Investigative journalist Margie Burns had reported on this same Bush-Stinnett circle a few months before I started investigating it, in mid-2004. She noted in Stinnett’s first book from 1990, which Bush 41 undoubtedly remains fond of, hints of the coming storm: “The first 10 pages of George Bush: His World War II Years are devoted to suggesting that FDR had access in November 1941 to "startling information" that the Japanese fleet was headed toward targets, including Pearl Harbor. Thus the Bush book opens with a slightly guarded version of Stinnett's later Pearl Harbor argument.” Burns apparently saw partisan politics in this development, calling Stinnett’s FDR conspiracy theory “de-bunked,” and essentially dismissing him as a GOP hack (recall the Bush book was a Republican fundraiser).
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But Margie Burns saw it differently, and wanted to know what Stinnett had shared with Bush and his son regarding his final argument. She contacted him, via phone and e-mail, and in August 2004 she reported his answers:
“Bush 41 discussed pre-Pearl Harbor communications intelligence concerning the Imperial Japanese Navy with me during my visits to the Oval Office while he was president. […] I have never met Bush 43, the current president. […] In 1990 when I discussed my book with Bush 41, the Provocation Plan adopted by President F. D. Roosevelt had not been declassified or released. I knew nothing about it. […] Several years ago, I sent Bush 41 an autographed copy of Day of Deceit, but have not heard from him on this matter. I did not send a copy to Bush 43.”
So Bush sr. read it, presumably in late 1999 when it was published. Bush jr. probably didn’t want to read it – he wasn’t a big reader until about 2005, unless goats were involved. The real question, obviously, is whether Cheney or Wolfowitz or Rumsfeld had read the book - and since it was available at Barnes and Noble, personal delivery from Stinnett seems unnecessary. A decent online book review would have been enough to get the idea across.
While I agree with Burns that the Bush connection to Stinnett’s expose is no accident, I believe there is more to Stinnett’s argument than she realized, and more at play in its release than discrediting a decades-dead Democrat. As Burns hinted, there is reason to believe that this book, and its argument that FDR’s plan may have been justified, would be used to deflect or mute 9/11 conspiracy theories.
I would take this a step further and note that, whether by accident or design, Stinnett’s book AND the PNAC’s references to a new Pearl Harbor AND the reports of provocations in Afghanistan AND even the intelligence failures and lax defense on the day of the attack are - taken together - part of a larger design. Let’s call this the “New Day of Deceit.”
This confluence of evidence seems on the surface rather damning, and is in fact the meat and potatoes of most mainstream conspiracy theories - Let it Happen on Purpose (LIHOP). The evidence is certainly copious, from ignored warnings of the terrorist plot to the substandard defenses, from provocations in Afghanistan to the curious personnel changes on the morning of the attack, to the apparent law-enforcement blind spot that hovered over the hijackers. This offers an immeasurably more accurate explanation for what happened on 9/11 than the official myth allows, and if it’s true then we are in serious trouble here. The New Day of Deceit theory, that the government allowed through an independently-planned al Qaeda attack to garner support for their desired transformation, was my own belief at first, and I still hold it as a distinct possibility.
But this explanation, tying the extremely weird 9/11 to the recently updated and wierdified 12/7, also has some noteworthy properties that may actually provide long-term stability to the official myth - even as it apparently threatens it – by obscuring other, even darker, possibilities. The New Day of Deceit may well be a semi-official conspiracy theory that looms large behind 9/11 – but in front of Shadow 9/11.
What purpose could this serve the Republicans in power, to suggest that Presidents of any party can and do engineer crises like this to further their political and military goals? It must be remembered that Pearl Harbor, on balance, has been historically absolved – FDR’s treachery pales in comparison to the nightmare possibility of a Nazi victory. Any misgivings about the attack were thus balanced out by the fact that it snapped America to attention and helped save England and the world from Nazi and Japanese domination. No one wants to aggressively argue that Roosevelt was wrong – who wants to sound like a Nazi supporter?
But there are certainly ethical issues to be discussed, and the muted debate was finally reinvigorated by Stinnett’s book, as it needed to be. But this dialog was curiously opened right before 9-11, which soon generated its own conspiracy theories. I would guess that big ideas like this take a while to sink in – weeks to allow the smart people to read it, a few moths for articles and discussions to happen and be disseminated, another few months for water-cooler discussions and to absorb that Pearl Harbor was a Day of Necessary Deceit. Then after another year of the idea subsiding to the periphery of awareness, somehow, the PNAC’s new Pearl Harbor was able to to piggyback in on this turn-of-the-century ambiguity regarding the original.
Perhaps even with FDR’s deceit added to the mix, Pearl Harbor still carries a positive connotation and all the right messages for the post-9/11 world. Maybe they did let the attack through, but maybe we did need a wake-up call. But either way, now that we’re awake, our main duty is to rally, rebuild, and oppose these two-bit thugs. We will not be intimidated into surrender but will wipe out this enemy that threatens civilization itself. We will win because we are history’s Good Guys, as always. As Stinnett noted, “painful though they surely were, Roosevelt’s decisions were strategically calculated to lead to the ultimate victory of allied forces over the Axis nations that threatened the liberties we all cherish.” Could he possibly have provided a better backdrop for the possible crimes of the New Day of Deceit should they become public? (And they have become public to an alarming degree)
The shock of 9/11 and the larger looming horror of a possible bin Laden victory, on top of the none-too-subtle subtle hints pointing at a New Day of Deceit explanation, has created a unique climate for the perpetuation of the official myth. People may think “I wonder if the only reason that attack got through was because they let it through?” But then they may reason, without recognizing the circular logic of it, “there’s no time for conspiracy theories. We’re in a struggle for survival with Islamo-fascists here.” So long as the cruel, subhuman terrorists allegedly responsible stay at the center of attention, and remain a persistent perceived threat, conspiracy theories can co-exist in tension with patriotic furor for decades, just as they did with Pearl Harbor through the difficult years of World War II.
But there is at least one evident key difference that separate 12/7 and 9/11, which I’d like to wrap up with. Roosevelt tried to get us there by education, making speeches and harping on the need to resist the Axis and aid the Allies, like his speech of September 11, 1940. He tried to muster support non-violently, but apparently settled on Pearl Harbor as a last resort when words failed. But the PNAC in its 2000 report and the Bush administration in the first eight months of office were conspicuously quiet about the known bin Laden threat, even though it was strong enough to bear the blame once 9/11 happened. They did not once try to convince the public war with a dangerous enemy was the answer – and to be sure, al Qaeda was not occupying Europe, just jointly-running Afghanistan. Thus with almost no case for war at all pre-9/11, the New Day of Deceit, if indeed that is what it is, was a first resort.
Source: Burns, Margie. 9-11 and the ‘second Pearl Harbor.” Online Journal. August 25, 2004. Accessed December 28, 2004 at: http://www.onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/082504Burns/082504burns.html
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