Wednesday, December 7, 2016

Pearl Harbor - the Original LIHOP

No doubt that as you read this, there will be numerous other articles inundating mainstream and alternative media outlets commemorating the 75th anniversary of bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.  I'm sure there will be lots written about it being a "sneak attack" that changed the course of World War II by bringing the United States into the Allied fold.  But there is a darker truth behind the circumstances that brought about the bombing of Pearl Harbor that belie the established historical reports that there was anything 'sneaky' as far as knowledge of it in the White House was concerned.  The truth is that when Japan planned and executed the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt Let It Happen On Purpose.


https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/30/FDR_1944_Color_Portrait.tif/lossy-page1-220px-FDR_1944_Color_Portrait.tif.jpg
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt  Source: Wikipedia


If you are wondering why I capitalized the last five words in the preceding paragraph, you might not be very familiar with 9/11 conspiracy theories.  There are two acronyms used to describe how 9/11 might have involved the United States government.  LIHOP, or Let It Happen On Purpose, posits that the plot originated outside of the government, but that once intelligence learned of it prior to 9/11, they allowed the attacks to occur.  MIHOP, or Made It Happen On Purpose, states that the US government created the plot from the beginning.  My own take on this is something I expressed in a previous blog post The X Factor.  Here is the pertinent section:

I've always rolled my eyes at the "debate" between LIHOP and MIHOP as those acronyms were used to assign responsibility for the 9/11 debacle. To my mind, the two terms represent a logical fallacy, a distinction without a difference.  It's quite possible the assassination of Malcolm X was LIHOP for the FBI and Martin Luther King was MIHOP. So fucking what?! They're still responsible. Whether they latch on to another organization's plot already in progress and help facilitate it by removing impediments or hatch the plot on their own, the intent to have the plot succeed is the same.  I've written before about how the 9/11 Truth movement lost direction and momentum; perhaps if more people had understood the logical fallacy at play, the search for Truth might have lead to Justice.


With that in mind, it was over ten years ago, back when the LIHOP/MIHOP debate was in full throttle, that an online friend of mine informed me about the McCollum memo.  Also known as the Eight Action Memo, this memorandum was dated October 7, 1940 and was sent by Lieutenant Commander Arthur H. McCollum, director of the Far East desk of Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) to Navy Captains Walter Stratton Anderson, the Director of ONI with direct access to FDR and Dudley Knox, a naval strategist and chief of the ONI library.  In this memo, McCollum advocated eight actions that called for virtually inciting a Japanese attack on American ground, air and naval forces in Hawaii:


A. Make an arrangement with Britain for the use of British bases in the Pacific, particularly Singapore
B. Make an arrangement with the Netherlands 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 Orient, Philippines, or Singapore
E. Send two divisions of submarines to the Orient
F. Keep the main strength of the U.S. fleet now in the Pacific[,] in the vicinity of the Hawaiian Islands
G. Insist that the Dutch refuse to grant Japanese demands for undue economic concessions, particularly oil
H. Completely embargo all U.S. trade with Japan, in collaboration with a similar embargo imposed by the British Empire
McCollum concluded by stating, "If by these means Japan could be led to commit an overt act of war, so much the better."  Captain Knox then wrote a comment that while cautiously worded, agreed with the actions detailed in the memo.  "The paper trail of the McCollum memo ends with the Knox endorsement.  Although the proposal was addressed to Anderson, no specific record has been found by the author indicating whether he or Roosevelt actually ever saw it.  However, a series of secret presidential routing logs plus collateral intelligence information in Navy files offer conclusive evidence that they did see it.  Beginning the very next day, with FDR's involvement, McCollum's proposals were systematically put into effect."


https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/ba/Arthur_H._McCollum_Portrait.jpg/220px-Arthur_H._McCollum_Portrait.jpg
Lieutenant Commander Arthur H. McCollum  Source: Wikipedia


The above quote is not by Knox, but by Robert B. Stinnett on page nine of his book, Day of Deceit.  Stinnett earned 10 battle stars and a Presidential Unit Citation for his service in the United States Navy from 1942 to 1946.  This book is extremely well researched; dedicated to US Congressman John Moss (D., CA), the author of America's Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).  In addition to numerous documents retrieved through the FOIA for the FBI as well as the Navy, the State Department and other government institutions, Stinnett's book contains over 600 endnotes.  The conclusion he reached through this painstaking research is that President Roosevelt definitely had foreknowledge of the attack on Pearl Harbor and took steps to make sure it happened.  Remarkably, Stinnett still retains a degree of sympathy for the man whose provocations led to the deaths of 2,403 Americans at Pearl Harbor as he details in the preface, page XIII:

As a veteran of the Pacific War, I felt a sense of outrage as I uncovered secrets that had been hidden from Americans for more than fifty years.  But I understood the agonizing dilemma faced by President Roosevelt.  He was forced to find circuitous means to persuade an isolationist America to join in a fight for freedom.  He knew this would cost lives.  How many, he could not have known.

The country was disillusioned by the failure of America's idealistic commitment to make "the world safe for democracy" in World War I.  Many Americans had chosen isolationism to shelter their young from the horrors of another war, and believed that Roosevelt would "not send their sons to fight in foreign wars."  Roosevelt believed that his countrymen would rally only to oppose an overt act of war on the United States.  The decision he made, in concert with his advisors, was to provoke Japan through a series of actions into an overt act: the Pearl Harbor attack.

While the McCollum memo, whose eight actions were all implemented by President Roosevelt prior to December 7, 1941, is presented by Stinnett in the first chapter as evidence, it is certainly not the only piece, or even the most damning piece of evidence proving foreknowledge and intent.  For me, the smoking gun is that Stinnett uncovered proof that the Japanese codes had been broken by the Americans and FDR was aware of this.  From Day of Deceit, page 21:

During the last days of September and first week of October 1940, a team of Army and Navy cryptographers solved the two principle Japanese government code systems: Purple, the major diplomatic code, and portions of the Kaigun Ango, a series of twenty-nine separate Japanese naval operational codes used for radio contact with warships, merchant vessels, naval bases, and personnel in overseas posts, such as naval attachés.

From pages 22-23:

Rear Admiral Royal Ingersoll, Assistant Chief of Naval Operations, revealed America's ability to detect and predict Japan's naval war strategy and tactical operations to the US Navy's two Pacific commanders, Admirals James Richardson and Thomas Hart, in a letter dated October 4, 1940.  Ingersoll was specific: The Navy began tracking the movement and location of Japanese warships in October 1940.  "Every major movement of the Orange (America's code name for Japan) Fleet has been predicted, and a continuous flow of information concerning Orange diplomatic activities has been made available."  He said that Navy cryptographers had solved the Japanese naval merchant ship code.  "The system itself is 99 percent readable," reported Ingersoll.

Later on page 23:

But Ingersoll's 1940 letter sheds a light on the 5-Num system that was never intended by the pre-Pearl Harbor naval censors.  Recovery was effected before April.  By the end of January 1941, President Roosevelt was on the receiving list of the Kaigun Ango, according to the White House route logs prepared by Arthur McCollum.


The most common response that this information doesn't prove FDR knew when the attack on Pearl Harbor would occur is that in the weeks prior to the attack there was complete radio silence of the Japanese carrier force.  Stinnett contends that this is a myth propagated by Lieutenant Commander Edwin Layton and others with the intelligence clearance who did not forward appropriate information to those who should have received indication of a pending attack.  From page 208:

Layton's claims about the carrier commands' radio silence does not hold up to scrutiny.  There were 129 Japanese naval intercepts obtained by US naval monitor stations between November 15 and December 6 that directly contradict Layton's figures.

Some of these intercepts gave more than just an indication of what was to come.  According to page 226:

On December 5, Japanese Foreign Ministry officials transmitted two messages which disclosed that war between Japan and America would start December 7.  Stations US, CAST and FIVE obtained two intercepts.  They were in the Purple Code; interception of the messages went fine, but there's no evidence that Stations US and CAST forwarded the intercepts to Hawaii - even though both cryptographic centers knew the keys to Purple and decoded such messages in hours.

From pages 212-213:

Vice Admiral Shigeyoshi Inoue, commander of the Fourth Fleet in the Central Pacific, informed his forces by radio that a declaration of war was imminent.  His radio message was intercepted by Henry F. Garstka at Station H at 8:40 P.M. on Friday, December 5, and included in Kisner's bundle, which was given to Dyer at 1:00 P.M. the next day, but was never delivered to Admiral Kimmel.

These are just a couple among many examples where vital intelligence regarding the plans to attack Pearl Harbor were withheld from the two men in Hawaii in a position to protect the troops, Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, and Lieutenant General Walter Short, commanding general of the Hawaiian Department of the US Army.  Both men were among the 36 Americans cleared to read the Japanese diplomatic and military intercepts in 1941.  Yet their access was restricted for reasons no subsequent investigation has yet to completely satisfactorily explain.

There are other disturbing incidents that indicate foreknowledge and cover-up from other important figures besides FDR.  On pages 157-158, Stinnett provides stunning details regarding a strictly secret press briefing delivered by Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall on November 15, 1941:

During the briefing, Marshall alluded to one of America's most vital secrets when he revealed that the United States could read Japan's encrypted messages.  He told the correspondents that his war assessment was based on access to a leak from the Japanese: "We know what they know and they don't know we know it."  Marshall then predicted that a Japan-America war would break out during the "first ten days of December," according to the notes of one correspondent present.

More from page 158:

Two ethical questions are raised by Marshall's secret conference with reporters: (1) Instead of the press conference on November 15, 1941, why didn't he confer with Lieutenant General Walter Short on November 15, 1941, and disclose that he had learned from secret Japanese sources that war with the United States would break out within the first ten days of December?  Ethical questions abound.  Who deserved the very secret information, the reporters or Short?  General Short raised the ethics question during testimony before the 1945-46 Joint Congressional Investigation Committee: "After October 28, 1941, with the War Department receiving information almost daily which indicated that war was imminent, he [Marshall] communicated to me none of those personal messages containing the inside information."  (2) What was the responsibility of the reporters, their editors, and their publishers?  In the land of the First Amendment, Americans expect journalists to abide by strict ethics and report the news, not hide secrets.  Yet four of the nation's major media - the New York Times, New York Herald Tribune, Time, and Newsweek - and three major wire services - Associated Press, United Press, and International News Service - were let in on secrets denied to General Short and Admiral Kimmel in Hawaii.

Where media responsibility is concerned, I'm reminded of a more recent example of the Radical Establishment Media sitting on the story of warrantless wiretapping.  While the New York Times broke the story in 2005, they had been sitting on it since the spring of 2004 when high-ranking Bush administration officials persuaded the paper’s brass to spike the story.  Some things never change.  But there is another aspect of cover-up in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor that is eerily reminiscent of a similar story of cover-up in the aftermath of 9/11.  From page 255:

The key evidence of what really happened began to be concealed as early as December 11, 1941, only four days after the attack.  The first step in the clean-up came from Rear Admiral Leigh Noyes, the Navy's Director of Communications.  He instituted a fifty-four year censorship policy that consigned the pre-Pearl Harbor Japanese military and diplomatic intercepts and the relevant directives to Navy vaults.  "Destroy all notes or anything in writing," Noyes told a group of his subordinates on December 11.

This type of destruction in the aftermath of a national tragedy instigating war would be repeated almost 60 years later when an unnamed FAA official destroyed a tape recording of interviews of at least six air traffic controllers who dealt with two of the hijacked airliners recalling their version of events from a few hours earlier on 9/11.  The tape was destroyed by a supervisor before anyone made a transcript of it or even listened to it.  Though the supervisor crushed the cassette in his hand, shredded the tape and dropped the pieces into different trash cans around the building, this decision was simply chalked up to "poor judgment."

It's a quote that has become somewhat of a cliche, but bears repeating: those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.  How many Pearl Harbors will America endure before it can no longer survive?