RS: In an e-mail debate on December 14, 2004, (et al), with David Theroux,
President of the Independent Institute, Congressional candidate Brian Holtz relied
on 1950 era hoaxes in describing pre Pearl Harbor Japanese naval communication
intelligence obtained by the radio cryptographers of the US navy. 

     I will discuss the two major hoaxes embraced by Holtz.  Number one is
the JN 25 hoax.  Mr. Holtz mistakenly refers to the 1941 Japanese navy
operations code as JN-25.  Holtz is in major error.  The designator "JN-25" was
assigned as a USN designator for a series of Japanese naval codes adopted by Japan in
the 1943 era and later.  JN-25 was never used as a designator by either Japan
or the USN and her Allies in the 1941-40 era.

BH: For the details about U.S. efforts against JN-25 (the Japanese naval code), see http://www.defensedaily.com/reports/PRObudiansky.htm.

RS:  By embracing the fake JN-25 designator, Holtz derails a factual
examination as to when America and her Allies solved Code Book D. 

RS: The next day, November 16, Lieutenant Lietwiler informed Washington, DC
naval officials that he and his staff were "current" in intercepting, decoding
and translating the operations code. 

BH: Stinnett quotes one word in claiming that a document says that an American codebreaking team "was “current” in intercepting, decoding and translating" the Japanese naval code. In fact, the document says "We are reading enough current traffic to keep two translators very busy, i.e. with their code recovery efforts etc. included." Stinnett's interpretation seems to ignore the distinctions among recording traffic, recovering code groups obfuscated via additive code pages, and decoding the underlying code groups. The document's use of "enough" and "code recovery efforts" contradict Stinnett's implication that all Japanese naval traffic was being read in nearly real time.

RS:  His radio intercept operators were
obtaining about 1,000 Japanese military dispatches per day, according to the CAST
records.  USN communications records disclose that Lietwiler dispatched
translations/information to Hawaii disclosed by Code Book D, but there is no record
the dispatches were delivered to Kimmel.

RS: Another hoax surfaced by Holtz in the debate, concerns the radio silence
doctrine that asserts the Japanese fleet did not transmit by radio while
enroute to Hawaii and the Central Pacific and were not picked up by the USN monitor
stations. 

 

RS: US Navy records, ignored by Holtz, confirm that the Japanese carrier
fleet and other Japanese military forces aimed at American bases at Hawaii, Wake,
and Guam were in "extensive communications" with one another as they
proceeded from Japan during the 11 day voyage from November 26 to December 7, 1941.   

BH: Stinnett says the codebreakers "obtained radio direction finder bearings on the Japanese forces en route to Pearl Harbor and identified the warships." Your site doesn't source this statement, but another site links it to a missing page on your site that I was again able to find in the Internet Archive (at http://web.archive.org/web/20031213104044/www.independent.org/tii/news/030204Stinnett.html.)  The original document in fact does not mention Hawaii at all, and instead talks about naval movements toward Formosa. The only carrier named in the report was not one of those that attacked Pearl.

RS: USN monitor stations of the USN's West Coast Communications Network obtained
radio direction finder bearings locating the Japanese forces in the North and
Central Pacific proceeding eastward toward the American bases.

By refusing to acknowledge or even read the 1941 US naval records of the
success of American naval cryptographers regarding Japan's military plans for
Pearl Harbor, Mr. Holtz indicates he lacks basic military understanding.  

• The five-paragraph core of the identified Budiansky rebuttal is impressive, and Stinnett's reply on the crucial issue is just to make two statements that are easily diagnosed as misleading by anyone willing to track down Stinnett's sources.
• Stinnett's quotation of "current" from the Nov. 16 Lietwiler document is misleading.
• Stinnett's statement that the codebreakers "obtained radio direction finder bearings on the Japanese forces en route to Pearl Harbor and identified the warships" is misleading in the context of the naval record he has cited for it.
• It was misleading for the Stinnett article to cite radio traffic from the day the Japanese strike force sortied from the Japanese mainland as evidence that the Japanese carrier force did not maintain radio silence as it approached Hawaii.
• The cited Stinnett article doesn't answer the obvious question of why the Japanese strike force wouldn't maintain radio silence while it was outside of Japan's home waters and en route to Hawaii.

RS: Holtz was overwhelming rejected by the voters of California's Fourteenth
Congressional District in the November 2004 election.