A-list
mailing list archive

Other Periods  | Other mailing lists  | Search  ]

Date:  [ Previous  | Next  ]      Thread:  [ Previous  | Next  ]      Index:  [ Author  | Date  | Thread  ]

[A-List] Do Freedom of Information Act files prove FDR had foreknowledge of Pearl Harbor? (fwd)






    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

               ANDRE    GUNDER      FRANK

Senior Fellow                                      Residence
World History Center                    One Longfellow Place
Northeastern University                            Apt. 3411
270 Holmes Hall                         Boston, MA 02114 USA
Boston, MA 02115 USA                    Tel:    617-948 2315
Tel: 617 - 373 4060                     Fax:    617-948 2316
Web-page:csf.colorado.edu/agfrank/     e-mail:franka@xxxxxxx

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 27 Mar 2002 16:10:19 PST
From: shniad@xxxxxx
Reply-To: Discussions on the Socialist Register and its articles
    <SOCIALIST-REGISTER@xxxxxxxx>
To: SOCIALIST-REGISTER@xxxxxxxx
Subject: Do Freedom of Information Act files prove FDR had foreknowledge

              of Pearl Harbor?

http://www.independent.org/tii/news/020311Cirignano.html

March 11, 2002

Do Freedom of Information Act files prove FDR had foreknowledge of Pearl
Harbor?

An Interview with Robert B. Stinnett*

By Douglas Cirignano**

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 January 1941. 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





Other Periods  | Other mailing lists  | Search  ]