Stinnett Responds to NSA’s Pearl Harbor Claims

At Scott Horton’s suggestion, I wrote Robert Stinnett, author of Day of Deceit: The Truth about FDR and Pearl Harbor, and asked “about the new story [1,2] that the NSA has debunked the Pearl Harbor foreknowledge narrative.” His response is as follows:

Memo for Anthony Gregory:

I received your email which I believe you refer to the “Winds Code” story which I read in the New York Times on Sunday, December 7, 2008, based on a news release of the National Security Agency written by NSA “court historians.”

The story is NOT news. The “Winds Code” was introduced in the Congressional Investigation of 1945-46 in an attempt by Congress to divert attention from American success in solving the Japanese naval codes prior to Pearl Harbor. American newspapers and radio networks carried the story in November 1945.

The “winds code” was issued by the Japanese Foreign Office, not the Imperial Japanese Navy. The Foreign Office, certain the Allied nations would cut off communications, planned to use hidden word phrases in their world-wide news broadcasts aimed at Japanese Embassies and Consulates world-wide. Example “East wind Rain” in the weather report during the short wave news broadcast meant war with America; East wind North meant war with Russia. Ralph T. Briggs, a U.S. Naval intercept operator at Station “M”, Cheltenham, Maryland, intercepted the “Winds Code” broadcast on December 4, 1941, numbered the report and sent it to headquarters in Washington, D.C. The numbered report of Briggs is missing from U.S. Navy files.

While the Foreign Office report certainly revealed Japanese war intentions, the Japanese Navy also used a hidden war phrase: Niitaka Yama Nobore 1208, which translated meant “Climb Mt. Niitaka on December 8, 1941” (Tokyo time). This radio message originated by Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, Commander in Chief of the Imperial Navy and was intercepted by Station “H” in Hawaii. Yamamoto transmitted the Niitaka message on December 2, 1941, in the hidden word phrase, according to testimony during the Congressional Investigation 1945-46. RADM Edwin Layton, who was Admiral Kimmel’s intelligence officer said the message was received in Hawaii in the hidden word system.

The Imperial Japanese Army also had a hidden word phrase. I have not seen the message, but it reportedly was “The Black Kite will fly on December 8, 1941.”

Best regards, Bob Stinnett.

See here for more on Pearl Harbor revisionism.

9 thoughts on “Stinnett Responds to NSA’s Pearl Harbor Claims”

  1. FDR KNEW about the attack on Pearl harbor. Indeed he welcomed it. Note how all the aircraft carriers were conveniently gone during the attack and only some old battleships were there.

    1. Perhaps better questions might be who did more harm to their country and the world at large, and why do the American sheeple remain so incurably gullible?

      1. I believe the answer to the latter question is, in a word, “denial.” Joe and Jane Sixpack have been indoctrinated practically since birth with the attitude best summed up by the phrase “my country, right or wrong.” Also, the realization over time that almost every civic ideal that his been ingrained into them since childhood is nothing but a pack of cynical lies is simply too painful to face. Most would rather take the ostrich approach and continue to exist within the system than reorder their lives and confront the beast that is the State. For this reason they continue to blindly follow the leader(s) as a herd and thus swallow the intellectual vomitus of the Establishment’s court historians.

  2. Smart of Anthony Gregory to ask Robert Stinett for his response to the NSA debunking. I wonder if the NSA will now reply to this memo printed here. Thanks so much.

    1. I wonder if the NSA will now reply to this memo printed here.

      Very unlikely. What they usually do (along with most other government agencies involved in defense or intelligence operations) is issue a memorandum internally that warns their employees that this controversy has made press and cautions them “not to confirm or deny anything related to NSA policy or work pertaining to this issue”, or something to that effect. They certainly aren’t about to confirm a truth that casts the intelligence community in a dubious light.

  3. For the purpose of historical truth, it’s vital that “revisionist” historians have their say. That applies, in spades, to Saint Franklin of Roosevelt. Today, a warm-and-fuzzy aura surrounds Saint Franklin. He’s thought of as the guy who “got us out of the Depression,” the guy who led us to victory in WW2, blah blah blah.

    Bullshit.

    Saint Franklin was an unmitigated bungler. His dictatorial interference in the economy perpetuated the Depression. (In 1938, unemployment was higher than when he took office in 1933. Also, there was a recession on top of the existing depression. Go figure.) Saint Franklin and his bright boys sure had it figured out, now, didn’t they?!

    Saint Franklin wanted to get America involved in Europe’s war. To that end, he pursued a hostile, insulting foreign policy toward Japan and Germany, hoping that it would lead to some “overt act” against us. It did–at Pearl Harbor.
    (During the 1944 campaign, Dewey or Clare Booth Luce said that Roosevelt “lied us into the war he didn’t want to lead us into.” Well said.)

    1. He also played a key role in bringing Stalin’s gothic horror show to the heart of Europe. Ask the people of eastern Europe how they feel about FDR. He is the most over-rated president in U.S. history.

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