[Spook86]

A more salient question is what was FDR up to the months before Pearl Harbor was attacked. In 2001, journalist Robert Stinnett published an excellent book ("Day of Deceit") that makes a convincing argument that FDR and his senior military leaders had strong intelligence that the Japanese were preparing to attack Pearl Harbor, but failed to notify U.S. commanders in Hawaii. Their rationale: U.S. entry into the war was inevitable, and they needed a pretext for American mailitary intervention.

Incidentally, Stinnett's book was based on 20 years of research in the national archives and hundreds of FOIA requests. He uncovered documents which (among other things) advocate a provocative U.S. policy towards Japan, and communications intercepts (from U.S. SIGINT stations) that pinpointed a large Japanese naval force north of Hawaii on December 6, 1941.

Democrats who claim President Bush was negligent or liable in 9/11 should examine the record of their icon the final months of 1941. I never put much credence in Pearl Harbor conspiracy theories until I read Stinnett's bok....

[The Right Stuff]

I have read Stinnett's book, but I also belong to the Battle of Midway Roundtable and I've seen his conclusions pretty effectively denied by the WWII vets that were there.

[Tallguy]

Stinnett's book is a piece of garbage. His book suggests that we were "reading" Japanese NAVAL codes prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor, when it has been known for years that the naval codes were only partially cracked by the Battle of Midway -- 6 months later. We WERE reading the Japanese DIPLOMATIC codes prior to Pearl, but there wasn't anything significant intercepted here until it was to late.

Stinnett did have some interesting new information on the Radio Direction Finding stations that were tracking encrypted naval radio traffic. But that's not the same thing as reading the messages themselves.

BTW, even when you 'cracked' a code, the enemy would frequently change the encryption 'key' right before a major operation. This means that you can't read the accumulating 'mail' until the new key is discovered. Sometimes that happens after you've been hit.

We were surprised at Pearl Harbor mostly because we expected the attack to fall in the Phillipines. That was the template. The few individuals that suggested that Pearl was vulnerable were not listened to.