The carriers put to sea in November for different reasons.
Correct.
The Important Information that had been communicated to DC in the run-up to the attack on Pearl Harbor was in an enormous "In Box" that had yet to be decrypted and processed.
I often think that the reason for the conspiracy theories about FDR and the attack on Pearl Harbor is an unwillingness to accept that this country could have been caught off guard to the extent that it was.
Gordon Prange's At Dawn We Slept is an absolute must-read on the subject of the attack; this should be considered a primer by anyone with even a cursory interest in the war.
He lays it all out (and at a time before the conspiracy theories took root, so he could hardly be considered an apologist for the FDR administration). The Japanese carriers, even those who did not participate in the attack, simply stopped any and all of their radio transmissions weeks before 12/07; US intelligence could not even hazard a guess as to where they might be, and the estimates were off by several orders of magnitude.
Also politics. Everyone knew war was coming, what was unknown was where and when. Kimmel and Short had warnings and should have had their submarines out on picket and aircraft in the air at dawn on patrol but they didn't.
Even as total as the surprise was at Pearl, the Japanese still took significant losses and would probably have been badly mauled if the US forces had been on alert.
Didn’t someone in Washington deduce from intercepted Japanese diplomatic messages that an attack on Pearl Harbor was imminent and send a telegram, but because of it being a weekend there were delays and the message was delivered to the commander at Pearl Harbor after the attack had already started?
Eggsactly!
Most war gamers predicted the attack would be in the Dutch East Indies, Philippines, or Australia, NOT Pearl Harbor. When it was discussed, most planners scoffed at the idea....to far....to complicated....