[RobbyS]

You are right: Stimmet handles the information like a journalist rather than a historian and speculates far too much. On the other hand, you say: Stinnett places incredible stock in the notion that a mid-level commander in an intelligence agency---and only one of several---somehow had the ear of the President of the United States. Intel groups generate these memos by the hundreds and few, if any, ever directly end up in the hands of the President. Indeed, in the 20th century, one would be hard pressed to name any large-scale public initiative---let alone manipulating a foreign power into a war---that was the work of a mid-level military officer.

Except that (1) Roosevelt was the defacto secretary of the Navy in WWI and as an "old navy hand, less impressed by the brass than another man might have been, and inclined to reach down to junior officers. The fictional hero "Pug" Henry of Winds of War is a conflation of actual men that Roosevelt did use. (2) Whether Roosevelt read the memo or not, he certainly acted as through he had and deciced to use it as a guide for policy. The nazi information suggests that Stinnet's conclusion about FDR's foreknowledge may be correct even if he has made a poor or even dishonest argument.

[LS]

No, Robby, Stinnett's whole case hangs on two or three flimsy threads that in the end just don't exist. First, there is no evidence---NONE---that FDR had read or knew about McCollum's memo. Again, this guy was a low level commander and there is NO evidence that his memos got any further than his superiors.

ALL the actions in the McCollum memo were logical and to be expected ANYWAY: if you are expecting a tense situation, you FORWARD DEPLOY the fleet. Of course it went to Hawaii. Duh!

Second, Stinnett lies in claiming to "uncover" new information about radio traffic. In fact, there was no traffic to uncover, as I and other have shown. There WERE constant, ongoing transmissions from JAPAN, but not by ships at sea, and if you read Stinnett closely, you'll see that he has no evidence whatsoever on this. He has two transmissions dated BEFORE the fleet left. Wow. That's a shocker.

Third, Stinnett banks on the fact that you don't know the difference between an interception, a decrypt, a translation, and an analysis. EVEN IF ALL FOUR of these conditions are met, you STILL have no proof that any info reached FDR. But in fact, Stinnett doesn't have proof that ANY of the four conditions were met before Dec. 7, and we know for a fact that the translation and analysis wasn't done until 1945 in most cases.

[aristeides]

If you look closely at the blackboard listing the names of the people with access to Magic intelligence that appears early in the movie Tora Tora Tora, you will see LCDR Arthur McCollum's name. He, along with FDR, was one of less than a dozen people cleared to receive this intelligence. Given the particularly close relationship that FDR had with the Office of Naval Intelligence, I regard it as virtually certain that LCDR McCollum, head of the Far East Desk of that office, personally knew FDR. One can imagine all sorts of ways in which McCollum's thoughts could have been communicated to FDR, even if it wasn't done officially by the book.

[Poohbah]

The problem is that the information is completely unverifiable. It MAY be authentic--but other parts of the book are rife with errors of fact that the alleged author (a Nazi intel bigwig) should not have made, as he was personally involved in those events.