Ghost Letter

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(Navy Department Building (“Main Navy”), Washington, D.C. View of the building’s central entrance, on Constitution Avenue NW, across from the foot of 18th Street in Washington, DC.)

I told you yesterday about the memo, found in a search by a comrade through the dusty archives of the greatest conflict in human history. Until the next one, anyway.

In a way, the memo represents a puzzle as profound as the JN-25 Japanese naval code. Some of the pages lack numbers; some might in fact be from different documents. I cannot verify it, and take the matter with more than a single grain of salt. But there are some real villains in this piece, and it is difficult to tell who is wielding the hatchet of accusation.

The memo- or memos- are ghost letters from the past. They were, at one time, classified documents. They were retained at the “SECRET” level, until reviewed and properly declassified under the authority of “003003,” whatever that might be. I jumped down a couple rabbit holes trying to find out this morning, waiting for the dew on the lawn to evaporate so I can cut it.

I was wandering through the electronic records of the Joint Staff to see if I could discover the context for the notation. I managed to find one hit, with guidance for declassification:

 

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I think it is safe to assume that whoever wrote the memo had a reasonable certainty that by the time the document got to the National Archives and Records Administration- NARA- the ones who really cared about the struggle would be long gone. This is a fight between ghosts, now. Any documents with the real bombshells are probably long gone, if the contents of the memo are to be believed. The men who orchestrated this had a long time to clean things up between the initial, frantic hearings of blame over Pearl Harbor, and the more polished version that would come once the war was done and the medals distributed.

That tidying up of history is what I don’t know about, nor why the Joint Experimentation Campaign Plan would be the guiding authority for finally telling the story outside the secret world. I think now that everyone is dead who had a dog in the fight it might be time to lift the curtain- but I know from personal experience that there are some secrets who still have their watchdogs on alert, whether their masters have gone.

The scars have healed, but their very existence is a word to the wise. Tread lightly in the land of ghosts.

This story may- or may not- begin with a photograph of a strange and badly copied page, not numbered. I will let it speak for itself, since there is no one alive to say it is not the truth.

“DECLASSIFIED
Authority: 003003

In the Spring of 1942, Commander John R. Redman, USN, took the old story of Jap(anise) deception and added new trimmings. No attempt was made to get verification from Pearl Harbor or to consult the evidence file in OP-20G which had come under his command on February 15. It was made to appear as if this were an “inside story” written by G.I. personnel. And to give the final touch of authenticity, it was published in an official Navy Department Secret Publication called “Black Magic in Communications” (CSF 14941-A) over the signature of Vice Admiral F.J. Horne, USN (Vice Chief of Naval Operations) as of February 15, 1942. The story appears on pages 6-8, inclusive, and carries the caption “Did the Japanese Paint Us a Picture?” The publication itself was undoubtedly “ghost written” by some Naval Reserve officer, but the editor and sponsor was John Redman.

The main effect (if not the intended purpose) of the particular story was to make the Service believe that the old lie was actually true- that Rochefort, Huckins and Williams had been sucked-in by Japanese Radio Deception.

From one point of view there was no falsehood- it merely asked a question. But, by suggestion and implication, it planted the story in the minds of its readers and was actually the best example of “deception” in “Back Magic.” And the Service literally ate it up.”

In the stories of that long-ago conflict, the great injustice meted out to CDR Joe Rochefort, lead code-breaker in the Pacific Fleet, centers on what happened after his triumph of analysis in predicting the location of the Japanese First Air Fleet (the “Kido Butai) at Midway. I have always understood the matter to be retaliation by Washington for his being right, and the boys at Main Navy getting it wrong.

This casts new light on things. The two great battles of the Spring and early summer of 1942- Coral Sea in May, and Midway in early June- were months in the future.

It looks like the careerists at Main Navy were plotting the overthrow of the men our pal Mac Showers served with in The Dungeon at the 14th Naval District at Pearl literally from the beginning of the war. The game of deception against honorable men in the heat of battle was baked into the pie from the get-go. In Washington there was a cabal of Communications officers that had a vision of a strong and independent Radio Intelligence organization quite apart from traditional Naval Intelligence. In the code world, they had a powerful tool that they intended to harness for career gain and power.

They would play by their own rules, centered in Washington, close to the flagpole at Main Navy and far from the sound of the guns.

The Japanese were purely incidental to what they intended to do.

You can see that this is all a story that some people would prefer to stay buried. Let’s see if we can dig around a little and expose it to some fresh air. Fasten your seat belts. It may be quite a ride.

Copyright 2015 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303

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