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

611
26.
Safeguarding
Military Information
By March 1945 the Allies were making progress on all fronts.
Th e Germans, besieged from the east by the Russians
and from the west by Allied forces, were pulling back.
Th e Japanese were in retreat in the Pacifi c and southeast Asia.
After leapfrogging from one Pacifi c island to another, the U.S.
Army under MacArthur had advanced as far as the Philippines.
However, more fi ghting lay ahead.
Th e procedure established to make sure that our enemies did
not learn that we were reading their codes seemed to be eff ective. 1
When the Pearl Harbor investigations started, Army and Navy
offi cers were prohibited from mentioning the intercepts. 2 Th ere
had been one leak in the spring of 1941, eventually attributed
to the State Department, which had received from the Army
1 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 8, pp. 3681–82. (Saff ord testimony).
2 Ibid., part 35, p. 101 (Miles’s affi davit for Clausen).