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

Joint Congressional Committee, Pearl Harbor Attack: Part 2 721
had made an error and Washington hadn’t corrected him, Short
replied: “[I]f you are not furnished information you in all probability
will make an erroneous estimate.” 147 Also in the War
Department’s Field Service Regulations:
Th e best information will be of no use if it arrives too late at the
headquarters for which it is intended. . . . Important and urgent
information . . . is sent by the most rapid means available to
all headquarters aff ected, without regard to the usual military
channels. 148
Committee Chairman Barkley was skeptical that more information
would have enabled Short to judge the situation any better
than he had.
Barkley: Everybody in Washington, all the high offi cers in
Washington—Navy, Army, Intelligence, War Plans, General
Staff —all saw these intercepted messages. . . . Th ey all have testifi
ed that, notwithstanding those messages, they did not really
expect an attack at Pearl Harbor and were surprised when it
came. Do you think that if you . . . or if the admiral . . . or
both of you together had gotten them, you would have reached
any diff erent conclusion from that reached by everybody in
Washington?
Short: I think there was a possibility because Pearl Harbor
meant a little more to us. We were a little closer to the situation
and . . . would have been inclined to look at that Pearl
Harbor information a little more closely. We might not have
made the correct decision, but I believe there was more chance
that either we or someone on our staff s would have had the
idea. . . .
147 Joint Committee, Pearl Harbor Attack, part 7, p. 2986.
148 War Department, FM 100-5. Field Service Regulations: Operations, May 22,
1941, pp. 46–47, paragraphs 227 and 228.