Intelligence part 2 Essay - 3,172 words

... was cracked. Also cracked was JN-25 - The Japanese Fleet's Cryptographic System, a.k.a. 5 number codes. JN stands for Japanese Navy, introduced June 1, 1939. This was a very simple old-type codebook system used by the American Army and Navy in 1898 and abandoned in 1917 because it was insecure.


Version A has a dictionary of 5,600 numbers, words and phrases, each given as a five-figure number. These were super-enciphered by addition to random numbers contained in a second codebook. The dictionary was only changed once before Pearl Harbor (PH) on Dec 1, 1940, to a slightly larger version B but the random book was changed every 3 to 6 months- last on Aug 1. The Japanese blundered away the code when they introduced JN25-B by continuing to use, for 2 months, random books that had been previously solved by the Allies. That was the equivalent of handing over the JN-25B codebook. It was child's play for the Navy group OP-20-G (738 men whose primary responsibility was Japanese naval codes) to reconstruct the exposed dictionary.


We recovered the whole thing immediately - in 1994 the NSA published that JN-25B was completely cracked in December 1940. In January 1941 the US gave Britain two JN-25B codebooks with keys and techniques for deciphering. The entire Pearl Harbor scheme was laid out in this code. The official US Navy statement on JN-25B is the Naval Security Group History to World War II prepared by Captain J. Holtwick in June 1971 who quotes Captain Safford, the chief of OP-20-G, on page 398: "By December 1,1941 we had the code solved to a readable extent." Churchill wrote, "From the end of 1940 the Americans had pierced the vital Japanese ciphers, and were decoding large numbers of their military and diplomatic telegrams." On September 24, 1941, the "bomb plot" message in J-19 code from Japan Naval Intelligence to Japan' s consul general in Honolulu was decoded. This message requested the exact locations of ships. There was no reason to know the exact location of ships in the harbor, unless to attack them.


This message could not have been interpreted any other way but as a planned attack on Pearl Harbor. Chief of War Plans Turner and Chief of Naval Operations Stark repeatedly kept this message and warnings based on it prepared by Safford and others from being passed to Hawaii. The Chief of Naval Intelligence, Captain Kirk, was replaced by Roosevelt because he insisted on warning Hawaii. The reason was lack of information and warnings that lead Hawaii commanders to be off guard. At no time did the Japanese ever ask for a similar bomb plot for any other American military installation. Why the Roosevelt administration allowed flagrant Japanese spying on Pearl Harbor has never been explained, but they blocked two Congressional investigations in the fall of 1941 to allow it to continue. The bomb plots were addressed to "Chief of 3rd Bureau, Naval General Staff", marked Secret Intelligence message, and given special serial numbers, so their significance couldn't be missed. On November 22, 1941, the Americans intercepted circular no. 812 stating "in short, if everything can be finished, we have decided to wait until that date (now moved to November 29).


This time we mean it, that the deadline absolutely cannot be changed. After that, things are automatically going to happen." (Investigation p 32) Therefore, it is obvious to us now that the Japanese were no longer interested in trying to work out a peaceful settlement with the United States, if the U.S. did not accede to the Japanese demands, they would attack the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor in hopes of knocking the U.S. out of the Pacific war before it ever started. The Japanese decided to continue with their campaigns in Asia in order to gain the mineral wealth they needed.


The reason the Japanese decided to attack the United States was a fear that in absence of any negotiation, the U.S. might decide to get involved in the Pacific struggle, and although a weaker force compared to the Japanese, had the ability to greatly hamper Japanese advances. An attack on the Pacific fleet, it was believed, would cripple the U.S. long enough to allow the Japanese to consolidate their gains in the Pacific. Combined with the Nazi conquest of Europe, the United States would then face an insurmountable task of ousting the Japanese and Germans at the same time. There is no doubt that if intelligence organization would exist before Japanese attack, this massive and brutal massacre would be prevented. Now it is possible to see that after creation of CIA there was a huge progress in obtaining useful information for our government during the World War II.


If there would not be any intelligence, then ...................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

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Essay Tags: united state, united states, pearl harbor, japanese, japan

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