ABSTRACT
Fifty years later, Pearl Harbor still haunts Americans. e nation remains mystified about how Japan’s surprise attack on the proud Pacific Fleet could have succeeded. e Joint Congressional Committee that in 1945 and 1946 investigated the attack put the question sharply:
e “finest intelligence” came from codebreaking. is is nearly always the best form of intelligence. It is faster and more trustworthy than spies, who have to write up and transmit their reports and who are always suspected of setting up a deception. It sees further into the future than aerial reconnaissance, which detects only what is present. It is broader in scope than the interrogations of prisoners, who know little more than what they have experienced. And it is usually cheaper and less obtrusive, hence more secret, than all of these. But it has a serious double-barreled failing. It cannot provide information that a nation has not put onto the airwaves, while its apparent omniscience and its immediacy seduce its recipients into thinking they are getting all the other nation’s secrets.
