Churchill, through Ultra, knew about Japanese plans to attack Pearl Harbor
Actually, the person who had the best knowledge of what was going to happen was, surprise, surprise, J Edger Hoover! Hoover interviewed the double agent, Dusko Popov, during the summer of 1941, who told him that the Germans had taken the Japanese to the Italian port of Taranto, Italy so that they could inspect how the British had destroyed the Italian Fleet there with torpedo bombers from a British Aircraft Carrier.
The Germans had also given Popov a questionnaire to fill out while in Honolulu, giving as many details as possible on Pearl Harbor. Hoover hated Popov, who was a "Eurotrash" playboy. He did not pass on the info, and ordered Popov out of the country to Brazil.
Churchill certainly had no interest in seeing the US get into a war with Japan, and was manipulating the Intel info he was giving Roosevelt, (Including phony maps of German plans to invade South America), but he had no more signal intelligence on the Pacific than Roosevelt did. His "Ultra" on the Japanese Ambassador did not have the info, and as late as Nov of '41, his best intel was that the Japanese were going to hit Thailand.
I am up on this because I am reading a new book, "Roosevelt's Secret War," that covers everything now known. What happened at Pearl is so much like what happened at 911 that it is scary. We had the details, but nobody put it together, and everybody was too arrogant to believe they could do it. We keep repeating the same mistakes over and over. |
