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

Administration Directed Supplementary Investigations 597
message in the offi cial fi les of OP-20-G had been fruitless.” 96
Months later, somebody higher up in the War Department—
perhaps General Bissell—“directed that a search be made through
our fi les at Signal Security Agency to see if we could locate such
a Winds execute message, and that was fruitless.” 97 Yet Saff ord
was “quite convinced that dissemination had been made to the
Army, if not to the Signal Intelligence Service then to some body
in G-2.” Saff ord could not explain this “mysterious disappearance
. . . of all copies of the Winds execute message,” especially as copies
of all the Japanese intercepts were supposed to have been held
in tight security in both Army and Navy permanent fi les. Th is
“mysterious disappearance” was naturally also
of extreme interest to me, and some time after my fi rst or possibly
second, conversation with Capt. Saff ord, I learned of the
return to Washington for duty of Colonel Sadtler. We were
old friends. . . . Shortly after he came back he came over to my
offi ce one day—and I don’t know whether he had specifi cally
in mind to talk about Pearl Harbor—he may have—but at any
rate in the course of our reminiscences about those days, he told
me some very startling things. . . . I asked him about the Winds
execute message his recollection was apparently extremely clear,
and he certainly was positive about this recollection of the fact
that such a Winds execute message had been intercepted by
a Navy source, because he told me that he was called over to
either Gen. Miles’ offi ce or Col. Bratton’s offi ce . . . I recall now
that he said that Adm. Noyes called him one morning and my
recollection is that it was on December 4—might have been the
5th—1941, saying—and this stands very bright in my memory
—“It’s in,” meaning that the Winds execute message had been
transmitted and had been intercepted and that it meant a break
in relations between . . . Japan and England, and that he had
then gone over to either Gen. Miles’ offi ce or to Col. Bratton’s
96 Ibid., part 34, p. 78 (see Hewitt, part 36, pp. 305–06).
97 Ibid., part 34, p. 78.