Pearl Harbor: The Seeds and Fruits of Infamy - Ludwig von Mises ...

Modus Vivendi—Yes? No! 151
by Chiang’s campaign of cables, had tipped the scales against
Japan.
Without consulting his other advisers, Roosevelt authorized
Hull to give the Japanese a ten-point note based on White’s suggestions.
Neither War nor Navy department was notifi ed of this
decision. Both Roosevelt and Hull realized their note would be
unacceptable to the Japanese.
Chiang’s anti-Japanese campaign, orchestrated largely by
three communist sympathizers—White, Lattimore, and Currie,
with Edward C. Carter standing in the wings ready to help if
need be—had paid off . 44
U. S. Note Delivered to Japanese Ambassadors
Th at afternoon, November 26, Hull summoned the two
Japanese ambassadors to his offi ce and handed them the statement
FDR had approved. Section I set forth a number of diplomatic
platitudes. Th e governments of the United States and Japan were
44 Th e Communist affi liations of these several advisers are on the record. Th e
evidence off ered by Whittaker Chambers and Elizabeth Bentley that White
engaged in Soviet espionage was considered “conclusive” by Attorney General
Brownell, “uncontradictable” by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, and “incontrovertible”
by President Eisenhower (Rees, Harry Dexter White, p. 424). After
Lattimore fi nished testifying during the investigation of the Institute for
Pacifi c Relations conducted by the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee,
the Subcommittee reported that Lattimore had been “from some time in the
middle 1930s a conscious, articulate instrument of the Soviet conspiracy”
(Francis X. Gannon, Biographical Dictionary of the Left, Belmont, Mass.:
Western Islands, 1969, consolidated vol. 1., p. 416). On November 8, 1945, FBI
Director J. Edgar Hoover informed President Truman that Currie was “one of
many persons within the federal government who ‘have been furnishing data
and information to persons outside the Federal Government, who are in turn
transmitting this information to agents of the Soviet Government’ ” (Ibid., p.
299). When testifying before the House Committee on Un-American Activities
on July 1, 1948, former Soviet espionage agent Elizabeth Bentley accused
Currie of having “furnished United States government secrets to a Soviet spy
ring” (Ibid., p. 299).