I, and Phil, have refuted this nonsense enough times.
Now there's a sterling defense of your thesis. You may be a wonderful professor with a wonderful book--although 320 pages to cover 48 lies doesn't leave much room for in depth analyses. You meet expectations--at least with respect to FDR and Pearl Harbor.
But there's also much missing from your argument--just like your name is missing from Jacobsen's book reviews. You can call people "boobs" and "conspiracists" in attempt to advance your position, but that's the tactic of one who knows he's lost the argument. I'm unimpressed. What if I declared that I've argued my position too many times to accord you the courtesy of a reply? It would come off as a tad arrogant, wouldn't you say?
First, let's deal with "conspiracist" smear. Of course, many think there is no such thing as a conspiracy. They believe that people in government and on this message board don't converse with each other; that Al Qaeda operatives never conspired with Saudis or Yemenis or Egyptians or Pakistanis or Sudanese to attack the U.S. That the media would never think of conspiring to embarrass Palin or McCain in order to promote the election of Obama. Maybe existence depends on the conspiracy and the facts as we know them.
Some think conspiracies give conservatives a bad name but, thankfully, you blame only Marxists and Libertarians. What happened to the Liberals who Lie? You never discussed them in your interview above. I think we can agree that Admiral Robert Stinnett fits neither category. He's probably not even an FDR-loving neo-conservative who came over from the Democratic Party when he discovered its weakness on national defense issues.
You know where to find all the refutation you want.
Actually, I don't, and I wonder how you jumped to this conclusion. You provided no links, presumably to dodge my request. There's very little on the Internet about your views on Pearl Harbor, almost no customer reviews, and some outlets have already deep-discounted your book. I took the liberty in the interim to peruse Lie #3 at the local B&N (one copy on the discount table), but I noticed you used less than six pages to "debunk" months of testimony and documentation with absolutely no evidence of your own--only your opinion. In your 21 footnotes, you reference yourself and Jacobsen among others--against 45 pages of documents Stinnett reproduces as well as 595 footnotes. No contest.
You charge that recent authors used "new facts," so they are revisionists. Shocking. Weren't those who examined the Venona Files released by Russia revisionists? Shouldn't a professor of history try to stay updated. Other professions are required to do so.
You write that "Stinnett repeatedly assumed that intercepted documents ... were forwarded to Washington, all in time to stop the attack." Here you make the mistake of assuming that FDR wanted to stop the attack--a direct contradiction to the McCollum memo, the existence of which you seem reluctant to acknowledge existed. Also, remember that the Brits' ULTRA project was decrypting, translating, analyzing and forwarding some German messages even before Hitler saw them. You and Jacobsen too often use your own "mush phrases" such as: your interpretation is "abundantly clear." You have also committed egregious mistakes on your misinterpretation of dates.
The crux of your argument is that information about the forthcoming attack, "if passed on to Washington--would have implicated American leadership in allowing the attack to occur." Duh. I don't know if you are naive or stupid to think there might have been larger, laudable motives on the part of FDR.. As you point out, he already had a pretext for war against Germany. What he didn't have was public support for another bloody world war.
You quote Jacobsen as saying "It is sad that revisionists do not seem to consider the implications of allegations of foreknowledge ... necessarily have on the reputations of dead intelligence personnel who re unable to defend themselves." What about Stinnett, who served in the same unit as George G. W. Bush, earned ten battle stars and received a Presidential Unit Citation. (Check it. It's there on Wikipedia, contrary to your assertion.)
How about Charles Tansill, Walter Millis, John Toland and Gordon Prange, and how this is any of this at all relevant to what happened? You come across as a history denier without a shred of proof, unlike those you denigrate. Besides, no one is attempting to smear our intelligence personnel. Quite the contrary, they didn't fail in their mission and deserve much more credit than you and Jacobsen are willing to give. It is the two of you who are harming their reputations by calling their sworn testimony false.
Your argument is narrowly focused on radio codes--that the Japanese fleet was under strict radio silence, but no one disputes that. The fact is that they broke that radio silence, as testimony reveals, which allowed our listening posts to track the fleet. You never deal with the McCollum memo, the Vacant Sea Act, the quick movement of the newer naval assets out of Pearl Harbor before the attack, subsequent actions by Congress and the President to reverse the judgments of history against Adm. Kimmel and Gen. Short, and whether FDR was able to use Pearl Harbor to maneuver the U.S. into war. He got what he wanted. He was a master at deception stemming from his earlier days in New York.
So, the Japanese proved the "experts" wrong: that they could attack Pearl Harbor, even while occupying China. They accomplished the unthinkable, and inadvertently fell into FDR's trap. The reputations of Kimmel and Short were rehabilitated by Congress in 1995 because the evidence shows they were taken out of the intelligence loop by Gen.Marshall and constrained as to what actions they could take to prevent an attack; e.g., they were denied permission to conduct reconnaissance flights and take other preparatory measures.
I hope the rest of your book is better. If it is, I will keep my copy. If not, back it goes.
I wrote an extensive review of "Day of Deceit," that was praised by the WW II codebreakers and cryptanalysts---who then went on to add their expertise to it.
So we can all benefit from your expertise in general history of the west, as a member of a rocker band and as the son of ranch foreman, why not post a link to your most competent and pertinent article? More to the point, since you are unwilling or unable to defend your position on FDR, why don't you post all of Lie #3 on this thread so that all can read your analysis and decide for themselves? If they like it, they may choose to buy your book.
Show me your refutations of Phil Jacobsen's radio work. I'm waiting.
I am attempted to play tit for tat and ask that you show me your refutations of Adm. Stinnett's work. It is surely not contained in the 5+ pages you wrote. But I can't escape the irony of your avoidance of an opportunity to set forth your proof by demanding that I refute someone else's theories. That's laughable.
Nevertheless, I'll play your game. Jacobsen argues that Stinnett made misinterpretations of the data. For instance, take Yamamoto's "Climb Mount. Niitaka 1208" message of 2 December 1941 that was widely interpreted to signal implementation of attack plans. Jacobsen writes in his book review: "Stinnett does not clearly point out to his readers that 'Climb Mount Niitaka' was prefaced by the words, 'This dispatch is Top Secret. This order is effective at 1730 on 2 December #10.' Can you imagine the Japanese sending a Top Secret message in the clear and depending on a transparent underlying meaning for security? Except for battle tactical reports during the war, the Japanese seldom used plain language and even then preferred tactical codes. These are only a small part of the omissions, errors and misinterpretations contained in the [Stinnett] book to try to make its revisionist conspiracy theory seem plausible to the uninitiated."
Clearly, the operative words are "clearly" and "seldom" but this is not an valid argument.
Larry, I wish you and your book well. I would like it to be a success overall, but on this topic you fall woefully short. To bolster your case, you have assembled the weakest set of arguments, witnesses and documents, if any, imaginable. There, your wait is over.
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