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

478 Pearl Harbor: The Seeds and Fruits of Infamy
having “looked now for more than six months.” 138 And there was
no way to trace it because “all the station logs unfortunately had
been destroyed sometime during ‘43,” which was “[m]ore or less”
Standard Operating Procedure when a government offi ce moved
or expanded. 139
More important in Grunert’s view than the “Winds Execute”
itself was whether the war eff ort in 1944 would suff er if the
Japanese learned that we had intercepted and deciphered this
message in 1941. Russell described the dilemma:
[T]he Board is debating the eff ect on the war eff ort of a public
disclosure of the contents of the “Winds” message. Assuming
that the Japanese Empire knew that the American Government
was in possession of those facts which are contained in that
“Winds” message, would it . . . cause them to make changes
which would make it more diffi cult for us to obtain Japanese
information now?
When questioned, Bratton had said it would. Saff ord
disagreed.
No, sir, not the “Winds” message or this other so-called hiddenword
or stop-code message. Th e setup for those two was sent
in what they call a low-grade cipher held by all their Consuls.
Everybody was solving that. Th e Dutch solved it, the British
solved it in Singapore, and we solved it ourselves—both of
them—and they must know that we have been reading those
messages, and I believe that that particular system is not in use
any more, anyhow. It is not the high-class machine which is a
literal gold mine at the present time. Th e other stuff it would
be very bad to let public. 140
138Ibid., part 29, pp. 2371–72.
139Ibid., pp. 2368–73.
140Ibid., pp. 2392–93.