Sociology

In between the term of 1936 through 1945, President Roosevelt had become the President of the US the first time and was looking forward to becoming the president a fourth time.  The major events and operations of the US intelligence did indeed depend upon the orders of the President but some were the combination of different opinions and suggestions. An example would be when the president ordered not to place an American oil ban against Italy (Andrew, 1996). Even though this decision was not a secret operation but it was intelligence driven. President Roosevelt was made to think by his friend that the Italian leader, Mussolini, was planning to overpower Ethiopia and did not need further barriers.  

Firstly there was a meeting held in 1938 in which the US leader assumed that Germans had around twelve thousand battle aircrafts ready. This piece of knowledge was provided by official as well as unofficial sources. It was a very unreasonable amount and it was obvious that this information had not been examined and inspected carefully neither by local sources nor by international basis. If precaution had been taken, then the president would have been more reasonable in quoting the number of aircrafts.

As history has witnessed, there were not many covert or clandestine operations of the US intelligence in the time frame of 1936-1945. There was a statement made by Admiral Godfrey of Britain that he was disappointed by the internal dealings of the US intelligence and he considered it of poor quality (Hanks, 2008). This statement gave the U intelligence a bad name on their data collection and internal affairs. In my opinion, even though the British had not found the US intelligence up to mark but it was very unprofessional of them to provide fake information to their friends. For example in the incident in which there was a forged map found which showed the make believe schemes of Nazis attacking Latin America  (The Bryan Times, 1985). This is also a matter not involving intelligence but if our secret agencies were more involved, then this piece of information may have easily been proven to be fake.  To make matters worse, President Roosevelt showed the map to the nation and briefed them on the plan of the Nazis to destroy all religions.

Although the comments of Admiral Godfrey were hurting, he was right as the inquiry began after the attack on Pearl Harbor. The intelligence of the US was still in state of shock and confusion when the first battle ship set off from Japan on 26th November, 1941. The SIGINT were being delivered to the President very randomly. The intelligence did not have enough information at that time. Then there was the cabinet meeting on 28th November 1941. This meeting had remained covert for many years and it is interesting to find the details of it now. All the readings suggest that Pearl Harbor was destined to happen as the intelligence were completely unaware of the attacks.

I agree that it is impossible to trace down when and where an attack may happen. But the failure of Pearl Harbor was an eye opener. The point at which the US intelligence had failed is excellently explained in a study by Roberta Wohlstetter on Pearl Harbor. She concludes that this failure was not of intelligence collection but of its analysis.