YOU TUBE CENSORS VIDEO OF PRO JEWISH MUSLIM AS "HATE SPEECH"

 YOU TUBE CENSORS VIDEO OF PRO JEWISH MUSLIM AS "HATE SPEECH"

BY CHRISTINE WILLIAMS

SEE: https://www.jihadwatch.org/2016/12/youtube-censors-video-of-pro-jewish-muslim-as-hate-speech; 

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:

It’s peculiar that Islamic supremacists can get away with spewing hatred and propaganda on YouTube against Israel, Christians, Jews, and generally against the West, largely because of the ubiquitous fear of their critics being branded racists or “Islamophobes.” Westerners also have been bullied into a collective fear of Muslims because of global jihad violence and threats of the same. Interesting, however, that an Israel-supporting Muslim no longer has the cover of the “Islamophobia” propagandists. Had Kasim Hafeez been blasting the Jewish state, falsely accusing it of crimes against humanity and of practicing apartheid, and pushing the Boycotts, Divestments and Sanctions (BDS) narrative, he would not have been censored by YouTube.
Kudos to Kasim Hafeez. Let’s hope that more peace-loving Muslims speak the truth about jihad propaganda and Islamic anti-Semitic hatred and indoctrination.
The hallmark of democracy is freedom of speech, and this YouTube stunt is yet another indication of how endangered this freedom is becoming, as fearful Westerners self-impose Sharia. Whether YouTube’s reasons may be some leftist-jihadist alliance, political correctness or threats by jihadists, it is troubling when truth, explained in a personal testimony, is stifled by YouTube.

The video, titled, “Born to Hate Jews,” shows an interview with Kasim Hafeez, a British Muslim and pro-Israel activist, explaining how he overcame the anti-Semitic indoctrination that convinced him to try and join a terrorist group.

Fortunately, freedom fighters spoke out and YouTube responded, but with unacceptable restrictions:

A petition to restore the video promptly gathered over 105,000 signatures in less than a day. Late Monday evening, YouTube re-uploaded the video in “Restricted Mode,” partially restoring it. This mode marks the video as explicit content, similar to pornography, and effectively makes the video impossible to view on public internet connections at libraries and schools.

“YouTube Censors Video Of Pro-Israel Muslim As ‘Hate Speech’”, by Andrew Follett, Daily Caller, December 6, 2016:

YouTube removed a Prager University video of a Muslim explaining how visiting Israel “de-radicalized” him, claiming that the video was hate speech.
The video, titled, “Born to Hate Jews,” shows an interview with Kasim Hafeez, a British Muslim and pro-Israel activist, explaining how he overcame the anti-Semitic indoctrination that convinced him to try and join a terrorist group.
“In the video, Hafeez explains how he overcame the anti-Semitic indoctrination that radicalized him from an early age,” according to an email sent by Prager. “Within hours of the video’s release Monday morning, YouTube flagged it for ‘hate speech’ and took it down. PragerU is disputing YouTube’s removal of the video.”
A petition to restore the video promptly gathered over 105,000 signatures in less than a day. Late Monday evening, YouTube re-uploaded the video in “Restricted Mode,” partially restoring it. This mode marks the video as explicit content, similar to pornography, and effectively makes the video impossible to view on public internet connections at libraries and schools.
Prager is a conservative, nonprofit educational organization that produces short, educational videos. This isn’t the first time YouTube has targeted the group. YouTube put 21 of Prager University’s videos on “restricted mode” in October and currently still lists 18 PragerU videos under that mode.
Many parents set their children’s YouTube accounts to restricted mode to prevent viewing of inappropriate or obscene content, but none of Prager’s videos contain adult material……

GATES FOUNDATION SUPPORTS TIME RELEASED VACCINES COATED WITH ALUMINUM OXIDE

 GATES FOUNDATION SUPPORTS 

TIME RELEASED VACCINES 

COATED WITH ALUMINUM OXIDE

SEE: http://www.thevaccinereaction.org/2016/12/gates-foundation-funds-research-on-temperature-resistant-time-release-vaccines-coated-with-aluminum-oxide/; 

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has awarded a $1.1 million grant to the University of Colorado at Boulder to develop next-generation vaccines that do not need to be refrigerated. The money will fund research conducted by Robert Garcea, PhD, Theodore Randolph, PhD, and Alan Weimer, PhD, who work in the university’s Jennie Smoly Caruthers Biotechnology Building (JSCBB).¹
A major goal is to develop genetically engineered vaccines that deliver time-released doses in the body.
Dr. Garcea, who is with the Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology and the BioFrontiers Institute, has teamed up with Dr. Randolph and Dr. Weimer of the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering. The collaboration is intended to build on Garcea’s work on the development of vaccines such as the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine and efforts by Randolph and Weimer to make vaccines “thermostatable” (able to resist temperature fluctuations) by converting them into a “glassy powder” form.¹
The research is intended to address the problem of “bad batches” of vaccines resulting from improper transport, handling, and storage, exposing vaccines to temperature variations that can reduce their safety and efficacy. Occasionally, there are reports of people subjected to revaccination against the same disease after having been injected with doses from a bad batch of vaccines.²
According to an article by Patrice La Vigne in The Vaccine Reaction last year:

[I]t seems that bad batches of vaccines, due to temperature variations, may be occurring more often than people realize, creating a largely overlooked and growing global problem of waste and revaccination.²

As a glassy powder, a vaccine can be safely stored in temperatures up to 120 degrees Fahrenheit for as long as four months. The grant from the Gates Foundation will seek to combine these vaccine powders with techniques that “allow uniform nanoscopic protective layers of aluminum oxide to be applied to vaccine microparticles”—a protective coating process called “atomic layer deposition” which also reportedly helps to stimulate an immune system response.¹
A key application of the coating process technique being pursued is “extended release, multilayer microparticulate vaccine dosage forms.” These dosage forms would be made up of an “inner core of stabilized vaccine coated with aluminum oxide layers and an outer layer of vaccine, all embedded in a glassy powder.” Upon injection, the vaccine’s outer layer would provide an initial dose of the vaccine. A second dose—the inner core of the vaccine—would be released when the aluminum oxide layers dissolve.¹
The concept is similar to the time release technology used by the pharmaceutical industry in the manufacture of pill tablets or capsules to allow for the gradual release of a drug into the bloodstream.

NVIC CALLS 21ST CENTURY CURES ACT "A WOLF IN SHEEP'S CLOTHING" & URGES PRESIDENTIAL VETO TO PROTECT PUBLIC HEALTH

 “Congress has handed the liability-free vaccine industry another free pass to make unlimited profits by exploiting Americans legally required to purchase and use inadequately tested vaccines.” — 

Barbara Loe Fisher, National Vaccine Information Center

NVIC CALLS 21ST CENTURY CURES ACT 

"A WOLF IN SHEEP'S CLOTHING" 

& URGES PRESIDENTIAL VETO TO PROTECT PUBLIC HEALTH 

SEE: http://www.thevaccinereaction.org/2016/12/nvic-calls-21st-century-cures-act-a-wolf-in-sheeps-clothing-and-urges-presidential-veto-to-protect-public-health/; 

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:

The non-profit National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) says the 21^st Century Cures Act (H.R. 34), which was pushed through the U.S Congress this week with a 94 to 5 vote in the Senate yesterday, is a threat to public health and should be vetoed by the President. The 996 page Act has been promoted by Congress as a consumer friendly bill to fund medical research and make new prescription drugs and medical devices more quickly available in the U.S., but it also lowers licensing standards used by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to fast track experimental vaccines to market that will be federally recommended and state mandated for use by all children and many adults in America.

“Instead of building a firewall between industry and government to protect the public health and safety, Congress has allowed the pharmaceutical industry to further co-opt the federal vaccine licensing and policymaking process,” said NVIC co-founder and president Barbara Loe Fisher. “The 21^st Century Cures Act is a wolf in sheep’s clothing and should be vetoed by the President.”

The 21^st Century Cures Act introduced in 2015 and expanded in 2016 weakens informed consent protections for people participating in experimental vaccine clinical trials. It allows drug companies to use surrogate endpoints to evaluate the effectiveness of vaccines and permits the FDA to accept novel statistical analyses and clinical experience related to a new vaccine’s reactivity, instead of requiring drug companies to conduct large randomized clinical trials to demonstrate safety. It prevents vaccine manufacturers from being sued in civil court if an FDA licensed vaccine given to a pregnant woman causes the injury or death of her unborn child in the womb.

“There is a difference between prescription drugs and medical devices designed to help sick people get well, which are subject to product liability in civil court, and vaccines given to healthy people that are not,” said Fisher. “Congress has handed the liability-free vaccine industry another free pass to make unlimited profits by exploiting Americans legally required to purchase and use inadequately tested vaccines.”

In 1986, Congress gave the pharmaceutical industry a partial civil liability shield from vaccine injury lawsuits in the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act, which created a federal vaccine injury compensation program (VICP) that to date has awarded $3.5 billion for vaccine injuries and deaths. In 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court declared FDA licensed vaccines to be “unavoidably unsafe” and effectively removed all product liability from vaccine manufacturers.

The U.S. government recommends that children receive 69 doses of 16 vaccines between day of birth and age 18 and all 50 states have mandated dozens of doses of at least 10 of those vaccines for children to attend school. Since Congress shielded pharmaceutical companies from vaccine injury lawsuits three decades ago, there has been a 2900 to 3700 percent increase in the cost to vaccinate a child with all federally recommended vaccinations. The current per child vaccination cost is about $2,100 per child vaccinated in a public health clinic and $3,000 per child vaccinated in a private pediatrician’s office.

In 2015 and 2016, more than 200 vaccine bills backed by the pharmaceutical industry and medical trade were introduced in multiple states. Most of those bills mandated the use of more federally recommended vaccines for school attendance and employment, and restricted or eliminated personal belief vaccine exemptions, including those protecting freedom of conscience and religion. All but two state legislatures voted against eliminating vaccine exemptions, but seven vaccine bills have already been filed in the Texas legislature for consideration in 2017 that restrict informed consent rights and threaten vaccine exemptions.

Dawn Richardson, who is NVIC’s director of advocacy and co-founder of Parents Requesting Open Vaccine Education (PROVE) in Texas, said, “The erosion of vaccine licensing standards in the 21^st Century Cures Act makes it even more important for state legislatures to protect flexible medical, conscientious and religious vaccine exemptions. No state should legally require citizens to purchase and use vaccines or face societal sanctions, especially when vaccine manufacturers have no product liability in civil court and are not required to adhere to high licensing standards.”

The National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) was founded in 1982 to prevent vaccine injuries and deaths through public education and advocates for inclusion of informed consent protections in U.S. health policies and laws, including flexible medical, conscientious and religious belief vaccine exemptions.

Read a referenced video commentary published by NVIC in 2015 after the 21^st Century Cures Act was first introduced into Congress.

UK PRIME MINISTER MAY FACES PARLIAMENTARY REBELLION OVER REFUSAL TO PUBLISH BREXIT PLANS

UK PRIME MINISTER MAY FACES PARLIAMENTARY REBELLION 

OVER REFUSAL TO PUBLISH BREXIT PLANS

BY PAMELA GELLER

SEE: http://pamelageller.com/2016/12/uk-pm-may-faces-parliamentary-rebellion-refusal-publish-brexit-plans.html/; 

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:

She says she won’t publish them so as not to weaken her negotiating position. But she opposed Brexit before she became Prime Minister, and is likely to be dragging her feet and trying to keep it from happening. Theresa May is the enemy of freedom who banned me from the UK for opposing jihad; it would be no surprise if she was working against the best interests of the British people here again.

“UK PM May faces parliamentary rebellion over refusal to publish Brexit plans,” by Kylie MacLellan, Reuters, December 6, 2016 (thanks to Van):

LONDON (Reuters) – British Prime Minister Theresa May faces a rebellion among her own lawmakers when parliament debates whether the government should set out its Brexit plan before triggering formal divorce talks with the European Union.
May, who plans to kick off the exit process by the end of March next year, has said the government will not give a running commentary on its preparations for Brexit as this would damage its negotiating position.
The opposition Labour Party has put forward a motion, to be debated on Wednesday, calling on the government to publish its plan for leaving the bloc before it invokes Article 50 of the EU’s Lisbon Treaty to begin the formal Brexit process.
The BBC reported that one former minister had predicted between 20 and 40 lawmakers from May’s ruling Conservatives could support the motion, which is not binding on the government but would increase pressure on it to be more open.
“These things are incredibly important. This actually transcends party politics and tribalism. There is nothing in it which I don’t agree with,” remain-backing Conservative lawmaker Anna Soubry told BBC Radio, referring to the motion.
“The contents of that motion are eminently supportable.”
While asking May to commit to publishing the government’s Brexit plan, the motion also says there should be “no disclosure of material that could be reasonably judged to damage the UK in any negotiations to depart from the European Union”.
“This is a real opportunity to finally get clarity on the government’s plan for Brexit,” Labour Party Brexit spokesman Keir Starmer, who put forward the motion, said in a statement.
“Parliament and the public need to know the basic terms the government is seeking to achieve from Brexit. This issue is too important to be left mired in uncertainty any longer.”…

TRUMP PICKS GENERAL JOHN KELLY AS SECRETARY OF HOMELAND SECURITY~HERE'S WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW

 

TRUMP PICKS GENERAL JOHN KELLY AS SECRETARY OF HOMELAND SECURITY~

HERE'S WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW 

BY PAMELA GELLER

SEE: http://pamelageller.com/2016/12/gen-john-kelly-dhs.html/;

 

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:

Marine Gen. John Kelly is President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to be the next secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, CBS News reported Wednesday morning. Kelly is the third general Trump has tapped for his Cabinet, along with retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn as national security adviser and retired Gen. James Mattis as defense secretary.
You need generals to clean out ….. the Augean Stables.
The Department of Homeland Security, like the Department of State and the Department of Justice, require an agency-wide purge. Under Obama, who stacked them with uber-left ideologues and Muslim Brotherhood members, these agencies became hostile to the American people.
The Department of Homeland Security targeted tea party members, veterans and patriots. The DHS had a Muslim Brotherhood agent on its advisory board; he leaked intel and shopped classified data to the media (and who knows who else).
Over the past eight years the Department of Homeland Security has turned its guns on …. us:

• DSH Secretary: Right-wingers pose same threat as Islamic jihadists
• Homeland Security-Funded Study on “Tea Party Terrorism”
• Obama’s DHS Warns Right Wing Terror Threat Greater than ISIS, Hamas-CAIR Celebrates
• DHS’ Islamic Advisor: Orlando Jihad Was Not Islamic
• WND Column: The Obama Doctrine – Target the Right
• OBAMA’S REAL TERRORISTS: TARGETING PATRIOTS AND THE RIGHT

Key points on Kelly:

• General found himself at odds — and eventually on the outs — with the Obama White House.
• General Kelly oversaw operations at GITMO. He opposes the Obama’s plan to shut it down. “There are no innocent men down there.”
• The general has a scholar’s appetite for reading and sharp viewpoints on America’s role abroad. He has extensive experience in the Middle East, having spent about two years leading combat forces against the Islamic State’s Sunni Arab forerunners in Iraq’s Anbar province. But perhaps most important to Trump, Kelly is an expert on Latin America
• The general found himself at odds — and eventually on the outs — with the Obama White House. He spoke out forcefully and publicly on a range of issues beyond Guantanamo.
• He lost his son Marine 1st Lt. Robert Kelly in combat, killed six years ago in Afghanistan.
• Trump’s Pick for DHS Secretary Warned About Iranian Infiltration of South America

Donald Trump picks Gen. John Kelly for Department of Homeland Security secretary

CBS News, December 7, 2016:
Donald Trump is tapping Gen. John Kelly to run the Department of Homeland Security, CBS News confirms.
The final request and acceptance, sources told CBS’ Major Garrett, occurred while Kelly was traveling in Europe. His pick for DHS secretary will be announced by the transition staff in the coming days.

Kelly is the third general tapped by the president-elect, joining Gen. James Mattis, Mr. Trump’s pick to become the next secretary of Defense, and Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, Mr. Trump’s incoming national security advisor.

Like Mattis, Kelly is a Marine with a reputation for bluntness.
Kelly was the commander of U.S. Southern Command until earlier this year. In that posting, he oversaw American military operations in South America and Central America.
Before that, he commanded American forces numerous times in Iraq, and spent a year as the top Marine in that country. He then was an aide to defense secretaries Leon Panetta and Robert Gates.
Created after the 9/11 attacks, the Department of Homeland Security now employs nearly 250,000 people. Trump pledged repeatedly to better secure America’s borders on the campaign trail, and it is likely that Kelly, should he take the position, will be central to that effort.
Unlike Flynn, Kelly did not endorse Mr. Trump during the campaign and indicated he would be open to serving in either a Republican or Democratic administration. He has also referred to domestic politics as a “cesspool” in an interview over the summer with Foreign Policy magazine.
Kelly, who served nearly 46 years in the Marine Corps, is the highest-ranking American military official to lose a child in combat since 9/11. His son, Marine Lt. Robert Michael Kelly, was killed in action in Afghanistan in 2010.

Military Times did this in-depth piece on Kelly last month: 

John Kelly shares many Republicans’ position on the U.S. military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. For three years prior to his retirement last winter, the Marine Corps general oversaw operations at the controversial detention facility where, despite President Barack Obama’s determination to close it, dozens of alleged wartime combatants and notable terror suspects remain incarcerated.
As the head of U.S. Southern Command, Kelly’s first and only four-star assignment, he was prepared to carry out a directive to shut down the prison complex. At the same time, the general made no secret of the fact that he believed the president’s goal was misguided. “They’re detainees, not prisoners,” Kelly told Military Times back in January, during one of multiple interviews and less formal on-the-record exchanges as his 45-year career came to a close. “The lifestyle they live in Guantanamo is — they can’t simply be put in a prison in the United States.
“Every one,” he added, “has real, no-kidding intelligence on them that brought them there. They were doing something negative, something bad, something violent, and they were taken from the battlefield. There are a lot of people that will dispute that, but I have dossiers on all of them, built and maintained by the intelligence community, both military and civilian.
“There are no innocent men down there.”
Gen. John Kelly, photographed in January 2015 at the Pentagon. Photo Credit: Mike Morones
Kelly, 66, is one of at least four candidates under serious consideration to become President-elect Donald Trump’s Homeland Security secretary, though Reince Priebus, whom Trump appointed as White House chief of staff, indicated on “Meet the Press” last week that Kelly also is being eyed to lead the State Department. Either role would afford him considerable influence as Trump begins to shape policies on national security, foreign policy and immigration, including his controversial calls to erect a 2,000-mile barrier along the U.S.-Mexico border and deport millions of people who’ve come to the United States illegally.
Kelly has declined to comment about his prospective role in the Trump administration.
He is one of several former senior military officers in whom Trump has taken an interest as he seeks to fulfill his campaign promise to “drain the swamp” of establishment insiders filling key posts within the executive branch. The general has a scholar’s appetite for reading and sharp viewpoints on America’s role abroad. He has extensive experience in the Middle East, having spent about two years leading combat forces against the Islamic State’s Sunni Arab forerunners in Iraq’s Anbar province. But perhaps most important to Trump, Kelly is an expert on Latin America — and he is decidedly not one of Obama’s guys.
Head of SOUTHCOM says partnership and cooperation are vital in the Americas
The general found himself at odds — and eventually on the outs — with the Obama White House. He spoke out forcefully and publicly on a range of issues beyond Guantanamo. Having lost a son in combat, Marine 1st Lt. Robert Kelly was killed six years ago in Afghanistan, the general delivered several pointed, passionate speeches about the sacrifice being made by American families as the country’s war with violent extremists seemed only to be worsening. And he spoke to Congress in very stark terms about the perceived vulnerability of America’s borders.
The question now is whether Trump, as president, would tolerate a Cabinet secretary with an unapologetic record for, as the general puts it, telling “truth to power.” During the campaign Trump declared that he knows more than America’s generals and admirals do, but he also lamented that they’ve been “reduced to rubble” under Obama. So perhaps the more important questions are: How would Kelly’s experience come to bear on whichever agency he may be asked to run, how do his views dovetail with the president-elect’s and, ultimately, would Trump even heed this general’s best advice?
James Mattis, another retired Marine general whose tenure in uniform and on the battlefield often intersected with Kelly’s, is said to be Trump’s leading candidate to run the Defense Department. A source familiar with Trump’s discussions said Mattis told the president-elect that Kelly also would make a solid defense secretary. Kelly reportedly said the same about Mattis. The source spoke to Military Times on the condition of anonymity, citing the sensitivity surrounding internal deliberations.
Like Kelly, Mattis clashed with the Obama White House. He was most vocal about the president’s stance toward Iran, with which the administration negotiated a nuclear proliferation accord that’s been endlessly criticized among those on the political right. It’s believed by many observers that both generals’ military careers ended prematurely because they refused to publicly support Obama’s agenda while holding convictions to the contrary.
“When I first came to know General Kelly, he was just a war fighter. But as time wore on in this administration, Kelly transformed,” said Rep. Duncan Hunter, a Marine Corps veteran who served under Kelly during the Iraq war. Hunter, a California Republican and member of the House Armed Services Committee, said that he and Kelly remain close.
“It killed him to not be able to talk about what he saw happening,” the congressman said. “He gives honest, unadulterated advice. It was interesting to see the change from ‘everything’s fine, we’re not going to say anything, we’re going to go execute our duties,’ to ‘this is wrong and I’ve got to talk about it.’ And in the end that’s probably what did John Kelly in.”
THREATS ALONG THE SOUTHERN BORDER
Trump and Kelly met in New Jersey on Nov. 20. They discussed the general’s diplomatic background and a host of global security concerns. The meeting included Priebus, who also chairs the Republican National Committee, and Steve Bannon, the Breitbart News executive whom Trump made his chief strategist. The discussion largely focused on the general’s experience at Southern Command, one the military’s nine unified combatant commands. SOUTHCOM, as it’s known, gave Kelly purview not only of Guantanamo Bay but also the massive criminal network that has metastasized from the trafficking of drugs, weapons and people throughout South America, Central America and the Caribbean.
President-elect Donald Trump talks to media as he stands with retired Marine Gen. John Kelly, right, at the Trump National Golf Club Bedminster clubhouse Sunday, Nov. 20, 2016, in Bedminster, N.J. Photo Credit: Carolyn Kaster/APIn that role, Kelly worked closely with several federal and nongovernmental agencies. Many of the larger ones, including Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the U.S. Coast Guard, operate under the aegis of the Department of Homeland Security.
And if not Kelly, whoever heads up Homeland Security or State may be hard-pressed to match the general’s wealth of contacts in this part of the world, and his depth of understanding about the socioeconomic and geopolitical dynamics there. The source close to Kelly said the general has “better relationships in Latin American than the State Department does.”
That source highlighted the Alliance for Prosperity, which Kelly played a lead role brokering during late-2014 and early-2015. It resulted in an initial U.S. investment of nearly $1 billion for Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, which has experienced  more murder per capita than any other nation in the last two decades, according to the World Bank. The initiative aims to spur economic development, promote education, and curtail criminal activity and human trafficking.
In Washington, it was an important win for the general. He felt the administration had largely ignored many of his assessments about threats facing the U.S. that emanate from Latin America. Just days after the White House announced its support for the alliance, in mid-March 2015, Kelly appeared on Capitol Hill to offer his annual overview of Southern Command’s budgetary needs. With his tenure about to expire, he used the opportunity — “my third and likely final year in command,” he told lawmakers — to highlight in stark terms what he considered the American government’s dangerous underestimation of the threat posed by what he branded “transnational organized crime.”
“Unless confronted by an immediate, visible, or uncomfortable crisis our nation’s tendency is to take the security of the Western Hemisphere for granted,” the general wrote in prepared remarks for the Senate Armed Services Committee. “I believe this is a mistake.”
The smuggling routes used by drug cartels and other criminal elements active in Latin America are ripe targets for international terror groups — specifically the Islamic State, Kelly warned Congress, citing online message traffic calling for ISIS adherents to seek entry into the U.S. via its southern border. “Southern Command has accepted risk for so long in this region that we now face a near-total lack of awareness of threats and the readiness to respond, should those threats reach crisis levels.”
He’d issued a similar warning to Congress the year prior.
A WALL ALONE WON’T SOLVE THE PROBLEM
Beyond his call to build a wall, Trump has promised to impose an aggressive crackdown on illegal immigration. When asked about those plans earlier this year, Kelly told Military Times that while he supports enhanced border security, that alone won’t address the underlying reasons people flee Latin America en masse.
“I think you have to have — we have a right to protect our borders, whether they’re seaward, coastlines, or land borders,” Kelly said. “We have a right to do that. Every country has a right to do that. Obviously, some form of control whether it’s a wall or a fence. But if the countries where these migrants come from have reasonable levels of violence and reasonable levels of economic opportunity, then the people won’t leave to come here.”
Military Times
‘Hypocrisy’ of legalizing pot undermines America’s war on hard-core drugs, general says
In his final statement to Congress as the head of Southern Command, Kelly addressed the role of human-rights education and training, calling it essential to U.S. objectives not only in Latin America but wherever America seeks to gain influence. Governments should be accountable to their citizens, he said.
While at Southern Command, Kelly also leveraged America’s military, diplomatic and intelligence assets to encourage impoverished or otherwise unstable nations in the region to provide better security and opportunity for their populaces. A big focus has been on teaching foreign militaries and law enforcement how to counter the powerful, wealthy drug cartels that perpetuate violence and drive people from their communities.
For that reason Kelly is fiercely opposed to illegal and recreational use of drugs, though he makes some exception where there is emerging evidence to suggest medical benefits may exist. Notably, marijuana has shown some promise in mitigating the anxiety some military personnel face as a result of post traumatic stress. Kelly is OK with that. But he opposes widespread legalization of pot, saying it undermines efforts to curtail the distribution of hardcore drugs like heroin, methamphetamine and cocaine.
^{Video by Daniel Woolfolk/Staff}
“The solution there,” Kelly said, “is for Americans to stop using drugs. Now, you’re never going to go to zero, but we’ve got great programs to convince Americans not to do things — or to do things. We’ve got great anti-smoking programs. I think when I was a kid a pack of cigarettes was 25 or 30 cents, and 70 percent of Americans smoked. Now I think it’s 23 percent and, of course, it costs you a million dollars to buy cigarettes. Years ago, people didn’t wear seatbelts. Now most people wouldn’t get in a car without putting a seatbelt on.
“We know how to influence people. I just don’t think we have any kind of a drug-cessation program to speak of. Consequently, the drugs are imported and consumed. I think if Americans understood that doing a little blow on the weekend — on a college campus or here on Capitol Hill — isn’t harmless, if they understood what it’s doing to Honduras or El Salvador, or what it was doing to Colombia, I think they’d responsibly realize that this is not a good thing.”
‘TRUTH TO POWER’
Kelly is a Boston native who speaks with a thick, tough-guy New England accent. He’s a very close friend of Marine Corps Gen. Joseph Dunford, whom Obama made chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 2015. Kelly is well regarded throughout the military’s officer and enlisted ranks, where he spent two years in the early 1970s before leaving as a sergeant to attend college and earn a commission.
Coincidentally, his first military deployment was to Guantanamo Bay. He was a 20-year-old enlisted infantryman in 1971. And then, as now, all new personnel arriving on the island are given a briefing about the wildlife there, he recalled. Notably, everyone is told “don’t screw with the iguanas,” the general said, grinning as he thought back to another Marine in his unit, a rough-hewn corporal from West Virginia who captured one of the the reptiles anyway — and then proceeded to butcher and cook it.
During his final trip to Cuba, in 2015, Kelly shared Thanksgiving dinner with the troops who manage Guantanamo’s day-to-day operations, personnel under endless scrutiny from human-rights advocates and other watchdogs who oppose the facility’s existence and remain skeptical of the detainees’ treatment there after revelations that many were subjected to vicious interrogation methods both at Guantanamo and at CIA-run “black sites” overseas. In his discussions with Military Times, Kelly touted those troops’ professionalism, saying everyone held at the prison is well cared for and treated “humanely.”
The source close to Kelly said he built “extraordinary relationships” with the human rights groups who monitor the prison, that this was such an intense focus of the general’s that he brought all of his subordinates at Southern Command to the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. “And he told them ‘this is what happens when you abuse your power,’” the source said.
Today, 60 suspects remain at Guantanamo Bay, and Trump has indicated he may look to expand the facility. Hunter, the congressman, said that Kelly understands “the value of Guantanamo,” and that because of him, Congress successfully blocked Obama’s efforts to close it.
“We’re in Iraq and Syria and Afghanistan. We’re not bringing anybody home to Guantanamo, right? We don’t have prisons anymore where we can interrogate people. What are we doing with the people that we’re capturing now?” Hunter said “… These guys are making IEDs. They’re killing Americans. They’re killing our allies. Yet there’s nothing we can do with them. Guantanamo was the perfect place for that. Kelly understands that Guantanamo is a necessary thing for the type of war that we’re fighting right now. And he talked about it.”
By the time Kelly retired, his relationship with the administration had become so strained that in the weeks before the general signed off at Southern Command, multiple White House officials accused him and other military leaders of actively undermining efforts to close Guantanamo. Kelly disputed those claims while the White House, at least publicly, sought to distance itself from them. But those closest to him see the episode as evidence that the president neither valued nor benefited from such unvarnished advice.
Gen. John F. Kelly and Defense Secretary Ash Carter listen to remarks during the U.S. Southern Command change of command ceremony at SOUTHCOM headquarters in Doral, Fla., Jan. 14, 2016. Photo Credit: EJ Hersom/DoD
Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, for whom Kelly worked as a senior military adviser in 2011, told Military Times that the general’s candidness was an asset at the Pentagon. The pair worked together for about four months, from the first days after Kelly’s son was killed, through the Navy SEAL raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan and early implementation of several budgetary moves designed to rein in wartime spending.
In recalling the bin Laden operation, Gates said that Kelly, then a three-star general, played a subtle but key role arranging an important 11th-hour meeting between the secretary and Mike Vickers and Michèle Flournoy, then the department’s top executives for intelligence and policy. That was “an otherwise very busy day,” said Gates, who’d had reservations about sending the SEALs into the compound in Pakistan where bin Laden was hiding.
He worried there would be grave consequences if the mission failed, and preferred instead to let an airstrike do the job. Vickers and Flournoy made “one last effort to persuade me to support the raid, and they were successful,” he said. “I called the national security adviser [Tom Donilon] and told him to tell the president that I was completely on board. John [Kelly] played a key role in making sure those folks got into my office at that time to make their case.”
Kelly, Gates recalled, always tried to be constructive, never hesitating to offer his opinion if he felt people were not leaning forward. “Or, in the event of a military operation or initiative, if he thought the constraints were too great or that it was ill conceived,” he said. “He wasn’t afraid to speak his mind to civilian superiors. Always respectfully. And always prepared to move on whatever the decision.”
Obama chose Kelly for the Southern Command job in 2012. It was a prestigious assignment, and a good fit. As a one- and two-star combat commander in Iraq, Kelly was integral to what became known as the Anbar Awakening. The movement succeeded, for a time, in curtailing the sectarian bloodshed that had gripped the country since Saddam Hussein’s fall in 2003, bringing with it the tenuous prospect of stability as Sunni militias fought alongside forces fielded by the Shiite-led government to flush al-Qaida from key cities such as Ramadi and Fallujah.
In many ways, it was the success of Kelly and others in managing that fragile alliance which enabled Obama to make good on his campaign pledge to end the U.S. occupation of Iraq.
U.S. Marine Maj. Gen John Kelly, the top U.S. commander in Anbar Province, left, and Anbar Governor Maamoun Sami Rashid, center, sign papers during a handover ceremony at the government headquarters in Ramadi, capital of Anbar province, in Iraq on Monday, Sept. 1, 2008. Photo Credit: Wathiq Khuzaie/AP
As a three-star general, Kelly led the Marine Corps Reserve while simultaneously overseeing the service’s element within U.S. Northern Command, which coordinates with other federal agencies to monitor potential threats against the homeland. NORTHCOM also tracks criminal activity in Mexico, whose military, with U.S. advisement, continues to fight the powerful drug cartels responsible for fueling violence throughout the region. He also served as the senior military adviser to Gates’ successor as defense secretary, Leon Panetta. And with multiple prior assignments that brought him through Washington, dating back to the 1980s, Kelly had developed a keen understanding of Congress and the dynamics (and theatrics) that define political life inside the Beltway, a skill that complemented his demonstrated strategic abilities.
Once at SOUTHCOM, it wasn’t long before Kelly took aim at the national security issues central to that part of the world. His tenure there coincided with steep federal spending cuts that threatened to hinder his command’s focus on drug interdiction and specialized military training for indigenous security forces battling the drug trade in places such as Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. The immigration crisis that peaked in 2014, when tens of thousands of women and children streamed to the U.S.-Mexico border, was the direct result of the surge in drug-related violence gripping Central America, Kelly told Congress at the time. And Americans’ demand for those drugs was to blame, he said.
Moreover, the general had warned, the network those individuals leveraged to pay their way north presented a legitimate national security threat. He was asked about this during his annual testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Kelly gave a straightforward response. It made headlines. And the administration wasn’t happy about it.
“We had defined the fact that hundreds of tons of cocaine make it across the southwest border,” Kelly said in recalling the hearing. “And then another line of questioning. All of the heroin consumed in the United States makes it across the southwest border. The methamphetamine produced in Mexico makes its way across the southwest border. There were 70,000 unaccompanied children who’d come across the border in the previous several months. You get the point. And Senator Lindsey Graham said to me, once we’d established all of the facts, ‘would you say that the southwest border is secure?’ You know, what are you going to say? I said no, I don’t believe it is secure. And anything that wants to get in can get it. They just have to pay the fare. Well, that didn’t go over well.”
But Kelly proved to be on point. He told the armed services committee that a small but growing number of radicalized Muslims from countries in the the Caribbean and South America had gone to wage jihad in the Middle East alongside the Islamic State group. And when they return, the general warned, there’s little that would stop them from coming north to kill Americans.
“Boy,” Kelly said, “Washington didn’t like that one either. But it’s funny, a year later, everyone acknowledges that there is an ISIS, radical Muslim threat in the Caribbean.”
It’s a sensitive issue with Obama. Republican lawmakers and presidential hopefuls have assailed the president for initially downplaying the threat posed by ISIS while being slow to articulate how he intends to stop the spread of the group’s ideology. Indeed, it was only after last November’s terror attack in Paris that the administration began to ramp up the military component of its counter-ISIS strategy, which coincided with a robust marketing campaign aimed at reassuring the American public that federal, state and local authorities were working nonstop to prevent a Paris-style attack inside the United States.
Heading into the 2015 Thanksgiving weekend, as Kelly flew to Guantanamo Bay one final time, Obama, flanked by members of his national security team, gave a six-minute televised address to the nation. He highlighted the 8,000-plus airstrikes that U.S. warplanes had conducted to that point on ISIS positions inside Iraq and Syria, alluding to concurrent efforts targeting the group’s finances and recruiting efforts, and plans to intensify the air campaign.
“Right now,” the president said, “we know of no specific and credible intelligence indicating a plot on the homeland.” Exactly one week later, Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik killed 14 people in San Bernardino, California. The married couple had sworn allegiance to the Islamic State, but authorities concluded they had acted as lone wolves, saying there was no intelligence that would’ve tipped them to the attack. It rattled a nation already on edge, and eroded many Americans’ confidence in what their leaders were telling them.
Today, although ISIS has been significantly degraded in Iraq and Syria, the group remains a serious threat as its ethos spreads to other parts of the world.
Kelly acknowledged that his final years in uniform were the most difficult to navigate. As he sees it, providing honest advice to those who run the government is a fundamental responsibility of someone in his position. While rising through the ranks, “the one thing I was always told is you absolutely have to tell truth to power,” the general said. “Whether you’re a second lieutenant working with a captain and a lieutenant colonel, or a four-star general working with the Office Secretary of Defense and the White House, the decision makers have got to have ground truth. Otherwise, the decisions they make could be flawed — and that can be dangerous.
“I’ve learned that, in many cases, people say ‘I want ground truth’ and they don’t really mean it. There are warts all over this organization, as there are in many organizations, but you just have to tell truth to power and let the chips fall where they may. I know a lot of people may read that, if you put it in your story, and say ‘easy for him; he’s a four-star.’ But I would say some of the most challenging periods in my life, as a Marine officer, have been fairly recently, where you get into that civilian-military thing and the truth is not always welcome. It can cause some heartburn when you get a call from certain people in Washington who say ‘it’s probably not a good idea to go down that road anymore.’ But I say ‘hey, that’s the truth. I’m at a congressional hearing, and they asked me a question. What am I going to do, lie?'”

PEARL HARBOR: HAWAII WAS SURPRISED; FDR WAS NOT

PEARL HARBOR: HAWAII WAS SURPRISED; 

FDR WAS NOT 

BY JAMES PERLOFF

SEE: http://www.thenewamerican.com/culture/history/item/4740-pearl-harbor-hawaii-was-surprised-fdr-was-not; 

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:

On Sunday, December 7, 1941, Japan launched a sneak attack on the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, shattering the peace of a beautiful Hawaiian morning and leaving much of the fleet broken and burning. The destruction and death that the Japanese military visited upon Pearl Harbor that day — 18 naval vessels (including eight battleships) sunk or heavily damaged, 188 planes destroyed, over 2,000 servicemen killed — were exacerbated by the fact that American commanders in Hawaii were caught by surprise. But that was not the case in Washington.
Comprehensive research has shown not only that Washington knew in advance of the attack, but that it deliberately withheld its foreknowledge from our commanders in Hawaii in the hope that the "surprise" attack would catapult the U.S. into World War II. Oliver Lyttleton, British Minister of Production, stated in 1944: "Japan was provoked into attacking America at Pearl Harbor. It is a travesty of history to say that America was forced into the war."

Although FDR desired to directly involve the United States in the Second World War, his intentions sharply contradicted his public pronouncements. A pre-war Gallup poll showed 88 percent of Americans opposed U.S. involvement in the European war. Citizens realized that U.S. participation in World War I had not made a better world, and in a 1940 (election-year) speech, Roosevelt typically stated: "I have said this before, but I shall say it again and again and again: Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars."
But privately, the president planned the opposite. Roosevelt dispatched his closest advisor, Harry Hopkins, to meet British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in January 1941. Hopkins told Churchill: "The President is determined that we [the United States and England] shall win the war together. Make no mistake about it. He has sent me here to tell you that at all costs and by all means he will carry you through, no matter what happens to him — there is nothing he will not do so far as he has human power." William Stevenson noted in A Man Called Intrepid that American-British military staff talks began that same month under "utmost secrecy," which, he clarified, "meant preventing disclosure to the American public." Even Robert Sherwood, the president's friendly biographer, said: "If the isolationists had known the full extent of the secret alliance between the United States and Britain, their demands for impeachment would have rumbled like thunder throughout the land."
Background to Betrayal
Roosevelt's intentions were nearly exposed in 1940 when Tyler Kent, a code clerk at the U.S. embassy in London, discovered secret dispatches between Roosevelt and Churchill. These revealed that FDR — despite contrary campaign promises — was determined to engage America in the war. Kent smuggled some of the documents out of the embassy, hoping to alert the American public — but was caught. With U.S. government approval, he was tried in a secret British court and confined to a British prison until the war's end.
During World War II's early days, the president offered numerous provocations to Germany: freezing its assets; shipping 50 destroyers to Britain; and depth-charging U-boats. The Germans did not retaliate, however. They knew America's entry into World War I had shifted the balance of power against them, and they shunned a repeat of that scenario. FDR therefore switched his focus to Japan. Japan had signed a mutual defense pact with Germany and Italy (the Tripartite Treaty). Roosevelt knew that if Japan went to war with the United States, Germany and Italy would be compelled to declare war on America — thus entangling us in the European conflict by the back door. As Harold Ickes, secretary of the Interior, said in October 1941: "For a long time I have believed that our best entrance into the war would be by way of Japan."
Much new light has been shed on Pearl Harbor through the recent work of Robert B. Stinnett, a World War II Navy veteran. Stinnett has obtained numerous relevant documents through the Freedom of Information Act. In Day of Deceit: The Truth about FDR and Pearl Harbor (2000), the book so brusquely dismissed by director Bruckheimer, Stinnett reveals that Roosevelt's plan to provoke Japan began with a memorandum from Lieutenant Commander Arthur H. McCollum, head of the Far East desk of the Office of Naval Intelligence. The memorandum advocated eight actions predicted to lead Japan into attacking the United States. McCollum wrote: "If by these means Japan could be led to commit an overt act of war, so much the better." FDR enacted all eight of McCollum's provocative steps — and more.
While no one can excuse Japan's belligerence in those days, it is also true that our government provoked that country in various ways — freezing her assets in America; closing the Panama Canal to her shipping; progressively halting vital exports to Japan until we finally joined Britain in an all-out embargo; sending a hostile note to the Japanese ambassador implying military threats if Tokyo did not alter its Pacific policies; and on November 26th — just 11 days before the Japanese attack — delivering an ultimatum that demanded, as prerequisites to resumed trade, that Japan withdraw all troops from China and Indochina, and in effect abrogate her Tripartite Treaty with Germany and Italy.
After meeting with President Roosevelt on October 16, 1941, Secretary of War Henry Stimson wrote in his diary: "We face the delicate question of the diplomatic fencing to be done so as to be sure Japan is put into the wrong and makes the first bad move — overt move." On November 25, the day before the ultimatum was sent to Japan's ambassadors, Stimson wrote in his diary: "The question was how we should maneuver them [the Japanese] into the position of firing the first shot...."
The bait offered Japan was our Pacific Fleet. In 1940, Admiral J.O. Richardson, the fleet's commander, flew to Washington to protest FDR's decision to permanently base the fleet in Hawaii instead of its normal berthing on the U.S. West Coast. The admiral had sound reasons: Pearl Harbor was vulnerable to attack, being approachable from any direction; it could not be effectively rigged with nets and baffles to defend against torpedo planes; and in Hawaii it would be hard to supply and train crews for his undermanned vessels. Pearl Harbor also lacked adequate fuel supplies and dry docks, and keeping men far from their families would create morale problems. The argument became heated. Said Richardson: "I came away with the impression that, despite his spoken word, the President was fully determined to put the United States into the war if Great Britain could hold out until he was reelected."
Richardson was quickly relieved of command. Replacing him was Admiral Husband E. Kimmel. Kimmel also informed Roosevelt of Pearl Harbor's deficiencies, but accepted placement there, trusting that Washington would notify him of any intelligence pointing to attack. This proved to be misplaced trust. As Washington watched Japan preparing to assault Pearl Harbor, Admiral Kimmel, as well as his Army counterpart in Hawaii, General Walter C. Short, were completely sealed off from the information pipeline.
Prior Knowledge
One of the most important elements in America's foreknowledge of Japan's intentions was our government's success in cracking Japan's secret diplomatic code known as "Purple." Tokyo used it to communicate to its embassies and consulates, including those in Washington and Hawaii. The code was so complex that it was enciphered and deciphered by machine. A talented group of American cryptoanalysts broke the code in 1940 and devised a facsimile of the Japanese machine. These, utilized by the intelligence sections of both the War and Navy departments, swiftly revealed Japan's diplomatic messages. The deciphered texts were nicknamed "Magic."
Copies of Magic were always promptly delivered in locked pouches to President Roosevelt, and the secretaries of State, War, and Navy. They also went to Army Chief of Staff General George Marshall and to the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Harold Stark. However, although three Purple decoding machines were allotted to Britain, none was sent to Pearl Harbor. Intercepts of ciphered messages radioed between Tokyo and its Honolulu consulate had to be forwarded to Washington for decrypting. Thus Kimmel and Short, the Hawaiian commanders, were at the mercy of Washington for feedback. A request for their own decoding machine was rebuffed on the grounds that diplomatic traffic was of insufficient interest to soldiers.
How untrue that was! On October 9, 1941, the War Department decoded a Tokyo-to-Honolulu dispatch instructing the Consul General to divide Pearl Harbor into five specified areas and to report the exact locations of American ships therein.
There is nothing unusual about spies watching ship movements — but reporting precise whereabouts of ships in dock has only one implication. Charles Willoughby, Douglas MacArthur's chief of intelligence, later wrote that the "reports were on a grid system of the inner harbor with coordinate locations of American men of war ... coordinate grid is the classical method for pinpoint target designation; our battleships had suddenly become targets." This information was never sent to Kimmel or Short.
Additional intercepts were decoded by Washington, all within one day of their original transmission:
• November 5th: Tokyo notified its Washington ambassadors that November 25th was the deadline for an agreement with the U.S.
• November 11th: They were warned, "The situation is nearing a climax, and the time is getting short."
• November 16th: The deadline was pushed up to November 29th. "The deadline absolutely cannot be changed," the dispatch said. "After that, things are automatically going to happen."
• November 29th (the U.S. ultimatum had now been received): The ambassadors were told a rupture in negotiations was "inevitable," but that Japan's leaders "do not wish you to give the impression that negotiations are broken off."
• November 30th: Tokyo ordered its Berlin embassy to inform the Germans that "the breaking out of war may come quicker than anyone dreams."
• December 1st: The deadline was again moved ahead. "[T]o prevent the United States from becoming unduly suspicious, we have been advising the press and others that ... the negotiations are continuing."
• December 1st-2nd: The Japanese embassies in non-Axis nations around the world were directed to dispose of their secret documents and all but one copy of their codes. (This was for a reason easy to fathom — when war breaks out, the diplomatic offices of a hostile state lose their immunity and are normally overtaken. One copy of code was retained so that final instructions could be received, after which the last code copy would be destroyed.)
An additional warning came via the so-called "winds" message. A November 18th intercept indicated that, if a break in U.S. relations were forthcoming, Tokyo would issue a special radio warning. This would not be in the Purple code, as it was intended to reach consulates and lesser agencies of Japan not equipped with the code or one of its machines. The message, to be repeated three times during a weather report, was "Higashi no kaze ame," meaning "East wind, rain." "East wind" signified the United States; "rain" signified diplomatic split — in effect, war.
This prospective message was deemed so significant that U.S. radio monitors were constantly watching for it, and the Navy Department typed it up on special reminder cards. On December 4th, "Higashi no kaze ame" was indeed broadcast and picked up by Washington intelligence.
On three different occasions since 1894, Japan had made surprise attacks coinciding with breaks in diplomatic relations. This history was not lost on President Roosevelt. Secretary Stimson, describing FDR's White House conference of November 25th, noted: "The President said the Japanese were notorious for making an attack without warning and stated that we might be attacked, say next Monday, for example." Nor was it lost on Washington's senior military officers, all of them War College graduates.
As Robert Stinnett has revealed, Washington was not only deciphering Japanese diplomatic messages, but naval dispatches as well. President Roosevelt had access to these intercepts via his routing officer, Lieutenant Commander McCollum, who had authored the original eight-point plan of provocation to Japan. So much secrecy has surrounded these naval dispatches that their existence was not revealed during any of the ten Pearl Harbor investigations, even the mini-probe Congress conducted in 1995. Most of Stinnett's requests for documents concerning Pearl Harbor have been denied as still classified, even under the Freedom of Information Act.
It was long presumed that as the Japanese fleet approached Pearl Harbor, it maintained complete radio silence. This is untrue. The fleet barely observed discretion, let alone silence. Naval intelligence intercepted and translated numerous dispatches, some clearly revealing that Pearl Harbor had been targeted. The most significant was the following, sent by Admiral Yamamoto to the Japanese First Air Fleet on November 26, 1941:

The task force, keeping its movement strictly secret and maintaining close guard against submarines and aircraft, shall advance into Hawaiian waters, and upon the very opening of hostilities shall attack the main force of the United States fleet and deal it a mortal blow. The first air raid is planned for the dawn of x-day. Exact date to be given by later order.

So much official secrecy continues to surround the translations of the intercepted Japanese naval dispatches that it is not known if the foregoing message was sent to McCollum or seen by FDR. It is not even known who originally translated the intercept. One thing, however, is certain: The message's significance could not have been lost on the translator.
1941 also witnessed the following:
On January 27th, our ambassador to Japan, Joseph Grew, sent a message to Washington stating: "The Peruvian Minister has informed a member of my staff that he has heard from many sources, including a Japanese source, that in the event of trouble breaking out between the United States and Japan, the Japanese intended to make a surprise attack against Pearl Harbor with all their strength...."
On November 3rd, still relying on informants, Grew notified Secretary of State Cordell Hull: "War with the United States may come with dramatic and dangerous suddenness." He sent an even stronger warning on November 17th.
Congressman Martin Dies would write:

Early in 1941 the Dies Committee came into possession of a strategic map which gave clear proof of the intentions of the Japanese to make an assault on Pearl Harbor. The strategic map was prepared by the Japanese Imperial Military Intelligence Department. As soon as I received the document I telephoned Secretary of State Cordell Hull and told him what I had. Secretary Hull directed me not to let anyone know about the map and stated that he would call me as soon as he talked to President Roosevelt. In about an hour he telephoned to say that he had talked to Roosevelt and they agreed that it would be very serious if any information concerning this map reached the news services.... I told him it was a grave responsibility to withhold such vital information from the public. The Secretary assured me that he and Roosevelt considered it essential to national defense.

Dusko Popov was a Yugoslav who worked as a double agent for both Germany and Britain. His true allegiance was to the Allies. In the summer of 1941, the Nazis ordered Popov to Hawaii to make a detailed study of Pearl Harbor and its nearby airfields. The agent deduced that the mission betokened a surprise attack by the Japanese. In August, he fully reported this to the FBI in New York. J. Edgar Hoover later bitterly recalled that he had provided warnings to FDR about Pearl Harbor, but that Roosevelt told him not to pass the information any further and to just leave it in his (the president's) hands.
Kilsoo Haan, of the Sino-Korean People's League, received definite word from the Korean underground that the Japanese were planning to assault Hawaii "before Christmas." In November, after getting nowhere with the State Department, Haan convinced Iowa Senator Guy Gillette of his claim's merit. Gillette briefed the president, who laconically thanked him and said it would be looked into.
In Java, in early December, the Dutch Army decoded a dispatch from Tokyo to its Bangkok embassy, forecasting attacks on four sites including Hawaii. The Dutch passed the information to Brigadier General Elliot Thorpe, the U.S. military observer. Thorpe sent Washington a total of four warnings. The last went to General Marshall's intelligence chief. Thorpe was ordered to send no further messages concerning the matter. The Dutch also had their Washington military attaché, Colonel Weijerman, personally warn General Marshall.
Captain Johann Ranneft, the Dutch naval attaché in Washington, who was awarded the Legion of Merit for his services to America, recorded revealing details in his diary. On December 2nd, he visited the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI). Ranneft inquired about the Pacific. An American officer, pointing to a wall map, said, "This is the Japanese Task Force proceeding East." It was a spot midway between Japan and Hawaii. On December 6th, Ranneft returned and asked where the Japanese carriers were. He was shown a position on the map about 300-400 miles northwest of Pearl Harbor. Ranneft wrote: "I ask what is the meaning of these carriers at this location; whereupon I receive the answer that it is probably in connection with Japanese reports of eventual American action.... I myself do not think about it because I believe that everyone in Honolulu is 100 percent on the alert, just like everyone here at O.N.I."
On November 29th, Secretary of State Cordell Hull secretly met with freelance newspaper writer Joseph Leib. Leib had formerly held several posts in the Roosevelt administration. Hull knew him and felt he was one newsman he could trust. The secretary of state handed him copies of some of the Tokyo intercepts concerning Pearl Harbor. He said the Japanese were planning to strike the base and that FDR planned to let it happen. Hull made Leib pledge to keep his name out of it, but hoped he could blow the story sky-high in the newspapers.
Leib ran to the office of his friend Lyle Wilson, the Washington bureau chief of United Press. While keeping his pledge to Hull, he told Wilson the details and showed him the intercepts. Wilson replied that the story was ludicrous and refused to run it. Through connections, Leib managed to get a hurried version onto UP's foreign cable, but only one newspaper carried any part of it.
After Pearl Harbor, Lyle Wilson called Leib to his office. He handed him a copy of FDR's just-released "day of infamy" speech. The two men wept. Leib recounted his story in the History Channel documentary, "Sacrifice at Pearl Harbor."
The foregoing represents just a sampling of evidence that Washington knew in advance of the Pearl Harbor attack. For additional evidences, see Infamy: Pearl Harbor and Its Aftermath by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian John Toland, and Day of Deceit: The Truth about FDR and Pearl Harbor by Robert Stinnett.* So certain was the data that, at a private press briefing in November 1941, General George Marshall confidently predicted that a Japanese-American war would break out during the "first ten days of December."
However, none of this information was passed to our commanders in Hawaii, Kimmel and Short, with the exception of Ambassador Grew's January warning, a copy of which reached Kimmel on February 1st. To allay any concerns, Lieutenant Commander McCollum — who originated the plan to incite Japan to war — wrote Kimmel: "Naval Intelligence places no credence in these rumors. Furthermore, based on known data regarding the present disposition and deployment of Japanese naval and army forces, no move against Pearl Harbor appears imminent or planned for in the foreseeable future."
Sitting Ducks
To ensure a successful Japanese attack — one that would enrage America into joining the war — it was vital to keep Kimmel and Short out of the intelligence loop. However, Washington did far more than this to facilitate the Japanese assault.
On November 25th, approximately one hour after the Japanese attack force left port for Hawaii, the U.S. Navy issued an order forbidding U.S. and Allied shipping to travel via the North Pacific. All transpacific shipping was rerouted through the South Pacific. This order was even applied to Russian ships docked on the American west coast. The purpose is easy to fathom. If any commercial ship accidentally stumbled on the Japanese task force, it might alert Pearl Harbor. As Rear Admiral Richmond K. Turner, the Navy's War Plans officer in 1941, frankly stated: "We were prepared to divert traffic when we believed war was imminent. We sent the traffic down via the Torres Strait, so that the track of the Japanese task force would be clear of any traffic."
The Hawaiian commanders have traditionally been censured for failing to detect the approaching Japanese carriers. What goes unsaid is that Washington denied them the means to do so. An army marching overland toward a target is easily spotted. But Hawaii is in the middle of the ocean. Its approaches are limitless and uninhabited. During the week before December 7th, naval aircraft searched more than two million square miles of the Pacific — but never saw the Japanese force. This is because Kimmel and Short had only enough planes to survey one-third of the 360-degree arc around them, and intelligence had advised (incorrectly) that they should concentrate on the Southwest.
Radar, too, was insufficient. There were not enough trained surveillance pilots. Many of the reconnaissance craft were old and suffered from a lack of spare parts. The commanders' repeated requests to Washington for additional patrol planes were turned down. Rear Admiral Edward T. Layton, who served at Pearl Harbor, summed it up in his book And I Was There: "There was never any hint in any intelligence received by the local command of any Japanese threat to Hawaii. Our air defenses were stripped on orders from the army chief himself. Of the twelve B-17s on the island, only six could be kept in the air by cannibalizing the others for spare parts."
The Navy has traditionally followed the rule that, when international relations are critical, the fleet puts to sea. That is exactly what Admiral Kimmel did. Aware that U.S.-Japanese relations were deteriorating, he sent 46 warships safely into the North Pacific in late November 1941 — without notifying Washington. He even ordered the fleet to conduct a mock air raid on Pearl Harbor, clairvoyantly selecting the same launch site Admiral Yamamoto chose two weeks later.
When the White House learned of Kimmel's move it countermanded his orders and ordered all ships returned to dock, using the dubious excuse that Kimmel's action might provoke the Japanese. Washington knew that if the two fleets met at sea, and engaged each other, there might be questions about who fired the first shot.
Kimmel did not give up, however. With the exercise canceled, his carrier chief, Vice Admiral William "Bull" Halsey, issued plans for a 25-ship task force to guard against an "enemy air and submarine attack" on Pearl Harbor. The plan never went into effect. On November 26th, Admiral Stark, Washington's Chief of Naval Operations, ordered Halsey to use his carriers to transport fighter planes to Wake and Midway islands — further depleting Pearl Harbor's air defenses.
It was clear, of course, that once disaster struck Pearl Harbor, there would be demands for accountability. Washington seemed to artfully take this into account by sending an ambiguous "war warning" to Kimmel, and a similar one to Short, on November 27th. This has been used for years by Washington apologists to allege that the commanders should have been ready for the Japanese.
Indeed, the message began conspicuously: "This dispatch is to be considered a war warning." But it went on to state: "The number and equipment of Japanese troops and the organizations of naval task forces indicates an amphibious expedition against the Philippines, Thai or Kra Peninsula, or possibly Borneo." None of these areas was closer than 5,000 miles to Hawaii! No threat to Pearl Harbor was hinted at. It ended with the words: "Continental districts, Guam, Samoa take measures against sabotage." The message further stated that "measures should be carried out so as not repeat not to alarm civil population." Both commanders reported the actions taken to Washington. Short followed through with sabotage precautions, bunching his planes together (which hinders saboteurs but makes ideal targets for bombers), and Kimmel stepped up air surveillance and sub searches. If their response to the "war warning" was insufficient, Washington said nothing. The next day, a follow-up message from Marshall's adjutant general to Short warned only: "Initiate forthwith all additional measures necessary to provide for protection of your establishments, property, and equipment against sabotage, protection of your personnel against subversive propaganda and protection of all activities against espionage."
Thus things stood as Japan prepared to strike. Using the Purple code, Tokyo sent a formal statement to its Washington ambassadors. It was to be conveyed to the American Secretary of State on Sunday, December 7th. The statement terminated relations and was tantamount to a declaration of war. On December 6th, in Washington, the War and Navy departments had already decrypted the first 13 parts of this 14-part message. Although the final passage officially severing ties had not yet come through, the fiery wording made its meaning obvious. Later that day, when Lieutenant Lester Schulz delivered to President Roosevelt his copy of the intercept, Schulz heard FDR say to his advisor, Harry Hopkins, "This means war."
During subsequent Pearl Harbor investigations, both General Marshall, Army Chief of Staff, and Admiral Stark, Chief of Naval Operations, denied any recollection of where they had been on the evening of December 6th — despite Marshall's reputation for a photographic memory. But James G. Stahlman, a close friend of Navy Secretary Frank Knox, said Knox told him FDR convened a high-level meeting at the White House that evening. Knox, Marshall, Stark, and War Secretary Stimson attended. Indeed, with the nation on war's threshold, such a conference only made sense. That same evening, the Navy Department received a request from Stimson for a list of the whereabouts of all ships in the Pacific.
On the morning of December 7th, the final portion of Japan's lengthy message to the U.S. government was decoded. Tokyo added two special directives to its ambassadors. The first directive, which the message called "very important," was to deliver the statement at 1 p.m. The second directive ordered that the last copy of code, and the machine that went with it, be destroyed. The gravity of this was immediately recognized in the Navy Department: Japan had a long history of synchronizing attacks with breaks in relations; Sunday was an abnormal day to deliver diplomatic messages — but the best for trying to catch U.S. armed forces at low vigilance; and 1 p.m. in Washington was shortly after dawn in Hawaii!
Admiral Stark arrived at his office at 9:25 a.m. He was shown the message and the important delivery time. One junior officer pointed out the possibility of an attack on Hawaii; another urged that Kimmel be notified. But Stark refused; he did nothing all morning. Years later, he told the press that his conscience was clear concerning Pearl Harbor because all his actions had been dictated by a "higher authority." As Chief of Naval Operations, Stark had only one higher authority: Roosevelt.
In the War Department, where the 14-part statement had also been decoded, Colonel Rufus Bratton, head of the Army's Far Eastern section, discerned the message's significance. But the chief of intelligence told him nothing could be done until Marshall arrived. Bratton tried reaching Marshall at home, but was repeatedly told the general was out horseback riding. The horseback ride turned out to be a long one. When Bratton finally reached Marshall by phone and told him of the emergency, Marshall said he would come to the War Department. Marshall took 75 minutes to make the 10-minute drive. He didn't come to his office until 11:25 a.m. — an extremely late hour with the nation on the brink of war. He perused the Japanese message and was shown the delivery time. Every officer in Marshall's office agreed these indicated an attack in the Pacific at about 1 p.m. EST. The general finally agreed that Hawaii should be alerted, but time was running out.
Marshall had only to pick up his desk phone to reach Pearl Harbor on the transpacific line. Doing so would not have averted the attack, but at least our men would have been at their battle stations. Instead, the general wrote a dispatch. After it was encoded it went to the Washington office of Western Union. From there it was relayed to San Francisco. From San Francisco it was transmitted via RCA commercial radio to Honolulu. General Short received it six hours after the attack. Two hours later it reached Kimmel. One can imagine their exasperation on reading it.
Despite all the evidence accrued through Magic and other sources during the previous months, Marshall had never warned Hawaii. To historians — ignorant of that classified evidence — it would appear the general had tried to save Pearl Harbor, "but alas, too late." Similarly, FDR sent a last-minute plea for peace to Emperor Hirohito. Although written a week earlier, he did not send it until the evening of December 6th. It was to be delivered by Ambassador Grew, who would be unable to receive an audience with the emperor before December 8th. Thus the message could not conceivably have forestalled the attack — but posterity would think that FDR, too, had made "a valiant, last effort."
The Roberts Commission, assigned to investigate the Japanese attack, consisted of personal cronies of Roosevelt and Marshall. The Commission fully absolved Washington and declared that America was caught off guard due to "dereliction of duty" by Kimmel and Short. The wrath of America for these two was exceeded only by its wrath for Tokyo. To this day, many believe it was negligence by the Hawaii commanders that made the Pearl Harbor disaster possible.
^{* Though a major exposer of the Pearl Harbor conspiracy, Robert Stinnett is sympathetic regarding FDR's motives. He writes in his book: "As a veteran of the Pacific War, I felt a sense of outrage as I uncovered secrets that had been hidden from Americans for more than fifty years. But I understood the agonizing dilemma faced by President Roosevelt. He was forced to find circuitous means to persuade an isolationist America to join in a fight for freedom." In our view, a government that is allowed to operate in such fashion is a government that has embarked on a dangerous, slippery slope toward dictatorship. Nonetheless, Stinnett's position on FDR's motives makes his exposé of FDR's actions all the more compelling.}
This article, slightly revised, originally appeared under the title "Pearl Harbor: The Facts Behind the Fiction" in the June 4, 2001 issue of The New American.
^{Photo at top: AP Images}
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Pearl Harbor: Motives Behind the Betrayal
Pearl Harbor: Scapegoating Kimmel and Short