Saturday, December 13, 2008

Did Someone Know About the Attack Beforehand?

The Dec. 7th Chicago Tribune had an article by Sam Roberts of the NY Times News Service regarding that age-old question, "Did someone in the US government know about the impending attack?"

"Specifically, who heard or saw a transcript of a Tokyo shortwave radio news broadcast that was interrupted by a prearranged coded weather report?" That would alert Japanese diplomats that war was imminent and they should destroy secret documents.

This "winds execute" message was intercepted as early as Dec. 4th.

Historians of the National security Agency have looked at the facts and concluded that this never reached Washington.

A Japanese message was intercepted and decoded Nov. 19, 1941, at an American monitoring station on Bainbridge Island, Washington, saying that the "winds execute" message would be given if war was imminent. Code names for possible enemies were "East wind rain" for the US, "north wind cloudy" for the Soviet Union, and "west wind clear" for Britain.

You can never convince me that someone couldn't have known about it, somewhere. There is no way we shouldn't have been on highest alert.

Who Knew? --Coot

No comments: