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

Administration Directed Supplementary Investigations 581
aide, who was there also, had brought it to Wilkinson’s attention,
and Wilkinson had shown it to Miles. Miles had been under the
impression that before December 7 the Navy in Hawaii had been
intercepting, decrypting, decoding, and translating Japanese diplomatic
and consular messages. 46
Back in Washington, Clausen met with Marshall. In his affi -
davit Marshall said that when he fi rst appeared before the APHB
on August 7, 1944, he had “informed” the voting members in a
one-hour closed session of “the character of information which
had been derived before 7 December 1941 from Top Secret
sources then called ‘Magic’.” In that brief meeting, Marshall said,
he did not explain the nature of the information gleaned from
these sources except to say that “neither this information nor the
source thereof should be made public because it would result in at
least temporarily, if not permanently, extinguishing that source.”
According to Marshall, it was “not until it developed that the
‘Magic’ papers were being disclosed before the Navy Court of
Inquiry” that Army offi cers concerned with MAGIC had been
“authorized to go into all the details regarding ‘Magic’.” 47
Marshall stated that it had been his “understanding” that
in the period preceding 7 December 1941 . . . the Commanding
General of the Hawaiian Department [Short] was aware of and
was receiving some of this information from facilities available
in his command.
In this Marshall was mistaken. 48 Marshall told Clausen that he
had advised Short by correspondence (February 7 and March 5,
1941) of the
46 Ibid., pp. 101–02.
47 Ibid., pp. 104–05.
48 Ibid.