Oh, and by the way, the review Spitfire IX posted (here it is again so you don't need to scroll up) also discusses the infamous 25000 or so messages in JN-25B from the Crane IN facility that started this thread. It states that they are now available at the archives in Laural MD for interested researchers, especially the 10% or so that relate to Pearl Harbor. So it would seem the government has nothing to hide in this respect.

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"I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind." - William Thompson, 1st Baron Lord Kelvin

"If it was so, it might be, and if it were so, it would be, but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic!" - Tweedledee

This isn't right. This isn't even wrong. - Wolfgang Pauli

My guess is Hitler declared war on the US to strengthen his relation
with Japan. He didn't care one way or the other if his war with the
US was official or not.

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I don't suppose he anticipated the USA putting the resources they did into the European war rather than concentrating on Japan.

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First of all, I did a search of this thread, and no one else besides you has used the word "indisputable," so please don't put words in people's mouths. And it's not just Count Zero's "personal viewpoint." The evidence that JN-25b had not been broken prior to Pearl Harbor is overwhelming--read Phil Jacobsen's article quoted previously by eta C, or any one of several by Stephen Budiansky (whom you quote out of context in one of your earlier posts) including this one. Second, you are attempting to use the fallacy of burden-of-proof shifting. Lieb asserted that Hull told him FDR was going to let Pearl Harbor be attacked; the burden of proof is on Lieb (and his supporters, among whom you appear to number). This is clearly an extraordinary claim; therefore it requires extraordinary proof. There is, in fact, no proof except Lieb's word.

I suggest you ask some Americans over the age of 50 how many of them "remember" seeing JFK assassinated live on television--if you ask enough you will get a significant number who claim to have, even though there was no television coverage of the event. Many people claim to have been abducted by aliens--do their assertions alone constitute significant proof? Furthermore, the possibility that Lieb simply lied for some reason or reasons (such as a long-simmering hatred of FDR or desire for his 15 minutes of fame) must be considered.

[Edit:]
A problem with your interpretation of Lieb's story has just occurred to me--any translated Japanese document would have given the date of the attack as December 8 (Tokyo time) and not December 7 (Hawaii time). The Japanese Army and Navy always used Tokyo time no matter where they were, and never local time. As Phil Jacobsen mentions in his article linked above, all US translations followed this convention to avoid confusion.

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--Doug

"When your statics problem becomes a dynamics problem, you're in trouble." --me

Moor's Law: "As you go from freshman engineering to Ph.D., the amount of work required per credit hour doubles approximately every 18 months." --me, inspired by Prof. Scott Moor

German intelligence held US war capabilities in very low esteem. This is something that stems from the Nazi view that Germany was stabbed in the back by communists and jews in 1918. For this version of events in 1918 to be true (ie that the German army hadn't actually been beaten) it also implies that the US entry into the war had little to no effect. Therefore the US military was rubbish. Very convoluted thinking.

That's the sort of mindset you're dealing with when trying to figure out the whys and wherefores of Nazi strategy. All very unpleasant, though at least it contributed massively to their downfall.

When the US entered the war their ability to fight a land campaign was pretty low. What the had was a massive industrial base and a large pool of manpower. Straight away all the convoluted systems for supplying Britain with weapons was swept away which was probably the biggest single contribution to victory in Africa.

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Quite.
I've said before that German intelligence really wasn't up to much, and always underestimated the production capacity of their opponents. Up to the fall of France that didn't matter since the campaigns were short, but after that it was a major hinderance.

A good example was the Battle of Britain. German estimates had the RAF down to the last few dozen Spitfires when in fact the number increased as the battle went on.

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German intelligence was way off during the Battle of Britain. But a large part of the error was intentional. No one wanted to report the truth to the public, and I'm sure a few of them didn't even want to report the truth to their superiors within the Luftwaffe!

English reports of German casualties were also inflated.

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Now that I'm done with classes for this week I was able to go to the library and look this up.

Note: the following quotations are from stories copyrighted by United Press and The New York Times. They are reproduced here pursuant to the fair use exemption to U.S. and international copyright conventions, for research purposes.

"Attack Was Expected" is actually a subheading in an article continued from the front page entitled "Tokyo Bombers Strike Hard At Our Main Bases on Oahu," which explains why Count Zero couldn't find it in the NYT database. No author is listed--the byline is simply "United Press." Note that on page 13, the continued section is titled "JAPANESE HIT HARD AT BASES ON OAHU."

The first sentence of "Attack Was Expected" reads as follows:
Clearly the author is mistaken, and even if this sentence were true it would be evidence against a conspiracy, rather than for one. Also, in another front-page story, the first sentence reads:
Farther along in the same story,
So we have one story saying the attack was a surprise, and another saying it wasn't. Clearly this is a case of incorrect initial reports about a developing news story. Both articles contain other information that is clearly erroneous, such as
I noticed that this particular claim has been parroted by a lot of CT websites; obviously they've never bothered to actually look up the article in question.

__________________
--Doug

"When your statics problem becomes a dynamics problem, you're in trouble." --me

Moor's Law: "As you go from freshman engineering to Ph.D., the amount of work required per credit hour doubles approximately every 18 months." --me, inspired by Prof. Scott Moor

Good work SpitfireIX

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hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon.

Four-Engined DIVE BOMBERS?

So much for accurate data

BTW I have read that in addition to Pearl Harbor, the Japanese also attacked Clark Field in the Phillipines with pretty much the same results, could anybody elaborate a bit that?

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This was from the same story as the "Attack Was Expected" quote; evidently the correspondent was rather ignorant of military matters.

The short version:

MacArthur was ordered to attack Japanese forces on Formosa (now Taiwan) using his four squadrons of B-17s; however, he stalled at the request of Philippine President Manuel Quezon, who naively believed that if no American attacks were launched from the islands, Japan would leave them alone. Because Japanese air attacks were expected, the two squadrons of B-17s based at Clark Field were launched without bombs so that they would not be caught on the ground. However, fog over their airfields had delayed the Japanese attack force; when they arrived, the B-17s were on the ground, along with most of the fighters, being refuelled, while the crews had lunch. Although the Japanese aircraft were detected by radar, poor communications and bureaucratic foul-ups prevented the airfield from being alerted in time. Half of MacArthur's B-17s were caught on the ground and destroyed.

The long version:

http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/...SA-P-PI-5.html

Mark Willey, the most rabid Pearl Harbor CT, claims that the destruction was part of a deliberate plot to lose the Philippines. See here for his rant on the subject (if you have a strong stomach, that is).

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--Doug

"When your statics problem becomes a dynamics problem, you're in trouble." --me

Moor's Law: "As you go from freshman engineering to Ph.D., the amount of work required per credit hour doubles approximately every 18 months." --me, inspired by Prof. Scott Moor

According to Willey tyhen the British lost Singapore and Burma for the same reasons?

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Well, it wouldn't be the first time a newspaper made up details to fill out a story. Of course, rampant rumor was being reported as fact in the days after the attack (invasions of Los Angeles, paratroopers in San Francisco, etc). A newspaper story written in that period is one the least authoritative sources imaginable. One need only go back and look at the accuracy of reports written the day after the OK City bombing or on 9/12. I imagine they are also full of rumor reported as fact and speculation presented as conclusion.

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"I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind." - William Thompson, 1st Baron Lord Kelvin

"If it was so, it might be, and if it were so, it would be, but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic!" - Tweedledee

This isn't right. This isn't even wrong. - Wolfgang Pauli

Wow. You just described 99% of all conspiracy theories.

I haven't had the time or willpower to wade through all (or even the majority) of Willey's garbage, but my impression is that he doesn't have much to say about the British wartime leadership, other than to quote Churchill out of context in order to bolster his CT. Here is the index of all of Willey's pages, if anyone is morbidly curious.

Here is a rather entertaining thread from a couple of years ago on usenet concerning some comments that Willey made about an article by Stephen Budiansky. WARNING--Willey has an extremely foul mouth. Note especially the extensive comments of Geoffrey Sinclair--he is an Australian who is to Pearl Harbor conspiracies what Jay Windley is to the moon hoax--except that Jay is generally more polite to HBs.


I also came across this exchange that took place just last week between Sinclair and Willey, concerning a Pearl Harbor "knowledge" (i.e. paranoia) quiz that Willey has just added to his site.

__________________
--Doug

"When your statics problem becomes a dynamics problem, you're in trouble." --me

Moor's Law: "As you go from freshman engineering to Ph.D., the amount of work required per credit hour doubles approximately every 18 months." --me, inspired by Prof. Scott Moor

The crucial difference, however, is that when responsible news sources report information that is later shown to be incorrect, they generally admit it and publish corrections. Of course, CTs almost never do this.

__________________
--Doug

"When your statics problem becomes a dynamics problem, you're in trouble." --me

Moor's Law: "As you go from freshman engineering to Ph.D., the amount of work required per credit hour doubles approximately every 18 months." --me, inspired by Prof. Scott Moor

Thanks for the info, another case where Jim's favorite quote applies:

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Like the case of the Columbia shuttle incident, in which a newscast claimed that the craft was travelling at 40 times the speed of LIGHT at the time of the accident.....

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The first sentence of "Attack Was Expected" reads as follows:

Quote:
It is now possible to reveal that the United States forces here had known for a week that the attack was coming and they were not caught unprepared.

Clearly the author is mistaken, and even if this sentence were true it would be evidence against a conspiracy, rather than for one.

Could you please post the rest of the article after the first sentence above?

I don't understand why you believe "the author is mistaken", or how if it was true, it would "be evidence against a conspiracy". Could you offer an explanation for these claims?

No. As I mentioned, the article is copyrighted; to post an extensive excerpt would not fall under "fair use."

Furthermore, this sentence is the only passage related to "Attack Was Expected"; the next sentence concerns a completely unrelated topic, and a lack of surprise is mentioned nowhere else in the article, either before or after. If you really want to read the entire piece, either go to a library that has the NYT on microfilm (I live in a medium-size town and attend a medium-size university; both the school's library and my local public library have it; I imagine any large city near you would probably have it, assuming you live in a country where English is widely spoken), or you can use the link that Count Zero provided above to purchase the full text; I gave the correct title in my post.

I don't understand why you don't understand, unless you are a conspiracist or simply a troll. Clearly, US forces in Hawaii did not know the Japanese were going to attack, and they were surprised, so the author was obviously mistaken. As the major premise of every Pearl Harbor conspiracy theory is that someone (FDR, Churchill, Stalin, The Andrews Sisters, etc.), deliberately withheld information so that US forces would be surprised and the Japanese attack would succeed, evidence of actual forewarning of the attack would tend to show that there was no conspiracy, as any such conspiracy would presumably be designed to prevent any warning.

__________________
--Doug

"When your statics problem becomes a dynamics problem, you're in trouble." --me

Moor's Law: "As you go from freshman engineering to Ph.D., the amount of work required per credit hour doubles approximately every 18 months." --me, inspired by Prof. Scott Moor

The crucial difference, however, is that when responsible news sources report information that is later shown to be incorrect, they generally admit it and publish corrections. Of course, CTs almost never do this.

You hven't been in CTland very long have you Spitfire. All this means to the good CT is that the paper reported it correctly the first time, but then was pressured to retract the truth and print the cover story.

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I don't understand why you don't understand, unless you are a conspiracist or simply a troll. Clearly, US forces in Hawaii did not know the Japanese were going to attack, and they were surprised, so the author was obviously mistaken.

I was actually hoping for a specific reason - that is, something that refutes the author's claim other than "We didn't know, so that means he's mistaken. You must be a 'this' or a 'that' otherwise." I didn't claim it was true or evidence of prior knowledge. I just asked for something relevant to the article.

As the major premise of every Pearl Harbor conspiracy theory is that someone (FDR, Churchill, Stalin, The Andrews Sisters, etc.), deliberately withheld information so that US forces would be surprised and the Japanese attack would succeed, evidence of actual forewarning of the attack would tend to show that there was no conspiracy, as any such conspiracy would presumably be designed to prevent any warning.

So if they lied about prior knowledge, and expose themselves as liars by allowing the truth to be published, then that shows that they weren't involved in a conspiracy.....!?

The official claim is that it was a complete surprise attack. If the article was actually true, there would be serious questions about why it was not prevented, and why they would still claim they had no prior knowledge.

“It is now possible to reveal that the United States forces here had known for a week that the attack was coming and they were not caught unprepared.”

Doesn’t that mean that the United States forces were prepared for the attack?

I wasn’t there, but I don’t know of anyone who claims that US forces were actually prepared on December 7, 1941 for an air attack from Japan. It seems to me the big question was, why the hell were they so very unprepared. Which means that this report was way off.

I think you have to be pretty obtuse to maintain that US forces were prepared for the Pearl Harbor attack.

I think this sentence was just feel good PR hype, which one reads a lot of in WWII news coverage.

Bob

The article states that US forces "were not caught unprepared." Anyone with even a passing familiarity with the subject knows that the Army and Navy were caught almost completely unprepared, which is why damage was so heavy, and Japanese casualties so light. You have selectively paraphrased what I wrote. I didn't just write "we didn't know." I also stated that US forces "were surprised," by which I meant unprepared. Possibly this was careless use of language on my part at 2:30 a.m. after a late-night chat session; I suppose it is possible to to be "prepared" for something, and yet still be "surprised" by it. However, I renew my original assertion that it should be obvious (at least to anyone with enough interest in the subject to read this thread) that the author was mistaken. If someone writes an article claiming that the average acceleration due to gravity on the earth's surface is actually 5.5 m/s^2, a detailed refutation is not necessary in order to prove the author is wrong; merely the observation that the correct value is 9.81 m/s^2.

The article states that "US forces here" (in Hawaii) knew the attack was coming--not that FDR, or Churchill, or anyone else knew. Further, this implies that a significant number of officers in the Army and Navy knew about it, and had attempted to act on their knowledge. Anyone who knew about the attack ahead of time and didn't give a warning would be exceedingly unlikely to tell a reporter about it one day later, as he would be admitting to treason and neglect of duty.

You are selectively focusing on the prior-knowledge issue, and ignoring the preparedness issue, which is what I suspect the CT who originally came up with this "evidence" did. Every Pearl Harbor conspiracy theory postulates that someone, somewhere, for some reason, had prior knowledge of the Japanese attack and withheld the information. In every case, the purported motivation for this is a desire for the Japanese attack to take place, and to be as successful as possible. No conspiracy theory has postulated a wish for an unsuccessful attack, as luring the Japanese into an ambush would not have constituted a conspiracy. Had US forces not been "caught unprepared," any conspiracy would have failed in that aspect, and, all other things being equal, it is easier to prove a conspiracy that completely succeeded than it is to prove one that partially failed.

__________________
--Doug

"When your statics problem becomes a dynamics problem, you're in trouble." --me

Moor's Law: "As you go from freshman engineering to Ph.D., the amount of work required per credit hour doubles approximately every 18 months." --me, inspired by Prof. Scott Moor

I think you're absolutely right on that, Bob, though I imagine that the correspondent later regretted having written it.

__________________
--Doug

"When your statics problem becomes a dynamics problem, you're in trouble." --me

Moor's Law: "As you go from freshman engineering to Ph.D., the amount of work required per credit hour doubles approximately every 18 months." --me, inspired by Prof. Scott Moor

The points you made have been adequately explained, Spitfire. Not having seen the entire article, I didn't know if you were making comments specifically in reference to this article or not. From what you've described, I agree it doesn't have any validity to support a conspiracy, though I won't rule it out 100% until I read the entire article and see if there is anything to corroborate it.

I am still undecided about the entire issue itself. There isn't enough solid evidence (that I've seen to date) to convince me there was a conspiracy. I'm not a long-time 'student' of the issue, so what may be old news to you or others here could well be unfamiliar to me.

But I won't merely brush aside certain statements, such as Joe Leib's, as false (or true) with complete certainty before looking into the entire Pearl Harbor story much more than I have so far. You may see that as ridiculous or pointless, but I want to give everything fair consideration before I decide for myself what I think is valid or not.

May I ask what, if any, solid evidence you've seen in favor of a conspiracy?

That is true; however, as I mentioned, there are certain things that anyone with even a passing familiarity with the Pearl Harbor attack should be expected to know, such as, for example, the fact that US forces were caught unprepared.

Approaching any issue with an open mind is neither ridiculous nor pointless, but in being open minded, the suspension of critical thinking is neither necessary nor desireable. In other words, "Don't be so open minded that your brain falls out."

Five important rules of thumb should guide one's initial evaluation of any conspiracy theory:

1. The simplest explanation is the most likely explanation. (Occam's Razor)

2. Never attribute to malice that which can adequately be explained by incompetence.

3. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.

4. It is generally impossible to prove a negative

5. The fact that a certain individual or group derived a benefit from some event does not prove that event was planned.

In the case of Lieb's story, for example, the simplest explanation is that Lieb simply misinterpreted and/or misremebered the conversation; that should be the working assumption until other evidence suggests a different explanation. Although historical investigations do not require the same rules of evidence and standards of proof as legal proceedings (which vary from country to country in any case), these can often be a good starting point. In an American court, Lieb's story would be considered "hearsay" evidence; had FDR been tried for treason, Lieb would not have been allowed to testify to the President's guilt, of which he did not have first-hand knowledge. Likewise he would not have been allowed to testify to the contents of the document he claimed that Hull had shown him. Note that Lieb's testimony should also be discounted due to a lack of extraordinary proof, as I mentioned in an earlier post.

Finally, I believe that you are be putting the cart before the horse. You have throw out lots of questions about conspiracists' claims, asking for answers, and then attempting to educate yourself about the subject in order to evaluate the quality of the responses you've received. I suggest that you begin by educating yourself about the Pearl Harbor attack, and if you still have questions, by all means ask them. Although I and others here are pleased to answer any questions we can, there is simply no substitute for reading several good books on the subject. I particularly recommend:

Gordon R. Prange's Pearl Harbor trilogy ( At Dawn We Slept; December 7, 1941; and Pearl Harbor: The Verdict of History) Very long and very comprehensive, though a bit dated.

Walter Lord's Day of Infamy. A good, relatively short introduction.

Henry C. Clausen's Pearl Harbor: Final Judgement. Debunks many conspiracist claims about who knew what and when in Washington.

I also recommend Battle of Wits by Stephen Budiansky, which contains information about Allied breaking of Japanese codes.

I'm sure other people will have their own recommendations as well.

__________________
--Doug

"When your statics problem becomes a dynamics problem, you're in trouble." --me

Moor's Law: "As you go from freshman engineering to Ph.D., the amount of work required per credit hour doubles approximately every 18 months." --me, inspired by Prof. Scott Moor

A very quick overview (of quite a few other topics as well) is available in Unsolved Mysteries of American History, by . . . er . . . Paul Aron. (Wow. That book database I did last week has already come in handy!) He also provides a bibliography.

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