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

552 Pearl Harbor: The Seeds and Fruits of Infamy
immediately; our armed forces would lose a valuable source of
intelligence; and the fi ghting and killing would be prolonged.
Republican Presidential Candidate
Dewey Silenced
Th e Republican Party had learned that U.S. cryptographers
had deciphered some Japanese codes and had been reading
some Japanese intercepts since before Pearl Harbor. As Research
Director for the National Republican Party in 1944, I learned
that Dewey wanted to make a speech on Pearl Harbor and
Washington’s knowledge of the Japanese intercepts. When Army
Chief of Staff Marshall got wind of this, he considered this matter
of such “a highly secret nature” that he felt compelled to prevent
Dewey from speaking on the subject. On September 25 he
wrote a “Top Secret” letter FOR MR. DEWEY’S EYES ONLY
and had his emissary, Colonel Carter Clarke, hand-deliver it to
Dewey, then on the campaign trail in Oklahoma. 5
Marshall wrote Dewey that he was contacting him “without
the knowledge of any other person except Admiral King (who
concurs) because we are approaching a grave dilemma in the
political reactions of Congress regarding Pearl Harbor.
What I have to tell you below is of such a highly secret nature
that I feel compelled to ask you either to accept it on the basis
of your not communicating its contents to any other person
and returning this letter or not reading any further and returning
the letter to the bearer. 6
5 79th Cong., 1st sess. Joint (Congressional) Committee on the Investigation
of the Pearl Harbor Attack. Pearl Harbor Attack, 39 vols. (Washington, D.C.:
U.S. Government Printing Offi ce, 1946), part 3, pp. 1130, 1133.
6 Ibid., p. 1130.