NOT MERELY GOSSIP
Hanighen, Frank C.
Not Merely Gossip By FRANK C. HANIGHEN THE Congressional Committee investigating Pearl Harbor is reportedly concerned because some vital files, mentioned in the Army and Navy Reports, are missing....
...Copyright 1945 by Human Events, Inc...
...Russian propaganda and diplomacy make much of the situation in Japan, where Russia demands participation in a four-power civilian control...
...Additionally, there are rumors that official pressure has been exerted on some officers to change their testimony...
...Russian propaganda says nothing about all this, nor about Northern Korea...
...The fact is that Manchuria and North China, as the richest industrial part of China, constitute Russia's major Asiatic objective—not Japan...
...Yet Russian propaganda remains significantly silent about Manchuria and North China...
...The unrest springs from inflation, lack of consumer goods, and economic dislocations (all acutely present in Venezuela...
...Just as Russia at the London Conference demanded a Mediterranean sphere as a bargaining point, in order to "settle" for dominance in the Balkans, so, in the Far East, Russia "raises a hue and cry about her secondary interest— Japan—in order to consolidate secretly and unhampered her indirect control of Manchuria and North China, the real objective...
...Last week he wrote: "It must be admitted that the General Federation of Labor, which is controlled by Colonel Peron . . . succeeded in paralyzing all activities in Argentina today...
...Furthermore, it is now known that President Truman, on the day he released the Army and Navy Reports, sent a directive to the services and Government departments forbidding all personnel to talk of de-coded messages...
...Will this prevent some witnesses from talking freely to the Committee...
...Experts call this Argentine debacle one of our greatest intelligence failures of recent years...
...According to some accounts, President Roosevelt received word of this warning the day before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor...
...Students of Latin American problems place the emphasis, in explaining these overturns, on the economic and social conditions from which most of these countries suffer today...
...THE Russians are playing a hide-and-seek game in the Far East...
...Oddly enough, the "East Wind Rain" key message, Japanese radiogram warning of a declaration of war on the United States, cannot be found...
...Rather than "admitting," he should have reported that Peron had lined up an impressive part of organized labor behind him and had created a mass.base for his movement...
...On the heels of the Peron affair comes the Venezuelan revolution...
...There the Russians are shipping plant machinery to Russia (as they have done in Europe) ; and, at the same time, they are building up the Chinese Communists so that the latter may take power when Russian occupation forces leave in December...
...Likewise deficient in noting trends were the State Department, Army and Navy Intelligence...
...For months Mr...
...COLONEL Peron, by his return to power in Argentina, has upset not only the military junta, but also the credulity of American newspaper readers...
...Arnaldo Cortesi, New York Times correspondent in Buenos Aires, has been waging a crusade against Peron, instead of reporting objectively about his regime...
Vol. 9 • November 1945 • No. 44
