Monday 7 December 1998 Canada raised Pearl Harbor alarm After almost 60 years of silence, wartime spy Grace Garner reveals that Canadian agents gave 'days, days, days' of warning before Japanese sneak attack on U.S. fleet Ian MacLeod and Charles Enman The Ottawa Citizen The wartime intelligence operation of fabled Canadian spymaster Sir William Stephenson warned the Americans that Japan's raid on Pearl Harbor was coming days before the Japanese struck the U.S. Pacific Fleet at its base in Hawaii. The claim that both the British and Americans were tipped in advance to the attack that plunged the U.S. into the Second World War comes from Sir William's principal secretary at the time, Grace Garner. She was one of hundreds of young Canadians -- most of them women -- who were recruited into the New York intelligence operation that Sir William created to co-ordinate the flow of intelligence between London, Washington and Ottawa. And Dec. 7, 1941 -- 57 years ago today -- is a day she has never forgotten. "We did know that they were going to attack on Dec. 7," she told the Citizen in an interview. "We told London. We told the Americans. We had quite some considerable warning. Days, days, days." Ms. Garner, a native of Qu'Appelle, Sask., who is now retired in England, stressed that despite her advanced age she still has "total recall" of her days in New York and the fateful day of Dec. 7. U.S. president Franklin Roosevelt declared it "a date which will live in infamy." Ms. Garner's recollection is at sharp odds with the version of the event that has passed into history. It has always been accepted that the attack on Pearl Harbor was a complete surprise. The Americans were caught unawares by wave after wave of carrier-based Japanese bombers. The Americans had expected a Japanese attack eventually, but clearly not on Dec. 7. The attack was devastating. Eight battleships were hit; five of them were sunk. Three light cruisers, three destroyers and three smaller vessels were also lost, along with 188 aircraft. The casualty list included 2,335 servicemen and 68 civilians killed, and 1,178 wounded. On the USS Arizona alone, 1,104 men lost their lives after a 1760-pound air bomb penetrated the battleship's forward magazine, causing catastrophic explosions. Pearl Harbor was completely unprepared for the attack. Aircraft were parked wing-to-wing on airfields, anti-aircraft guns were unmanned, and no torpedo nets were protecting the anchored fleet. A private who saw the first incoming flight of nearly 200 bombers was even told to ignore them, since a large flight of planes had been expected to arrive at any time from the mainland. Sir William's intelligence operation had offices in the Rockefeller Center in Manhattan, functioning under the cover of "British Passport Control." Ms. Garner was in those offices when news of the Pearl Harbor attack broke. Sir William was in Atlantic City meeting with British Columbia businessman A.J. Taylor, whose daughter, Kathleen, was also a member of the intelligence staff in New York. "Sir William was walking with Mr. Taylor on the boardwalk at Atlantic City because they wanted to talk secretly -- (they'd take) 'a walk in the woods,' " she recalled in her interview with the Citizen. "There was no way I could get in touch with him." Ms. Garner recalled taking an elevator down to the coffee shop in Rockefeller Center's foyer and finding the lobby floor covered with spent flashbulbs used by news photographers taking pictures of Japanese diplomats fleeing the Japanese Consulate, which was, ironically, located in the same building. "The place was shin-deep in flashbulbs from the press. Hundreds of them. You don't forget things like that," she said. "It's very sad. I've lived through two wars. I remember vaguely the First World War ... and thank you very much, I'm not going to be very interested in the third one, which won't last very long." Historian Jack Granatstein, director of the Canadian War Museum, described Ms. Garner's recollection as "not very credible." Sir William's intelligence group couldn't read Japanese code, he explained, and the Americans, who could, had no warning of the attack. "If they were in their right minds, neither the British nor the Americans would ever want to see the American fleet sunk. "Without hard physical evidence to support the story, I can't believe a word of it." <= we're not machines you know => +++ we're not going to fall over in rows +++ Dr. King - On The Beach - 1959 [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.aches-mc.org ************************************************************** MINDCONTROL-L Mind Control and Psyops Mailing List To unsubscribe or subscribe: send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the following text: "unsubscribe MINDCONTROL-L" or "subscribe MINDCONTROL-L". Post to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Wes Thomas <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, list moderator
