On Lincoln’s birthday a far different breed of witness appeared. Lieutenant Colonel Henry C. Clausen was not at all daunted by the committee and its battery of counsel. A lawyer himself, he faced cross-examination with refreshing cockiness. When it was suggested that Stimson and the War Department had meant him to “slant” his one-man investigation, he bridled. “No, sir. I would not have conducted it if they had.” Were there instructions that he should in any way attempt to have a witness change his evidence? “No, sir,” briskly.
A query from Ferguson on the pre-war American agreement with the British, Chinese and Dutch was revelatory. Clausen said that an investigation of this nature “would lead to the White House and I was told that it was beyond the scope of my functions to investigate there.”
The next day Clausen talked frankly about his relationship with Stimson, whom he admired greatly. “When you made your investigation,” asked Ferguson, “did you ever look into his diary?”
“No, sir.”
“Well, you mean I should investigate the investigator? That would be like the grand jury investigating the grand jury. You told him to do the job. If you wanted somebody else to investigate Stimson you should have said so in the law.”
On February 14 Clausen assured Gearhart that he had been “as free as the wind as to what I could do so far as uncovering evidence was concerned. I mean by that, Mr. Gearhart, and I want you to believe this, there was no compulsion, no restraint, nothing put upon me except that in which I agreed.”
During the day Senator Lucas read Keefe’s statement in the House the previous November that Clausen “at the instigation of the War Department and Secretary of War” had apparently “browbeat” Colonel Bratton into signing an affidavit changing his previous testimony.
Then Lucas turned to Clausen, a man of average size. “What I want to specifically know is whether or not you browbeat this 225-pound Colonel here into giving evidence that was other than what he considered at that time the truth.”
It was a comical concept from a physical aspect.
“No, sir.”
The next witness was the burly Bratton, who had first made a statement to the Army Board that he had delivered the thirteen-part message to Bedell Smith and General Gerow. Now, under the grilling of the associate general counsel, Samuel Kaufman, Bratton was trying to explain why he had changed his testimony to Clausen. “This is the point at which my memory begins to go bad on me. I cannot state positively whether there was any delivery made that night or not at this time.… At the time when I made the statement to the Grunert Board I had not remembered, or I did not remember, that Colonel Dusenbury was working with me in the office that night.” Since making the statement to the Army Board Clausen had shown him affidavits from Bedell Smith and Gerow denying that they had received the thirteen-part message that Saturday night. “Now, I know all these men. I do not doubt the honesty and integrity of any one of them, and if they say that I did not deliver these pouches to them that night, then my memory must have been at fault.”
It was odd that after such abasement he was preparing to challenge Marshall himself. Just before leaving Berlin to testify at the hearings, he had vowed to his friend, Colonel Heimlich, that he was going “to blow the roof off that inquiry!”
He began by testifying that it was Marshall who, sometime in August 1941, had ordered him not to send Magic to the overseas theaters. But Bratton became so convinced by subsequent Magic messages that war was coming that he decided to take a chance and send a warning to Hawaii.
Then he produced the carefully wrapped package of photostats he had brought from Berlin; it was the long memorandum requested by Roosevelt on Japanese and German preparations for war from 1937 to Pearl Harbor. This was the report Bratton had discussed in 1943 with Colonel Yeaton, who had advised him to have the entire volume photostated at once and kept in a safe place.
Now at last he had nerved himself to reveal that Marshall personally had deleted vital portions of the memorandum. One stricken part dated 1937 was read aloud by Ferguson:
“ ‘There is a possibility, fantastic as it may seem, that Japan contemplates military action against Great Britain in the Orient at a time when she is involved in Europe, with the idea of seizing Hong Kong and Singapore, and ultimately acquiring the Dutch oil fields and control of trade routes to the Orient … it is not improbable that this country will be compelled to apply the Neutrality Act and ultimately become involved.’
“Now who struck that out of the report?” asked Ferguson.
“To the best of my knowledge and belief it was stricken out by General Marshall in person.”
“Well, now, will you tell us whether or not that was a false report that you had inserted in there or was it true?”
“The report was true to the best of our knowledge and belief and was based on intelligence that we had secured from various sources.… All of the items that were stricken out of this book, to the best of our knowledge and belief, were supported by documents now on file in G-2…. I may say this is a document that has been referred to a number of times by my chief, General Miles. He attempted to get this committee to take cognizance of this document on a number of occasions while he was testifying but nobody seemed to take an interest.” He explained that the Far Eastern volume was supported by more than ten volumes of photostats of original documents on file in G-2.
Richardson ridiculed the entire matter. “Here is a review made by a person two years after Pearl Harbor. It is of no more importance than a review made by the Washington Post or the Chicago Tribune.” His equation of an official War Department report based on voluminous secret material with a newspaper review was ludicrous. Equally so was his misunderstanding of the seriousness of deleting material for the eyes of the President foreseeing war with Japan over a period of years from 1937, an action interpreted by Bratton to Yeaton as a cover-up by the Chief of Staff of the Army.
Not a single thing in the volume was fact, charged the chief counsel with some heat. “Everything is conclusion of this witness, historically, as to what happened. I don’t care how many times it has been referred to here, but I am wondering as counsel how far the committee is going to go into the hindsight of some historian as to what the situation was at Pearl Harbor when we have all this trouble here trying to get foresight.”
Murphy and Ferguson, usually antagonists, joined in pressing the issue. The former moved that Bratton be allowed to read a letter explaining the import of what had been stricken out of the volume. The colonel read a memorandum, dated August 26, 1943, for General George Strong, the Army Intelligence Chief.
The attached tab does not comply with the directive in that it contains much material other than the MA reports. The Chief of Staff desires it to be revised to contain only MA reports.
By direction of the Chief of Staff
Colonel, General Staff
Secretary, General Staff
“Do I understand everything was stricken out except MA’s?” asked Ferguson. “What is an MA? That is a military attaché?”
“Yes, sir,” said Bratton. “The book was all torn to pieces by the Chief of Staff and everything deleted therefrom except the raw MA and MO reports, MO meaning military observer.”
Asked for an example, Bratton read parts of a confidential lecture delivered to the faculty and students of the Army War College which gave the opinion of the Far Eastern Section as to the approaching war. He then gave other examples showing partial as well as total deletions in what he claimed was Marshall’s own handwriting. “There are numerous comments on the margin all through the book which I believe, and General Strong also believed, to have been made by General Marshall in person.” Strong, he said, had told him this upon the return of the volume from the Chief of Staff in 1943.
There were no more questions from the committee. It was already after 10 P.M. The matter was dropped; and Bratton disappeared into obscurity.1
Colonel Sadtler was the next witness. As bitter and disillusioned as Bratton, he also was determined to at last fight back. To the committee’s surprise he reverted to the first testimony he had given the Army Board. Yes, he had told Gerow about the “winds” execute on December 5 and it undoubtedly meant a Japanese break with Britain and America. Then he did see Bedell Smith. “I said, ‘The Winds message is in,’ as I recall the wording.”
“So you told him the Winds message was in,” said Ferguson. “And did you ask him to get it to General Marshall, that word that it was in?”
“As I remember it, he asked me what I had done and I told him I had talked to General Miles and General Gerow.… He said he didn’t care to discuss it further.”
“What did that really mean, that he didn’t want to discuss it further?”
“That I was through.… Had done as much as I could possibly do.”
“… Did he say as to whether or not he would convey this to General Marshall?”
“No, sir.”
“Then, I assume, you thought your mission had been performed, when you told them that the Winds message was in?”
“I think I had gone a little too far in talking to either General Gerow or Colonel Bedell Smith.”
Had Sadtler considered it was a genuine message? Yes. “So far as you were concerned, the Winds message was in and it meant war.”
“Yes, sir.” He also verified that, before the rebuff from both Gerow and Smith, he had prepared a warning message to Hawaii, Panama and the Philippines that read:
Reliable information indicates war with Japan in the very near future Stop Take every precaution to prevent a repetition of Port Arthur Stop Notify the Navy. Marshall.
“And you did it because of the mounting tension and flow of information which you had together with the Winds Execute at that time?” asked Ferguson.
Yes, but the message was never sent. “I did not show it to anyone. I do not know where the message is now, and I made no copy at the time.”
This was the testimony that Sadtler had given to the Army Board and then, after being confronted by written denials from Gerow and Smith, had reversed to Clausen. Keefe asked for a clarification of the confusing double reverse. Did Sadtler now mean to tell the committee “positively and without question” that he was challenging the denials of Gerow and Smith?
“Absolutely,” said Sadtler. “I talked to both of them.” This unequivocal statement was not only an attack on the credibility of Gerow and Smith but a covert admission that Sadtler had reversed himself to Clausen out of fear of opposing the Army hierarchy.
He also declared that the “winds” intercept “was the most important message that I think I ever handled in my life.” Murphy challenged its importance. After the messages that preceded it, what exactly did the “winds” message do? “It capped the climax,” said Sadtler.
“In what way?”
“That everything is here. Now we have the whole thing.… Now, there was nothing but the Winds message, which was a message that we had been straining every nerve to get; we had everybody listening for that message.”
The dramatics provided by Bratton and Sadtler were surpassed by revelations from the surprise naval witness who followed. He was Commander Lester Robert Schulz, who had taken a message to Roosevelt on the night of December 6, 1941.
In late November 1945, after a request by Ferguson to locate witnesses who had been at the White House, the Navy Pearl Harbor Liaison group, headed by Commander John Ford Baecher, had requested that Schulz, chief engineer of the U.S.S. Indiana docked at Puget Sound Navy Yard, Bremerton, Washington, be ordered for temporary duty in connection with the congressional investigation. Since Schulz was needed at Bremerton, it was decided to retain him on the West Coast until the committee was ready for him to testify. A week later Commander Baecher telephoned Schulz and learned that he had been on watch at the White House on Pearl Harbor eve; and that he had received the thirteen-part message delivered by Kramer at about 9:30 P.M. Schulz revealed that he had personally carried the message to the President and stood by while he read it.
Having spent the night of February 14 on board a Navy transport plane from San Francisco, Schulz had slept very little. He arrived in the capital about 9 A.M. to be met by a Navy officer who took him to the Navy Department where he talked briefly with Commander Baecher. Schulz had been reading about the hearings and disagreed completely with any innuendoes that the President could have known in advance of the Japanese attack. Not yet being aware of the significance of the Magic messages, he didn’t feel that he had much to offer as a witness.
As Schulz entered the caucus room, Keefe was winding up his interrogation of Sadtler. Informed that Schulz had arrived, Ferguson hurriedly escorted him to the reception room of the Judiciary Committee for a short talk. When Ferguson returned to his seat he leaned over and whispered to Greaves, “This is it!”
After Schulz met Richardson, whom he did not then know, he was brought into the caucus room. The appearance of the mystery witness kindled interest and the explosion of flash bulbs surprised the young commander.
Richardson asked if Schulz recalled Captain Kramer coming to the White House on the evening of December 6 to deliver some papers.
“He handed them to me,” said Schulz. “They were in a locked pouch.… I took it from the mail room, which is in the office building, over to the White House proper and obtained permission to go up on the second floor and took it to the President’s study.” An usher announced him and left. “The President was there seated at his desk and Mr. Hopkins was there.… I informed the President that I had the material which Captain Kramer had brought and I took it out of the pouch.” As Schulz recalled, Mr. Roosevelt was expecting the material. There was a hush of expectation in the room. Schulz’s open, bright face radiated credibility. The committee members listened in rapt silence. “The President read the papers, which took perhaps ten minutes.” Then he handed them to Hopkins, who had been slowly pacing back and forth. “Mr. Hopkins then read the papers and handed them back to the President. The President then turned toward Mr. Hopkins and said in substance—I am not sure of the exact words, but in substance—‘This means war.’ ”
There was an excited murmur, a stirring of chairs. Several photographers moved within a few feet of Schulz and began taking pictures. Startled by the flash bulbs, Schulz wondered what the excitement was about. The photographers, under orders to take no pictures once testimony began, were reprimanded and Murphy told Schulz to relax.
“Mr. Hopkins agreed,” he continued, “and they discussed then, for perhaps five minutes, the situation of the Japanese forces, that is, their deployment and—”
“Can you recall what either of them said?” asked Richardson.
“In substance I can. There are only a few words that I can definitely say I am sure of, but the substance of it was that—I believe Mr. Hopkins mentioned it first—that since war was imminent, that the Japanese intended to strike when they were ready, at a moment when all was most opportune for them—”
In the excitement, Barkley could not hear. “When all was what?”
“When all was most opportune for them. That is, when their forces were most properly deployed for their advantage. Indochina in particular was mentioned, because the Japanese forces had already landed there and there were implications of where they should move next. The President mentioned a message that he had sent to the Japanese Emperor concerning the presence of Japanese troops in Indochina, in effect requesting their withdrawal. Mr. Hopkins then expressed a view that since war was undoubtedly going to come at the convenience of the Japanese, it was too bad that we could not strike the first blow and prevent any sort of surprise. The President nodded and then said, in effect, ‘No, we can’t do that. We are a democracy and a peaceful people.’ Then he raised his voice, and this much I remember definitely. He said, ‘But we have a good record.’ The impression that I got was that we would have to stand on that record, we could not make the first overt move. We would have to wait until it came.”
Schulz heard no mention of Pearl Harbor. “The time at which war might begin was not discussed, but from the manner of the discussion there was no indication that tomorrow was necessarily the day. I carried that impression away because it contributed to my personal surprise when the news did come.”
Neither Roosevelt nor Hopkins mentioned sending any further warning or alert to overseas posts. “However, having concluded this discussion about the war going to begin at the Japanese convenience, then the President said that he believed he would talk to Admiral Stark. He started to get Admiral Stark on the telephone.” The President, so recalled the commander, was told by the telephone operator that Stark could be reached at the National Theater “and the President went on to state, in substance, that he would reach the admiral later, that he did not want to cause public alarm by having the admiral paged or otherwise when in the theater, where I believe, the fact that he had a box reserved was mentioned and that if he had left suddenly he would surely have been seen because of the position which he held and undue alarm might be caused, and the President did not wish that to happen because he could get him within perhaps another half an hour in any case.”
“Was there anything said about telephoning anybody else except Stark?”
“No, sir, there was not.”
“How did he refer to Admiral Stark?”
“When he first mentioned calling him, he referred to him as ‘Betty.’ ”
Schulz had made an excellent impression on all the members of the committee as well as the observers. No one doubted that he was telling the truth. As he left the room no reporters or photographers followed. They were busy with the next witness. He left alone but was soon invited by Admiral Noyes to ride with him back to the main Navy Building. Schulz was glad the ordeal was over and still couldn’t understand why there had been so much excitement. It was an uneasy ride. He was somewhat in awe of the admiral and did not feel comfortable conversing with him. Schulz was also somewhat concerned about his recent testimony. Had the committee really understood Roosevelt? After all, there was a big difference between feeling war was imminent and expecting it to begin with an attack on Pearl Harbor. So much could be inferred from the tone of voice. The President, for instance, had said, “This means war,” calmly without emotion. Could he possibly have unwittingly harmed the President, whom he admired and held in high esteem?
Five days later, after uneventful interrogations of eleven more witnesses, the hearings were suspended. “The committee had some differences with respect to procedure,” commented peacemaker Barkley in closing, “but these differences were no doubt inherent in the situation; but they have not been too serious.… I might say that the committee and counsel have a vast amount of work yet to do before we get our report ready for the Congress, and I am sure we will pursue that phase of this task with the same diligence and I hope the great thoroughness with which we have concluded the hearing.” Whereupon, at 5:15 P.M., February 20, the committee adjourned, subject to call of the Chair. The committee now had until June 1 to assess the evidence it had received and prepare their report.
Over a period of three months and five days there had been sixty-seven days and three nights of public hearings. The testimony of thirty-nine witnesses comprised almost 14,000 pages. Even so, many witnesses deemed important by the minority were not called. These included Bedell Smith, Forrestal, the judge advocates of the Army and Navy who had instigated the Clausen and Hewitt investigations, Marshall’s orderlies and two top State Department Far East advisers, Maxwell Hamilton and Stanley Hornbeck. The latter, sent off recently to Holland as ambassador, had more to say about the Pacific Fleet than the Navy itself, according to Admiral Richardson’s testimony. Hull was not recalled for Republican cross-examination on medical grounds, and Secretary of War Stimson had a heart attack the day it was announced he was to be summoned.
“The Congressional Pearl Harbor investigation, one of the longest and most extraordinary in the history of any country,” commented William S. White in the New York Times, “closed this week, but the fog of doubt and accusation that has hung so long about that disaster has been dispelled only in part.”
The day was marked by a tragedy involving an important witness. That morning Vice Admiral Theodore Wilkinson, former head of Navy Intelligence, drove a borrowed Cadillac sedan off the ferry West Point at Norfolk. As the car rolled down the port side at about twenty miles an hour, a deckhand, Luke Piland, shouted, “Stop that car, man, you’re driving too fast!” Piland threw a block beneath a wheel of the car but the Cadillac went over this obstruction, crashed through the forward chain and gate to plunge into the Elizabeth River. Piland saw the admiral bent over the wheel. (“I thought he would open the door and make a leap out,” he later testified. “He never did straighten up any more.”)
As the car hit the water, Wilkinson shouted to his wife to open her window. She did and was halfway through when the car sank. She surfaced and was rescued, but a diver found the admiral’s body stuck behind the wheel. Wilkinson was still clutching the steering post. His window was wide open. “He died at the peak of his career,” said Secretary of the Navy Forrestal. “There goes with him on his last journey the heartfelt ‘well done’ of all hands.”
The freak accident sparked rumors that Wilkinson had committed suicide because he had defied the military hierarchy during his earlier testimony to the committee. He, it will be recalled, had insisted there had been messages indicating the Japanese feared the Purple code had been compromised—and then produced eleven intercepts which Marshall and others had testified did not exist.
Some supporters of Safford reasoned that, being a man of honor, Wilkinson had not been able to live with the fact that he had not come forward with the truth about the “winds” execute. Safford himself believed this. Referring to the October 1941 Mutiny on the Second Deck, he wrote, “Wilkinson was the only decent one in the lot, the only one to show any remorse.” The Wilkinsons had been close friends of the Saffords and, after the tragic incident at Norfolk, the admiral’s widow had come to Mrs. Safford to accuse her husband of “causing Ping’s death” by his dogged persistency in the Pearl Harbor controversy.
A Naval Board of Investigation, after a thorough inquiry, concluded that his drowning was accidental “and was not the result of his own misconduct, and that his death was not caused in any manner by the intent, fault, negligence or inefficiency of any person in the naval service.”
By late March Baecher reported to Forrestal that Seth Richardson had submitted a draft of a proposed report concluding that “Washington must bear a large share of the burden for what occurred on 7 December 1941.” However, his assistant, Sam Kaufman,2 would submit a draft “more in keeping with the views of the Democrats. It places the primary responsibility for the Pearl Harbor disaster on the command in Hawaii, chiefly because of failure to take reconnaissance and other action after receipt of the war warning message.”
A few days later there was a surprise move. George Marshall, recently returned from China, was summoned to another session at the caucus room. He and Stark arrived on the morning of April 11. The admiral still could not remember where he was on the night of December 6 despite testimony that he had been at the National Theater attending a performance of The Student Prince. “It does not ring any bell with me that I was there that night, but I can assume, in view of the testimony of Commander Schulz and of others who tried to contact me, and my remembrance of having seen the revival, that I probably was there.” Nor did he recall getting any telephone message later that night from the President.
On May 23 written answers to questions by the minority to Hull and Stimson were entered in the record. The latter responded only to those questions he felt worth answering. At twelve-fifteen the work was finished and Barkley announced that the record of the investigation was now officially closed. The inquiry, editorialized the New York Times, “has ended as it began on a note of Republican suspicion,” and it seemed inevitable that a “majority report and a minority report—along strictly party lines—will be written.”
But there was the one final dramatic surprise in this inquiry of surprises. On May 25 Captain Harold Krick and his wife had dinner with their old friends, the Starks. Krick had been the admiral’s flag lieutenant and the Starks had treated the Krick children as if they were grandchildren. As the admiral was carving he casually mentioned how happy he was that the hearings were over at last. But one thing bothered him. He hadn’t been able to tell the committee where he was on the night of December 6.
“Well, we know,” said Krick. “We were with you at dinner; and then we went to the National Theater.” The Kricks both reminded Stark that after the show the President had called. They would never forget it.
Stark did recall the dinner party and the show but, although he racked his mind far into the night, the Roosevelt telephone call remained a blank. The more he thought about his previous testimony the more convinced he became “that the committee should have this, the record should have it straight, and I got up around two or three in the morning, thinking this thing over.…” He wrote a letter to Barkley in longhand stating that he wanted this new evidence placed before the committee.
Five of the members of the committee were out of town but, since Stark was scheduled to leave for London on May 31 to receive a decoration, Barkley called an emergency meeting for 10 A.M. of that day in Room 312 of the Senate Office Building. Only Barkley, George and Lucas were present. Keefe promised to come later but the others were unavailable.
“Admiral,” said Richardson, “if the President had told you in his talk with you that night, assuming that you talked to him, and had told you that it was his opinion that this thirteen-part message meant war, thereby impressed you with his serious estimate of it, what would have been, in accordance with your custom, the action for you to have then taken, with that information?”
“I don’t know, sir, that I would have, that we would have sent anything more. I think that I should have gotten in touch with Ingersoll and with Turner.… We thought, and the President knew every move we had made, that we had sent everything possible, on that premise, that war was in the immediate offing. I don’t know that I would have done anything. I couldn’t say.”
At last Keefe arrived. He was disturbed and unhappy at the last-minute notice. Barkley explained that the admiral was leaving for London that night and it wasn’t right merely to file his letter with the committee. “I raised the question,” said Keefe, “because I had understood that the hearings had, by action of the committee, been closed, and that the testimony had been closed, and I want to keep the record clear, in the absence of my colleagues, none of whom are present here this morning.”
After Krick was duly sworn by the chairman, he told about the dinner, the theater and the return to the Stark home.
“What occurred when you went into his house?” asked Richardson.
“One of the admiral’s servants advised the admiral that—”
“What did he say?”
“That there had been a White House call during the evening, sir.… The admiral excused himself and retired to his study on the second floor and returned.”
“How long was he there?”
“I would say approximately between five and ten minutes.” Then he came downstairs.
“Did he say anything to you?”
“Only to the extent that the conditions in the Pacific were serious; that was the substance of it, that conditions with Japan were in a critical state, something of that sort, sir.”
“Did he say anything to you, as near as you can recall, that he had had a telephone message, on the second floor?”
“That is my inference. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind about it, sir. But I do not recall the exact statement. I do not recall that he stated, ‘I have talked with the President of the United States.’ But I heard, of course, the statement of the servant that there had been a White House call, and the admiral retired immediately, and he may have stated that he was going to call the White House; but I have the distinct impression that the conversation was with the White House.” Did he have any impression that upon his return from upstairs Admiral Stark made any statement that his talk had been with the White House? “My impression very definitely was that; yes, sir.”3
The interrogation was accelerated with only Lucas asking a few questions, and at 11:15 A.M. the committee adjourned, this time for good. What would have been a sensational revelation several months earlier was interred by exasperation and a desire by all parties to make an end to the matter. And so the hearings ended not with a bang but a whimper.
Besides the two memoranda submitted by Richardson and Kaufman there were two others designed to assist the committee in making its report. One, by assistant counsel John Masten, concentrated on the diplomatic phase and echoed the opinions of the Democrats; the second, by another assistant counsel, Edward P. Morgan,4 also represented the Administration’s viewpoint.
These last two memoranda displeased the four Republicans. And when Barkley told reporters, after a lengthy closed session on July 6, “… my hope is that we can make a unanimous report,” Keefe announced that he was positive there would be more than one report.
Within a week a majority report based on the Morgan memorandum was concluded. But there were important modifications. Morgan had stated, “Indeed, had the keen awareness of Japanese deceit and beastiality voiced by the Secretary of State characterized thinking elsewhere, the disaster of Pearl Harbor as we know it might never have occurred.” This was changed to “The President, the Secretary of State, and high Government officials made every possible effort, without sacrificing our national honor and endangering our security to avert war with Japan.”
Morgan’s flat statement that the disaster was the failure of “the Army and Navy in Hawaii” was modified by the removal of the words “in Hawaii.” Again where Morgan charged that Kimmel and Short “were fully conscious of the danger from air attack,” the final report read, “Officers, both in Washington and Hawaii, were fully conscious of the danger from air attack.”
On July 16 the violently anti-Administration columnist, John T. Flynn, received a startling telephone call from a Washington correspondent: Congressman Gearhart was about to join the majority in its report.
Flynn immediately wrote Gearhart that he was profoundly shocked.
I earnestly hope there is no truth in the somewhat round-about rumor that came to me, but it was enough to surprise and grieve me. Recalling so many of the things that you said during the hearings, I simply could not credit it.… I would be horrified beyond expression if I could be made to believe that you had changed your mind after so much that you said appears in the record itself, to take part with these fellows in the job they were appointed to perform and which apparently they are now about to complete.
If I could believe this rumor that has come to me to be true, it would help to explain so much that has happened to this country and the Republican Party in the last dozen years. I begin to tremble for the fate of this country.
Flynn wrote Keefe about the rumor. “It confirmed what you told me yourself and I was so greatly disturbed that I wrote Gearhart. I did not, of course, mention that you had talked to me.”
The news about Gearhart was true. Much more astounding was Keefe’s signature on the majority report. He had signed after promises to alter other Morgan conclusions. Whereas Morgan had found that Hawaii had been “adequately and properly alerted on the basis of the November 27 warnings,” the majority agreed to conclude that “The Intelligence and War Plans Divisions of the War and Navy Departments failed” in this respect. The majority also consented to state as their final conclusion: “Under all of the evidence the War and Navy Departments were not sufficiently alerted on December 6 and 7, 1941, in view of the imminence of war.”
The Washington gossip was that Gearhart had been intimidated. In 1934 he had won both the Democratic and Republican nominations and held them both until losing the Democratic primary that June. This had come about after the Administration, knowing he represented a strong anti-Japanese California district, launched an attack charging Gearhart was pro-Jap and even wore a kimono. Now to save his seat in November he had gone along with the Democrats.
The case of Frank Keefe was far different. He tried to explain to Flynn in a letter why he had signed the majority report.
I did succeed in getting many ideas incorporated through changes of language and interpretations and in the addition of conclusions.… However, because the whole report is slanted in the wrong direction, in my opinion, I have filed my own views in a separate report. My signature to the committee report is with reservations. Gearhart has unfortunately signed the report without any reservations, and although he thoroughly agrees with the views which I have expressed in a separate report, he could not sign the same for reasons that are best known to himself. (The fact that he may have an election coming up may have something to do with his decision.)
Keefe’s 24-page “Additional Views” statement condemned not only Marshall and the Administration but also the bias of the majority report. “The committee report, I feel, does not with exactitude apply the same yardstick in measuring responsibilities at Washington as had been applied to the Hawaiian commanders. I cannot suppress the feeling that the committee report endeavors to throw as soft a light as possible on the Washington scene.” Rugg and Hanify helped Keefe draft his “Additional Views,” and according to the anti-Administration historian, Charles A. Beard, they “constitute an arraignment of the Roosevelt Administration’s management of affairs during the months before December 7, 1941, which is, in many ways, sharper in tone than the ‘propositions’ filed by the two Republican Senators, Mr. Ferguson and Mr. Brewster. Indeed, in phrasing, Mr. Keefe’s statement is even more like an indictment than the essentially historical Conclusions advanced by the minority.…”
Unfortunately for Keefe, the press sensationalized his signing of the majority report but almost completely ignored his “Additional Views,” which were not released until the following day.
Unlike Beard, Flynn could find no excuse for Keefe, and wrote a blistering reply.
Why did you have to sign a report which contained so much which according to your letter you did not agree to? Why could you not have done what any reasonable man would do—refuse to sign the report and file your own, which by the way, is what you said you would do?
I know, of course, that you were angered at Senator Ferguson5 for what you believed was the manner in which he conducted his part of the investigation and that you were annoyed at Senator Brewster for not being around. But what possible excuse could this be for you to put your signature to a document containing this complete exoneration of the President and Hull and the verdict that they “did all in their power to avert war with Japan,” when you know that they did not and when you repeatedly said not only to me but to many others that they did not. You will see what a mess you have made of the Republican share in the investigation when you see the newspapers of the country and the use they will make of your incredible folly.
Flynn’s prediction was accurate. P.M. wrote, “When two Republicans joined with six Democrats in signing a majority report which absolved the late President of blame in the disaster, any claims the partisans could make that the Congressional investigation under Democratic leadership was a ‘whitewash’ were knocked out.”
The less partisan New York Herald Tribune agreed. The majority report dissipated all the wildest rumors and suspicions “and even the minority report by Senators Ferguson and Brewster offers no clear or convincing criticism of the basic course of the Administration policy. We are left with the intricate story of what happened upon which all are now substantially agreed, and that story in turn leaves us about where we began four and a half years ago.” Now the public had the facts on record but there was no valid guide to the future conduct of both war and diplomacy. “The committee failed to produce that searching critique and synthesis for which some hoped. Perhaps it was a hope too high to place on any politically-appointed investigation, unavoidably involved in partisan ends.”
Despite differences expressed by the two reports, it was now obvious that the wartime debate on Pearl Harbor was over. The avid critics of Roosevelt still remained vocal but, as a partisan political question and a public issue, Pearl Harbor was dead.
The principals in the affair were still left in limbo; Short, for one, felt he had been partially vindicated. Kimmel refused to comment to reporters but privately both he and Rugg felt that they had accomplished their purpose. They had placed the bulk of the material concerning the attack on record so that some historian in future years could study it with objectivity and reach conclusions. Preservation of the material to them both meant success.
Even so, many colleagues of Kimmel’s remained indignant. “The most disgraceful feature of the whole affair,” said Admiral Harry Yarnell, former commandant, Pearl Harbor Naval Base, “was the evident determination on the part of Washington to fasten the blame on the Hawaiian commanders. The incomplete and one-sided Roberts report, the circumstances of the retirements of Kimmel and Short, the attempts of the War and Navy Departments to deny access to the intercepted messages by the Naval Court of Inquiry and the Army Board of Investigation, the appointment of secret one-man boards to continue investigations, and finally, the inability of the Joint Congressional Committee to secure access to pertinent files, constitute a blot on our national history.”
The fate of Captain Laurance Safford was perhaps the hardest to bear. In spite of the considerable evidence to the contrary, it was believed that he was mistaken about the “winds” execute. Even friends and colleagues were convinced there had been no such message. To them it was a tragedy that a man who had done practically everything right in the years before Pearl Harbor, and had built an organization which produced a wealth of solid intelligence which later helped win the Battle of Midway, could have risked his career by the fanatic pursuit of the “winds” execute. Now his achievements were all but forgotten and he was generally regarded as a brilliant eccentric whose obsession with cryptology had affected his judgment, and who had, indeed, suffered from hallucinations. The testimony of those others who had seen the “winds” execute was so buried in the complexity and verbiage of the inquiry that the general impression was that Safford and only Safford had ever seen the message.
Less than a month after the appearance of the Joint Congressional reports, Safford visited his old friend, William Friedman, the code expert, to view a ciphering machine. After the demonstration, Friedman asked him to autograph a copy of the statement on the “winds” execute Safford had prepared for the committee. Friedman asked how Safford now felt about the “winds” execute.
The captain looked at him rather intently, then said, “I feel I didn’t prove it existed.” He himself had prepared a war warning to send in case higher authorities did not do so.
“But,” said Friedman, “it might have been based on an erroneous or false ‘winds’ execute.”
“When you’re going to by-pass higher authority,” retorted Safford, “be damned sure your facts are right.” Not only had he prepared the warning message but he had it encoded. And the man who encoded it remembered the message.
Was this introduced into evidence at the hearings? asked Friedman. No, said Safford, the encoder had been out of the country and unavailable until the hearings were over. Safford had not wanted to bring up the matter at the time since he could produce no corroborating witness. “In case the subject is reopened,” said Safford, “I know I can get him to tell his story.”
Friedman later wrote on the back of the statement autographed by Safford: “It is clear that S is of firm conviction there was an authentic ‘Winds Execute’, that it was intercepted, decoded, passed around—and has disappeared.”
And so the majority of Americans, by midsummer 1946, were convinced that the “winds” execute was either a fabrication or a delusion, that Kimmel and Short should carry the burden of blame for Pearl Harbor, that George Marshall had been maligned cruelly, and that Hull, Stimson and Roosevelt had done their best to prevent war with a nation run by bandits.
Although all these conclusions had been disproved in the course of nine investigations, the truth had become so distorted by reversion of testimony, cover-up and outright lies that the only chance for it to emerge could come if all the secret records of Pearl Harbor were declassified; and those with special knowledge, like Ralph Briggs, had immunity to talk openly. Only then could a tenth investigation, carried out in full freedom, be made.
1He retired in 1952, still a colonel, and moved to Hawaii. Six years later, an embittered man, he died at Tripler Army Hospital.
2Kaufman further demonstrated his pro-Administration sympathies during the first trial of Alger Hiss.
3In an interview with the author his wife confirmed the impression.
4Morgan later wrote the Tydings Committee report, described by Republicans as a whitewash of the State Department.
5Keefe was handicapped throughout the hearings, wrote Percy Greaves, “by committee rules which permitted every other member prior opportunity to question each witness. Many of the questions he had worked up were exhausted by Senator Ferguson before Keefe’s turn. Time after time, Keefe saw the Senator getting credit for uncovering many important points he, himself, had been prepared to reveal. Piqued by this fact, he was determined not to sign a report sponsored by the Senator.”