Warlady
05-27-2001, 09:22 AM
By: Justin Raimondo
The smoke barely had time to clear before a dark cloud of intrigue and suspicion formed around the circumstances leading up to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. When the shock had worn off, questions began to be asked, at least by the most sober and realistic Americans: why had the US military been taken by surprise, and who, the Congress and the public wanted to know, was responsible?
John T. Flynn was one of the first to stand up to the war hysteria, defy the atmosphere of political intimidation, and start asking questions. Flynn was an old-style liberal journalist, a former columnist for The New Republic, author of God's Gold (1932), a best-selling book on the rise of the Rockefeller oil fortune, and also Men of Wealth: the Story of Twelve Significant Fortunes from the Renaissance to the Present Day (1941), who had been purged from the precincts of "respectable" journalism for his unrelenting opposition to US entry into World War II. Flynn labored mightily to avert that disaster, joining with others – conservatives, mostly, and nascent libertarians – in the antiwar America First Committee, writing, speaking, rallying and lobbying to stop FDR's drive to war.
In the wake of Pearl Harbor, the America First Committee disbanded, and the "isolationists" were driven practically underground, hounded by the government, driven out of politics and journalism, and in some cases prosecuted for "sedition." Flynn, however, would not be cowed. He wrote two scathing pamphlets, The Truth About Pearl Harbor (1944) and The Final Secret of Pearl Harbor (1945), that raised the question for the first time: did FDR have advance warning of the Pearl Harbor catastrophe? Flynn's answer was yes.
It is amazing how much he gleaned from contemporary accounts – in spite of the repressive wartime atmosphere that allowed the President to avoid a real investigation – and it's nothing short of astounding how he was able to cut like a searchlight through the cloud of obfuscating murk and get at the essential truth. As it was, given what we now know, his conclusions were fairly mild. Flynn makes the case that FDR had every reason to expect the Japanese to attack Pearl Harbor, that he ignored the advice of his generals, and that he deliberately bottled up the fleet there. He reveals that the Japanese code had been cracked, and that the diplomatic messages being sent back and forth between Tokyo and its various embassies had been intercepted by the British, delivered to the Americans, and decoded. But what he didn't know – couldn't know – was that much more than that had been intercepted. As revealed in Robert Stinnett's book, Day of Deceit, a whole series of military messages sent by Japanese commanders betrayed the day and the hour of the attack – and Stinnett shows that FDR had to have known this. Flynn couldn't have had access to the thousands of pages of documents – recently released under the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act – that prove FDR's foreknowledge, and that of top figures in his administration. But Flynn saw the pattern of deception, fifty years ago, even if he couldn't have known the full extent of it. He is the father of Pearl Harbor revisionism, the first writer to collect the evidence and indict an American President for a heinous war crime – one committed against his own soldiers and sailors.
Click to read more (http://www.etherzone.com/raim060101.shtml)
The smoke barely had time to clear before a dark cloud of intrigue and suspicion formed around the circumstances leading up to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. When the shock had worn off, questions began to be asked, at least by the most sober and realistic Americans: why had the US military been taken by surprise, and who, the Congress and the public wanted to know, was responsible?
John T. Flynn was one of the first to stand up to the war hysteria, defy the atmosphere of political intimidation, and start asking questions. Flynn was an old-style liberal journalist, a former columnist for The New Republic, author of God's Gold (1932), a best-selling book on the rise of the Rockefeller oil fortune, and also Men of Wealth: the Story of Twelve Significant Fortunes from the Renaissance to the Present Day (1941), who had been purged from the precincts of "respectable" journalism for his unrelenting opposition to US entry into World War II. Flynn labored mightily to avert that disaster, joining with others – conservatives, mostly, and nascent libertarians – in the antiwar America First Committee, writing, speaking, rallying and lobbying to stop FDR's drive to war.
In the wake of Pearl Harbor, the America First Committee disbanded, and the "isolationists" were driven practically underground, hounded by the government, driven out of politics and journalism, and in some cases prosecuted for "sedition." Flynn, however, would not be cowed. He wrote two scathing pamphlets, The Truth About Pearl Harbor (1944) and The Final Secret of Pearl Harbor (1945), that raised the question for the first time: did FDR have advance warning of the Pearl Harbor catastrophe? Flynn's answer was yes.
It is amazing how much he gleaned from contemporary accounts – in spite of the repressive wartime atmosphere that allowed the President to avoid a real investigation – and it's nothing short of astounding how he was able to cut like a searchlight through the cloud of obfuscating murk and get at the essential truth. As it was, given what we now know, his conclusions were fairly mild. Flynn makes the case that FDR had every reason to expect the Japanese to attack Pearl Harbor, that he ignored the advice of his generals, and that he deliberately bottled up the fleet there. He reveals that the Japanese code had been cracked, and that the diplomatic messages being sent back and forth between Tokyo and its various embassies had been intercepted by the British, delivered to the Americans, and decoded. But what he didn't know – couldn't know – was that much more than that had been intercepted. As revealed in Robert Stinnett's book, Day of Deceit, a whole series of military messages sent by Japanese commanders betrayed the day and the hour of the attack – and Stinnett shows that FDR had to have known this. Flynn couldn't have had access to the thousands of pages of documents – recently released under the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act – that prove FDR's foreknowledge, and that of top figures in his administration. But Flynn saw the pattern of deception, fifty years ago, even if he couldn't have known the full extent of it. He is the father of Pearl Harbor revisionism, the first writer to collect the evidence and indict an American President for a heinous war crime – one committed against his own soldiers and sailors.
Click to read more (http://www.etherzone.com/raim060101.shtml)