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Day of Deceit : The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor

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Day of Deceit is a well documented account of the Roosevelt administration's efforts to provoke the Japanese into attacking the US to have an excuse to enter the war against Germany. No progressive democrat or reactionary republican can give this text an honest reading without coming to the conclusion that the Roosevelt administration, rather than being a reluctant entrant into the war, was an enthusiastic and very active provocateur.
If the propositions of this text were not true, no WWII archives would still be secret.

Because I just finished reading Day of Deceit at this late date (2007) I have the advantage of reviewing it both for what's on its pages plus a lot of information about it from several other sources. They include extensive testimony from numerous genuine experts on the book's core subject matter, plus two television documentaries that are totally focused on it. In a nutshell, all of those inputs add up to a rather convincing conclusion that Day of Deceit is far from what its cover claims it is: "the truth about FDR and Pearl Harbor."

I have never met Mr. Stinnett and therefore assume him to be an honorable, forthright researcher who genuinely believes his theories. The sad fact is that all of his key assertions are highly arguable if not demonstrably wrong. That has been abundantly shown by other reviewers who have provided point-by-point rebuttal to each of the author's charges against FDR and the Navy's communications intelligence (ComInt) organization of the prewar era. You can see that for yourself with an Internet search and, even better, by watching the two TV documentaries: "Conspiracy Theory" (2004) on the History Channel and "Deception in the Pacific" (2006) on the Fox News Channel; both available on DVD. Those programs feature numerous bona fide ComInt experts, none of whom are from the political or military arena that Stinnett brands as conspirators. Instead, they are respected authors, historians, and scholars, and they take Day of Deceit apart piecemeal on screen, leaving it thoroughly discredited.

Therefore, since a line-item rebuttal of Day of Deceit has already been done, I'll focus here on a broader view. In broad terms, then, Mr. Stinnett is basically saying that FDR knew that the Japanese were about to blind-side his military forces on Oahu, and conspired with others to let it happen in order to take the nation to war.

There are three real problems with that: (1) Art. 3, Sect. 3 of the U.S. Constitution. Such a conspiracy could easily have brought a charge of treason against FDR had it been revealed, and there's little doubt that the Republicans in Congress would have jumped on that with zeal. And (2) was there a reasonable expectation that it would be revealed? There certainly was if Stinnett is right, for he said during the Fox News documentary that virtually EVERYONE in the ComInt services at that time were deliberate co-conspirators...scores of personnel in FDR's administration plus Army and Navy officers and enlisted men from the service chiefs down to the lowest ranking intercept operators. "All of them!" (Stinnett's words.) With that many opportunities for leaking a secret, there's no way it's going to be kept, especially in Washington, and especially for 60 years. Yet in all that time, NO ONE has ever come forward with the smoking gun, leaving the inescapable conclusion that there isn't one.

And then there's the third problem. Stinnett is very clear that General Marshall is a willing co-conspirator with the President. Okay, let's understand this: George C. Marshall is going to idly stand by while an enemy force attacks and destroys a portion of his army and air force, undoubtedly killing a great number of his soldiers in the process. Preposterous! One has to believe that had Marshall been aware of such a conspiracy against his army, he would have stopped FDR by any means at his disposal, constitutional or otherwise. The notion is blatantly ludicrous, and Day of Deceit offers no INARGUABLE evidence to the contrary.

And that's really the fundamental flaw in this book. The front cover says that it tells "the TRUTH about Pearl Harbor." How can it be the truth if it is scorned by virtually every genuine expert in its subject matter? How can it be the truth when it presents NOTHING that explicitly proves that advance warning of a Japanese attack on Hawaii was ACTUALLY RECEIVED by the President and UNDERSTOOD FOR WHAT IT WAS? How can it be the truth when the entire issue, with all of the author's "evidence," could simply have been the result of misinterpretation and poor leadership in the ComInt organizations in Washington, DC?

At best, Mr. Stinnett's many assertions add up to no more than the possibility that evidence of a Japanese advance on Hawaii might have existed in Washington before the attack. However, he fails to demonstrate that FDR and the ComInt leadership there ACTUALLY RECEIVED such information BEFORE THE FACT, that they UNDERSTOOD it for what it was, and that they then actively CONSPIRED to conceal it. That's the "proof" that readers are tempted with on the book's front cover, but it's simply not to be found.