World War II: Pearl Harbor: National Security Agency, CIA, and Military Documents - Download

World War II: Pearl Harbor: National Security Agency, CIA, and Military documents

953 Pages of National Security Agency, CIA, and Military documents related to the Pearl Harbor Attack.


National Security Agency - History of Pearl Harbor Intelligence

664 pages of NSA monographs related to the Pearl Harbor attack.

The histories include:

West Wind Clear: Cryptology and the Winds Message Controversy A Documentary History

Some people have questioned whether the American Government and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had advance information about Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor and was this fact later suppressed, either to conceal incompetence or because the President wanted an act of aggression to force America into war with the Axis Powers?

One of the significant topics brought up by those that are critical of the conventional view of the attack and the Roosevelt administration's role in it has been the phenomenon of the so-called "Winds Message", Japan's code phrase to advise its diplomats abroad that an attack on America was imminent. In West Wind Clear: Cryptology and the Winds Message Controversy – a Documentary History, the National Security Agency's Center for Cryptologic History has tackled the complex history of this message, when it was sent, and why its existence or non-existence has exercised the imaginations of academics, amateur historians, and conspiracy buffs since the 1940s.

This monograph includes key documents, some never before published, dealing with the voluminous Japanese signals traffic leading up to the Pearl Harbor attack and the timing of signals interception and decoding. This assemblage of documents, supplemented by the author's clear guide to their meaning, places the reader right in the middle of the behind-the-scenes events and helps the scholar and researcher to follow them closely.

The authors Robert Hanyok and David Mowry from the NSA's Center for Cryptologic History have made a significant contribution to our knowledge and understanding of two of the event's controversies, the Winds Message and the state of U.S. communications intelligence prior to the Hawaiian attack.



Pearl Harbor Revisited: United States Navy Communications Intelligence, 1924-1941

This monograph tells the story of the U.S. Navy's communications intelligence (COMINT) effort between 1924 and 1941. It also illustrates an organization plagued from its inception by shortages in money, manpower, and equipment, total absence of a secure, dedicated communications system, little real support or tasking from higher command authorities, and major imbalances between collection and processing capabilities. The author presents the view that in 1941, as a result of these problems, compounded by the stresses and exigencies of the time, the effort misplaced its focus from Japanese Navy traffic to Japanese diplomatic messages. The author believes that if Navy cryptanalysts been ordered to concentrate on the Japanese naval messages rather than Japanese diplomatic traffic, the United States would have had a much clearer picture of the Japanese military buildup and, with the warning provided by these messages, might have avoided the disaster of Pearl Harbor.



A History of U.S. Communications Intelligence during World War II: Policy and Administration

The objective of this study is to provide an authentic and reliable guide to U.S. communications intelligence (COMINT) during World War II. The monograph focuses on high-level policy, administration, and organization, showing how communications intelligence was controlled and directed by each service and how these services related to each other and to their British counterparts.

Also included is an article from the NSA's journal Cyptologic Quarterly, "What Every Cryptologist Should Know about Pearl Harbor."


United States Military Files

249 pages of various reports and monographs concerning Pearl Harbor. The documents include: Headquarters Hawaiian Intercept Command Report of Enemy Activity over Oahu, 7 December 1941; U.S.S. Enterprise after action report of
December 7, 1941; Hickam Field summary report; A report on the attack at Bellows Field, Hawaii; The December 7, 1945 issue of the Hickam Field newsletter, marking the 4th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack.

The Military Intelligence Service report, "Japanese land operations (from Japanese sources) 8 Dec. 41 to 8 Jun. 42." This report of Japanese land operations during the first 6 months of the war was written by a military observer during the period of his confinement with the American Embassy in Tokyo, from December 7 until June 17, 1942. The information on which it is based was drawn entirely from Japanese sources: official bulletins, news reports, speeches, radio commentaries, magazine articles, and accounts of personal experiences written by officers and men at the front.

"Staff Ride Handbook for the Attack on Pearl Harbor, 7 December 1941: A Study of Defending America." A Staff Ride is a systematic analysis of a battlefield site. It is a military academic activity that involves booth the study of a battle and a visit to the actual location to learn the impact of geography, weather and other physical influences on those events as well as using the location as a source of inspiration.

LTC Jeffrey Gudmens’ 2005 handbook on Pearl Harbor allows individuals and organizations to study this battle not only in the context of the Japanese attack, but also in the context of issues that are relevant to the current global war on terror. In addition to analyzing the actual attack, Gudmens also enables users of this work to examine the problems associated with conducting joint planning and operations between the US Army, the Army Air Forces, and the US Navy. He also provides insights into the problems of a Homeland Security environment in which intelligence operatives from a foreign nation (and potentially even recent immigrants from that foreign nation who are now US citizens) can operate with little hindrance in a free and open democratic society.



CIA Files

40 pages of CIA files related to the Pearl Harbor attack. Includes a 1946 report ascertaining the role, achievements, and shortcomings of intelligence in connection with the attack on Pearl Harbor. A modern CIA journal article titled, "Pearl Harbor: Estimating Then and Now." A 1993 CIA book review of a book about Pearl Harbor that the CIA reviewer called "the most objective examination of the intelligence failure culminated at Pearl Harbor yet published."