TBR News December 7, 2018
The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Isaiah 40:3-8
Washington, D.C. December 7, 2018 :”In remembrance of things past, today is the anniversary of Pearl Harbor and the rumblings of popular revolt in France. Roosevelt tricked the Japanese into attacking the United States so he could get into a war with Hitler and in France, a government which supports their rich friends is teetering on the edge of the quarry. All it would take to cause open revolt would be for the police in France to shoot a number of students dead in front of TV cameras and given the mind-set of many police in the world today, this is not an impossibility. A frightened French government will either capitulate or attack; they have no other choice. It will be interesting to see what path they take though in the past most governments kill in defense of their privileges.”
The Table of Contents
- French government offers sweeteners to head off fresh ‘yellow vest’ unrest
- France boosts security amid fear of new ‘yellow vest’ protest riots
- French government defends heavy-handed police tactics against students
- Yellow vests: France protests ‘created a monster’, says minister
- FDR’s Pearl Harbor Fabrication: A Rebuttal
- The Roosevelt-Churchill Conversations
- The CIA Confessions: The Crowley Conversations
French government offers sweeteners to head off fresh ‘yellow vest’ unrest
December 6, 2018
by Richard Lough, Marine Pennetier
Reuters
PARIS (Reuters) – The French government hinted at more concessions to ‘yellow vest’ protesters on Thursday in a bid to head off another wave of violence in the capital over living costs and regain the initiative after weeks of civil unrest.
With protesters calling on social media for “Act IV” – a fourth weekend of protest – Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said 65,000 police would be drafted in to stop a repeat of last Saturday’s mayhem in Paris when rioters torched cars and looted shops off the famed Champs Elysees boulevard.
Philippe told the Senate he was open to new measures to help the lowest-paid workers. Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said he was prepared to accelerate tax cuts for households and that he wanted workers’ bonuses to be tax-free.
“I am ready to look at all measures that will help raise the pay of those on the minimum wage without doing excessive damage to our competitiveness and businesses,” Philippe told the parliament’s upper house.
The rush of sweeteners to soothe public anger began with Philippe’s climb-down on fuel tax hikes, the first major U-turn of Emmanuel Macron’s presidency.
Yet, five days after the worst rioting central Paris has seen since 1968, all signs are that the government has failed to quell the revolt.
A repeat of last Saturday’s violence in Paris’s city center — which saw rioters deface the Arc de Triomphe with anti-Macron graffiti — would deal a blow to the economy and raise doubts over the government’s survival.
Philippe said the state would do all it could to maintain order. At least four first division football matches have been canceled and several museums including Paris’ Grand Palais said they would close.
ACT IV
An official in Macron’s office said intelligence suggested some protesters would come to the capital with the aim to “vandalize and kill”. There is concern about far-right, anarchist and anti-capitalist groups like the Black Bloc, which have piggybacked off the ‘yellow vest’ movement.
The Paris prefecture on Thursday told restaurants and luxury boutiques along the Champs Elysees boulevard to close on Saturday and asked local Paris authorities to prepare their districts for violence.
On Facebook and across social media, protesters are calling for “Act IV”.
“France is fed up!! We will be there in bigger numbers, stronger, standing up for French people. Meet in Paris on Dec. 8,” read one group’s banner.
Security sources said the government was considering using troops currently deployed on anti-terrorism patrols to protect public buildings.
The protests, named after the fluorescent safety jackets French motorists have to keep in their cars, erupted in November over the squeeze on household budgets caused by fuel taxes. Demonstrations swiftly grew into a broad, sometimes-violent rebellion against Macron, with no formal leader.
Their demands are diverse and include lower taxes, higher salaries, cheaper energy costs, better retirement provisions and even Macron’s resignation
STREET POLITICS
Reversing course on next year’s fuel-tax hikes have left a gaping 4 billion euro hole in the government’s 2019 budget which it is now searching for ways to plug.
Citing unnamed sources, Les Echos business daily said the government as considering delaying corporate tax easing planned next year or putting off an increase in the minimum wage.
The unrest has exposed the deep-seated resentment among non-city dwellers that Macron is out-of-touch with the hard-pressed middle class and blue-collar workers. They see the 40-year-old former investment banker as closer to big business.
An Elabe poll on Thursday showed that only 23 percent of people trusted Macron, now lower than his predecessor Francois Hollande at the same period in his presidency.
Trouble is also brewing elsewhere for Macron. Teenage students on Thursday blocked access to more than 200 high schools across the country, burnt garbage bins and setting alight a car in the western city of Nantes. Hundreds of students were arrested after clashes with riot police.
Meanwhile, farmers who have long complained that retailers are squeezing their margins and are furious over a delay to the planned rise in minimum food prices, and truckers are threatening to strike from Sunday.
Le Maire said France was no longer spared from the wave of populism that has swept across Europe.
“It’s only that in France, it’s not manifesting itself at the ballot box, but in the streets.”
Reporting by Richard Lough and Marine Pennetier; additional reporting by Leigh Thomas, Michel Rose, Emmanuel Jarry, John Irish and Myriam Rivet; Editing by Richard Balmforth
France boosts security amid fear of new ‘yellow vest’ protest riots
Officials warned that “major violence” could hit Paris as “yellow vest” protesters plan to gather again this weekend. Teens have also blocked hundreds of schools, while several unions called for solidarity strikes.
December 6, 2018
DW
The political crisis engulfing French President Emmanuel Macron’s government showed no signs of abating on Thursday, as public anger continues to grow despite the scrapping of a controversial fuel tax hike.
Authorities across France are bracing for another weekend of “yellow vest” protests. The movement’s members are known for wearing yellow safety vests carried by French motorists.
The protests began as demonstrations against the fuel tax, which started in November but turned violent in Paris last Saturday, with some of the worst rioting in France in decades. Three weeks of protests have led to four deaths and left hundreds injured.
Some 89,000 security personnel will be deployed across the country on Saturday ahead of the fourth weekend of planned rallies, French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said on Thursday. About 8,000 officers will be in Paris where armored vehicles will be on the streets for the first time since 2005 when riots broke out in the capital’s suburbs.
“We are facing people who are not here to protest, but to smash and we want to have the means to not give them a free rein,” Philippe said during an interview on TF1 national evening news.
Authorities are concerned that far-right and far-left agitators are hijacking the protests to incite further violence. One French presidential source told news agency AFP that they fear “major violence” could hit the capital this weekend.
Shops and restaurants on the Champs-Elysees were urged to close this weekend over concerns of renewed rioting, according to notices seen by the AFP. The Eiffel Tower will also be closed on Saturday.
Half of this weekend’s scheduled French league football matches have been canceled due to security concerns.
Teens protest education reforms
On Thursday, students blocked some 200 French high schools to protest education reforms. They demanded an end to testing overhauls and a controversial new online platform for allocating university placements, local media reported.
Some of the protests grew violent, with masked demonstrators throwing Molotov cocktails and setting fire to trash cans. A car was also set on fire in the western city of Nantes.
Growing calls for strikes
Although the “yellow vests” do not have formal leaders and are not affiliated with any labor union or political party, several French unions have called for strikes to coincide with the demonstrations.
The CGT trade union called on its energy workers to stage a 48-hour walkout on December 13, adding that they wanted to join the “yellow vests.”
France’s main farmers’ union said on Wednesday that its members would stage demonstrations every day next week. Two truck driver unions also called for an indefinite sympathy strike starting from Sunday night.
Who are the ‘yellow vests’?
The movement developed out of a petition against fuel taxes which then spread via Facebook’s new algorithm for disseminating local news, and a variety of social media groups. On November 17 yellow vest-wearing protesters blocked roads across the country and hampered access to factories and some fuel depots.
Further rallies spread quickly, spanning France’s rural and urban areas. What initially started as a campaign against Macron’s tax hike grew into a broader opposition movement to his government, which was elected in May 2017.
Protesters have voiced concern over the high cost of living and urged for higher salaries and lower taxes as well as Macron’s resignation.
French government defends heavy-handed police tactics against students
December 7, 2018
Reuters
PARIS (Reuters) – France’s government on Friday defended the tactics of riot police who forced several dozen detained high-school students to kneel in rows with their hands held behind their heads or in handcuffs after violent protests west of Paris.
Students this week have been blocking access to scores of high schools across France in protest at President Emmanuel Macron’s education reforms, just as the 40-year-old leader grapples with sometimes-violent demonstrations over living costs.
Videos and photos of the students from two high schools in Val Fourre, a deprived neighborhood outside Mantes-La-Jolie, 60 kilometers west of Paris, went viral on social media late on Thursday, prompting public outrage.
“Over the past few days, the students have been joined by about 100 hooded youths armed with clubs and incendiary devices and determined to pick a fight with police,” Interior Minister Christophe Castaner told a news conference.
Castaner said roadblocks had been set alight, projectiles hurled at motorists and houses robbed in the area around the two schools.
“It is in this context that the security forces stepped in,” the minister added.
No students were injured while detained in the Val Fourre incident, French media reported.
But some social media users said the scene, with some of the teenagers lined up facing a wall, resembled a mock mass-execution.
“Can anyone tell me if they’ve witnessed such a thing in the last 50 years,” one Twitter user said.
Another tweet read: “These images of teenagers on their knees at the feet of CRS (riot police) are unworthy of a democracy. The government needs to take charge and re-establish chains of command.”
Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer described the images as “shocking” but said the violence convulsing France in recent weeks justified the heavy-handed policing.
France is hunkering down for another wave of potentially violent protests on Saturday as Macron struggles to quell public anger at the cost of living. Senior allies said he would address the nation early next week.
Reporting by Inti Landauro and Emmanuel Jarry; Writing by Richard Lough; Editing by Hugh Lawson
Yellow vests: France protests ‘created a monster’, says minister
December 7, 2018
BBC News
Anti-government protests in France have “created a monster”, France’s Interior Minister Christophe Castaner has said.
And he is warning that “radical elements” could infiltrate planned “yellow vest” protests at the weekend.
Tourist sites in Paris are to close on Saturday amid fears of further street violence.
The protests began three weeks ago, initially against a rise in fuel taxes but have spread to take in other issues, including education reforms.
Mr Castaner said “large-scale security measures” would be put in place this weekend.
Across France, 89,000 police officers will be on duty and armoured vehicles will be deployed in the capital, Prime Minister Edouard Philippe announced.
Paris police have urged shops and restaurants on the Champs-Elysees to shut and some museums will also be closed.
The government has said it is scrapping the unpopular fuel tax increases in its budget – but discontent with the government has spread and protests have erupted over other issues.
Further protests have been reported in the east of country.
One student has been injured following a demonstration in the town of Montbéliard, about 13km from the border with Switzerland, local media report. A police officer was seriously injured at a student protest in Mulhouse, according to French broadcaster BFMTV.
The AFP news agency reports that authorities seized 28 Molotov cocktails and 3 homemade bombs from “yellow vest” protesters in the south of the country.
There has also been widespread anger at images showing how police made high school students kneel and put their hands behind their heads following clashes on Thursday in Mantes-la-Jolie, to the west of Paris.
What has the government said?
Mr Castaner told reporters that the past three weeks of demonstrations had “created a monster that escaped from its creators.”
He said authorities would respond with “firmness”.
He went on: “I will have no tolerance of those who capitalise on the distress of our citizens.”
An official with the interior ministry told AFP news agency authorities were braced for “significant violence” on Saturday, with activists from both the far right and far left planning to converge on the capital.
In an interview with TV channel TF1, Mr Philippe said 8,000 police would be deployed in Paris as well as a dozen armoured vehicles.
He repeated an appeal for calm but added: “We are facing people who are not here to protest, but to smash and we want to have the means not to give them a free rein.”
Earlier, Mr Philippe suggested there might be further concessions to protesters, telling the Senate that the government was open to new measures to help the lowest-paid workers.
How will Paris be affected?
The operator of the Eiffel Tower said the threat of violent protests on Saturday made it impossible to ensure “adequate security conditions”
City authorities say they are stepping up protection for famous landmarks after the Arc de Triomphe was damaged last week.
Museums, including the Louvre and Orsay, opera houses and the Grand Palais complex will close on Saturday.
Police have asked businesses along the Champs-Elysees and other major shopping streets to stay closed and to remove any outdoor items such as tables and chairs.
Several football matches have also been postponed, including those between Paris and Montpellier, and Saint-Etienne and Marseille.
What other protests have there been?
On Thursday young people took to the streets, protesting over education reforms.
More than 140 people were arrested when a protest outside a school in Mantes-la-Jolie, to the west of Paris, ended in clashes with police. Two cars were set on fire.
Pictures of the arrests, in which the students were made to kneel and put their hands behind their heads, sparked outrage on social media. French broadcaster BFMTV said the incident lasted “several hours.”
“Now there’s a well-behaved class,” a police office was heard saying on video.
The town’s police chief told Le Monde newspaper that those arrested were suspected of taking part in an “armed gathering”, adding that officers had wanted to break up a situation that was getting “out of control.”
Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer said he was “clearly shocked”, by the events but added that they must be put in “context”. Mr Castaner described the images as “tough” to watch but added that the students had been joined by armed protesters.
Dozens of schools were blockaded in cities including Marseille, Nantes and Paris. Students have been angered by President Emmanuel Macron’s plans to change the end-of-school exam, known as the baccalaureate, which is required for entrance to university.
Critics fear the reforms will limit opportunity and breed inequality.
Who are the protesters?
The “gilets jaunes” protesters, so-called because they have taken to the streets wearing the high-visibility yellow clothing that is required to be carried in every vehicle by French law, initially complained at a sharp increase in diesel taxes.
Mr Macron said his motivation for the increase was environmental, but protesters accused him of being out of touch.
The government later scrapped the plan but the yellow vest protesters were not placated. Last week, the movement – despite a lack of central leadership – issued more than 40 demands to government.
Among them were a minimum pension, widespread changes to the tax system, and a reduction in the retirement age.
The protest movement has gained momentum via social media, encompassing a whole range of participants from the anarchist far left to the nationalist far right, and moderates in between.
FDR’s Pearl Harbor Fabrication: A Rebuttal
December 6, 2018
by Adam Graham
“Yesterday, December 7, 1941 — a date which will live in infamy — the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by the naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan. The United States was at peace with that nation and … looking toward the maintenance of peace in the Pacific.… Japan has … undertaken a surprise offensive extending across the Pacific area.… I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December 7th, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese Empire.”
Such were the words of US president Franklin Delano Roosevelt on December 8, 1941, the day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. As dates go in US history, December 7 certainly ranks among the most broadly remembered; a most infamous day, indeed, of a much more infamous war. And perhaps no more definitive event is offered when considering the history of American involvement in any war in the 20th century, considered to be one of the most clear cut examples of unprovoked aggression and resulting defensive actions. Indeed, even the America First Committee, the longstanding bastion of non-interventionism in America, just four days afterward on December 11, voted to disband their organization once war, in their mind, had entered the realm of necessity.
But in the spirit of testing and questioning all things, we should consider the accuracy of FDR’s words. Is it true that there existed a peaceful relationship between the United States and Japan? That they sought peace in the Pacific? That the attack on the Hawaiian islands was truly unprovoked? And that it was one of a surprise nature with no warning or build up? Was Congress and the American people told the truth about Pearl Harbor? Or is there more to the story than meets the eye?
It Was Most Certainly NOT Unprovoked
One of the aspects of the Pearl Harbor attack that is most powerful in the minds of the American citizen is that of its allegedly unprovoked nature. The impression held by most is one akin to someone simply walking up to a friend and punching them in the nose with no warning. However, if you were to see such a thing in the real world the most reasonable assumption would naturally be that there must be some justification, in the eyes of the assaulter at the very least. So to the principled American mind, the question ought to be posed: was there actually some provocation in this case, some reasoning for Japanese aggression?
As it turns out, there is. Germany and Japan had been allied as part of the Tripartite Pact more than a year earlier, in September of 1940. For the sake of argument, if we extend our record of American relations with Japan to the overarching German-Japanese alliance, we will already find much evidence pointing to anything but a lack of provocation. Beginning from 1941 onward, the US participated in the Lend-Lease program, a policy of providing war materiel, free of charge to Britain in exchange for land leases, and eventually the Soviet Union, China, and others. Not only was the budget for the program hidden and obscured within the overall military budget during the war but it placed American ships and personnel at risk. Most of all, this action alone represented a break from any pretense of non-intervention in World War II proper.
But Lend-Lease was just the beginning. Roosevelt went on to make it explicitly clear that American ships and military convoys were supplying the British and even went so far as to instruct American ships to report German submarine positions to the British. Even after the famous destruction of the USS Greer while performing said assistance, Congress still did not declare war on Germany or, by extension, Japan, nor did Germany do likewise. It would be reasonable to see these actions as provocative not only to Germany but to its allies but it could be argued that these activities did not occur with or directly involve the Japanese directly and may not constitute as powerful a case.
We also history of US intervention and provocation of a more direct nature with Japan herself. Beginning in the early ’30s, the Japanese had been busy waging a series of invasions and ongoing conflict on the eastern Asian mainland, beginning in Manchuria and eventually extending into China proper. The second Sino-Japanese war is noted for its brutality and length but for much of that time the US did not intervene. But beginning in 1940, the US posture changed, with Roosevelt approving funding of Chinese war materiel and the application of sanctions and other restrictions against Japan on trade like iron and scrap steel. The following summer of 1941 oil shipments were restricted and soon after Japanese assets were frozen. These actions were accompanied by an increase in Chinese military assistance. For the libertarian, not only were each of these actions tantamount to threats of aggression, with Japan being rather natural resource poor and requiring heavy imports, but they also restricted the rights of free trade of US citizens and directly betrayed the non-belligerence that the vast majority of American citizens supported.
These myriad actions certainly show that there was no obvious policy of peace pursued in the Pacific. For those citizens not aware of the tension that existed between the two states, Pearl Harbor probably did seem like wanton aggression out of the blue. But, as is so often the case, one person’s surprise is, to the informed, a logical conclusion.
It Was Welcomed by FDR (And Churchill)
This gradual and blatant ramp-up of tensions with Japan should seem a bit strange within the context the period at large. Throughout the ’30s, while Japan conducted its expansionist actions throughout eastern Asia, Americans remained staunchly non-interventionist and Roosevelt continuously campaigned under the premise that, “your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars.” And yet, curiously, no sanctions or aggressive actions were taken against Japan until much later, around the turn of the decade, and only after repeated provocations were ignored by Hitler in the Atlantic. Could it be that Japan offered Roosevelt a back door to war?
As Sheldon Richman tells us, “As early as 1938, Roosevelt quietly explored with the British the possibility of war with Japan.” In 1940, with the approval and cooperation of Roosevelt and federal agencies, the British agent William Stephenson, aka “Intrepid”, was allowed to set up shop in New York City to actively intercept public messages and orchestrate smear campaigns against isolationist figures in the US. Churchill also, after hearing that the British ambassador to Japan Robert Craigie was attempting to maintain a peaceful relationship with Japan, ensured that, “[Craigie] should surely be told forthwith that the entry of the United States into war either with Germany and Italy or with Japan, is fully conformable with British interests. Nothing in the munitions sphere can compare with the importance of the British Empire and the United States being co-belligerent.”
But, though Churchill was certainly intent on using any means possible to encourage Roosevelt to aid him in Europe, he had no shortage of homegrown help. In October of 1940, Lieutenant Commander Arthur McCollum issued a memorandum, forwarded to two of FDR’s closest military advisors, which contained eight steps specifically intended, as Secretary of War Henry Stimson would later phrase it, “to maneuver them [Japan] into the position of firing the first shot.” Those steps were as follows:
1.Make an arrangement with Britain for the use of British bases in the Pacific, particularly Singapore.
2.Make an arrangement with Holland for the use of base facilities and acquisition of supplies in the Dutch East Indies [now Indonesia].
3.Give all possible aid to the Chinese government of Chiang Kai-shek.
4.Send a division of long-range heavy cruisers to the Orient, Philippines, or Singapore.
5.Send two divisions of submarines to the Orient.
6.Keep the main strength of the US Fleet, now in the Pacific, in the vicinity of the Hawaiian Islands.
7.Insist that the Dutch refuse to grant Japanese demands for undue economic concessions, particularly oil.
8.Completely embargo all trade with Japan, in collaboration with a similar embargo imposed by the British Empire.
It is unclear from the first-hand evidence of the paper trail of the original memo whether FDR himself saw the memo with his own eyes but the circumstantial case seems clear especially since, as Robert Stinnett states, “beginning the very next day, with FDR’s involvement, McCollum’s proposals were systematically put into effect.”
Take, just for instance, Action D. Regarding the presence of US cruisers and naval power in the Orient, Roosevelt himself, in words that should chill any trusting American’s bones, commanded that “I just want them to keep popping up here and there and keep the Japs guessing. I don’t mind losing one or two cruisers, but do not take a chance on losing five or six.” The Navy Pacific fleet commander, Admiral Husband Kimmel, objected, making it blatantly clear that, “It is ill-advised and will result in war if we make this move.” And this is just one of the proposed 8 actions. Despite Kimmel’s objections and against international law, naval “pop-up cruises” were indeed launched in March through July of 1941.
On October 8, 1940, one day after the memo was issued, the US State Department dispatched instructions for Americans to evacuate the Far East as soon as possible. As well, the very same day, Roosevelt began the execution of plans to move and keep the Pacific fleet stationed in Hawaii during a presidential luncheon. Admiral James Richardson, present at the luncheon, quoted the president as saying “Sooner or later the Japanese would commit an overt act against the United States and the nation would be willing to enter the war.” Admirably, Richardson opposed Roosevelt’s actions and intentions but, unsurprisingly, he was also relieved of his command on February 1, 1941. It seems that FDR’s experience stacking judicial and executive branch positions with “yes men” during the New Deal era would continue to be of use.
Despite the long list of provocative actions, there were still many opportunities to reduce this tension. The US and the Japanese came to a number of possible settlements during the years leading up to 1941 that could have offered a deescalation from their trajectory of war. The Japanese made an offer in 1940 that included their leaving China and the Tripartite pact but that offer was not taken. Even as late as November 20, 1941, Japan offered to withdraw troops from Indochina and restore peace with China in exchange for the lifting of trade restrictions against them but then Secretary of State Cordell Hull considered the deal unacceptable. He instead issued an ultimatum on November 26 requiring complete withdrawal from China and Indochina which he could be confident would be rejected. And Japan did, indeed, reject the ultimatum, at 1:00 pm, Eastern Standard Time, on December 7, 1941.
There Was Plenty of Warning
At this point, it may be difficult, in light of the evidence above, to believe that the eventual Japanese attack of Pearl Harbor could have possibly been a surprise to almost anyone close to Roosevelt or his military officials. While it is certainly possible that the complex plans and secretive actions and motives of Washington could have been kept hidden from the average American, it seems highly unlikely that those in the thick of the daily diplomatic and military proceedings with Japan could have been caught unaware. But, for the sake of being thorough, we may nevertheless ask ourselves, “did Roosevelt, or anyone else for that matter, know that Japan planned an overt attack on Pearl Harbor?”
The first obvious note is that so many of the Roosevelt administration’s actions leading up to late 1941 were engineered with the primary purpose of provoking an attack by Japan. Take, for instance, action F from McCollum’s 8 point plan which desired to keep the bulk of the Pacific fleet in the area of the Hawaiian islands. It could possibly be argued that Pearl Harbor could be rightfully considered a “surprise attack” of sorts in the sense that it was not known with accuracy beforehand exactly when or where the attack could occur. But it certainly would not be reasonable to consider it very surprising that such an attack would take place within the vicinity of the Pacific as a whole and, since the fleet was effectively used as bait, that it would occur against this obvious military target.
In the months and years after the attack, various investigations and reports were conducted to review the facts and attempt to understand where blame might be warranted. Details in those reports shed much useful light on just how much was known ahead of time. For instance, Captain Laurence Safford, who was in charge of much of the deciphering of Japanese messages during the early ’40s, testified that it was clear as early as May 1941 that the Japanese were preparing for some sort of military action in the Pacific. As well, between December 1 and 4, it was known that Japan intended to attack the US and Britain and on December 6 and 7 that Japan would formally declare war on the US. Yet this information was not forwarded to those on the ground in Hawaii or those responsible for its readiness.
A slew of others involved in cryptoanalytic and diplomatic activities at the time were also incredulous as to how the forces at Pearl Harbor could be caught so unawares. William Friedman, army cryptanalyst who assisted in breaking the Japanese “purple” diplomatic code was dumbfounded, having reportedly exclaimed to his wife, “But they knew, they knew, they knew.” Dusko Popov, a famed British double agent had disclosed the plans for the attack to the FBI in August and stated, prior to hearing the actual results of December 7, that “I was sure the American fleet had scored a great victory over the Japanese. I was very, very proud that I had been able to give the warning to the Americans four months in advance. What a reception the Japanese must have had!” And Tommy Wisden, a British Royal Navy codebreaker wondered, “With all the information we gave them. How could the Americans have been caught unprepared?”
A number of Japanese messages had been intercepted and decoded that pointed very obviously toward Pearl Harbor as the location, among them the “bomb plot” message of October 4, describing the plotting of Pearl Harbor into a supposed bombing grid, the “winds execute” message of December 4 which denoted an imminent Japanese attack, a December 6 message describing methods of signaling movements and positions of ships within the harbor, and the aforementioned message containing the precise timing of the Japanese rejection of the November 1941 ultimatum.
Ultimately, despite disagreements regarding exactly how much was known by whom and when, Sheldon Richman distills the points that are much more agreed upon: “(1) Franklin Roosevelt and his closest aides had seen Japanese messages that should have indicated to them (if they did not indeed do so) that Pearl Harbor would be attacked at dawn on December 7. (2) The commanders at Pearl Harbor, who were later made scapegoats, were inexcusably denied critical intelligence that would have likely caused them to take precautions that would have spoiled the Japanese surprise and probably prevented the attack.” These points alone should provide enough reason to doubt the incredulousness of Roosevelt and his leadership.
The Bottom Line
In America’s history, Pearl Harbor was not the first useful excuse for a politician’s entry into war and it was definitely not the last. It is my hope that, with this information in hand, the next similar situation that is destined to occur will be met with a healthy skepticism, one that it will most likely deserve and one that was unfortunately lacking in 1941. With any luck, when the time comes, that skepticism may save countless lives and further encroachments on American liberty.
The Roosevelt-Churchill Conversations
On March 6, 1942, German Minister of Post, Dr. Wilhelm Ohnesorge, sent the following letter to Adolf Hitler. To it was attached a sample manuscript of an intercepted conversation.
——————————–
The Reichspost Minister Berlin W 66 6 March 1942
Leipziger Str. 15
Geheime Reichssache!
(Secret State Matter)
U5342-11Bfb Nr. 23 gRs
Decoding of the American-England telephone system
Mein Führer!
The Research Section (Forschungsanstalt) of the German Reichspost has, as the latest of its efforts, completed a unit designed to intercept the telephone message traffic between the United States and England which had been rendered unintelligible by their use of current communications technology. Because of the significant work of its technicians, the Reichspost is the sole agency in Germany that is now able to make immediate interception and decoding of these hitherto unintelligible conversations.
I will present these results to the Reichsführer-SS, Pg Himmler who will forward them on the 22nd of March.
It is my intention, pending your approval, to strictly limit the circulation of these communications in order that no news of our success reaches the English. This might seriously jeopardize future interceptions.
Heil mein Führer!
Ohnsorge
In 1937, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company put into use a telephone scrambling device called the A-3. This device, which permitted telephone conversations to be scrambled at one and descrambled at the other, effectively prevented interception of the conversations en route.
The German Reichspost (state postal system responsible for the telephone and telegraph systems in Germany) had purchased the A-3 system from AT&T before the war for use on lines in service between Germany and the United States. However, each set of scrambling devices was different and in practice, the possessors of one set could not intercept the transmissions of another.
The A-3 system in use between Roosevelt and Churchill was housed, in America, in a secure area of the AT&T offices at 47 Walker Street in New York City and the British A-3 counterpart was located at Whitehall in London. Roosevelt’s calls to Churchill were routed through the New York office where technicians constantly supervised the conversations to be certain that the transmitted speech was unintelligible after passing through the scrambling devices.
In September of 1939, the A-3 system was in use by the White House and on the first day of that month, Roosevelt heard from his personal friend and Ambassador to France, William Bullitt, that the Germans had invaded Poland.
The Germans were well aware that Roosevelt used this device through an indiscreet article in the New York Times of October 8, 1939 entitled “Roosevelt Protected in Talks to Envoys by Radio Scrambling to Foil Spies Abroad.”
The spies abroad found this indiscretion stimulating and Dr. Ohnesorge determined to find a way to unscramble the President’s messages. He assigned a specialist in the field, Kurt Vetterlein, to work on the project using the A-3 equipment then in the hands of the Reichspost as a basis. By late 1940, Vetterlein and his team of specialists had effectively broken Roosevelt’s secure system.
Vetterlein then built a device that was able to descramble each conversation as it progressed without the loss of a single word and Ohnesorge ordered an intercept station to be established in the occupied Dutch coastal town of Noorwikj aan Zee, just north of den Haag. Here, in a former youth hostel, Vetterlein set up the equipment he needed to begin a full-scale 24-hour program of interception and transcription of the trans-Atlantic radio telephone traffic.
The first intercept was made at 7:45 PM on September 7, 1941. The daily number of intercepted calls, on a 24 hour basis, ranged from a high of sixty to a low of thirty and were screened by experts for their intelligence value. Important material was transcribed in the original English and send by courier either to Hitler’s military headquarters in East Prussia or to Heinrich Himmler at the RSHA in Berlin.
Himmler, in turn, had the original English texts translated into German and distributed within his organization. SS General Gottlob Berger, head of Himmler’s Main Office, was one of the recipients and the head of Overseas Intelligence of the Sicherheitsdienst or SD received others.
These intercepts, coupled with confidential coded reports by Bruggmann, Swiss Minister to the United States, proved to be of incredible value to German intelligence organs and gave the Germans the closest look at the inner workings of the top leadership of the United States. Bruggmann was the brother-in-law of Vice President Henry Wallace who was absolutely indiscreet about top level police decisions. The Swiss Minister had no idea that the Germans were reading all of his secret dispatches to the Swiss Foreign Office in Bern just as the American President and the British Prime Minister had no idea their often sophomoric and pompous chatterings were ending up on the desk of Adolf Hitler within hours after they hung up.
Ever since the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 and the subsequent entry of the United States into what then became World War II, there has been a heated and protracted debate about the historical role played by Roosevelt in this episode. His detractors have claimed that the President was fully aware of the impending Japanese attack and allowed it to proceed because it supplied him a casus belli that would permit him to actively engage his real enemy, Hitler. Much is made of the interception and decoding of Japanese official military and governmental messages, which in hindsight would appear to point clearly to a Japanese attack.
Certainly, the decoding of Japanese Foreign Office diplomatic traffic would indicate the strong probability of a military attack on the United States by the Japanese if their respective governments were unable to resolve their problems in the Pacific.
None of the diplomatic messages, however, were specific about such an attack and all that can be gained from reading them is the clear knowledge that the Japanese did not want war with the United States and, like Saddam Hussein of Iraq, were desperately seeking some kind of a peaceful solution.
Given that Roosevelt was aware of this attitude, which he clearly was, there has been no proof that the President was aware of a specific attack on the United States.
On November 26, 1941, the German intercept station in Holland recorded the following conversation between Roosevelt and Churchill concerning the situation in the Pacific. It is of such historical importance that it is reproduced in full and copies of the original German documents are attached. These transcripts of the Roosevelt/Churchill conversations were always initially in English and were then later translated into German.
Roosevelt-Churchill Conversation of November 26, 1941
This conversation is taken directly from a German transcript of a trans-Atlantic scrambled telephone conversation initiated by British Prime Minister Winston Spencer-Churchill and American President Franklin Roosevelt. The original was taken down in English and a German translation is in the German State Archives.
The original carbon copy of this, and other historically important German intercepts, came from the private files of Robert T. Crowley, formerly Deputy Director of Clandestine Operations of the Central Intelligence Agency.
Conversation Participants
A=Franklin Roosevelt, Washington
B= Winston Churchill, London
B: I am frightfully sorry to disturb you at this hour, Franklin, but matters of a most vital import have transpired and I felt that I must convey them to you immediately.
A: That’s perfectly all right, Winston. I’m sure you wouldn’t trouble me at this hour for trivial concerns.
B: Let me preface my information with an explanation addressing the reason I have not alluded to these facts earlier. In the first place, until today, the information was not firm. On matters of such gravity, I do not like to indulge in idle chatter. Now, I have in my hands, reports from our agents in Japan as well as the most specific intelligence in the form of the highest level Japanese naval coded messages (conversation broken) for some time now.
A: I felt this is what you were about. How serious is it?
B: It could not be worse, A powerful Japanese task force comprising (composed of) six of their carriers, two battleships and a number of other units to include (including) tankers and cruisers, has sailed yesterday from a secret base in the northern Japanese islands.
A: We both knew this was coming. There are also reports in my hands about a force of some size making up in China and obviously intended to go (move) South.
B: Yes, we have all of that. (Interruption) ..are far more advanced than you in our reading of the Jap naval operations codes. But even without that, their moves are evident. And they will indeed move South but the force I spoke of is not headed South, Franklin, it is headed East..
A: Surely you must be…will you repeat that please?
B: I said to the East. This force is sailing to the East…towards you.
A: Perhaps they set an easterly course to fool any observers and then plan to swing South to support the landings in the southern areas. I have…
B: No, at this moment, their forces are moving across the northern Pacific and I can assure you that their goal is the (conversation broken) fleet in Hawaii. At Pearl Harbor.
A: This is monstrous. Can you tell me…indicate…the nature of your intelligence? (conversation broken) reliable? Without compromising your sources…
B: Yes, I will have to be careful. Our agents in Japan have been reporting on the gradual (conversation broken) units. And these have disappeared from Japanese home waters. We also have highly reliable sources in the Japanese Foreign Service and even the military…
A: How reliable?
B: One of the sources is the individual who supplied us the material on the diplomatic codes that (conversation broken) and a Naval officer whom our service has compromised. You must trust me, Franklin and I cannot be more specific.
A: I accept this.
B: We cannot compromise our code breaking. You understand this. Only myself and a few (conversation broken) not even Hopkins. It will go straight to Moscow and I am not sure we want that.
A: I am still attempting to…the obvious implication is that the Japs are going to do a Port Arthur on us at Pearl Harbor. Do you concur?
B: I do indeed. Unless they add an attack on the Panama Canal to this vile business. I can hardly envision the canal as a primary goal, especially with your fleet lying athwart their lines of communications with Japan. No, if they do strike the canal, they will have to first neutralize (destroy) your fleet (conversation broken).
A: The worse form of treachery. We can prepare our defenses on the islands and give them a warm welcome when they come. It would certainly put some iron up Congress’ ass (asshole).
B: On the other hand, if they did launch a bombing raid, given that the aircraft would only be of the carrier-borne types, how much actual damage could they inflict? And on what target?
A: I think torpedoes would be ruled out at the outset. Pearl is far too shallow to permit a successful torpedo attack. Probably they would drop medium bombs on the ships and then shoot (conversation broken) damage a number of ships and no doubt the Japs would attack our airfields. I could see some damage there but I don’t think either an airfield or a battleship could sink very far. What do your people give you as the actual date of the attack?
B: The actual date given is the eighth of December. That’s a Monday.
A: The fleet is in harbor over the weekend. They often sortie during the week…
B: The Japs are asking (conversation broken) exact dispositions of your ships on a regular basis.
A: But Monday seems odd. Are you certain?
B: It is in the calendar. Monday is the eighth. (conversation broken).
A:…then I will have to reconsider the entire problem. A Japanese attack on us, which would result in war between us…and certainly you as well…would certainly fulfill two of the most important requirements of our policy. Harry has told me repeatedly…and I have more faith in him than I do in the Soviet ambassador…that Stalin is desperate at this point. The Nazis are at the gates of Moscow, his armies are melting away…the government has evacuated and although Harry and Marshall feel that Stalin can hang on and eventually defeat Hitler, their is no saying what could transpire (happen) if the Japs suddenly fell on Stalin’s rear. In spite of all the agreements between them and the Japs dropping Matsuoka, there is still strong anti-Russian sentiment in high Japanese military circles. I think that we have to decide what is more important…keeping Russia in the war to bleed the Nazis dry to their own eventual destruction (conversation broken) supply Stalin with weapons but do not forget, in fact he is your ally, not mine. There are strong isolationist feelings here and there are quite a number of anti-Communists…
B: Fascists…
A: Certainly, but they would do all they could to block any attempt on my part to do more than give some monetary assistance to Stalin.
B: But we too have our major desperations, Franklin. Our shipping upon which our nation depends, is being sunk by the huns faster than we could ever replace (conversation broken) the Japs attack both of us in the Pacific? We could lose Malaya which is our primary source of rubber and tin. And if the Japs get Java and the oil, they could press South to Australia and I have told you repeatedly, we cannot hold (conversation broken) them much but in truth I cannot deliver. We need every man and every ship to fight Hitler in Europe…India too. If the Japs get into Malaya, they can press on virtually unopposed into Burma and then India. Need I tell you of the resultant destruction of our Empire? We cannot survive on this small island, Franklin, (conversation broken) allow the nips (knips?) to attack, you can get your war declaration through your Congress after all. (conversation broken)
A: Not as capable as you are at translating there messages and the army and navy are very jealous of each other. There is so much coming in that everyone is confused. We have no agents in place in Japan and every day dozens of messages are (conversation broken) that contradict each other or are not well translated. I have seen three translations of the same message with three entirely different meanings (conversation broken) address your concern about British holdings in the Pacific…if the Japanese do attack both of us, eventually we will be able to crush them and regain all of the lost territories. As for myself, I will be damned glad to be rid of the Phillipines.(sic)
B: I see this as a gamble (conversation broken) what would your decision be? We cannot procrastinate over this for too long. Eleven or twelve days are all we have. Can we not agree in principle now? I should mention that several advisors have counseled (advised) against informing you of this and allowing it to happen. You see by notifying you where my loyalty lies. Certainly to one who is heart and soul with us against Hitler.
A: I do appreciate your loyalty, Winston. What on the other hand, will happen here if one of our intelligence people is able to intercept, decipher and deliver to me the same information you just gave me? I cannot just ignore it…all of my intelligence people will know about it then. I could not ignore this.
B: But if it were just a vague message then?
A: No, a specific message. I could not just sweep it under the rug like that (conversation broken).
B: Of course not. I think we should matters develop as they will.
A: I think that perhaps I can find a reason to absent (leave) myself from Washington while this crisis develops. What I don’t know can’t hurt me and I too can misunderstand messages, especially at a distance (conversation broken)
B: Completely. My best to you all there.
A: Thank you for your call.
In dealing with documents of a controversial nature, there are a number of factors to be considered. The first point to consider is the authenticity of the document in question.
Authenticity can be determined by several means. There is the provenience of the piece; where it came from and a catalog of the owners showing unbroken custody. Then there is the forensic study of the document. Is the paper correct to the period when the document was purported to have been written. Is the typewriter or the handwriting correct? If ink is used, can it be tested as to age?
These are the forensic issues and the next issue is one of plausibility. Does the document accurately reflect knowledge and opinion when it was alleged to have been written? The sure sign of a faked or altered piece is if it reflects information known only after the fact and not before.
As a case in point, American newspapers contemporary with the sinking of the RMS Titanic in April of 1912, reported on what was then believed to be fact. These perceived facts later turned out to be in error. A document that accurately depicts the opinions, and errors, current with its alleged origin is far more believable than one that reflects information that was developed at a later date, information that could not be known to a period writer.
In the case of the copies of the German intercepts, these principles have been carefully adhered to. Because of the importance of some of these captured papers, it is vital to at least ascertain their authenticity based on the forensic criteria.
These documents, fortunately, exist in their original form.
The Roosevelt/Churchill conversation of November 26, 1941, was typed on a German Olympia typewriter, manufactured in 1938. The typeface does not indicate excessive wear such as one would find in an old, second-hand machine.
The paper on which the document was originally typed is common pulp paper, very quick to age. This paper proved to be unremarkable pulp that could have come from any period. There were no chemical additives, as are found in post 1948 paper, and no wood pulp additives that would preclude period German manufacture.
The next step in authentication would be to study the text to see if the speech was consistent with the speakers, their education and background.
In studying this aspect of the conversations, it must be remembered that these intercepts were taken down directly from the intercepted messages, as they were in progress. The technicians were persons in German employ who were conversant with idiomatic English. They were not necessarily of German birth or upbringing and attempting to write down intercepts in a foreign language could easily lead to minor grammatical or textual errors.
It is also necessary to consider the personal attitudes of persons who wish not to believe the authenticity of very controversial documents.
As a case in point, using this November 26, 1941, intercept as an example, several scholars have decided that the text is authentic. One recent reviewer, historian John Lukacs, has decided that it is not.
Dr. Lukacs has written at some length about this intercept in the American Heritage magazine of November/December 2002.
A very polished writer, Dr. Lukacs has stated that he simply cannot, and will not, accept this conversation as authentic. He stated in his article that he once spoke with an unnamed elderly British translator who stated she could not accept some of the comments made in the text.
There is the argument that Churchill would never have called Roosevelt by his first name. Since Roosevelt had known Churchill and his family for some time before the date of the conversation, there is no logical reason why he would not have used the President’s first name. Roosevelt’s mother was a friend of the Churchill family and had been visiting with them in England in 1915. This is an obscure fact, admittedly, but one that is not so concealed that it could never be discovered by a competent researcher.
There is also the question of Churchill’s use of ‘fascist’ in the conversation when Lukacs feels that ‘Nazi’ would be more accurate. A number of Churchill’s published speeches contain references to both definitions. Lukacs refers to the use of this word as ‘nonsensical’ when in fact published material shows that Churchill very clearly had used it a number of times in his writings and speeches.
What all of this proves is nothing more than the fact that Dr. Lukacs is not happy with the implication that Churchill, about whom he has written glowingly and at great length and whom he holds in the highest esteem, had prior knowledge of the Pearl Harbor attack and was engaged in plotting with his American opposite number to let it go forward. By both Roosevelt and Churchills’ doing so, it is obvious many lives were lost and the war burst forth on a global dimension.
Dr. Peter Hoffman from Canada and Dr. Lukacs have both written in glowing phrases about their particular historical idols. Hoffman produced a highly laudatory work on Claus von Stauffenberg, as worshipful as the Lukacs’ Churchill works, and any writer who dares to denigrate their heroes immediately draws the academic ire of their biographers.
These academic gentlemen have staked out their turf, as it were, and like many other academics, will fight to the death to defend their own territory. It is never an edifying sight to witness distinguished academics engaged in behavior redolent of elderly whores engaging in a hair-pulling and purse-swinging battle in a dark alley over possession of a drunken client but this sort of activity seems to be more the norm than the exception
The ferocity of these encounters is always in direct proportion to the unimportance of the subject.
In essence, Dr. Lukacs simply cannot, and will not, accept anything that brings the character, or lack of it, of his primary hero into question.
Many do indeed revere both Roosevelt and Churchill. Still others revere Hitler and Stalin and are just as fierce in the defense of their respective heroes.
The personality of Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill could very well be a subject of interest to an alienist who, by definition, is a physician who treats mental disorders. There is a saying that the world is governed with very little sense and there are times when one could add to this statement that it often has been governed by lunatics.
(For an illuminating discussion of the personality and activities of Churchill, see a report by eminent American historian Harry Elmer Barnes in the Appendix)
Churchill was born in 1874 and died in 1965. His father was Randolph Spencer-Churchill, a son of the Duke of Marlborough. The first Duke was John Churchill, one of England’s most capable military commanders, who died without male issue in 1722 and the title was given to one of his nephews, a Spencer. As a courtesy, the Spencer family was allowed to add Churchill to its name, separated by a hyphen. Winston always wanted to believe that he was a gifted military leader in the mold of the first Duke but his efforts at generalship were always unqualified disasters that he generally blamed on other people. This chronic refusal to accept responsibility for his own incompetent actions is one of Churchill’s less endearing qualities.
Randolph Churchill died early as the result of rampant syphilis that turned him from an interesting minor politician to a pathetic madman who had to be kept away from the public, in the final years of his life. His mother was the former Jennie Jerome, an American. The Jerome family had seen better days when Jennie met Randolph. Her father, Leonard, was a stock-market manipulator who had lost his money and the marriage was more one of convenience than of affection.
The Jeromes were by background very typically American. On her father’s side, Jennie was mostly Irish and on her mother’s American Indian and Jewish. The union produced two children, Winston and Jack. The parents lived separate lives, both seeking the company of other men. Winston’s psyche suffered accordingly and throughout his life, his frantic desire for attention obviously had its roots in his abandonment as a child.
As a member of the 4th (Queen’s Own) Hussars, in 1896 Churchill became embroiled in a lawsuit wherein he was publicly accused of having engaged in the commission of “acts of gross immorality of the Oscar Wilde type.” This case was duly settled out of court for a payment of money and the charges were withdrawn. Also a determinant factor was the interference by the Prince of Wales with whom his mother was having an affair.
In 1905, Churchill hired a young man, Edward Marsh (later Sir Edward) as his private secretary. His mother, always concerned about her son’s political career, was concerned because Marsh was a very well known homosexual who later became one of Winston’s most intimate lifelong friends. Personal correspondence of March, now in private hands, attests to the nature and duration of their friendship.
Churchill, as Asquith once said, was consumed with vanity and his belief that he was a brilliant military leader led him from the terrible disaster of Gallipoli through the campaigns of the Second World War. He meddled constantly in military matters to the despair and eventual fury of his professional military advisors but his political excursions were even more disastrous. Churchill was a man who was incapable of love but could certainly hate. He was viciously vindictive towards anyone who thwarted him and a number of these perceived enemies died sudden deaths during the war when such activities were much easier to order and conceal.
One of Churchill’s less attractive personality traits, aside from his refusal to accept the responsibility for the failure of his actions, was his ability to change his opinions at a moment’s notice.
Once anti-American, he did a complete about-face when confronted with a war he escalated and could not fight, and from a supporter of Hitler’s rebuilding of Germany, he turned into a bitter enemy after a Jewish political action association composed of wealthy businessmen hired him to be their spokesman.
Churchill lavishly praised Roosevelt to his face and defamed him with the ugliest of accusations behind his back. The American President was a far more astute politician than Churchill and certainly far saner.
In order to support his war of vengeance, Churchill had to buy weapons from the United States and Roosevelt stripped England of all of her assets to pay for these. Only when England was bankrupt did Roosevelt consent to the Lend-Lease project, and in a moment of malicious humor, titled the bill “1776” when it was sent to Congress.
Hitler’s bombing of England was not a prelude to invasion, but a retaliation for Churchill’s instigation of the bombing of German cities and Churchill used the threat of a German invasion to whip up pro-British feelings in the United States. Threats of invasion by the Germans, in this case of the United States, have been cited by such writers as Weinberg as the reason why Roosevelt had to get into the war. Neither the Germans nor the Japanese had even the slightest intention to invade the continental United States and exhaustive research in the military and political archives of both countries has been unable to locate a shred of evidence to support these theories.
A dedicated academic supporter of Winston Spencer-Churchill or Franklin Delano Roosevelt would undoubtedly find any evidence of bad character on the part of their beloved subjects, total anathema but this attitude in and of itself has no actual bearing on the originality of documentation that might augment or expose lack of character or morality.
Roosevelt’s role in the Pearl Harbor attack has been the subject of speculation even from the first. His opponents claimed that he deliberately pushed the Japanese into war to permit him to fight his archenemy, Adolf Hitler. His supporters have firmly denied this thesis and the multiplication of books, scholarly articles and media dramas seems to have no end.
Several valid points have been brought by Roosevelt partisans that deserve to be carefully considered. The first is concerned with American military intelligence work and deals, in the main, with the interceptions of Japanese coded messages. It has been fully acknowledged that the Japanese diplomatic code, called “Purple,” was broken by the Americans and consequently, all high-level diplomatic messages between Tokyo and Japanese diplomats throughout the world were being read almost as soon as they were sent. (The average translation took two days.)
The question of the Japanese Army and Navy operational codes was another matter. The American government has firmly denied for decades that such codes had even been broken or, if that had, were not translated until 1945! While nearly all of the “Purple” intercepts have been made public, only a very few of the coded Japanese Naval messages have appeared in print and then only concerning matters of no special significance.
The Japanese Pearl Harbor task force did not broadcast any messages during their passage to the Hawaiian Islands but Japanese Naval headquarters did send messages to the task force. What they may have consisted of are not known at present and perhaps will never be known, although the National Security Agency, holder of these documents, has stated that it will release the Naval intercepts (known as JN-25) at an unspecified future date.
The argument has been well made, specifically by Roberts Wohlstetter, that so much material was intercepted during the period just prior to the Japanese attack, that it was extremely difficult for American intelligence agencies to winnow out the wheat from the chaff. In retrospect, it is glaringly obvious that some kind of a Japanese attack was planned and in train, but the direction of this attack was lost in the muddle of complex and difficult-to-translate messages.
A further point well made is, had American military intelligence learned of a definite attack on Pearl Harbor, it would have been impossible to keep this a secret, given the number of translators and other military personnel who handled such intercepted messages. The army and navy of that period were small in size and most senior officers in both services knew each other well, having served together for many years. In the absence of any concrete evidence to support the receipt of Japanese military messages dealing with an attack on any specific American installation, it is not within the realm of belief that these senior officers would passively allow American military units to be attacked.
In response to this entirely valid postulation, it should be noted that the specific 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.
A second area of interest has been the possible motivation for Roosevelt’s increasing pressure on the Japanese, pressure which culminated in a stringent oil embargo that forced Japan into war. Diverse reasons are given for this, including a personal prejudice in favor of China stemming from his maternal grandfather’s highly lucrative opium and immigrant-smuggling operations to an intense hatred of Hitler in specific and Germans in general.
Both of these reasons for Roosevelt’s attitude are historically valid but in and of themselves do not explain the dangerous brinkmanship practiced by Roosevelt in his dealings with Japan. It is clearly evident from reading the intercepts of the Japanese diplomatic coded messages that Tokyo was not only not interested in pursuing war against the United States but was seriously engaged in attempting to defuse and dangerous situation whose accelerating progress caused them great alarm. Roosevelt and his advisers were fully aware of the ease with which they could achieve effective dialog with the Japanese government. All diplomatic approaches by Japan were rebuffed by Washington and as the diplomatic crisis deepened, the possibility of military action by Japan against the United States was very clearly evident in Washington.
The actual motivation behind the turning of the screw against Japan and the refusal on the part of Roosevelt to negotiate has been explored extensively in print but one of the most valid answers seems to lie clearly in the section of the intercepted communication dealing with the Soviet Union.
As much as Roosevelt wished to enter a war against Germany, he was constrained by Congress from conducting a personal war. A de facto war against Germany was in progress in the Atlantic where US naval units were engaged in open warfare with German U boats but Hitler would not rise to the bait and issue a unilateral declaration of war against the United States. For a time, Roosevelt was check in his ambitions.
The CIA Confessions: The Crowley Conversations
December 6, 2018
by Dr. Peter Janney
On October 8th, 2000, Robert Trumbull Crowley, once a leader of the CIA’s Clandestine Operations Division, died in a Washington hospital of heart failure and the end effects of Alzheimer’s Disease. Before the late Assistant Director Crowley was cold, Joseph Trento, a writer of light-weight books on the CIA, descended on Crowley’s widow at her town house on Cathedral Hill Drive in Washington and hauled away over fifty boxes of Crowley’s CIA files.
Once Trento had his new find secure in his house in Front Royal, Virginia, he called a well-known Washington fix lawyer with the news of his success in securing what the CIA had always considered to be a potential major embarrassment.
Three months before, on July 20th of that year, retired Marine Corps colonel William R. Corson, and an associate of Crowley, died of emphysema and lung cancer at a hospital in Bethesda, Md.
After Corson’s death, Trento and the well-known Washington fix-lawyer went to Corson’s bank, got into his safe deposit box and removed a manuscript entitled ‘Zipper.’ This manuscript, which dealt with Crowley’s involvement in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, vanished into a CIA burn-bag and the matter was considered to be closed forever.
The small group of CIA officials gathered at Trento’s house to search through the Crowley papers, looking for documents that must not become public. A few were found but, to their consternation, a significant number of files Crowley was known to have had in his possession had simply vanished.
When published material concerning the CIA’s actions against Kennedy became public in 2002, it was discovered to the CIA’s horror, that the missing documents had been sent by an increasingly erratic Crowley to another person and these missing papers included devastating material on the CIA’s activities in South East Asia to include drug running, money laundering and the maintenance of the notorious ‘Regional Interrogation Centers’ in Viet Nam and, worse still, the Zipper files proving the CIA’s active organization of the assassination of President John Kennedy..
A massive, preemptive disinformation campaign was readied, using government-friendly bloggers, CIA-paid “historians” and others, in the event that anything from this file ever surfaced. The best-laid plans often go astray and in this case, one of the compliant historians, a former government librarian who fancied himself a serious writer, began to tell his friends about the CIA plan to kill Kennedy and eventually, word of this began to leak out into the outside world.
The originals had vanished and an extensive search was conducted by the FBI and CIA operatives but without success. Crowley’s survivors, his aged wife and son, were interviewed extensively by the FBI and instructed to minimize any discussion of highly damaging CIA files that Crowley had, illegally, removed from Langley when he retired. Crowley had been a close friend of James Jesus Angleton, the CIA’s notorious head of Counterintelligence. When Angleton was sacked by DCI William Colby in December of 1974, Crowley and Angleton conspired to secretly remove Angleton’s most sensitive secret files out of the agency. Crowley did the same thing right before his own retirement, secretly removing thousands of pages of classified information that covered his entire agency career.
Known as “The Crow” within the agency, Robert T. Crowley joined the CIA at its inception and spent his entire career in the Directorate of Plans, also know as the “Department of Dirty Tricks,”: Crowley was one of the tallest man ever to work at the CIA. Born in 1924 and raised in Chicago, Crowley grew to six and a half feet when he entered the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in N.Y. as a cadet in 1943 in the class of 1946. He never graduated, having enlisted in the Army, serving in the Pacific during World War II. He retired from the Army Reserve in 1986 as a lieutenant colonel. According to a book he authored with his friend and colleague, William Corson, Crowley’s career included service in Military Intelligence and Naval Intelligence, before joining the CIA at its inception in 1947. His entire career at the agency was spent within the Directorate of Plans in covert operations. Before his retirement, Bob Crowley became assistant deputy director for operations, the second-in-command in the Clandestine Directorate of Operations.
Bob Crowley first contacted Gregory Douglas in 1993 when he found out from John Costello that Douglas was about to publish his first book on Heinrich Mueller, the former head of the Gestapo who had become a secret, long-time asset to the CIA. Crowley contacted Douglas and they began a series of long and often very informative telephone conversations that lasted for four years. In 1996, Crowley told Douglas that he believed him to be the person that should ultimately tell Crowley’s story but only after Crowley’s death. Douglas, for his part, became so entranced with some of the material that Crowley began to share with him that he secretly began to record their conversations, later transcribing them word for word, planning to incorporate some, or all, of the material in later publications.
Conversation No. 97
Date: Monday, August 4 1997
Commenced: 8:45 AM CST
Concluded: 9:02 AM CST
GD: Ah, good morning, Robert.
RTC: You said something on the answering machine about the Swiss?
GD: Yes, I was talking with their press secretary several days ago and learned that they had been working on their transmitter because they have been having on-going problems with it. Seems that a number of employees have been complaining of headaches and the suffering of a general malaise. Given what was said to me, it could only be your oscillator. I guess you keep it on.
RTC: Oh I do indeed. In fact, I left it on once for a whole week. Actually, I forgot about it. It does work, then?
GD: I have used this many times and, yes, it does work. A friend of mine and I wanted to buy a house for investment so we put an oscillator in a van and parked it across the street. First, the dog went mad and ran off and soon the cat vanished. One of the kids kept crapping on the floor and everyone inside felt terrible. We just showed up at their door and said my aunt had lived there years before and one thing and another. We made an offer and the wife screamed ‘take it! take it!’ to her husband and so we got the place cheap. A little paint, some landscaping and we turned around and sold it two months later and made a huge profit. Of course you can’t do the same thing with the Swiss.
RTC: We should do it to the Russians.
GD: Why not leave the poor Russians alone? My God, you people down there have done terrible things to them and to their economy.
RTC: Well, the idea is to smash them so badly they can never be a rival again.
GD: I don’t mean to be critical, Robert, but your people never think down the road. Nature abhors a vacuum so why not get together with the Russians? Well, you got the Poles to revolt and break away but what can we do with them? Nothing. Germany and Russian ought to get together, buy off the Polish government and then Germany takes their side and the Russians take theirs.
RTC: What about the Poles?
GD: Perhaps we can ship them all to Chicago. Then the Poles can have Chicago and the Jews can have Miami and the rest of us can get on about out business. No, actually, I am serious about Russia. I know you set up Yeltsin and I know your people have been looting the country and systematically destroying her industry but it can’t last. A new administration and a new change of policy and then a rebuilding Russia could be an enemy again. After all, we turned her into a bogey man in the ‘40’s and just look how much money your friends made with the Cold War. Don’t forget, I knew Gehlen and he told me, and showed me the papers, that our Army, for whom he then worked, wanted him to draw up a report showing Russia was going to attack Europe. Yes, and say hello to the Easter Bunny. Stalin would never have launched a military attack against anyone but sea turtles in 1948. The war virtually destroyed the Russian infrastructure and a huge military attack would have been impossible for anyone. Well, it paid off so now that Communism is gone and Russia is starting to act normal again, why not support her? Who needs enemies?
RTC: Gregory, I’m sorry to say you simply do not realize that Communism is not dead and we want it stop it from ever coming back.
GD: Well, Nazism is dead in Germany and the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere is dead in Japan so why not bury the Cold War, start trading with Cuba and get on with our business? I guess everyone is stuck in the past.
RTC: And where do you see yourself in this?
GD: Being positive, Robert. Russia is a huge potential market and Russia has a great collection of natural resources. Instead of getting tin horn rip off artists to screw them, why not help them develop? A stable and advancing country is not about to engage in a struggle for world domination. We did that and believe me, it will take all we have just to keep the status quo. We can only expand so far and using Russia as an excuse for grabbing control over every puissant country in Africa can only go so far.
RTC” Gregory, Gregory, I am concerned for your soul. Who ever put this bee into your bonnet?
GD: Tom Kimmel.
RTC: Oh, bullshit. Tom has a little book of rules and he wouldn’t do anything not in the book and what you have been talking about is not in his book.
GD: Well, so much for the little books. That sounds like Mary Baker Eddy. By the way, did you know she was buried with a hooked –up telephone in her casket? I’d like to get the number and see how she’s doing down there but I’ll bet she forgot the pay the bills for the last fifty years and they disconnected it. Jesus, suppose she answered? There goes yesterday’s dinner.
RTC: Gregory, so soon after breakfast
(Concluded 9:02 AM CST)