SECRETARY KNOX AND PEARL HARBLR:

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP75-00149R000100270004-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: November 11, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 8, 1999
• Sequence Number: 4
• Content Type: NSPR

FOIAb3b
Sanitized - Approved For-Release : CIA-R
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mars Frank Beatty, never before
published, is a historical document of prime importance
in connection with the twenty-fifth anniversary of Pearl
Harbor. There is probably no one else alive who can
give so revealing an account of what Pearl Harbor
looked like immediately after the attack, and of the ef-
fect of the unexpected attack on the participants and
surviving victims of Roosevelt's need for a dramatic
surprise to unite the nation behind him in war.
In addition to solid historical information, the article
has many special points of interest. It indicates how
top officials in Washington-aside from Roosevelt and
Marshall-had been so hypnotized by the parading of
Japanese forces down the coast of Southeast Asia. that
they concluded that the Japanese would launch their
first attack in the Far East. It validates the effectiveness
of the Roosevelt-Marshall suppression of details having
to do with warnings to Pearl Harbor after December 4.
A leading aim of Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox
in going to Pearl Harbor was to try to discover how
Admiral Kimmel could have been so completely sur-
prised considering that Knox had ordered a warning
message sent to Kimmel at Pearl Harbor and to Hart
at Manila on the night of December 6, after he learned
of the arrival of the Japanese reply to Hull's ultimatum.
The Japanese rebuff had for days been regarded by
Washington as marking the time when war would be
right at hand. No record could be found that this warn-
ing message had ever been sent from Washington or
received at Pearl Harbor. Not even the Secretary of
the Navy was above the effective ban on warnings to
Pearl Harbor.
Some points were amplified during a pleasant inter-
view I had with Admiral Beatty in San Francisco.
Secretary Knox's report to Roosevelt completely ab-
solved General Short and Admiral Kimmel of any and
all dereliction of duty with respect to the surprise at-:
tack. ut his was not in accord with Roosevelt's need
to mak them the scapegoats and saddle them with the
y for being surprised, an operation which
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was almost immediately launched in the commissioning
of the notorious Roberts Commission. Hence, Knox's re-
port was immediately suppressed by Roosevelt and was
brought to light only during the Joint Congressional
Committee Investigation of Pearl Harbor in 1945-1946,
after the war was over, by lucky accident growing out
of the initiative of Senator Homer Ferguson of the
Committee minority. Even then, little or no publicity was
given to this important aspect of the suppressed report.
Probably not one American in a million knows anything
about it to this day. I am personally inclined to think
that Admiral Beatty is a little overkind to Roosevelt in
stressing the fact that the Knox report had to be sup-
pressed to keep the Japanese from knowing about the
damage inflicted at Pearl Harbor. They could have
learned plenty about this from the newspapers by the
time Knox had returned to Washington.
Furthermore, the publicity given to Knox's visit well
illustrated the cleverness of Secretary of War Stimson
in shifting his own guilt to the shoulders of others, a
technique for which he became notorious in the post-
Pearl Harbor investigations of the surprise attack.
Roosevelt had ordered Knox and Stimson to prepare
separate statements concerning the responsibility for the
surprise and the devastation. They were intended to
indicate that the Army and the Navy shared the respon-,
sibility equally. Knox issued his statement as to Navy'
responsibility first, and it naturally received great pub.
Zicity in large headlines all over the country. Stimson
adroitly delayed his statement until it had lost much
of its interest as hot news. Hence it got few headlines
and most of the statement appeared on the inside pages
of the newspapers. The result was that the great majority
of the public felt that the main responsibility for the
Pearl Harbor disaster fell on the Navy and that Knox
had admitted this to be the case.
Finally, as absorbing reading, Admiral Beatty's article,
ith its account of the intrepid air trip, so different from
hose of today in our fast and comfortable superjets,
he spectacle of the devastated Pearl Harbor area, and
nox's intense interest in gathering the facts, is a docu-
mentary gem for those interested in recording crucial
and dramatic occurrences in our past. The editors are
fortunate in being able to reproduce it here.
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