Dec 07, 2005
http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/cgi-bin/newsviews.cgi/Intelligence/Pearl_H
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Pearl Harbor: Was There a Conspiracy?
by Srdja Trifkovic
The name of Pearl Harbor, a naval base in the middle of the Pacific, was
virtually unknown before December 7, 1941. Until that morning most Americans
had favored staying out of "Europe's war." Two fateful hours changed that
for ever.
Was America attacked "suddenly and deliberately," as President Franklin D.
Roosevelt put it in his address on December 8? What did really happen? The
war was still going on when the official version came under critical
scrutiny. First John T. Flynn published his seminal essay, "The Truth about
Pearl Harbor," followed in early 1945 by William Neumann's brochure, The
Genesis of Pearl Harbor and in 1947 by George Morgenstern's Pearl Harbor:
The Story of the Secret War. Since then Pearl Harbor has become one of the
most exhaustively reserached episodes in all of history, but the controversy
about its causes and circumstances continues unabated. Harry Elmer Barnes
wrote in 1968 that "only a small fraction of the American people are any
better acquainted with the realities of the responsibility for the attack
than they were when President Roosevelt delivered his 'Day of Infamy'
oration." If Barnes were still with us, there is no doubt that he would
repeat that verdict.
The revisionist position can be summarized as follows: Roosevelt wanted to
enter the war in Europe, especially after the fall of France (June 1940),
because he believed that without American intervention the Nazis would
conquer the Old Continent. In this striving he was supported by the old East
Coast elite, which was traditionally Anglophile, and by the increasingly
influential Jewish lobby. After Hitler's attack on the Soviet Union (June
22, 1941) the Left—deeply embedded in the Roosevelt administration—also
became pro-war. After meeting the President at the Atlantic Conference
(August 14, 1941) Churchill noted the "astonishing depth of Roosevelt's
intense desire for war."
There was a problem, however: FDR could not overcome the isolationist
resistance to "Europe's war" felt by most Americans and their elected
representatives. According to the revisionists, Roosevelt therefore resorted
to subterfuge and maneuvred the Japanese into attacking the United States.
His real target was Hitler: he expected the German dictator to abide by the
Tripartite Pact and declare war on America, and hoped that Hitler's decision
would be facilitated by a display of America's apparent vulnerability and
unpreparedness. Accordingly, even though Roosevelt was well aware of the
impending Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, he let it happen, and was
relieved and pleased when it did take place.
The evidence to support this interpretation is circumstantial but extensive.
The more important elements of the scenario proceeded as follows:
On October 7, 1940, a Navy intelligence analyst, Lt.Cdr. Arthur McCollum,
prepared a memorandum for Roosevelt on how to force Japan into war with U.S.
"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 wrote. He therefore suggested an eight-point action plan
in pursuit of two strategic objectives: to cajole Japan into attacking
preemptively; and to facilitate that attack by not interfering with Japanese
preparations and by making the potential target vulnerable. Specific
measures that McCollum recommended were:
A. Make an arrangement with Britain for the use of British bases in the
Pacific, particularly Singapore.
B. Make an arrangement with Holland for the use of base facilities and
acquisition of supplies in the Dutch East Indies.
C. Give all possible aid to the Chinese government of Chiang Kai-Shek.
D. Send a division of long range heavy cruisers to the Philippines or
Singapore.
E. Send two divisions of submarines to the Orient.
F. Keep the main strength of the U.S. fleet in the vicinity of the Hawaiian
Islands.
G. Make the Dutch refuse to supply Japan with oil oil.
H. Completely embargo all U.S. trade with Japan, in collaboration with a
similar embargo imposed by the British Empire.
"If by these means Japan could be led to commit an overt act of war,"
McCollum concluded, "so much the better." Over the ensuing months all of his
recommendations were put into practice. Furthermore, the denial of oil from
the Dutch East Indies was followed, on August 1, 1941, by the imposition of
the U.S. oil embargo on Japan.
In January 1941 FDR's closest advisor and fervent interventionist Harry
Hopkins met Churchill in London and told him, "The President is determined
that we shall win the war together. Make no mistake about it. He has sent me
here to tell you that at all costs and by all means he will carry you
through, no matter what happens to him—there is nothing he will not do so
far as he has human power." Ultra-secret U.S.-British military consultations
that began later that month gave an added meaning to the word "we" used by
Hopkins. Even a friendly biographer of FDR commented that "if the
isolationists had known the full extent of the secret alliance between the
United States and Britain, their demands for impeachment would have rumbled
like thunder throughout the land."
On 23 June 1941 –one day after Hitler's attack on Russia—Secretary of the
Interior and one of FDR's closest advisors, Harold Ickes, wrote a memo for
the President in which he pointed out that "there might develop from the
embargoing of oil to Japan such a situation as would make it not only
possible but easy to get into this war in an effective way. And if we should
thus indirectly be brought in, we would avoid the criticism that we had gone
in as an ally of communist Russia."
The "situation" was developing so smoothly that less than four months later
Ickes looked upon the forthcoming attack as a foregone conclusion and
gloated over his wisdom in helping provoke it. On October 18 noted in his
diary, "For a long time I have believed that our best entrance into the war
would be by way of Japan." By that time the U.S. had cracked key Japanese
codes and FDR had translations of all key messages. On 24 September 1941
Washington deciphered a message from the Naval Intelligence Headquarters in
Tokyo to Japan's consul-general in Honolulu, requesting grid of exact
locations of U.S. Navy ships in the harbor. Commanders in Hawaii were not
warned.
Less than two weeks before the attack, on November 25, 1941, Secretary of
War Henry L. Stimson wrote in his diary that FDR said a Japanese attack was
likely within days, and stressed the need to "maneuver them into the
position of firing the first shot without too much danger to ourselves." "In
spite of the risk involved, however, in letting the Japanese fire the first
shot, we realized that in order to have the full support of the American
people it was desirable to make sure that 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."
On that same day FDR received a "positive war warning" from Churchill that
the Japanese would strike against America at the end of the first week in
December. This warning caused the President to do an abrupt about-face on
plans for a time-buying modus vivendi with Japan, and it resulted in
Secretary of State Hull's provocative note of 26 November 1941 demanding
full Japanese withdrawal from Indochina and all China. U.S. Ambassador to
Japan called this "the document that touched the button that started the war."
Also on November 26 Washington ordered both aircraft carriers, the
Enterprise and the Lexington, out of Pearl Harbor "as soon as possible."
This order included stripping Pearl of 50 planes, or 40 percent of its
already inadequate fighter protection.
On November 29 Hull told United Press reporter Joe Leib that Pearl Harbor
would be attacked on December 7. The New York Times reported on December 8
("Attack Was Expected," p. 13) that the U.S. knew of the attack a week earlier.
On December 1 Office of Naval Intelligence, ONI, 12th Naval District in San
Francisco found the missing Japanese fleet by correlating reports from the
four wireless news services and several shipping companies that they were
getting signals west of Hawaii. On 5 December FDR wrote to the Australian
Prime Minister, "There is always the Japanese to consider. Perhaps the next
four or five days will decide the matters."
Particularly indicative is Roosevelt's behavior on the day of the attack
itself. Harry Hopkins, who was alone with FDR when he received the news,
wrote that the President was unsurprised and expressed "great relief." Later
in the afternoon Harry Hopkins wrote that the war cabinet conference "met in
not too tense an atmosphere because I think that all of us believed that in
the last analysis the enemy was Hitler . . . and that Japan had given us an
opportunity." That same evening FDR said to his cabinet, "We have reason to
believe that the Germans have told the Japanese that if Japan declares war,
they will too. In other words, a declaration of war by Japan automatically
brings . . . "—at which point he was interrupted, but his expectations were
perfectly clear. CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow met Roosevelt at midnight and
was surprised at FDR's calm reaction.
The following morning Roosevelt admitted to his speechwriter Rosenman that
"Hitler was still the first target, but he feared that a great many
Americans would insist that we make the war in the Pacific at least equally
important with the war against Hitler." Jonathan Daniels, administrative
assistant and press secretary to FDR, later said "the blow was heavier than
he had hoped it would necessarily be . . . But the risks paid off; even the
loss was worth the price." Roosevelt confirmed this to Stalin at Tehran on
November 30, 1943, by saying that "if the Japanese had not attacked the US
he doubted very much if it would have been possible to send any American
forces to Europe."
Historian Jonathan Toland has made Pearl Harbor revisionism academically
respectable with his book "Infamy: Pearl Harbor and its Aftermath "[1981].
"Was it possible to imagine a President who remarked, 'This means war,'
after reading the message [of December 6]," Toland wrote, "not instantly
summoning to the White House his Army and Navy commanders as well as his
Secretaries of War and Navy?" Instead,
Stimson, Marshall, Stark and Harry Hopkins had spent most of the night of
December 6 at the White House with the President. All were waiting for what
they knew was coming: an attack on Pearl Harbor. The comedy of errors on the
sixth and seventh appears incredible. It only makes sense if it was a
charade, and Roosevelt and the inner circle had known about the attack.
Churchill later wrote that FDR and his top advisors "knew the full and
immediate purpose of their enemy" but allowed events to take their course
because "Japanese attack upon the U.S. was a vast simplification of their
problems and their duty. How can we wonder that they regarded the actual
form of the attack, or even its scale, as incomparably less important than
the fact that the whole American nation would be united?"
FDR's real target, Adolf Hitler, duly declared war on the United States
three days after Pearl Harbor, thus ensuring Germany's defeat. The ensuing
"Good War" gave birth first to a superpower, then to a global empire. It
swept away doubters and America-Firsters, stigmatized "isolationists," and
legitimized a total war for unconditional surrender. It created nuclear
weapons, the Cold War, the military-industrial complex, the "intelligence
community." It paved the way for Bill Clinton's "humanitarian" intervention
in Kosovo and George W. Bush's Operation Iraqi Freedom. The proponents of
America's "benevolent global hegemony" deny the existence of a Pearl Harbor
conspiracy as strenuously as their predecessors have been denying it for
half a century; but in their hearts they'll admit that, whether it was a
setup or not, Pearl Harbor was a Very Good Thing.
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