Pearl Harbor, then would America ever have ended up dropping nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Stinnett: Well, that’s what the survivors, the families of those who were killed at Pearl, and other people say. They claim that if there hadn’t been Pearl Harbor there would have been no Hiroshima. But, of course, that’s a "what if" question. And I don’t know how to answer it. One could only speculate on that. But it seems in a way Hiroshima and Nagasaki were maybe retribution for Pearl Harbor. Stinnett: I think it was more really to bring a close to the war. You know, I was out there at the time, and, frankly, I…we were subject to kamikaze attacks, they were attacking our carriers, and about half of our carriers were knocked out as of July 1945, so, personally, I was very pleased with the atom bombing because that ended the war. It probably saved my life. If what you’re saying is true, then Pearl Harbor is a prime example of government treating human beings like guinea pigs. Yet, you, yourself, don’t disparage and don’t have a negative view of FDR. Stinnett: No, I don’t have a negative view. I think it was his only option to do this. And I quote the chief cryptographer for the Pacific fleet, who said, "It was a pretty cheap price to pay for unifying the country." That cryptographer, Commander Joseph Rochefort, was a confidant of McCollum’s. He worked closely with Kimmel in Pearl Harbor. It could be argued that Rochefort was the closest one to Kimmel who was most responsible for denying Kimmel of the vital intelligence. And he did make that statement. But do you agree with that? A lot of people would be offended and angered by that statement. A lot of people wouldn’t agree with it. Stinnett: A lot of people would not, but I think under the cirumstances this was FDR’s only option. And, of course, this was sort of used in the Viet Nam War, you know. The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was based on a provocation aimed at the North Vietnamese gunboats---something like that. That’s how President Johnson got The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution passed through the Congress. There was a provocation. Apparently, it’s a military strategy, but the families---obviously---of the people who get killed when a military uses this strategy wouldn’t agree with it. Stinnett: Oh, right. I know. Oh, when I speak about this with the families they just start crying about it, you know. They’re terribly upset….But, you know, it was used by President Polk in the Mexican War in 1846. And also by President Lincoln at Fort Sumter And then also, as I say, another example is Viet Nam, this Gulf of Tonkin business. It could be a traditional military philosophy, the idea that a military has to sometimes provoke the enemy to attack, sacrifice its own soldiers, so as to unify a country for war. Stinnett: I think so. I think you could probably trace it back to Caesar’s time. How much in your book has never been revealed to the public before? Stinnett: The breaking of radio silence. The fact that the Japanese ships did not keep silent as they approached Hawaii….The breaking of Japanese codes---I mean the full proof of it. Military codes, I want to emphasize that….And also McCollum’s eight action memo---that’s the whole heart of my book. If I didn’t have that it wouldn’t be as important. That is the smoking gun of Pearl Harbor. It really is. Your research seems to prove that government conspiracies can exist. In your view, how many people would you say ultimately knew that Japan was going to attack Pearl Harbor, but kept quiet about it and covered it up before and after the event? Stinnett: I cite about thirty-five people there in the book that most certainly knew about it. And it’s probably more than that. It also seems like a classic Washington cover-up. In your book you use the phrase "Pearl Harbor deceits". Ever since the attack there have been missing documents, altered documents, people being disingenuous, and people outright perjuring themselves before the Pearl Harbor investigation committees. Correct? Stinnett: That is right. Absolutely. And you know the Department of Defense has labeled some of my Pearl Harbor requests as B1 National Defense Secrets, and they will not release them. I say that in the book. Janet Reno would not release them to me. And all the official Congressional Pearl Harbor committees were denied and weren’t privy to all this revealing information? Stinnett: That’s right. They were cut out, also. A lot of people probably don’t want to believe that a president would let something like Pearl Harbor happen. Have you gotten any criticism for contending that FDR had a foreknowledge of the attack? Stinnett: Yes. I get about a seventy percent approval rating. From, you know, comments, news media, radio, and all that. And there’s about thirty percent just don’t accept this….But the nitty-gritty questions are fine to me. You know, the people who are attacking me, what they are really quoting from is 1950 information. They don’t have the 1999 or 2000 information…. The information you put out in your book. You’re talking about new things here. Stinnett: That’s right. And this thirty percent, I feel they just don’t want to accept it, or they regard FDR as an icon who brought Social Security, and all that. But he also unified this country, and we were able to stop Hitler, you know, and the holocaust, and everything else that was going on. So, you could also say that this was a victory for President Roosevelt. But it seems under our system of government if President Roosevelt felt it was an emergency to go to war with Germany then he should have come before the American people and the Congress and explained it and convinced us that we had to go defeat Hitler. Stinnett: Well, you see that was the problem. The strong isolation movement. Eighty percent of the people wanted nothing to do with Europe’s war. And, you know, German submarines were sinking our ships in the North Atlantic. That did not rouse the American public. Nobody gave a damn. The USS Ruben James was a destroyer that was sunk, and lost a hundred lives about a month before Pearl Harbor. And there were other ships, merchant ships, and other ships in the North Atlantic that were sunk or damaged. But no one cared about it. I think the American people thought that Roosevelt was trying to provoke us into the German war, or Europe’s war. They didn’t want anything to do with that. But, you see, Commander McCollum was brilliant. He fashioned this---it was a real PR job---he got Japan to attack us in a most outrageous manner that really did unite the country. A lot of people would probably be of the opinion that it wasn’t so brilliant. The families of the three thousand people who were killed and injured at Pearl Harbor probably wouldn’t think it was brilliant. Stinnett: I know, I know. You see, that’s the argument today. But if this is true, then you agree with what FDR did? Stinnett: I do. I don’t see what other option he had. Because a lot of the tone in your book seems to be questioning and disagreeing with Roosevelt’s actions. Stinnett: Well, I disagree with the way he treated Admiral Kimmel and General Short, letting them hang out to dry. Kimmel and Short were cut off from the intelligence loop. Stinnett: They were cut off. And Congress, you know, last October, the Senate and the House, found that they were cut off. They made the finding. That would have never happened five years ago. Or ten, twenty years ago It happened because of the Freedom of Information Act? Stinnett: I think so. And the Short and Kimmel families have credited my book with getting that through Congress. Did you ever read Clausen’s book? Colonel Henry Clausen was part of a Pearl Harbor investigation of November 1944. He wrote a book that was published in 1992 that claimed FDR didn’t have a foreknowledge of the attack. Stinnett: Well, you know, I read that. But I fault Colonel Clausen because he had access to all of these military intercepts and he did not bring them out. And I think that was a crime for him to have done that. He should have been court-martialed for that. You infer in your book that at one point Clausen was probably trying to cover up for General Marshall’s actions of December 6 and 7. Stinnett: I think so. You know, he was acting on the behalf of the Secretary of War. He had carte blanche with these intercepts. When was he acting on behalf of the Secretary of War? Stinnett: Well, Clausen was authorized by Secretary of War Stimson to conduct the Pearl Harbor investigation in November 1944. He traveled to the Hawaiian monitoring stations and interviewed cryptographers but failed to obtain any evidence or testimony concerning the intercepts the Navy was making prior to December 7. So when Congress opened its Pearl Harbor investigation in November 1945 there were no pre-Pearl Harbor Japanese naval intercepts available. Clausen was told by Stimson to get the intercepts, but he didn’t do it. Did you ever talk with Clausen? Did he criticize you? Stinnett: He died. I tried to contact him. He was an attorney in San Francisco, and I did write him but he would never answer me. I wanted to ask him why he didn’t obtain the intercepts. His book doesn’t address that major issue. He didn’t return my calls, and he never answered my letters. I guess he just didn’t want to be exposed to this. Clausen was obviously a part of the conspiracy that kept the pre-Pearl Harbor intercepts from Congress and the American public. What kind of attention did your book get from the mainstream media? Did it get as much attention as you thought it would? Stinnett: Most of the mainstream print media has given Day Of Deceit very fine reviews. That includes The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, San Francisco Chronicle, et al. Mainstream TV has not been forthcoming. The exceptions have been C-Span, PAX TV, and local television stations. Neither ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, or Fox News have carried a word. C-Span carried ninety minutes of me discussing the book with a crowd of one hundred-fifty people. That was arranged by independent.org---the Independent Institute, a major, progressive think tank in Oakland, California. Why do you think the information in your book is important? Stinnett: It’s important because it reveals the lengths that some people in the American government will go to deceive the American public, and to keep this vital information---in our land of the First Amendment---from the people. And that’s against everything I believe in http://www.perspectives.com/forums/forum71/23394.html WW II a Much Bigger Lie than Iraq--FDR Deliberately Brought US into War! I thought we need a little "liberal" perspective here on war in general since WW-II was not that long ago. There has been much discussion of the VietNam war of late and it is logical to go back another 20 years or so to the one of the bloodiest wars in history. If we are going to blame Presidents for deaths (as Bush is being blamed for deaths in Iraq) then we cannot ignore Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt (responsible for many millions of people killed in WW-II). I've been told to broaden my horizons and consider other views, so I am considering this one seriously. I believe the author of the following can explain better than myself why WW-II is the fault of FDR: http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/p...cle_10208.shtml Quote: The "Good War" story of World War II is a Big Lie, used today by the likes of George W. Bush and John F. Kerry to create a mind set in which America's rulers are the good guys who, despite all of their faults and foibles, are saving the world from the really really bad guys. FDR told Americans that the war was about fighting fascism and tyranny. But FDR lied about his real war objectives, just as Hitler lied to the Germans and Japanese militarists lied to the Japanese people to get them to fight the bloodiest war in history. . . . Roosevelt needed an enemy and fascism was the logical best choice. FDR certainly had no genuine desire to defeat fascism, however, or else he would have helped the Spanish working class in its fight to defend the Spanish Republic in the Spanish Civil War against the fascist coup attempt by General Franco in 1936. When FDR used a "moral embargo" and then got legislation passed to prevent American arms from getting to the Spanish workers in their fight against fascism, it was as clear as daylight that when the choice was between working class people or fascists coming to power, FDR was on the side of the fascists. . . . To solve this problem (of so many Germans and Japanese being anti-fascist), FDR made sure that Americans were never informed about the truth of the anti-fascist stance of German and Japanese workers and peasants, or the extreme measures used by their governments to control them, such as the "Thought Police" in Japan and the 165 miniature concentration camps set up next to German factories for workers guilty of "only a minor infraction, a lateness, an unjustified absence or an angry word." . . . Another problem for FDR was that Americans were overwhelmingly opposed to getting into another war after seeing how horrible the First World War was, and how it mainly enriched arms dealers and war profiteers at the expense of ordinary people. Franklin ("Day of Infamy") Roosevelt's solution to this problem was to secretly scheme to get the Japanese to attack the United States. FDR embargoed U.S. oil for Japan and at the same time made it clear to the Japanese government that if they tried to take oil from the only other source – British or Dutch Asian colonies – the U.S. would consider it an act of war against itself. This had the intended effect of making the Japanese attack the United States. Far from being a shocking surprise, Pearl Harbor was the long awaited and eagerly sought solution to the elite's most pressing problem – the American working class. This is why Secretary of War Stimson felt so much "relief" when Japan finally attacked. Pearl Harbor got the U.S. into the war. But how would FDR fight it? And lest you think the fact that FDR lied and deliberatly lead us into World War II is a liberal ranting, think again. A US Navy person that served with honors, Robert Stinnet wrote a top selling book on the topic: Day Of Deceit: The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor Quote: It was not long after the first Japanese bombs fell on the American naval ships at Pearl Harbor that conspiracy theories began to circulate, charging that Franklin Roosevelt and his chief military advisors knew of the impending attack well in advance. Robert Stinnett, who served in the U.S. Navy with distinction during World War II, examines recently declassified American documents and concludes that, far more than merely knowing of the Japanese plan to bomb Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt deliberately steered Japan into war with America. Stinnett's argument draws on both circumstantial evidence--the fact, for example, that in September 1940 Roosevelt signed into law a measure providing for a two-ocean navy that would number 100 aircraft carriers--and, more importantly, on American governmental documents that offer apparently incontrovertible proof that Roosevelt knowingly sacrificed American lives in order to enter the war on the side of England. Any thoughts on this? I would especially think our foreign members would like to comment on US Imperialism.