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'''''Did Roosevelt Have Advance Knowledge About the Pearl Harbor Attack?'''''

'''''Did Roosevelt Have Advance Knowledge About the Pearl Harbor Attack?'''''

“Even as the last smoke billowed from the sinking ships in Hawaii, many people were asking how the United States could have been so unprepared. Historian Charles Tansill suggested that the debacle could only have could only have occurred with Franklin Roosevelt’s foreknowledge. Clearly, if a president in possession of advance warning had allowed hundreds of sailors and soldiers to die in a surprise attack, it would have constituted high treason. Why would any chief executive permit such a strike?

“Even as the last smoke billowed from the sinking ships in Hawaii, many people were asking how the United States could have been so unprepared. Historian Charles Tansill suggested that the debacle could only have occurred with Franklin Roosevelt’s foreknowledge. Clearly, if a president in possession of advance warning had allowed hundreds of sailors and soldiers to die in a surprise attack, it would have constituted high treason. Why would any chief executive permit such a strike?

In his famous book, ''Back Door to War'' (1952), Tansill accused Roosevelt of allowing a Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor to provide the United States with the motivation and justification to enter the war against Hitler in Europe. …but little new evidence was provided over the years until the 1980s, when John Tolland published Infamy, wherein he claimed to have located a navy witness who, while on duty in San Francisco, received transmissions locating Japanese carriers and forwarded the information to Washington. Adding to Toland’s revelations, a “Notes and Documents” piece in the American Historical Review disclosed that the FBI had acquired information from an Axis double agent named Duskow Popov (“Tricycle”), who had information on a microdot about the attack. Although Tolland and others maintained that Popov’s documents included a detailed plan of the Japanese air attack, it did no such thing. Tricycle’s data dealt almost exclusively with buildings and installations, but had nothing on ships, aircraft scouting patterns, or any of the rather important items that one would expect from a “detailed plan.” In 1981, Asian historian Gordon Prange published ''At Dawn While We Slept''; following his death, his students Donald Goldstein and Katherine Dillon completed his work with new Pearl Harbor claims in ''Pearl Harbor: The Verdict of History''. The authors found Toland’s mystery sailor, Robert Ogg, who empathetically rejected Toland’s assertion that he had said that he had intercepted massive Japanese radio traffic. Meanwhile, Documents acquired from Japanese archives raised a more serious problem for the conspiracy theorists because they proved that the Japanese fleet had been under strict radio silence during the voyage to Pearl Harbor.

In his famous book, ''Back Door to War'' (1952), Tansill accused Roosevelt of allowing a Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor to provide the United States with the motivation and justification to enter the war against Hitler in Europe, but little new evidence was provided over the years until the 1980s, when John Tolland published Infamy, wherein he claimed to have located a navy witness who, while on duty in San Francisco, received transmissions locating Japanese carriers and forwarded the information to Washington. Adding to Toland’s revelations, a “Notes and Documents” piece in the American Historical Review disclosed that the FBI had acquired information from an Axis double agent named Duskow Popov (“Tricycle”), who had information on a microdot about the attack. Although Tolland and others maintained that Popov’s documents included a detailed plan of the Japanese air attack, it did no such thing. Tricycle’s data dealt almost exclusively with buildings and installations, but had nothing on ships, aircraft scouting patterns, or any of the rather important items that one would expect from a “detailed plan.” In 1981, Asian historian Gordon Prange published ''At Dawn While We Slept''; following his death, his students Donald Goldstein and Katherine Dillon completed his work with new Pearl Harbor claims in ''Pearl Harbor: The Verdict of History''. The authors found Toland’s mystery sailor, Robert Ogg, who empathetically rejected Toland’s assertion that he had said that he had intercepted massive Japanese radio traffic. Meanwhile, Documents acquired from Japanese archives raised a more serious problem for the conspiracy theorists because they proved that the Japanese fleet had been under strict radio silence during the voyage to Pearl Harbor.

The controversy refused to go away. In1999, Robert B. Stinnet’s ''Day of Deceit'' revived the argument that Roosevelt had prior knowledge of the attack with important new code-breaking information. But the crucial pieces of “evidence” that Stinnet employed often proved the opposite of what he claimed. He used precise intelligence terms—code breaking, interception, translation, analysis—interchangeably, which produced massive errors: An intercepted document is not necessarily broken, and if intercepted and broken, it may not be translated, and if intercepted and broken, and translated, it may not be analyzed for days, weeks, or even years. Some intercepts from November 1941 were indeed broken, but were not translated or analyzed until…1945!

The controversy refused to go away. In 1999, Robert B. Stinnet’s ''Day of Deceit'' revived the argument that Roosevelt had prior knowledge of the attack with important new code-breaking information. But the crucial pieces of “evidence” that Stinnet employed often proved the opposite of what he claimed. He used precise intelligence terms—code breaking, interception, translation, analysis—interchangeably, which produced massive errors: An intercepted document is not necessarily broken, and if intercepted and broken, it may not be translated, and if intercepted and broken, and translated, it may not be analyzed for days, weeks, or even years. Some intercepts from November 1941 were indeed broken, but were not translated or analyzed until…1945!

The entire argument of the revisionists hinges on the notion that FDR couldn’t get into the war with Germany without pretext. But Roosevelt had already had ample cause if he’d wanted to, to ask for a declaration of war against Germany. Nazi U-boats had sunk American ships, killed American sailors, and in all ways shown themselves hostile. Against a nation that declared war on Mexico over a handful of Cavalry troopers or that had declared war on Spain for the questionable destruction of a single ship, Germany had long since crossed the line needed for a declaration of war. …Pearl Harbor was a Tragedy, but not a conspiracy. <ref>A Patriot’s History of the United States Pages 594-595</ref>

The entire argument of the revisionists hinges on the notion that FDR couldn’t get into the war with Germany without pretext. But Roosevelt had already had ample cause if he’d wanted to, to ask for a declaration of war against Germany. Nazi U-boats had sunk American ships, killed American sailors, and in all ways shown themselves hostile. Against a nation that declared war on Mexico over a handful of Cavalry troopers or that had declared war on Spain for the questionable destruction of a single ship, Germany had long since crossed the line needed for a declaration of war. …Pearl Harbor was a Tragedy, but not a conspiracy. <ref>A Patriot’s History of the United States Pages 594-595</ref>