James Perloff, Pearl Harbor: Hawaii Was Surprised; FDR Was Not, The New American | http://www.thenewamerican.com/his-
tory/european/574
-John Chamberlain, in an article which appeared in the September 21 1945 issue of Life magazine. Chamberlain declared
that “long before” the 1944 election Republican Presidential Candidate Thomas E. Dewey learned “that we had cracked
the Japanese ‘ultra’ code some time prior to Pearl Harbor and that [U.S. President Franklin D.] Roosevelt and his advisers
knew what the Japanese were going to do well in advance of the overt rupture of relations.” 1
To conclude this, the following is the summery made admiral Robert Alfred Theobald, who was serving and was in the Port
of Pearl Harbor when the Japanese attacked, in his book: “The Final Secret of Pearl Harbor: The Washington Background
of the Pearl Harbor Attack”:
1) President Roosevelt forced Japan to war and enticed them to initiate hostilities by holding the Pacific fleet in Hawaiian
waters as an invitation to that attack;
2) The plans to use Pearl Harbor as the bait started in June 1940
3) War with Japan meant war with Germany
4) Roosevelt, Marshall and Stark knew about Pearl Harbor 21 hours before the attack.2
(49) In a journal entry by Roosevelt’s Secretary of War Henry Stimson dated November 25, 1941 he documented a
conversation he had with Roosevelt.
“The question was how we should maneuver them into firing the first shot…”
and in congressional testimony later, he added “It was desirable to make sure the Japanese be the ones to do
this so that there should remain no doubt as to who were the aggressors.” –Henry Stimson, Secretary of War
On November 25, 1941, President Roosevelt met with his principal advisers in the White House. In addition to the Presi-
dent, Secretaries Hull, Stimson, and Knox, and General Marshall and Admiral Stark were also present. The discussion
which took place at that meeting, and certain background facts concerning it, mark it as a vitally important incident in the
Pearl Harbor story.
The following extracts of Secretary Stimson’s testimony to the Congressional Investigation* cover the most significant
features of that discussion:
“The President at once brought up the relations with the Japanese. Mr. Hull said that the Japanese were poised for the
attack — that they might attack at any time. The President said that the Japanese were notorious for making an attack
without warning and stated that we might be attacked, say next Monday, for example.
One problem troubled us very much. If you know your enemy is going to strike you, it is not usually wise to wait until he
gets the jump on you by taking the initiative. In spite of the risk involved, however, in letting the Japanese fire the first shot,
we realized that in order to have the full support of the American people it was desirable to make sure that the Japanese
be the ones to do this so that there should remain no doubt in anyone’s mind as to who were the aggressors.” 3
The Stimson diary for November 25 stated this problem in these words: “The question was how we should maneuver
them [the Japanese] into the position of firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves. It was a difficult
proposition.”
*This testimony by Stimson evidently consisted of two depositions, which included selected extract from the “Secretary’s
dairy. The quote used (in Zeitgeist) is combined from the diary and the Congressional Testimony. The first part of the
quote “The question was how we should maneuver them into firing the first shot…” is found in his diary and can be refer-
enced to a 1946 Time article. 4
The 2nd part of the quote- “It was desirable to make sure the Japanese be the ones to do this so that there should remain
no doubt as to who were the aggressors.” - is taken from the Congressional Testimony, as denoted above and reprinted in
The Final Secret of Pearl Harbor, Chapter 7.
(50) In the months leading up to the attack on Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt had done almost everything in his power to
anger the Japanese showing a posture of aggression: he halted all of Japan’s imports of American petroleum, he
froze all of Japanese assets in the United States; he made public loans to Nationalist China and supplied military
aid to the British, both enemies of Japan in the war, which by the way was in complete violation of international
war rules.
1
John Chamberlain, Life Magazine, September 21st 1945
2
Robert, A. Theobold, The Final Secret of Pearl Harbor, pp.184-185, 197
3
http://www.rooseveltmyth.com/FinalSecret/chap7.html
4
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,792673,00.html
Most of these points are public knowledge. The “Lend-Lease” plan was in violation of international law, even though some
debate it. In the American Journal of International Law, it details the how the Act was passed, with the opponents saying “it
would permit departure from the duties of the United States under international law, and that it would involve the country
in war.” - while the defenders of the bill contended that it “...was in accord with the requirement of international law in the
abnormal situation which exists...” 1
(51) And, with numerous Japanese codes broken in advance, revealing the plan to attack, on December 7th, 1941
Japan was allowed to attack Pearl Harbor killing 2400 soldiers. Before Pearl Harbor 83% of the American public
wanted nothing to do with the war. After Pearl Harbor - one million men volunteered for that war.
See the prior sub-section [Broken Codes] on the nature of the broken Japanese codes.
(52) It is important to note, Nazi Germany’s war effort was largely supported by two organizations: one of which
was called I.G.Farben. I.G. Farben produced 84% of Germany’s explosives. [a] One of the unspoken partners of
I.G.Farben was J.D.Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company in America. [b] In fact, the German Air Force could not
operate without a special additive patented by Rockefeller’s Standard Oil. [c] The drastic bombing of London by
Nazi Germany, for example, was made possible by a 20 million dollar sale of fuel to I.G.Farben by the Rockefell-
er’s Standard Oil Company. [d] This is just one small point of the topic how American business funded both sides
of World War II. [e]
[a] The number of “84%” was denoted in Chapter 2 of A. Sutton’s “Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler”, which is internally
sourced to the New York Times. 2
[b] The trading relationship of I.G. Farben and Standard Oil is publicity documented and there was even a government
investigation. Such was explored in Charles Higham’s “Trading With the Enemy” 3
[c] Memos by I.G. Farben reveal that Nazi Germany began converting domestic coal into synthetic fuel using processes
developed jointly by Standard Oil and I.G. Farben. Standard showed I.G. Farben how to make tetraethyl-lead and add it to
gasoline to make leaded gasoline. The Standard Oil group of companies, in which the Rockefeller family owned a one-
quarter (and controlling) interest, was of critical assistance in helping Nazi Germany prepare for World War II. This infor-
mation is detailed in Chapter 4 of Sutton’s “Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler” 4
[d] Another I.G. Farben memo chronicled Standard’s assistance in procuring $20 million worth of aviation fuel and lubri-
cant to be stockpiled for war:
“As a further remarkable example of advantageous effect for us of the contract between I.G. and Standard Oil, the follow-
ing should be mentioned: in the years 1934 / 1935 our government had the greatest interest in gathering from abroad a
stock of especially valuable mineral oil products (in particular, aviation gasoline and aviation lubricating oil), and holding
it in reserve to an amount approximately equal to 20 million dollars at market value. The German Government asked I.G.
if it were not possible, on the basis of its friendly relations with Standard Oil, to buy this amount in Farben’s name; actu-
ally, however, as trustee of the German Government. The fact that we actually succeeded by means of the most difficult
negotiations in buying the quantity desired by our government from the American Standard Oil Company and the Dutch
— English Royal — Dutch — Shell group and in transporting it to Germany, was made possible only through the aid of the
Standard Oil Co. ” 5
As far as the relationship to the loan, the fuel and the bombing of London (also known as the “Blitz” of 1940), this is an
inferential assumption given the direct need for the Standard Oil additive/fuel.
However, given the dependence of the German Air Force for the fuel/additive, it is not illogical to assume the connection.
Also, in Higham’s “Trading with the Enemy”, he denotes:
“After Pearl Harbor the German army, navy, and air force contracted with ITT [corporation] for the manufacture of switch-
boards, telephones, alarm gongs, buoys, air raid warning devices, radar equipment, and thirty thousand fuses per month
for artillery shells ... This was to increase to fifty thousand per month by 1944. In addition, ITT supplied ingredients for the
rocket bombs that fell on London, selenium cells for dry rectifiers, high-frequency radio equipment, and fortification and
field communication sets. Without this supply of crucial materials it would have been impossible for the German air force
to kill American and British troops, for the German army to fight the Allies, for England to have been bombed, or for Allied
ships to have been attacked at sea.” 6
1
American Journal of International Law, Vol. 35, No 2 (April 1941), pp. 305-314 | http://www.jstor.org/pss/2192265
2
New York Times, October 21, 1945, Section 1, pp. 1, 12.
3
Charles Higham, Trading With the Enemy, Delacorte Press, New York NY 1983, pp. 32 - 62
4
http://www.reformed-theology.org/html/books/wall_street/chapter_04.htm
5
Reprinted in A. Sutton’s “Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler”, Chapter 4
6
Charles Higham, Trading With the Enemy, Delacorte Press, New York NY 1983, p. 99
[e] It is suggested that those unfamiliar with the history of “playing both sides” for profit during times of war to read:
“Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler”, by Anthony. Sutton & “Trading With The Enemy: An Exposé of the Nazi-American
Money Plot “1933-1949 by Charles Higham.
The Congressional Inquiry into Standard Oil’s practice of ‘Trading with the Enemy’ can also be found in Higham’s work
noted above.
(53) One other treasonous organization worth mentioning is the Union Banking Corporation of New York City.
Not only did they financed numerous aspects of Hitler’s rise to power along with actual materials during the war,
it was also a Nazi money laundering bank which was eventually exposed for having millions of dollars of Nazi
money in its vaults. The Union Banking Corporation of New York was eventually seized for violations of the Trad-
ing with the enemy Act. Guess who the director and vice president of the Union Bank was? Prescott Bush, the
father and grandfather of former US president’s George W Bush’s and George HW Bush.
The details about Nazi affiliation with the Union Banking Corporation and Prescott Bush was recently made more public.
In a 2004 article in the British Guardian, an extensive treatment was presented which was extracted from the US National
Archives.
“...the new documents, many of which were only declassified last year, show that even after America had entered the war
and when there was already significant information about the Nazis’ plans and policies, he worked for and profited from
companies closely involved with the very German businesses that financed Hitler’s rise to power. It has also been sug-
gested that the money he made from these dealings helped to establish the Bush family fortune and set up its political
dynasty. ”
“vesting order number 248 which records the seizure of the company assets. What these files show is that on October
20 1942 the alien property custodian seized the assets of the UBC, of which Prescott Bush was a director. Having gone
through the books of the bank, further seizures were made against two affiliates, the Holland-American Trading Corpora-
tion and the Seamless Steel Equipment Corporation. By November, the Silesian-American Company, another of Prescott
Bush’s ventures, had also been seized. ”
“The trouble started on July 30 1942 when the New York Herald-Tribune ran an article entitled “Hitler’s Angel Has $3m in
US Bank”. UBC’s huge gold purchases had raised suspicions that the bank was in fact a “secret nest egg” hidden in New
York for Thyssen and other Nazi bigwigs. The Alien Property Commission (APC) launched an investigation.
There is no dispute over the fact that the US government seized a string of assets controlled by BBH - including UBC and
SAC - in the autumn of 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy act.” 1
(54) Vietnam -The United States official escalation and entry into the Vietnam War, came after an alleged incident
involving two US destroyers being attacked by North Vietnamese PT boats in the Gulf of Tonkin. This was known
as the Gulf of Tonkin Incident. This situation was the catalystic pretext for massive troop deployment and full-
fledged warfare. One problem, however. The attack on the US destroyers by Vietnamese PT boats never hap-
pened.
The “Gulf of Tonkin Incident” is the name often given to two separate incidents supposedly involving the Democratic Re-
public of Vietnam (North Vietnam) and the United States in the waters of the Gulf of Tonkin.
As the official story went, on Aug. 2, 1964, three North Vietnamese torpedo boats attacked a U.S. destroyer in the Gulf of
Tonkin. Two days later, the U.S. Navy reported to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara that another American destroy-
er was under attack by the North Vietnamese.
This led to the Tonkin Gulf Resolution. The Tonkin Gulf Resolution gave U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson authorization,
without a formal declaration of war by Congress, for the use of conventional military force in Southeast Asia. While the US
had been engaged in an undeclared war with N. Vietnam, this resolution promoted a large scale escalation by Johnson,
as the Tonkin incident initially generated more public/congressional support. The episode opened the way for an American
military commitment that ultimately peaked in March 1969 with 548,000 U.S. troops in South Vietnam plus additional sup-
porting forces in Thailand. Some 59,000 Americans and several million Vietnamese died in the conflict.
1
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/sep/25/usa.secondworldwar
Background:
The follow are extracts from a summery article compiled by archive senior fellow and Vietnam expert John Prados:
“The Johnson administration maintained that it had acted with restraint, refusing to respond to an initial North Vietnam-
ese attack on August 2, 1964, and reacting only after North Vietnam made a second naval attack two nights later. Both of
these assertions turned out to be misleading.
In fact, the United States at the time was carrying out a program of covert naval commando attacks against North Vietnam
and had been engaged in this effort since its approval by Johnson in January 1964. (For documentation of this program,
carried out under Operations Plan (OPLAN) 34-A, see the Tonkin Gulf subset of the National Security Archive’s microfiche
collection, U.S. Policy in the Vietnam War, I: 1954-1968.) A fresh addition to the declassified record is the intelligence es-
timate included in this briefing book, Special National Intelligence Estimate 50-2-64. Published in May 1964, the estimate
again demonstrates that the United States purposefully directed OPLAN 34-A to pressure North Vietnam, to the extent of
attempting to anticipate Hanoi’s reaction.
Administration officials contended that the U.S. warship simply happened to be cruising in the Gulf to exert a U.S. pres-
ence -- engaged in “innocent passage” under international law. The naval battle between the destroyer USS Maddox and
several North Vietnamese torpedo boats occurred on August 2, 1964...” 1
Incident One: Aug. 2nd 1964:
According to recorded accounts of conversations between Johnson and McNamara, the USS Maddox as assisting in the
“34-A” mission, which included raids hostile to the North Vietnamese. It is important to note that Secretary McNamara is
proved to have been lying about the nature of “34-A”. It is critical to note that this covert operation, known as “Plan 34A,”
was designed to provoke a North Vietnamese response, which would then provide an excuse for U.S. Escalation. Plan
34A was a CIA operation that consisted of inciting unrest and provoking the North Vietnamese army by carrying out bom-
bardments and sabotage. The goal was to invoke counter strikes so that there would essentially be a motive to expand
the war on North Vietnam.
As John Prados relays:
“Appearing before the legislators, Secretary McNamara did mention the 34-A raids but asserted they were South Vietnam-
ese naval missions and had nothing to do with the United States. In fact the 34-A missions were unilaterally controlled by
the U.S., using boats procured and maintained by the U.S. Navy, attacking targets selected by the CIA, in an operation
paid for by the United States...Secretary McNamara not only advanced the fiction of 34-A as a *South Vietnamese enter-
prise in a private meeting with congressmen, he repeated it at congressional hearings on the administration’s requested
use of force resolution. At an executive session hearing held on August 6, McNamara declared, “Our Navy played abso-
lutely no part in, was not associated with, was not aware of, any South Vietnamese actions, if there were any...These ad-
ministration assertions were highly misleading as the declassified documentary record of OPLAN 34-A makes abundantly
clear.” (*Secretary McNamara was blaming the South Vietnamese for the 34-A raids.) 2
Incident Two: Aug. 4th 1964:
Prados continues:
“Following the initial naval battle of August 2, President Johnson ordered a second U.S. destroyer, the USS C. Turner Joy,
to join the Maddox, after which both ships sailed back up the Gulf of Tonkin. On the night of August 4, both ships thought
they had come under attack again and sent messages reporting enemy contacts, torpedoes in the water, and so on, while
directing a good deal of fire at the supposed adversary. Following this supposed repeat challenge to “innocent passage,”
President Johnson ordered retaliatory bombing against North Vietnam and asked for the congressional resolution with
which he prosecuted the Vietnam war.
But the certainty of the “second attack” would never be so clear as the first...there was no physical evidence at all for
the August 4 attack claims. The supposed surface action took place at night and in poor weather. The skipper and four
seamen aboard the C. Turner Joy variously claimed having seen a searchlight, boat cockpit lights, smoke at a location
where they claimed their gunfire had hit a Vietnamese vessel in the water, and one, or perhaps two, torpedo wakes. The
Navy further claimed their vessels had sunk two attacking torpedo boats. But there was no wreckage, nor bodies of dead
sailors. No photographs or other physical evidence existed. Radar and sonar sightings provided an exceedingly confusing
set of data at best.
1
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB132/essay.htm
2
Ibid
Commander James B. Stockdale, who led this flight of jets, spotted no enemy, and at one point saw the Turner Joy point-
ing her guns at the Maddox. As Stockdale, who retired an admiral after a distinguished career that included being shot
down and imprisoned by the North Vietnamese, later wrote: “There was absolutely no gunfire except our own, no PT boat
wakes, not a candle light let alone a burning ship. None could have been there and not have been seen on such a black
night.” 1 In his memoir, Stockdale also remarked on the situation: “I had the best seat in the house from which to detect
boats-if there were any. I didn’t have to look through surface haze and spray like the destroyers did, and yet I could see
the destroyers’ every move vividly.” 2 These comments reinforce the dispatches from the Navy’s on-scene commander,
Captain John Herrick, who after filing various reports of attacks sent a cable that questioned them all. A Top Secret August
28, 1964 chronology prepared for President Johnson summarized Herrick’s report, sent at 1:27 p.m. Washington time on
August 4, as follows: “a review of the action makes many reported contacts and torpedoes fired ‘appear doubtful’. ‘Freak
weather effects’ on radar, and ‘over-eager’ sonarmen may have accounted for many reports. ‘No visual sightings’ have
been reported by the Maddox, and the Commander suggests that a ‘complete evaluation’ be undertaken before any fur-
ther action.” But Washington had already decided to strike North Vietnam.” 3
In 1968, questions regarding this “second attack” were already strong enough to force renewed Congressional attention.
Prados details how Secretary McNamara continued to lie.
“Secretary McNamara pulled out a trump card during the 1968 hearings to silence doubters. The trump was a set of
communications intercepts made by the Naval Security Group detachment on the destroyer Maddox, the very unit whose
presence defined this cruise as a DeSoto Patrol. As McNamara described the intercepts in his testimony: “Intelligence
reports from a highly classified and unimpeachable source reported that North Vietnam was making preparations to attack
our destroyers with two Swatow [patrol] boats and one PT boat if the PT could be made ready in time. The same source
reported, while the engagement was in progress on August 4, that the attack was underway. Immediately after the attack
ended, the source reported that the North Vietnamese lost two ships in the engagement.” 4
Prados continues:
“Secretary McNamara played the intercepts very close to his chest. Describing them only in general terms, he refused to
leave copies with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee...Years later, Foreign Relations Committee Chairman J. Wil-
liam Fulbright was finally able to arrange with the Nixon administration for Jones and staff director Carl Marcy to actually
view the intercepts. Jones’ reaction is important to record:
Of the several messages we were allowed to scan, only one was from August 4. The others clearly related to the
incident on August 2.
My reading of the Aug. 4 intercept was that it was a boastful summary of the attack on August 2. Even the NSA
[National Security Agency] officials could not say that it definitely related to the Aug. 4 action. In addition the time
sequence of the intercept and the reported action from the U.S. destroyers did not jibe. Curiously, NSA could not
find the original of the Aug. 4 intercept, although it did have originals of the others. 5
Ray S. Cline, who at the time headed the CIA’s Intelligence Directorate and would later become chief of the State Depart-
ment’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research: “I began to see that the [intercepts] which were being received at the time of
the second attack almost certainly could not have referred to the second attack because of the time differences involved.”6
Prado continues now to express new information about the incident which was obtained in 2003:
“Not mentioned thus far in regard to possible U.S. provocation is the fact that 34-A forces carried out another raid on North
Vietnam during the night of August 3/4, when the U.S. destroyers were beginning their run back up the Tonkin Gulf. If
Hanoi was responding to the first raid, a second one furnished an equivalent reason to act against the reinforced DeSoto
Patrol. Yet, it appears Hanoi decided not to act. North Vietnamese officials, including Defense Minister General Vo Nguy-
en Giap, explained at a retrospective international conference in 1997 that their August 2 response had been ordered by a
local naval command, not the Hanoi leadership. 7The Vietnamese said they had mounted no naval sortie on the 4th. This
is consistent.
1
Admiral James B. Stockdale, “Another Gulf, Other Blips on a Screen,” The Washington Post, August 7, 1988, p. B7.
2
James B. Stockdale, In Love and War. New York: Bantam Books, 1985, p. 17.
3
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB132/essay.htm
4
James B. Stockdale, In Love and War. New York: Bantam Books, 1985, p. 17
5
J. Norvill