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http://www.sobran.com/columns/991207.shtml
Pearl Harbor Revisited
December 7, 1999
World War II is raging again, at least in the press. Pat Buchanan has been
called a Hitler-lover for suggesting the currently unthinkable: that entry
into the war may not have been in the best interests of Americans. And Pope
Pius XII is still being smeared for his �silence� about Hitler during the
war (though the greater mystery is his wartime silence about Communism).
Sometimes the rhetoric of these controversies gets so heated that one wishes
Hitler were still here to restore a little perspective.
Now a new book argues that President Franklin D. Roosevelt probably knew in
advance that the Japanese were about to attack Pearl Harbor. This �sneak
attack� by those �sneaky Japs,� as we used to call them, may have been
trumped by the sneakiness of our sneakiest president (current incumbent
included). Everyone knows that FDR wanted to get into the war and lied to
the American public in order to achieve this goal. But would he have gone so
far as to allow the preventable slaughter of thousands of American soldiers
and sailors?
In Day of Deceit (Free Press), Robert B. Stinnett amasses circumstantial
evidence that FDR knew what was coming. He shows that U.S. intelligence had
broken the Japanese military code and that, contrary to official U.S.
insistence, the Japanese fleet bound for Pearl Harbor did not maintain radio
silence.
Reviewing the book for the Wall Street Journal, Bruce Bartlett cites an even
more suggestive piece of evidence: �a memo from Lieutenant Commander Arthur
H. McCollum, the top expert on Japan in naval intelligence before the war.�
�Dated October 7, 1940,� writes Mr. Bartlett, �the memo outlines an
eight-point plan to force Japan to attack the U.S. Among the recommendations
were the relocation of the U.S. Pacific Fleet from San Diego to Hawaii and
an embargo on all trade with Japan. Mr. Stinnett correctly notes that every
item on McCollum�s list was acted upon � starting the day after Roosevelt
received the memo.�
Mr. Stinnett himself, amazingly, defends Roosevelt�s deliberate inaction:
�Heinous as it seems to families and veterans of World War II, of which the
author is one, the Pearl Harbor attack was, from the White House
perspective, something that had to be endured in order to stop a greater
evil � the Nazi invaders in Europe who had begun the Holocaust and were
poised to invade England.�
Here, sad to say, is an extension of the standard defense of FDR: that he
had no choice but to act cynically in order to achieve his noble goals. Such
is �the White House perspective,� not to be confused with the perspective of
American boys and their anxious parents. To say that Pearl Harbor �had to be
endured� is to lose sight of who was doing the enduring. It wasn�t FDR, who
welcomed the opportunity Pearl Harbor gave him. With boundless cynicism,
Roosevelt proceeded to scapegoat the military commanders of Pearl Harbor,
stripping them of their rank for being unprepared for the attack he had
failed to forewarn them of!
The notion that Roosevelt was upset because the Nazis had �begun the
Holocaust� deserves a particularly coarse horselaugh. FDR never mentioned
the persecution of Jews as a casus belli. As of December 7, 1941, all he
knew was that the Nazis had rounded up and incarcerated people of Jewish
ancestry � a practice he emulated by rounding up and incarcerating American
citizens of Japanese ancestry, a policy even FBI director J. Edgar Hoover,
not exactly renowned as a civil libertarian, protested as unconstitutional.
Roosevelt turned the U.S. Constitution into a charred ember and helped the
Soviet Union win World War II, complete with the spoils of ten Christian
countries which fell to the tender mercies of �Uncle Joe� Stalin. After
FDR�s death, the United States, in partnership with Stalin, adopted Soviet
jurisprudence by conducting show trials of German officials at Nuremberg.
Roosevelt also deserves full credit for the terror bombing of German and
Japanese cities and for launching the development of nuclear weapons.
Killing millions of civilians, mostly women and children, may seem an odd
way to oppose the Holocaust; but by now we have all learned to internalize
�the White House perspective.�
Joseph Sobran
------
http://www.pearlharbor41.com/bio.htm
Biography
Robert B. Stinnett's interest in news-making history began when he was
growing up in his birth city, Oakland, California.� He was the oldest of
four
children born to Curtis and Margaret Stinnett.
�A favorite activity of Robert while still a youngster was listening on the
family radio to news reports from Europe by radio newscasters Hans V.
Kaltenborn, Edward R. Murrow, and William L. Shirer.� His interest in news
and how it is processed formed his ambition to become a journalist.
By age 16 Robert was shooting photographs and selling them to The Oakland
Tribune.� On the day of the Pearl Harbor attack, December 7, 1941, he was a
student at Fremont High School.� He graduated in 1942, enlisted in the US
Navy and was assigned to the same aerial photo school as former President
George H. W. Bush.� They served together on the USS San Jacinto of the
Pacific Fleet from late 1943 to November 1944.� For naval service in the
Pacific and Atlantic in World War II, Stinnett was awarded 10 Navy Battle
Citations.
His experiences with the US Navy's Fast Carrier operations in the Pacific
Theater led to an 18-year research project that resulted in his book, Day of
Deceit, now in its 6th printing by Simon & Schuster.� Other editions of the
book are published in the United Kingdom, Japan, and Italy.� Publication is
pending in Germany, France, and Norway.
After the war, he joined The Oakland Tribune as a photo-journalist, and in
1986 retired to research and write books.� He is married to Peggy McBride
Stinnett, associate editor and columnist for The Oakland Tribune.� They have
two children, Colleen Badagliacco of San Jose, and James Stinnett of San
Francisco, two grandchildren, and a great grandchild.� Robert and Peggy live
in Oakland.
------
Stinnett, Robert B. George Bush: His World War II Years. Missoula, Mont.:
Pictorial Histories Pub. Co., 1991. 208 pp.
------
Re: Codebreaking in WWII
------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:4QoLoCOnuPc:lists.his.com/intelforum/ms
g04385.html+Phil+Jacobsen+and+stinnett&hl=en
Re: Codebreaking in WWII
* To: intelforum@xxxxxxx
* Subject: Re: Codebreaking in WWII
* From: Phil Jacobsen <k6fw@xxxxxxxx>
* Date: Thu, 08 Mar 2001 00:15:34 -0800
* Reply-To: intelforum@xxxxxxx
* Sender: owner-intelforum@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Phil Jacobsen wrote:
> "Unless there is something in HW 14/18 that contradicts the other =
> British document as indicated above, I believe my evaluation in =
> yesterday=B4s intelliforum post that Kamer-14 had no pre-war progress on =
> Japanese military and naval codes is correct and that there were no =
> transmissions of Japanese naval decrypts from F.E.C.B. Singapore to the =
> Dutch unit."
>
> 19600718 Captain J.W. Henning (a worker of Kamer 14) wrote a letter in =
> which he gave examples of Japanese diplomatic cryptograms (Tokyo to =
> Batavia). According to him it was by TA they discovered large =
> fleetmovements (from the last week in November 1941).
First, my post above referred to decrypts not traffic analysis.
As to traffic analysis, please note my post of 3 March 2001 where
I pointed out that Kamer-14 is a favorite subject of revisionist writers
of all stripes and some Kimmel/Short supporters..... (such as) locating
the Kido Butai in the North Pacific assumedly from traffic analysis
or direction finding ...."
As to the specific reference to Captain Henning's (and General Hein
ter Poorten's) long delayed post Pearl Harbor "remembrances," a
chronological listing of some regurgitations of such "remembrances"
is in order.
Adm. Edwin T. Layton et. al.'s "And I Was There" on p. 206 cited
a NAA Ter Poorten letter of 23 July 1960 for the allegation that
Kamer-14 was reading the Japanese Red diplomatic machine
and had penetrating the five-digit Japanese fleet system as well
as providing General ter Poorten with intelligence reports that
"showed Japanese naval concentrations near the Kuriles."
Since British records and a visit to Bandoeng show that
Kamer-14 was not reading Japanese diplomatic machine ciphers
nor any military or naval codes, this report is of highly doubtful
validity to say the least. In addition, British records show that
the Dutch were sending Sigint intelligence reports to Singapore
but no such report of Japanese forces in the Kuriles was
apparently received from Kamer-14 by F.E.C.B. Singapore
further derogating such validity. One must also consider that
Layton died before the book was completed and it was finished
by his co-authors.
James Rusbridger's "Betrayal At Pearl Harbor" at p. 147 quotes
the same letter but greatly expands it claiming that F.E.C.B. and
Kamer-14 were exchanging JN-25 decrypts which British records
(HW4/25) flatly contradict. Rusbridger then quotes a report by
Captain Henning of 11 March 1965 claiming Kamer-14 decrypted
a JN-25 message from Tokyo to the Kido Butai ordering it to
sail. and sent the decrypt to their naval attach� in Washington and
thence to OP-20-G as well as to F.E.C.B. Again, British official
records show that Kamer-14 had made no progress with any
Japanese naval codes and was only sending decrypts of Japanese
diplomatic (non-machine ciphers) and raw traffic to F.E.C.B.
Furthermore, no such message was ever even intercepted by any
of the many U.S. Navy stations in the Pacific much less received
by OP-20-G from the Dutch naval attach�. One wonders if the
advent of British documents that directly contradict such post Pearl
Harbor "remembrance" reports of JN-25 decrypts by Kamer-14
caused a downgrading of such information from decrypts
to "traffic analysis." Furthermore, Station Cast at
Corregidor, Station Hypo in Hawaii and F.E.C.B. were all
quite proficient in traffic analysis and saw nothing from their
much larger intercepts to show such a fleet concentration in
the Kuriles.
John Prados' "Combined Fleet Decoded" mentions General Hein
ter Poorten's claim that Kamer-14 informed him of Japanese
carriers concentrating in the Kurile Islands (p. 247). However,
Prados relates that "Robert D. Haslach, the leading authority
on Dutch codebreaking in the East Indies, believes that the Dutch
were not reading the code Washington knew as JN-25(b)."
Robert B. Stinnett's "Day of Deceit" quotes the same sources but
alleges much more in his massive revisionist conspiracy theory
including the charge that such Dutch decrypts are in the National
Archives but are being kept from the public to this day in
furtherance of his unbelievable conspiracy theory.
Please excuse me for being a doubting Thomas about these
post-Pearl Harbor "remembrances" of pre-war successes that
coincide with released Japanese historical reports on the Kido
Butai However, the recent releases of both U.S. and British records
bear out my skepticism and advance the likely use of 20/20 hindsight
in such belated reports.
Philip H. Jacobsen
------
------To: jamaksin
Oh my gosh! The U.S. Army Chief of Staff at the White House. Stop the
presses!
If you want to see the lies in Stinnett's book exposed, look at
Cryptologica, the journal of cryptology, for an article by Commander Phil
Jacobsen, a trained cryptologist. Stinnett apparently deliberately fudged
evidence (and in at least one occasion, "invented" evidence because the
documents he refers to DON'T EXIST).
But here is the book review I wrote for CONTINUITY (Belive me, mine is tame
compared to what the professional cryptologists say about this book!)
Robert B. Stinnett, Day of Deceit: The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor. New
York. Free Press, 2000. 388 pp, xiv. ISBN 0-684-85339-6. $26.00 hardcover.
Reviewed by Larry Schweikart, University of Dayton
This is a difficult review to write for a number of reasons, not the least
of which is that I detest what Franklin D. Roosevelt did to the United
States by introducing the welfare state mentality. Only in the 1990s---60
years after the New Deal---did the nation start to undo some of the damage
inflicted on the economic and social institutions by FDR's ultra-liberal
policies. Nevertheless, while FDR is guilty of many sins, "setting up" the
7th U.S. Fleet at Pearl Harbor in 1941 to as to slip the United States into
war through the "back door" is not one of them.
Robert Stinnett could have had an important book, a respected book, and an
influential book. To do that, he would have had to stuck to the facts as he
had them, and possibly even re- title the book something like, How
Intelligence Operations Might Have Averted Disaster at Pearl. Nevertheless,
Stinnett, who is not a trained historian, did an admirable job of collecting
and analyzing---to a point---new data, and organizing it to tell a story.
Unfortunately, it appears he had the story he wanted to tell mapped out in
advance, and whittled, pushed, and squeezed every piece of information into
its pre-determined hole so as to complete his mosaic.
The story? Obviously, from the title, that Franklin Roosevelt, acting on the
memo of a Navy captain, diabolically plotted an intricate plan to maneuver
the Empire of Japan into war in 1941. The Japanese dutifully obliged,
coincidentally responding to every Roosevelt initiative like puppets on a
string. Further, Stinnett argues, Roosevelt, having goaded Japan to fire the
first shot, sat on critical intelligence that normally would have gone to
the commanders in Hawaii, Gen. Walter Short and Adm. Husband E. Kimmel,
thereby deliberately and devilishly hanging U.S. soldiers and sailors out as
fodder to pump up the emotional turbines of the American electorate for a
war the people really did not want.
If this sounds familiar, it should. It was the basis for the Millis/Tansill
"Back Door to War" theories several decades ago, which were revived by "pop"
historian John Toland in the 1980s with his book Infamy. After an initial
burst of publicity, Infamy was subsequently torpedoed (pardon the pun) by
the work of the late Gordon Prange and his students, Donald Goldstein and
Katherine Dillon. Toland's chief witness for the prosecution, it seems,
"Seaman Z," was tracked down by Goldstein and Dillon and repudiated most of
what Toland ascribed to him.
But just as the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) has provided a literal
gold mine for John Kennedy assassination researchers, so too has it opened
the door for further Pearl Harbor revisionism. It is to the author of FOIA,
appropriately, that Stinnett dedicates his book.
There is no question that Stinnett has unearthed a boxcar load of documents
previously unseen by most Americans. His familiarity with the markings of
radio transmissions and his analysis of who could have known what is
impressive and may have been valuable in another context. Lacking a
historian's perspective, however, Stinnett fails to perform one of the most
basic elements of historical research, namely to follow the footnotes. It
leads him to a disastrous trap, which I will develop in detail.
Stinnett's lack of historical training also produces a tunnel vision that
sees one potential path of actions (among many thousands) as the only
possible route that could have unfolded. The result is that at every
critical point where Stinnett prepares the reader for a "gotcha" of FDR, he
aborts his mission, employing a host of "mush" terms that reveal that in
fact has does not have the incriminating evidence that his title purports to
contain. I have counted at least 23 such term uses, but I am sure there are
many more that I missed. Among them:
*(introduction, xiv) "The commanders in Hawaii . . . were deprived of
intelligence that might have made them more alert to risks entailed in
Roosevelt's policy . . . ." Would it made them more "alert" or not? How so?
*(5) Journalist Edward Murrow, commenting on what "he and Murrow were told
by FDR" "hinted" at a "tantalizing" conclusion: "The President's surprise
[at the attack] was not as great as that of other men around him. Nor was
the attack unwelcome." Then Stinnett admits, "Any conclusion about the
Murrow meeting must remain speculative." Oh? So why report it?
*(9) "The paper trail of the McCollum memo ends with the Knox endorsement.
Although the proposal was addressed to Anderson, no specific record has been
found by the author indicating whether he or Roosevelt actually saw it." Yet
Stinnett builds much of his early case on the McCollum memo, which we will
have more to say about later. Why bother, when there is no proof FDR
"actually saw it?"
*(9) "Throughout 1941, it seems, providing Japan into an overt act of war
was the principal policy that guided FDR's actions toward Japan." Was this
the policy, or not? Can you prove it?
*(9) "Roosevelt's �fingerprints' can be found on each of McCollum's
proposals." Yet Stinnett has no proof FDR "actually saw it." So Roosevelt
must have handled it without seeing it.
*(10) "Action D [of the McCollum memo] was very risky and could have
resulted in a loss of American lives approaching that of Pearl Harbor. In
the end, however, no shots were fired . . . ." So there are alternatives to
a single-path of history after all!
*(12) "There is no evidence that Admiral Kimmel knew of the action plans
advanced by McCollum, because Admiral Richardson never told him of them."
This raises an incredible possibility that Stinnett appears not to have
considered: if Kimmel had known of the "action plans" (if, indeed, such
things did exist, and which FDR saw---which Stinnett says he cannot prove),
would Kimmel have enthusiastically gone along with them? In retrospect,
Kimmel supporters portray him as "set up." In reality, did he feel "left
out?"
*(14) "A link to some of McCollum's provocations surfaced earlier in 1940
but did not produce a written directive." Or, in plainspeak, either no one
saw McCollum's memo, or the people who did see it did not act on it.
*(17) Referring to FDR's statement to members of his staff that "If somebody
attacks us, then it isn't a foreign war, is it?" Stinnett writes,
"McCollum's eight-action memo would soon make the President's words a
reality." This is where the revisionists fail to realize what they are
really saying: The "eight-action memo did not make the President's words a
reality," the Japanese Imperial Fleet did! The most astounding side-effect
of the revisionists' arguments is to completely excuse the Japanese for any
role in Pearl Harbor. (Toland ends his book by blaming FDR for the presence
of nuclear weapons and for the Cold War that resulted from, as he saw it,
the use of the atomic bombs on Japan . . . by Truman.)
*(35) Director Walter S. Anderson, the head of the Office of Naval
Intelligence (ONI) "obviously believed in the McCollum strategy and went to
Hawaii knowing of the risks inherent in increasing American pressure on a
militant Japan." First, Stinnett does not know what Anderson "believed," and
second, his comments virtually apologize for "increasing pressure" on "poow
wittle Japan," whom he admits was "militant." But the kicker comes in the
next sentence. Again, on p. 35, Stinnett writes, "Yet in an oral-history
interview conducted by Columbia University in March 1962, he [Anderson]
claimed to know nothing of the Richardson-Roosevelt discussion concerning
keeping the fleet in Hawaiian waters." It appears as an interpreter of
thoughts, Stinnett knows what Anderson "obviously believed," despite what
the man himself "claimed."
*(37) "Had he been briefed, Kimmel could have requested that Purple
decryptions be sent to him from either Washington or Corregidor." Or, he
could not have. The man who did not put up long range reconnaissance, who
did not coordinate well with General Short, who did not have the fleet on
full alert despite numerous and abundantly clear warnings, who did not have
torpedo nets up---that admiral would "have requested" decryptions if only he
had been briefed.
*(44) Dutch naval attache Johan Ranneft, monitoring Japanese fleet movements
for the Dutch, reported in a diary that he had plotted carrier groups, but
had one unnamed port location. "Ranneft's unnamed port could only be
Hitokappu Bay . . . ." Stinnett goes on to say "There was no way Ranneft
could mistake the southern Japanese carrier movement for an eastern foray."
*(48) "Dropping �Hitokappu Bay' from the typewritten summary may have been
done deliberately to conceal American success in decoding Japanese naval
communications." Or, it may not have been done deliberately. I will say more
on this key message later.
*(96) "It is quite possible that Director [J. Edgar] Hoover learned he was
excluded from the Tsu intercepts and, in a state of pique, planted the
espionage questions directed at FDR with favored White House reporters." It
is also possible, if one believes Anthony Summers, that Hoover was involved
in trying on new dresses. Either is as equally likely . . . or unlikely.
*(96) "The prickly FBI director was offended when he was refused access to
secret naval communications documents. FBI censorship still veils the full
details, but apparently Navy codebreakers refused to share Japanese
intercepts, including the Tsu reports, with Hoover." We don't know, do we,
because "FBI censorship still veils the full details" . . . or not.
*(97) "Though there is no proof that he saw the Tsu reports, [Hoover]
continued to forward evidence of the Japanese espionage at Honolulu to
"Berle." There is "no proof" that Hoover saw the Tsu reports, and there is
no proof that FDR saw the McCollum memo. What else can the author share that
he has no proof of? I have no proof that UFOs exist, or that unicorns live
in Dayton, Ohio. Is that grounds for a book---"The Unicorn Deception?"
*(134) "How much was disclosed to Admiral Kimmel and the White House [by the
codebreakers] is obscured by continued US censorship." This tack gets old.
The author is plenty eager to pat himself on the back for using FOIA to
obtain some documents, but retreats to the "censorship" canard when the
documents he does get don't make his case.
*(136) "Admiral Kimmel's war plans staff should have been alarmed by the
arrival of a Japanese invasion force south of Wake Island." Certainly, the
staffers would have been less alarmed than the Wake Islanders. But I could
just as easily argue that the staff "should have been relieved" that the
fleet wasn't south of Oahu.
*(136) Commander Vincent R. Murphy was "the man who was responsible for
evaluating Japanese intentions" as the assistant war plans officer for
Kimmel. "Murphy attended major meetings with America's top naval brass [who?
how �top'?] while in Washington in late 1940, which suggests that he learned
of FDR's policy of �let Japan commit the first act of war.'" While working
with the U.S. Air Force, I hung out with some of the "top brass" (generals,
colonels, and Senior Executive Service-types) related to aerospace transport
programs. How much do you think I learned from them about strategic bomber
programs? Or about policies related to "no-fly" zones in Iraq?
*(136) Stinnett follows these two "shoulda/wouldas" with a third on the same
page: "It is unreasonable to believe [Adm.] Richardson [Kimmel's superior]
did not convey Roosevelt's policy to his top aide---Murphy." Now Stinnett
has two degrees of separation from reality: he has no proof that Murphy knew
and he has not proof that Richardson told him, and he cites both as evidence
to the contrary!
*(145) "Neither Kimmel nor his family ever mentioned the mysterious sortie
and the sudden recall from the North Pacific waters." But Stinnett thinks
this sortie important enough to dwell on at length.
*(168) After stating that "the Kimmel-Bloch-Rochefort alert of November 25
is the only intelligence report generated by Station HYPO that can be linked
to President Roosevelt," on the following page he backtracks, saying
"Tracing the Navy's copy of the HYPO message to the White House during this
time frame is difficult." He then spends the remainder of the paragraph
explaining that he cannot prove that this alert "can be linked to President
Roosevelt."
*(207) Edwin Layton, responding to a comment by Kimmel, "may not have
beencompletely frank. . . . He then expanded the falsification." So is it a
lack of frankness, or an outright falsification? The answer comes soon
enough when we learn that Joseph Rochefort is in on the plot: "Rochefort . .
. backed up Layton . . . ."
There are other similar "mush phrases" I could cite, but the reader, no
doubt, gets the point. Other, arguably more serious, problems abound.
Stinnett has more than a few substantial contradictions in his Stinnett
thesis. He admits that "American agencies from whom the oil is bought [by
Japan] go ahead and make suitable arrangements with government authorities
in Washington," (19), and calls the oil-licensing system a "sham." The
embargo, he points out, did not work between July 1940 and April 1941, but,
of course, "McCollum's proposals had not yet been adopted." (19) So that
explains it! The proposals by a mid-level navy officer, that Stinnett has no
proof were ever seen by FDR, had "not yet been adopted." Yet a few pages
later, Stinnett tells us that "Japan's initial planning for the attack began
in the fall of 1940, about a month after McCollum's action recommendations
were sent to the White House." (30) So the oil embargo had nothing to do
with Japan's decision to prepare the Pearl Harbor attack, and the McCollum
memo had nothing to do with it, since it had only been a month and nothing
in the McCollum memo---[which Stinnett cannot prove FDR even saw----possibly
could have been approved, let alone acted on, by the President!
This alone is a fatal blow to Stinnett's argument (but, believe it or not,
hardly the worst error). The onus for war was clearly on Japan. Planning
already started no matter what FDR did, or whose advice he took. But this
is, in essence, working backward. Stinnett's thesis falls apart right from
the start, when he rolls the dice, as it were, on a memo by Lt. Commander
Arthur H. McCollum, the head of the Far East desk of ONI.
McCollum's five-page memo of October 1940 (which Stinnett calls the
"eight-action memo") was a blueprint for starting a war with Japan, and,
more important, inciting Japan to "fire the first shot." Stinnett places
incredible stock in the notion that a mid-level commander in an intelligence
agency---and only one of several---somehow had the ear of the President of
the United States. Intel groups generate these memos by the hundreds and
few, if any, ever directly end up in the hands of the President. Indeed, in
the 20th century, one would be hard pressed to name any large-scale public
initiative---let alone manipulating a foreign power into a war---that was
the work of a mid-level military officer. Possibly the closest anyone could
come would be the Iran-Contra Affair, which is a pretty far cry from
provoking an enemy into bombing American soil. It has already been
established that Stinnett cannot prove Roosevelt, or Kimmel, or even Murphy,
ever saw the memo, and we know that although Anderson denied hearing
anything about the "eight-action" plan in a January 1941 meeting between
Richardson and Roosevelt, which, to Stinnett, is proof that he in fact did
know about it! (35)
One of the most egregious errors, though, is that Stinnett fails to mention
that it was prohibited by the Navy's regulations for an officer to sent any
memo forward without sending it first to his superiors, including copies to
his superiors, including Adm. Kimmel. One of the central lynchpins of
Stinnett's argument---that FDR was engaged in manipulation behind Kimmel's
back- --thus collapses.
Where Stinnett could have made a valuable contribution---in the unearthing
of various intercepts of radio broadcasts on November 25, and, at the
latest, on November 26, while the Japanese fleet was still in Japan---he
fritters away through a failure to appreciate the big picture within which
not only the intelligence groups, but all the Pacific armed forces, were
operating. The crux of the issue was this: while many of the intercepts show
movement, and although the Japanese carriers were known to be at sea,
Stinnett's own evidence time and again suggests that they were thought to be
heading south. When viewed in the understanding of Japanese naval
capabilities of the day, it is easy to see why no one took seriously an
attack on Pearl Harbor at that time: Japan did the impossible, conducting
three major simultaneous amphibious or attack operations in Singapore, the
Philippines, and Pearl Harbor. Most military authorities would admit that
the United States, today, with all its vast capabilities could not pull off
such a feat. When combined with the chronic underestimation of Japanese
prowess, there is little doubt that any messages of ships at sea were taken
as feints and decoys for the "main attack" at Singapore.
Rochefort's dispatch of November 26 makes this clear: while the Japanese
fleet was on the move, intelligence "INDICAT[s] STRONG FORCE COMPONENT MAY
BE PREPARING TO OPERATE IN SOUTH EASTERN ASIA WHILE PARTS MAY OPERATE FROM .
. . MARSHALLS" (166). This is anything but confirmation that the fleet was
headed to Pearl! Captain Duane Whitlock, as Stinnett confirms, denies that
any message spelling out Hitokappu Bay was ever sent. But even if it was,
this was only the staging area, and as such did not lock the Japanese into
moving in any predetermined direction.
It gets worse for Stinnett's argument. On pp. 45-47, Stinnett supposedly
uncovers four radio dispatches---two by Nagano and two by Yamamoto---that
were "intercepted" and decoded, and thus warned FDR (but not Kimmel) that
the Japanese fleet was on the move. Virtually all of Stinnett's thesis hangs
on these four intercepts indicating that the Japanese did not keep radio
silence. It is the lynchpin of his "new" information, and the core of his
book. No originals exist, but rather, Stinnett's source for this "new"
information is "two US naval histories: Pearl Harborby Vice Admiral Homer N.
Wallin and The Campaigns of the Pacific War prepared by the . . . Strategic
Bombing Survey." Wallin's source was the 1979 Pearl Harbor hearings, which
referenced the Navy's History Section. Both of these came from a November
29, 1945 document produced by the History Section, based on October 1945
interviews with principal Japanese actors!
Let's reconstruct this: Stinnett cites Wallin, who cites the Hearings, which
cite the History Section's "reconstructions" with Japanese four years after
the incident. Even then, the Strategic Bombing survey, cited in the classic
book by Gordon Prange, et. al., At Dawn We Slept, quotes the Strategic
Bombing survey as saying that none of the four were transmitted by radio and
that all four messages were hand-delivered. This is confirmed by virtually
all of the Japanese participants, including Genda, in repeated interviews.
Stinnett's key evidence then---which is hardly new, and has been in the open
for years---is that there is no "new" evidence, and that the Hitokappu Bay
message was hand delivered. Had Stinnett traced the citations back, to use
his waffle terms, it's hard to believe that he would have relied on this as
evidence of anything.
What about the decrpytions of 120+ other "radio transmissions" that Stinnett
claims to have found from various fuel tankers and other ships? These
messages may well have been intercepted, but most were not translated until
after the war (and certainly not in December 1941). Keeping in mind that the
intelligence sources were looking for a task force heading toward Singapore,
any information not fitting into that template was delayed in translation,
then analysis. Here, I again will defer to Stinnett's waffle language, and
say, it is not clear if any of the radio decryptions were actually
translated, and if they were, if they were then sent to Washington or to
Kimmel. Of course, Stinnett cannot prove that they were---only that they
were intercepted. Historians of Pearl Harbor are well familiar with the
evidence that surfaced in the mid-1980s about the information Duskow Popov
gave the FBI on a microdot, which the FBI then for the most part ignored.
This is the same scenario.
Moreover, the notion that Kimmel, if only properly warned, would have taken
action is, to use Stinnett's phraseology, difficult to believe. Rochefort
told Kimmel on October 22 that Japan was in the midst of a large-scale
"screening maneuver," and while Hitokappu Bay references were deleted from
the messages passed to Kimmel to conceal American decoding successes,
Stinnett again takes this as denying the Admiral critical information. But
Stinnett misses the key phrases---it wasn't the starting point that was
important, it was the "screening" mission that convinced Kimmel and everyone
else that this fleet was not a threat to Pearl. Stinnett misses the
significance of the December 2 decrypt. While making the case we had in fact
cracked the code, he ignores the fleet moves "thus implying a move from
Japan proper to the south." On my Rand- McNally, Hawaii is due east of
Japan. Singapore is south.
There is other evidence that even had Kimmel had more information, he
wouldn't have known what to do with it. RCA messages were delivered to
Kimmel by David Sarnoff: "Though made personally aware of the RCA messages
by Sarnoff's visit, neither Kimmel nor Short ever took an interest in them"
(108). Stinnett notes that Gen. Short waited two days for a photo plane to
have machine guns installed before sending it out on patrol. But what about
all the PBYs and other long-range aircraft that could have made visual
reconnaissance? Characterizing Kimmel and Short as "watch[ing] helplessly"
while the [Japanese] ships steamed into position," neither dispatched any
subs, long-range ground-based air, or even a destroyer or two to patrol the
region they (according to Stinnett) were so concerned about.
This takes us to the last significant point, namely the recall of the U.S.
carriers that Kimmel had sent to the "intended Japanese launch site" (145)
Washington "issued directives that caused Kimmel to quickly order the
Pacific Fleet out of the North Pacific and back to its anchorages in Pearl
Harbor." (145) Although Stinnett includes a monstrous endnote section,
little is said about exactly what was in these "directives." But let's use
his tactic and imagine we know. Likely it was something along the lines of:
"Get those carriers, which have no battleship or submarine support, and
which are our only naval air assets in the Pacific, back where they can be
protected from submarine attacks." On page 148, Stinnett explains that the
U.S. was outnumbered four to one in carriers alone. If viewed in this light,
Stinnett's amazement that "neither Admiral Kimmel nor his family ever
mentioned the mysterious sortie and the sudden recall . . . ." I should hope
not! It indicates that Kimmel realized he may have exposed the carrier fleet
to an ambush at sea.
On November 28, Adm. Betty Stark told Kimmel in no uncertain terms to take
all due precautions: "THIS POLICY SHOULD NOT REPEAT NOT BE CONSTRUED AS
RESTRICTING YOU TO A COURSE OF ACTION THAT MIGHT JEOPARDIZE YOUR DEFENSE . .
. YOU ARE INSTRUCTED TO UNDERTAKE SUCH RECONNAISSANCE AND OTHER MEASURES YOU
DEEM NECESSARY . . . ." (172) Stark's only caveat was not to "alarm" the
civilian population. Based on these instructions, Stinnett concluded Kimmel
was "handcuffed." (173).
Other contradictions and flat-out errors abound. A central point in the
Stinnett thesis is that Adm. Anderson was promoted shortly before December
1941 to act as FDR's "enforcement" mechanism. But Anderson's own oral
history, and national biographical sources confirm, that he was promoted in
July 1936, and he attributed his position as a demotion based on a falling
out with Frank Knox. If Anderson was friendly with FDR, it doesn't come
through in his oral history.
There are still more inconsistencies and errors. On page 146, Stinnett calls
it a "bizarre series of coincidences" that Yamamoto and Kimmel both selected
the identical launch area as the most desirable from which to attack Pearl
Harbor, then on 147 he tells us that "naval war planning had always
contemplated a Japanese carrier raid aimed at Hawaii from the North
Pacific." After 100+ pages explaining how Kimmel was denied information,
Stinnett reproduces a message from Admiral Royal Ingersoll indicating an
attack was possible "in any direction" INCLUDING ATTACK ON PHILIPPINES OR
GUAM. . . ." Again, Rochefort's November 26 intercept warned of a Japanese
fleet "PREPARING TO OPERATE IN SOUTH EASTERN ASIA." To repeat: in the
context of what intelligence sources knew about Japanese capabilities, any
attack on the Philippines or South Eastern Asia would exclude a strike
anywhere else. He describes the vessels at Pearl as "27-year-old relics of
World War I," yet every one of the ships sunk (except the Arizona) returned
to action in World War II.
Stinnett's single most important contribution is the revelation that the
Japanese transmitted in the open late on November 25 or early on November
26. If this is "breaking radio silence," it is pretty flimsy stuff. The
overarching issue remains clear, though. Data must be analyzed in a variety
of contexts. Intelligence efforts at codebreaking were superb prior to Pearl
Harbor, but the context in which they were placed was obsolete---a Japanese
Empire capable of only one large-scale operation. Perhaps if other areas of
intelligence about Japan's capabilities, and intentions, were better, a
surprise attack would have been averted.
But the key fact remains: Japan intended to attack Pearl Harbor, surprise or
not, and as John Toland showed, fully expected to find the ships under way,
all guns blazing. Japanese documents reveal that planners there anticipated
losing 30% of the entire Pearl Harbor task force! This makes clear that
nothing Kimmel, or FDR, could have done would have forestalled the December
7 strike. Even if Kimmel and Short had been better prepared and fully
informed, it only would have changed the finally tally, not the outcome.
30 posted on 11/4/01 7:59 AM Pacific by LS
------
http://www.netsurf.com/nsb/nsb.02.03.html
EDITOR'S CHOICE
Day of Deceit: The Truth about FDR and Pearl Harbor
Free Press; ISBN: 0684853396
Robert B. Stinnett
Free Press; ISBN: 0684853396 It's been long rumored that the attack on Pearl
Harbor, FDR's pivotal Day of Infamy, didn't come as a complete surprise to
American officials. Former journalist Stinnett began wielding the Freedom of
Information Act two decades ago to research the story and, after 17 years,
comes as close to proving its truth as is likely to happen. A strong
isolationist sentiment among opponents prevented Roosevelt from committing
the United States to stopping Hitler for much of the war in Europe -
something that FDR saw as necessary and inevitable. To counter the
isolationism, the US Navy devised a long-term scheme that over several
months provoked Axis partner Japan into aggression; it was the plan's tragic
miscalculation, though, that it played out so successfully, yielding Pearl
Harbor. Stinnett's evidence is mostly circumstantial. Still, even absent a
smoking memo - which seems unlikely to turn up - his case is compelling
enough to re-open the debate with strong new evidence. Stinnett, a WWII
veteran who served with George Bush, gives full due to the deaths and ruined
careers that accompanied the debacle. Nonetheless, he sympathizes with what
he believes was FDR's calculated risk to ultimately save more lives and
enable America to commit to what he and history judged to be a moral war.
------
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig/trask1.html
The Conspiracies of Empire
by H. Arthur Scott Trask
"Finally I say let demagogues and world-redeemers babble their emptiness to
empty ears; twice duped is too much."
~ Robinson Jeffers
Day of Deceit: The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor
by Robert B. Stinnett
New York, NY: Free Press; 260pp., $26.00
The late Murray Rothbard often argued that far from being evidence of a
"paranoid" strain in the American mind, belief in conspiracies as a factor
in American history was usually not taken far enough. The truth behind most
conspiracies, he alleged, was far more heinous and diabolical than even the
most diehard conspiracy theorist suspected. While many have assumed Rothbard
was only being half serious, a new book on the Japanese attack on Pearl
Harbor by Robert B. Stinnett offers compelling evidence that Murray had it
right. The truth that emerges as one makes his way through this exhaustively
researched volume is of an American political and military establishment
whose brilliance is exceeded only by its utter lack of moral scruple or
genuine patriotism. Sixty years after the fateful attack, Stinnett has
uncovered, presented, and substantiated the truth behind Pearl Harbor. It is
now clear that FDR did know the Japanese attack was coming. He knew more
than a year in advance of Japanese plans to bomb the United States� Pacific
fleet at Pearl, and he knew more than a week before that the attack would
come early Sunday morning. He knew because American naval intelligence had
cracked the Japanese naval codes in the early fall of 1940, 15 months before
the fateful attack.
The smoke had barely cleared from Pearl Harbor before rightwing journalists,
cranky poets, and some Republican politicians began suspecting that somehow
Pearl Harbor was all a set-up. Since then, revisionist historians have
contended that FDR both provoked and welcomed the war; and some even charged
that he knew of the attack beforehand. Establishment historians and
government officials countered these charges by insisting that the attack
was indeed a surprise due to a failure of American intelligence and
incompetence in the naval high command. Stinnett quotes historian Stephen E.
Ambrose who claimed, as recently as a 1999 Wall Street Journal editorial,
that "the real problem was that American intelligence was terrible."
According to Ambrose (who echoes the official story), the navy had not yet
broken the Japanese naval codes, and the Japanese task force maintained
strict radio silence on its way to Hawaii. As a result, "in late November,
intelligence �lost� the Japanese aircraft carrier fleet." Other historians
have contended that the Japanese caught us by surprise due to faulty
analysis of pretty good intelligence, bureaucratic squabbling among
high-level naval officers in Washington, underestimation of Japanese daring
and capabilities, and expectations that the attack would come against Dutch
or British possessions in East Asia, not against Hawaii. Stinnett exposes
each one of these theories to be false. For instance, he amply demonstrates
that the ships of the Japanese carrier fleet engaged in daily radio
communication with the high command in Japan, military commands in the
Central Pacific, and with each other. Stinnett found out the truth by
reading American naval intelligence radio intercepts of the Japanese
transmissions. American intelligence did not lose the carriers.
How did Stinnett manage to uncover the truth when congressional
investigations (in both 1945-1946 and 1995) failed to do so? The answer lies
in Stinnett�s intelligence, integrity, and unflagging research effort
(lasting 17 years), qualities that we know from experience are all too
lacking in congressional investigations. But it also lies in a crucial
Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by the author in 1983. In
that year, Stinnett learned of the existence of the Pacific War
communications intelligence files of the United States Navy (a top secret
file containing over one million documents relating to U.S. communication
intelligence before and during the war). The author�s request was at first
denied, but in 1994 the navy decided to declassify the records, or at least
most of them. As the Stinnett soon discovered, key intercepts and documents
were kept back, some were missing from the records, and other documents had
been altered to conceal vital information. However, enough information was
released, perhaps inadvertently, to enable Stinnett to piece together the
truth.
American communication intelligence operations in the Pacific theater was
primarily a naval operation. The intelligence network was composed of 21
radio intercept stations located along the North American coast from Panama
to Alaska and on Pacific islands from Hawaii to the Philippines. As Stinnett
demonstrates, well over 90 percent of all Japanese radio transmissions were
intercepted by one or more of these stations. Once intercepted, these
messages were sent to one of three regional control centers, two of which
were also cryptographic centers, and from there they were sent on to Station
US in Washington, the headquarters for naval communications intelligence. Of
course, all official Japanese communications were in code. Diplomatic
messages were sent in the Purple, Tsu, or Oite codes; naval communications
in one of 29 codes called the Kaigun Ango, the most important of which were
the 5-Num (naval operations), SM (naval movement), S (merchant marine), and
Yobidashi Fugo (radio call sign) codes. Stinnett conclusively demonstrates
that American cryptologists (codebreakers) had broken all four naval codes
by October of 1940. (American intelligence had broken Japanese diplomatic
codes even before: Tsu in the 1920s, Oite in 1939, and Purple in September
1940. As a result, cryptologists could intercept, decipher, and translate
almost all Japanese diplomatic and military radio traffic within a matter of
hours after receiving them. The decryption (decoding) and translating was
done at three cryptographic centers: Station CAST on Corregidor in the
Philippines; Station HYPO on Oahu; and Station US in Washington.
The resulting intelligence information was then sent to top U.S. military,
naval, and cabinet officials, including the president (about 36 individuals
in all). However, as Stinnett meticulously and thoroughly demonstrates,
crucial intelligence information indicating a Japanese strike at Pearl was
deliberately withheld from both Lt. Gen. Walter Short, commander of army
forces on Hawaii, and Admiral Husband E. Kimmell, commander of the Pacific
fleet. Roosevelt and his advisers had set up these two distinguished
officers to be the fall guys for the catastrophe at Pearl. The story of
their betrayal by friends and colleagues in the naval high command, all of
whom knew of the impending attack and Roosevelt�s strategy of provocation,
is heartrending.
In addition to the interception and decryption of Japanese radio
transmissions, most of the radio intercept stations were equipped with radio
direction finders (RDF) which allowed trained operators to pinpoint the
exact location of specific Japanese warships once their distinct radio call
sign was identified. By means of RDF, naval intelligence experts were able
to track the movement of the Japanese carrier force as it approached Pearl
Harbor. Stinnett�s findings confirm the truthfulness of the claim made by
the Dutch naval attach� to the United States, Captain Johan Ranneft, that
while on visits to the Office of Naval Intelligence in Washington on
December 2 and 6 he saw intelligence maps tracking the movement of Japanese
carriers eastward toward Hawaii. Also, his findings support the testimony of
Robert Ogg who claims that while on assignment to the 12th Naval District in
San Francisco he located (by means of RDF intelligence) the Japanese fleet
north of Hawaii three days before the attack.
Perhaps the single most important document discovered by Stinnett is a 7
October 1940 memorandum written by Lt. Commander Arthur H. McCollum, head of
the Far East desk of the Office of Naval Intelligence. McCollum�s memo
outlines a strategic policy designed to goad the Japanese into committing
"an overt act of war" against the United States. McCollum writes that such a
strategy is necessary because "it is not believed that in the present state
of political opinion the United States government is capable of declaring
war against Japan without more ado." McCollum suggests eight specific
"actions" that the United States should take to bring about this result. The
key one is "Action F" which calls for keeping "the main strength" of the
U.S. Pacific Fleet "in the vicinity of the Hawaiian Islands." McCollum
concludes his memo by stating that "if by these means Japan could be led to
commit an overt act of war, so much the better." Stinnett has little trouble
demonstrating that the strategy outlined in this memo became the official
policy of the Roosevelt administration. Not only was the memorandum endorsed
by Capt. Dudley Knox, one of Roosevelt�s most trusted military advisers, but
White House routing logs demonstrate that Roosevelt received the memorandum;
and over the next year, Roosevelt put every one of the eight suggested
actions into effect. He implemented the last one (Action H) on 26 July 1941
when he ordered a complete embargo of all U.S. trade with Japan.
Roosevelt�s summer embargo was the culmination of another very clever
administration policy, namely helping the Japanese to build up their
military oil reserves just enough to encourage them to attack the United
States but not enough to enable them to win a long war. In the summer of
1940, Roosevelt took two actions designed to implement this truly
Machiavellian plan. First, he signed a bill authorizing a massive American
naval build up designed to create a two-ocean navy. Second, he required
American companies to obtain a government license before selling any
petroleum products or scrap metal to Japan. For the next 12 months, the
administration readily granted export permits to American firms selling raw
materials to Japan, and Japanese oil tankers and merchant vessels could be
seen loading up on scrap iron and petroleum at America�s West Coast ports.
Meanwhile, American naval intelligence, using radio direction finding (RDF),
tracked the tankers to the Japanese naval oil depot at Tokuyama. Roosevelt�s
strategists calculated that helping the Japanese build up a two-year supply
of reserves would be about right. That way, if war broke out in the second
half of 1941, the Japanese would run out of oil in mid to late 1943, just as
American wartime industrial production would be peaking and her massive
carrier fleets (100 proposed carriers) would be ready to go on the
offensive. In July 1941, Roosevelt took the final step and, together with
the British and Dutch, imposed an embargo on the sale of petroleum, iron,
and steel to Japan (McCollum�s Action H). The trap had now been laid, and
the Japanese were not slow to fall for it.
Stinnett does not ignore the moral dimensions of the Roosevelt strategy. How
did those who knew the attack was coming justify the deliberate sacrifice of
over three thousand American lives? A bone-chilling comment by Lt. Commander
Joseph J. Rochefort, commander of Station HYPO at Pearl Harbor, provides the
answer. In a postwar assessment of the attack made to a naval historian, he
remarked of Pearl Harbor that "it was a pretty cheap price to pay for
unifying the country." There you have it. Massive deception, lying, the
sacrifice of military careers, the betrayal of friends and fellow officers,
and the deaths of thousands of American servicemen � all is justified for
the cause of inciting a peaceful people to go to war. Stinnett himself is
far from being unsympathetic to Roosevelt�s strategy. He agrees with the
pre-war interventionists that America needed to go to war against the Axis
powers. According to Stinnett, Roosevelt and his advisers "faced a terrible
dilemma." The public was overwhelmingly opposed to entering the war, and in
a democracy the people are supposed to rule. Yet, Roosevelt believed this
war would be both necessary and just. What to do? In the end, they decided
that "something had to be endured in order to stop a greater evil."
Here we have yet another example of Americans making use of the doctrine
that the end justifies the means. Americans are quick to deny the ethical
legitimacy of this doctrine when it is presented to them as a naked
proposition, yet there is no doctrine that they more readily turn to in
order to justify morally questionable practices. Do not those who defend the
nuclear holocaust of Hiroshima and Nagasaki argue as their first line of
defense that it was morally justified because it saved American lives? And
can we not expect to hear in the near future from those who can no longer
deny the truth, "Roosevelt�s duplicity was justified because it was
necessary to stop Hitler." The Christian�s response to this question was
articulated by Paul two thousand years ago: "And why not say, �Let us do
evil that good may come�? � as we are slanderously reported and as some
affirm that we say. Their condemnation is just." (Romans 3:8 NKJV).
We owe a debt of gratitude to Mr. Stinnett. Not only has he uncovered the
truth behind Pearl Harbor, but in so doing he has exposed one of the
greatest cover stories, or con jobs, of all time � American prewar naval
intelligence and high command as keystone cop. After sixty years, America�s
brave band of revisionist historians have been vindicated, while her servile
crop of court historians have been pretty much disgraced.
December 9, 2000
Dr. Trask is an historian.
--- End Message ---
