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

562 Pearl Harbor: The Seeds and Fruits of Infamy
is wicked; this is wicked.” FDR then read Stimson’s paper and
praised it. But “he still adhered to his view that the safer plan was
to follow as nearly as possible the Forrestal method.” We must
“take every step” against Congress getting hold of the papers and
the facts. We “must refuse to make the reports public,” he said.
[T]hey should be sealed up and our opinions put in with them
and then a notice made that they should only be opened on a
Joint Resolution of both Houses of Congress approved by the
president after the war.
Th is resolution, FDR said, should say that that was “in the public
interest.” 44
In spite of the fact that no news release concerning the Navy
court’s conclusions had as yet been issued, the New York Times
of November 26, 1944, reported that the Army and Navy Journal
had
suggested [that] as a result of the recent [Naval] Court of
Inquiry, Rear Admiral Husband E. Kimmel might never be
court-martialled for the Pearl Harbor disaster and that his Army
associate at Hawaii, Maj. Gen. Short, would be vindicated.
Th e Times quoted the Journal as saying:
Th ere will be no court-martial for Admiral Kimmel. . . . under
the fi ndings of the Court of Inquiry headed by Admiral
Murfi n, according to gossip in well-informed Washington
circles. . . . As to the Army Board, which simultaneously investigated
the disaster, it also is said to support the fi ndings of
the Roberts Board in the matter of the failure of offi cers of
the War Department to comment to General Short upon the
measures he had reported he took to guard the base in accordance
with the instructions given him. . . . In the unlikely case
44 Ibid., p. 40.