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REPORT DEBUNKS THEORY THAT THE U.S. HEARD
A CODED
WARNING ABOUT PEARL HARBOR -- "In reality, the
Japanese
broadcast the coded phrase long after hostilities
began --
useless, in fact, to all who might have heard
it."
A boat rescues a crew member of
the West Virginia after the bombing on Dec. 7, 1941. (photo:
Associated Press) |
For more about Pearl Harbor, use the VA Watchdog
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http://www.yourvabenefits.org/sessea
rch.php?q=pearl+harbor&op=ph
Story here...
http://www.nytime
s.com/2008/12/07/us/07pearl.html?em
Story below:
Your comments accepted at bottom of
page.
-------------------------
Report Debunks Theory That the U.S. Heard a Coded
Warning About Pearl Harbor
By SAM ROBERTS
It has remained one of World War II’s most enduring mysteries, one that
resonated decades later after Sept. 11: Who in Washington knew what and
when before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941?
Specifically, who heard or saw a transcript of a Tokyo shortwave radio
news broadcast that was interrupted by a prearranged coded weather report?
The weather bulletin signaled Japanese diplomats around the world to
destroy confidential documents and codes because war with the United
States, the Soviet Union or Britain was beginning.
 In
testimony for government inquiries, witnesses said that the “winds
execute” message was intercepted as early as Dec. 4, three days before the
attack.
But after analyzing American and foreign intelligence sources and
decrypted cables, historians for the National Security Agency concluded in
a documentary history released last week that whatever other warnings
reached Washington about the attack, the “winds execute” message was not
one of them.
A Japanese message intercepted and decoded on Nov. 19, 1941, at an
American monitoring station on Bainbridge Island, in Washington State,
appeared to lay out the “winds execute” situation. If diplomatic relations
were “in danger” with one of three countries, a coded phrase would be
repeated as a special weather bulletin twice in the middle and twice at
the end of the daily Japanese-language news broadcast.
“East wind rain” would mean the United States; “north wind cloudy,” the
Soviet Union; and “west wind clear,” Britain.
In the history, “West Wind Clear,” published by the agency’s Center for
Cryptologic History, the authors, Robert J. Hanyok and the late David
Mowry, attribute accounts of the message being broadcast to the flawed or
fabricated memory of some witnesses, perhaps to deflect culpability from
other officials for the United States’ insufficient readiness for war.
A Congressional committee grappled with competing accounts of the “winds
execute” message in 1946, by which time the question of whether it had
been broadcast had blown into a controversy. The New York Times described
it as a “bitter microcosm” of the investigation into American
preparedness.
“If there was such a message,” The Times wrote, “the Washington
 military
establishment would have been gravely at fault in not having passed it
along” to military commanders in Hawaii. If there was not, then the
supporters of those commanders “would have lost an important prop to their
case.”
In an interview, Mr. Hanyok said there were several lessons from the
controversy that reverberate today. He said that some adherents of the
theory that the message was sent and seen were motivated by an unshakable
faith in the efficacy of radio intelligence, and that when a copy of the
message could not be found they blamed a cover-up — a reminder that no
intelligence-gathering is completely foolproof.
Washington also missed potential warning signs because intelligence
resources had been diverted to the Atlantic theater, he said, and the
Japanese deftly practiced deception to mislead Americans about the
whereabouts of Tokyo’s naval strike force.
“The problem with the conspiracy theory,” Mr. Hanyok said, “is that it
diverted attention from the real substantive problems, the major issue
being the intelligence system was so bureaucratized.”
Beginning about Dec. 1, Washington became aware that the Japanese were
ordering diplomats overseas to selectively destroy confidential documents.
But, the N.S.A. study found, “because of the sometimes tardy exploitation
of these messages, intelligence officers in the Army and Navy knew only
parts of the complete program.”
“It is possible,” the study went on, “that they viewed the Japanese
actions as ominous, but also contradictory and perhaps even confusing.
More importantly, though, the binge of code destruction was occurring
without the transmittal of the winds execute message.”
The authors concluded that the weight of the evidence “indicates that one
coded phrase, ‘west wind clear,’ was broadcast according to previous
instructions some six or seven hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor.”
“In the end, the winds code never was the intelligence indicator or
warning that it first appeared to the Americans, as well as to the British
and Dutch,” they wrote. “In the political realm, it added nothing to then
current view in Washington (and London) that relations with Tokyo had
deteriorated to a dangerous point. From a military standpoint, the winds
coded message contained no actionable intelligence either about the
Japanese operations in Southeast Asia and absolutely nothing about Pearl
Harbor.
“In reality,” they concluded, “the Japanese broadcast the coded phrase(s)
long after hostilities began — useless, in fact, to all who might have
heard it.”
That war with Japan was anticipated is apparent from a separate memorandum
to President Franklin D. Roosevelt dated Nov. 13, 1941, from William J.
Donovan, director of the Office of Strategic Services, the precursor to
the Central Intelligence Agency. The memorandum was found in the National
Archives last year by the Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government
Records Interagency Working Group.
Reporting on a conversation the week before between Hans Thoman, the
German chargé d’affaires to the United States, and Malcolm R. Lovell, a
Quaker leader, Mr. Donovan quoted Mr. Thoman as saying that Japan was
trying to buy time.
“In the last analysis, Japan knows that unless the United States agrees to
some reasonable terms in the Far East, Japan must face the threat of
strangulation, now or later. Should Japan wait until later to prevent this
strangulation by the United States, she will be less able to free herself
than now, for Germany is now occupying the major attention of both the
British empire and the United States.
“If Japan waits, it will be comparatively easy for the United States to
strangle Japan,” Mr. Donovan’s memorandum quoting Mr. Thoman continued.
“Japan is therefore forced to strike now, whether she wishes to or not.”
-------------------------
posted by Larry Scott
Founder and Editor
VA Watchdog dot Org
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