ZGram - 12/6/2001 - "On the eve of Pearl Harbor Day"

[irimland@zundelsite.org]

Copyright (c) 2001 - Ingrid A. Rimland

ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny

December 6, 2001

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

These days, Revisionists can be found in the most prestigious places - and
aren't there lessons to be learned about opinion manipulation?

 Read on:

[START]

 Pentagon Still Scapegoats Pearl Harbor Fall Guys

             By Robert B. Stinnett

                     12-6-1

  As we remember the roughly 2,400 persons killed in the Japanese attack at
Pearl Harbor -- the worst one-day loss of American lives prior to Sept.
11th of this year -- recently declassified U.S. military documents authored
more than 60 years ago compel us to revisit some troubling questions.

 At issue is American knowledge of Japanese military plans to attack Hawaii
prior to Dec. 7, 1941. The first question is whether President Franklin D.
Roosevelt and his top military chieftains provoked Japan into an "overt act
of war." The second question is whether Japan's military plans were
obtained in advance by the U.S. but concealed from the Hawaiian military
commanders, Admiral Husband E. Kimmel and Lieutenant General Walter Short.
Both Kimmel and Short were relieved of their commands, blamed for failing
to ward off the attack, and demoted in rank after the Japanese raid.

 The latter question was answered in the affirmative last year on October
30, 2000, when President Bill Clinton signed a defense appropriations bill
containing congressional findings that both Kimmel and Short were denied
crucial military intelligence.

   However, despite the numerous pardons he issued shortly before leaving
office, President Clinton deferred to the Pentagon's long-standing policy
against posthumously restoring the commanders to their 1941 ranks.
Nonetheless, the congressional findings should be widely seen as an
exoneration of years of blame assigned to Kimmel and Short.

    But the other important question remains, looming ever larger in the
inevitable comparisons made between Dec. 7, 1941 and Sept. 11th: Does the
blame for the Pearl Harbor disaster revert to President Roosevelt?

 Before Walt Disney Studios released the movie "Pearl Harbor" earlier this
year, the film's producer, Jerry Bruckheimer, commented on claims of FDR's
foreknowledge by saying "That's all b___s___."

    Yet Roosevelt believed that provoking Japan into an attack was the only
option he had to overcome the powerful America First non-interventionist
movement. Though Germany had conquered most of Europe, and her U-Boats were
sinking American ships in the Atlantic Ocean, Americans wanted nothing to
do with "Europe's War."

    However, Germany made a strategic error. She, along with her Axis
partner, Italy, signed the mutual assistance treaty with Japan, the
Tripartite Pact, on September 27, 1940. Ten days later, Lieutenant
Commander Arthur McCollum, a U.S. Naval officer in the Office of Naval
Intelligence, saw an opportunity to counter the U.S. anti-war movement by
provoking Japan into a state of war with the U.S., and triggering the
mutual assistance provisions of the Tripartite Pact.

 Memorialized in a secret memo dated October 7, 1940, McCollum's proposal
called for eight provocations aimed at Japan.

    President Roosevelt acted swiftly, and throughout 1941, implemented the
remaining seven provocations.

    The island nation's militarists used the provocations to seize control
of Japan and organize their military forces for war against the U.S., Great
Britain, and the Netherlands. During the next 11 months, the White House
followed the Japanese war plans through the intercepted and decoded
diplomatic and military communications intelligence.

 At least 1,000 Japanese radio messages per day were intercepted by
monitoring stations operated by the U.S. and her Allies, and the message
contents were summarized for the White House. The intercept summaries from
Station CAST on Corregidor Island were current -- contrary to the
assertions of some who claim that the messages were not decoded and
translated until years later -- and they were clear: Pearl Harbor would be
attacked on December 7, 1941, by Japanese forces advancing through the
Central and North Pacific Oceans.

 As I explained to a policy forum audience at The Independent Institute in
Oakland, California -- which was telecast nationwide by C-SPAN on July 4th
last year -- my research shows that not only were Kimmel and Short cut off
from the Japanese communications intelligence pipeline, so were the
American people. The coverup lasted for nearly 59 years. ___

 *Robert B. Stinnett is Media Fellow at The Independent Institute in
Oakland, Calif. and the author of Day of Deceit: the truth about FDR and
Pearl Harbor (Free Press).

 http://www.independent.org/tii/news/011203Stinnett.html

 (  Source:  The Rense webpage at http://www.rense.com/general17/scape.htm )

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Thought for the Day:

"Many things happen between the cup and the lip."

(Robert Burton)