PEARL HARBOR

In its immediate aftermath, the 9/11 attacks were compared to the attack on Pearl Harbor that launched America into World War II. This comparison was quiteappropriate—but not for the reason most people believed.

Controversy has raged for years over the question of Franklin Roosevelt's foreknowledge of the December 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor and it is now clear that certain elements in Washington, D.C. knew of the Japanese attack in advance.

While few journalists and some Republicans accused the Roosevelt administration of foreknowledge, government spokesmen and establishment historians blamed the attack on the failure of US intelligence and incompetence within the naval high command.

Today, the accumulation of available information has now caused wide acceptance of the idea that the devastating attack on Pearl Harbor was tolerated, even encouraged, in an effort to galvanize public support for America's participation in the war.

Roosevelt was quite open in his allegiance to England. While proclaiming neutrality, he had sent war ships and ammunition to Britain just as proposed by the Century Group, a foreign policy think-tank composed of CFR members. He ordered the occupation of Iceland, closing it off to the Germans, and authorized attacks on U-boats. He openly approved loans to Japan's enemy, nationalist China, and quietly approved the recruitment of well-paid American “volunteers” for Chiang Kai-shek's famous “Flying Tigers.” Much of this was in violation of international war rules and was guaranteed to provoke the Axis powers.

“Roosevelt was himself a prototypic Wall Streeter,” wrote CFR researcher James Perloff. “His family had been involved in New York banking since the eighteenth century. His uncle, Frederic Delano, was on the original Federal Reserve Board.” Roosevelt's son-in-law, Curtis B. Dall, wrote, “Most of his [Roosevelt's] thoughts, his political ‘ammunition,’ as it were, were carefully manufactured for him in advance by the CFR-One World Money group.” Dall, of course, was referring to the New World Order long before George Herbert Walker Bush popularized the term.

Those who accept the idea that Roosevelt and a few other insiders knew that Pearl Harbor was to be attacked point to these facts:

• During Pacific naval exercises in 1932 and 1938, and with Japanese military attachés closely observing, US Navy officers theoretically destroyed the Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor both times by using the same tactics used in 1941 by the Japanese.

• Roosevelt ordered the Pacific fleet moved to the exposed position at Pearl Harbor over the vigorous objections of Admiral James O. Richardson, who was replaced for refusing to issue the order.

• Roosevelt, Secretary of State Cordell Hull and other high-level officials knew that war was inevitable and that negotiations with Japan's Kichisaburo Nomura were hopeless because the broken Japanese code revealed Nomura was instructed not to yield to Hull's harsh demands.

• They also knew that a large Japanese task force, including six aircraft carriers, had dropped from sight after moving towards America.

• This prompted US Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall, a close associate to many CFR members, to send an oddly-worded message to Pearl Harbor commanders on November 27, 1941, “Hostile action possible at any moment. If hostilities cannot, repeat CANNOT, be avoided, the United States desires that Japan commit the first overt act. This policy should not, repeat NOT, be construed as restricting you to a course of action that might jeopardize your defense.” Despite this clear warning, with its accompanying suggestion not to attack any attackers, Pacific Fleet ships remained at anchor and aircraft were bunched into clusters of “sitting ducks” as “security” against saboteurs.

• During the first week of December, Americans intercepted the Japanese diplomatic “Purple” code ordering the Washington embassy to destroy all secret papers and prepare to evacuate.

• On December 4, Australian intelligence reported sighting the missing Japanese task force moving toward Pearl Harbor but Roosevelt dismissed it as a rumor begun by pro-war Republicans.

• A Dutch submarine tracked the Japanese fleet to Pearl Harbor and radioed this news to headquarters, prompting a warning from Col. F. G. L. Weijerman, the Dutch military attaché in Washington.

• A British agent named Dusko Popov learned of Japan's plans from German sources but his warnings to Washington were ignored.

• According to John Toland, author of Adolf Hitler, separate warnings regarding a pending attack on Pearl Harbor, though varying as to a specific time, came from US Ambassador to Japan Joseph Grew; FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover; Senator Guy Gillette; Rep. Martin Dies; and Brig. Gen. Elliot Thorpe in Java.

• Dutch naval officer, Capt. Johan Ranneft, said sources in US Intelligence told him on December 6 that the Japanese carriers were only 400 miles northwest of Hawaii.

• During investigations after the attack, Marshall and Navy Secretary Frank Knox both testified they could not recall their whereabouts the night of December 6. It was later revealed that they were both in the White House with Roosevelt.

• Then there is the issue of the aircraft carriers. In 1941, the American public, as well as a few hidebound military officers, still believed that the battleship was the ultimate weapon. But anyone who had been paying attention knew that Gen. Billy Mitchell had proven in the mid-1920s that a single bomb-laden airplane could destroy a battleship. Battleships were obsolete. Victory in any Pacific war would go to the side with the strongest air power and that meant aircraft carriers. Not one aircraft carrier was present when Pearl Harbor was attacked.

On November 25, 1941, Secretary of War Henry Stimson had a conversation with Roosevelt, after which he wrote in his diary, “The question was how we should maneuver them into the position of firing the first shot without too much danger to ourselves…It was desirable to make sure the Japanese be the ones to do this so that there should remain no doubt in anyone's mind as to who were the aggressors.” The answer to this dilemma came on December 7.

The most damning evidence yet of Roosevelt's foreknowledge of an attack came from the 1948 interrogation of Germany's Gestapo chief Heinrich Mueller. In a 1995 book by Gregory Douglas, based on previously secret files, Mueller stated that on November 26, 1941, the Germans in Holland had intercepted a private trans-Atlantic telephone conversation between Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Churchill.

Churchill informed Roosevelt of the movements of the missing Japanese fleet and stated, “I can assure you that their goal is the (conversation broken) fleet in Hawaii, at Pearl Harbor.” “This is monstrous,” exclaimed Roosevelt, “Can you tell me…indicate…the nature of your intelligence?” “Reliable,” answered Churchill, who mentioned agents within the Japanese military and foreign service as well as their broken code.

“The obvious implication is that the Japs are going to do a Port Arthur on us at Pearl Harbor. Do you concur?” asked Roosevelt. Churchill replied, “I do indeed unless they add an attack on the Panama Canal to this vile business.” Port Arthur, today called Pinyun Lu-shun, was a strategic Russian port on China's Liaotung Peninsula. The Japanese launched a surprise torpedo attack against the port, which began the 1904–5 Russo-Japanese War.

Roosevelt then said, “…I will have to consider the entire problem…A Japanese attack on us, which would result in war between—and certainly you as well—would certainly fulfill two of the most important requirements of our policy.” Roosevelt speaks about absenting himself from the White House on some pretext, adding, “What I don't know, can't hurt me and I cannot understand messages at a distance.”

Addressing the unlikely proposition that US military officers would have knowingly allowed American units to be attacked, author Douglas explained, “[T]he warning did not come to Roosevelt from below but on a parallel level and from a foreign intelligence source which was far better equipped to decode and translate the Japanese transmissions.”