Thank you for your service. Liot carlson is a longtime , a graduate of the university of oregon and and the university, author of a book published in 2011 which explores the life and career of the officer carlson described as the most consequential shorebased actor. He also tells us code breaking at intelligence gathering pearl harbor was actually the work of many individuals, and to discuss the effort of these individuals who change the course of history, please welcome elliot carlson. [applause] mr. Carlson good morning. I want to thank the sponsors for having me in today. Appreciate it. Want to thank you all for coming. What was your right, sir . [inaudible] mr. Carlson ok. Very much an honor to have you here in the audience. Thank you. , midway and code breaking. When crypto analysis came of age. Might need a bit of an explanation. It suggests there was a time before midway when crypto was not of age, and this might seem odd because cryptanalysis, the art of breaking secret messages encrypted in a cipher or code, has a long history. He goes back to the romans. During world war i, the british navy stymied the german high seas fleet using code breaking. , ashe eve of world war ii practiced by the American Army and navy, cryptanalysis was barely in its adolescence. The American Military yes, sir . [inaudible] mr. Carlson you want me closer to the microphone . Louder . Ok, im going to boom it out. Military had barely noered the cryptologic arena more than 20 years earlier. That better . For many officers, admirals, generals, this activity was new. Not only knew, it was strange and a little fuzzy. A lot of them regarded cryptanalysis as a kind of novelty, an activity that would timelyy never yield intelligence in a combat situation. Was not really much of a magnet for ambitious young officers. In fact, the field was considered a career killer, and only a few very intrepid souls wanted to have anything to do with it. The way to get ahead in the navy adopt join the gun club, a specialty in the gunnery, and that was the way to rise in the navy. Codebreakers, the reputation of cryptanalysis was not helped by the attack on pearl harbor on the cymer 7, 1941. A lot of the skeptics in the officer ranks wondered why this new science had not provided a better warning. Entered world war ii very much under a cloud. Codebreakers had staggering problems of their own besides the reputation. Their big problem was that there was not enough of them. Around 50 inhave it watching an office, but a lot of them were detailed to work on various diplomatic codes, the german evening with code german enigma code. Only a handful worked on the german Navy Operational codes, and this small group was helped by 20 when crypto analysts in the navys field station at pearl harbor and manila, and this small band was charged with shadowing the entire japanese navy. Said, they did an amazing job. They did catch a few breaks. Walter boardman was talking in thehe early raids gilbert and Marshall Islands and the solomons. Codebreakers cannot break codes unless they have intercepts, lots of messages to work with, and those raids generated gazillions of Imperial Navy messages, so suddenly, our codebreakers had more intercepts than they knew what to do with, than they could possibly break, and i showed in the result became later that showed in the results that came later, when a japanese squadron was spotted heading toward port moresby on the Southern Coast of new guinea, it was tracked by analysts at pearl harbor out of melbourne, australia, as to where the manila group had been. Vacuated earlier in the war admiral nimitz now had information, and he sent the carriers lexington and yorktown to thwart that japanese advance, and the resulting action, known as the battle of the coral sea, about which we heard earlier, was really the first major setback for the Imperial Navy. Called a draw. I think it was a tactical win for the japanese, but a strategic feat for the japanese because they were not able to proceed with their mission. Midway a month later where cryptanalysis comes into its own. In the words of historian john ferris, midway is one of those cases where intelligence strikes like lightning. Any cryptanalyst illustrated their ability to affect the outcome of a campaign. Midway was the crucial battle of the war, nimitz said, that engagement made Everything Else possible. I think its no exaggeration to say that aside from the battle of the coral sea, the battle of inway was the only campaign which code breaking was so fundamental to the event that had there been no code breaking,. Here would have then no battle the battle could not have happened without it. Without code breaking, it would have been a very different day. True, some things would have been the same. Motos Striking Force would still have converged on midway. With the carriers nimitz had available to check that advanced yorktown, enterprise, and hornet they would not have them there. Yorktown would have then then would have been 3000 miles away, getting repairs from scars sustained in the coral sea. Enterprise and hornet would have been 4000 miles away on station in the coral sea, and that is where admiral cain wanted them to be, to give projection terrestrially a. Asking,a had been pleading that they needed extra protection from the japanese fleet, and that australians were very worried about the japanese navy. Carriers in the wrong place. There were no carriers in the central pacific. Both those carriers, the hornet and enterprise, cruised in the pearl c on may 16, but just 17 days later, moving it break next beat navy standards, all three carriers, including yorktown, showed up 300 miles northeast of midway at a point that nimitz called point luck. What caused nimitz to act so quickly was a single message, a single transmission Trump Imperial maybe headquarters to a. Apanese transport ship go to saipan,o pick up supplies, and proceed to a place called af. F. I will talk more about that later. Picked up by a station radioman on oahu, decrypted by codebreakers at pearl, left no doubt in nimitz class mind that he planned to invade and occupy midway. General george marshall, the army chief of staff, said the closest week and the greatest victory in the pacific was at midway. Marshalls appraisal at midway is now widely accepted. Almost did not strike on june 4. The battle, as we know it, almost did not happen. Marshall called midway a close squeak, but it was not only a close squeak in the waters near midway. It was also a close squeak in washington where army and navy chieftains could not agree among themselves where yamamoto would strike his blow, and they disputed and rejected nimitzs estimate. Nimitz at first was unfazed by this squabble that was going on. He felt comfortable with his workers because the information he acted upon had been conveyed by a source that he had learned to trust, and this source was a prickly and sometimes difficult Intelligence Officer named joe rochefort, who is easily the pivotal character of this story. He was an unusual officer. Unlike most officers occupying positions of high responsibility in the navy, he he had come up from enlisted ranks, and this made him an oddity in the navy culture. The historian walter lord described rochefort as caustic, andy, unorganized, intimate brilliant. Quirky as rochefort may have had faith his officer was wellplaced. Rochefort has been a pioneer. In 1925d the fielde joining something that was then called euphemistically the research desk. The word was intended to disguise one of the navys newest activities at that time, code breaking. Excuse me a minute. When the founder of the research , a crypto analytic genius rotated the seat, rochefort inherited his job. At the tender age of 26 and only a couple months of training under his belt, rochefort found himself running the navys code breaking arm. It consisted of five people, one officer, himself, and four civilians. Heavily one of those civilians was an experienced crypto analyst. The experienced but somewhat haughty agnes meyer driscoll. In cryptod joe analysis. They worked for about a year and a half or two years. Working together they compromised at least one Imperial Navy code. Aggie became one of the navys most prominent teachers, and joe went to japan. He was ordered by Naval Intelligence to learn the language and familiarize himself with the culture of the people of japan. He stayed there for three years. With orpring of 1941, looking more likely in the far east, rocheforts training in cryptology and japanese came in handy. Something,s now ran an extension of the research desk, of the navys original code breaking arm. Sanford wanted rochefort to run a field station at pearl harbor. Joe took the job and later game fame as station hypo. Rochefort did not break Imperial Navy codes. By himself. He had a lot of help. He used leaders in cryptology to do most of that work. Twooutfit consisted of dozen officers and enlisted men. These gentlemen were a motley crew, a salty mixture of crypto analysts, language officers, and cryptologic mavens. By rocheforts definition, they were odd characters. They were people who, in rocheforts words, would not generally conform to accepted ideas. If you desire to be a real crypto analyst, being a little nuts helps. Charactersorts odd did their work in a dreary place, a drab windowless basement in the Navy Administration building in pearl harbor. This is what it looked like in 1942. This is what it looks like today. [laughter] oops, got ahead of myself there. That little space there is the worsthat led down to this to this basement work area. This is the staircase that led to it. It was usually full of burn bags from discarded intercepts. Trial, down there was a not an inspiring place. Because rochefort wouldnt allow photographers for security reasons, all we have is this artists conception. Fairly nt was a fairly spacious, the size of a large pool hall, but it has some drawbacks. You are either were either too hot or too cold. The men called the police the dungeon. Characters d excuse me a minute, i got a little bit ahead of myself. We have one other idea of that world i will share with you. It comes my way of hollywood. Midway,6 movie rochefort is portrayed as a kind whoeirdo, a loudmouth twang,with a folksy smokes cigars, and walks around. Ressed in a sloppy red smock rocheforts staff hated this portrayal. They said he was not like that at all. They remember him as a tall, slender, aristocratic gentlemen that spoke softly and smoked a pipe at his desk. It is odd they should have fought not. Thought that. Joe was on the set of the movie almost every single day. He seemed to enjoy himself. 18,movie was released june 1942. 1976. Rry, july 18, 1976 the movie was ied july 20,d joe d a month later. Whether joe liked the movie or not, we probably will never know. Rochefort did wear a red smoking jacket in the confines of that dank basement, because as he was cold called down there. Rocheforts characters please their bosses in washington. That changed after japans surprise attack on december 7. His codebreakers were not blamed for that, but stanford lost some credibility with his higher ups. He was reassigned and new bosses took over. This was bad news for rochefort. She is bosses in washington didnt like his practice whereby customarily purported his reported his findings to the fleet commander first. That is to say, he would report first to admiral kimball then nimitz, then secondarily to washington. Commander john redmond now ran op20g. He may have had friends in high places, but no background in crypto analysis. He was a coefficient in regular navy communications, which is to say hardware, morse code, things like that, but he had no background in crypto analysis. Redmond wanted code breaking and intelligence to be centralized in washington. To send in rochefort washington and let to the thinking. Rochefort wouldnt go along with this. He thought because of his background, he was better suited than the people in washington to render judgment on what the japanese intendant. Intended. He continued to report first to fleet headquarters. Weeks, the relations 20gen station hypo and op frayed. Despite the bickering, they all did serious work. Along with codebreakers in melbourne and certainly some in washington doing decent work, aconfronted a balancing daunting task, how to break the code. Jn25. The famous the numbers on the left are five digit code groups. Is wording on the right plaintext recovery of those code groups. Some were ships, somewhere something else. Jn25b had 55,000 digit code groups. Assigning values to these code groups was a gargantuan task. It was made harder by the fact that the code groups on the left were disguised by something called additives. There was a code group or book of 15,000 additives. They look like that, superimposed the regular code groups. Before you could read the real code group, you had to strip off these additives. Not easy work. Unlike enigma, the code used by the german army and navy, jn25 b was not a machine encrypted code. It couldnt the decrypted be decrypted by a machine as codebreakers were able to do with the negat with enigma. Jn25b, each code group had to be solved with pencil and paper one sheet at a time. Later machines were used, tabulators and calculators to be included into the code. Ibm month that used 3000 punch cards for storage and retrieval of each five digit code group they received. Usablely, a small but portion of jn25b became readable. When they were able to read it, they saw a huge offensive building up in a japanese home waters. They knew the attack would be huge. They do it would be bigger than the coral see, but they didnt know when it would be. Now station hypo turned into a pressure cooker. To pinpoint the Imperial Navys target, rochefort worked routinely 20 hour days. His men worked almost as many hours. Their problem was not breaking messages so much as it was staying awake. Panelist, actually my favorite guy, Lieutenant Commander thomas h dyer suffered a peculiar illness to codebreakers, long hours at a desk dealing with an intractable code. Dyer took uppers and donors. I he put it years later, desk,t stay awake at my so my doctor gave me something to take in the morning. All this work did pay off. Radioman, hypos intercepted a navy imperial message that i told you about earlier. It established midway as yamamotos target. The message contained the geographic designated af. Rochefort remembered back in of the messageks from a japanese scout plane flying near midway. The scout plane sent a message to wake island using the designator af. Af was clearly midway. Nobody had any doubt about that at pearl harbor. But when nimitz on may 14 purported reported hypos message to washington, he ran into that bus stop. That buzz saw. The secretary of war and others believed yamamoto not intended to his midway, but the American West coast in retaliation for the doolittle raid that had bombed tokyo and 4 other cities. , we know heish king temperamental,as had a lot of anger and rage. Keywords mere curio. Ercurial. He had doubts about midway. Thatdid something astonished nimitzs staff, he changed his mind and accepted nimitzsassessment. Kingz had to cajole from the transfers from the coral see to midway, but king went along with it. , this little group of crypto analysts working separately, did not agree with hypo and told king that hypo was making a terrible mistake, and that if king followed hypos lead, he would be making a terrible mistake. Op20g analysts believed that the Imperial Navy might be headed for somalia for samoa. For they thought perhaps hawaii itself would be the name target. Was getting a little anxious himself. He told rochefort that he needed to better proof. Rochefort convened his group in the basement, and fortunately king, we m this was issed him. Jasper holmes informed rochefort about midways water shortages. They felt if they could get midway to report a shortage, japanese radio men would pick that up, convey it to tokyo, and the cat would be out of the bag. Japanese radio men did take that bait. The word got out that it was now confirmed. The only trouble was rochefort hasnt bothered to inform his bosses in new york about the water ploy. They did not appreciate the slight. But they had no choice but to accept the final midway estimate. May, navy of codebreakers, particularly those at pearl harbor and melbourne decrypted so many of them of yamamotos messages. This is an iconic message in my opinion. s dispatch to all his commanders at sea on may 31, 10 days after the original water ploy, showing how much he had learned from his codebreakers about what would happen at midway. From this message, we can see that nimitz had incredibly detailed information. She knew about a Striking Force coming from the northwest. He knew about a support force and a occupation force coming in from the west with transports and destroyers, as many as 16 submarines. Nimitz was really armed. Nimitz proceeded with his planet to surprise plan to surprise the japanese, as we all know he did. The stunning aftermath of that victory, rochefort should have been the man of the hour. He was in the eyes of nimitz and was given a distinguished metal. King to vetoaded that medal, and he went with the recommendation of his staff. Later they removed rochefort from pearl harbor and have them and had him assigned to the San Francisco bay, supervising a floating drydock. Did that rather well. Success, medal or no medal, rochefort and his team put their stamp on the battle of midway. Amazing position theision of nimitz, direction of his approach, the timing of his attack, his launch position, all was the product of crypto analysis. The navys success put crypto analysis on the map in the military. It gave codebreakers the respectability they needed when they needed it most. Ambitious officers caught on that they had an alternative to the gun club. They had another pathway to an authority as career in the navy. They did not have to be gone. To be gunners. Codebreakers in the army in the around 1000 souls. By the end of the war that number had ballooned to more than 16,000 in washington alone. Crypto analysis had indeed, page. Indeed come of age. His986, rochefort had distinguished Service Medal at the has to of his staff. The behest ofd his staff. Joe thet reagan awarded medal. Joe could not be there himself because he had died 10 years earlier. The medal went to his wife and u. S. Joseph rochefort jr, army retired. Thank you very much. I would be happy to answer any questions. [applause] mr. Carlson i will be happy to injure any questions if there are any. Yes sir. Missedre told that intel the attack on the lead up to pearl harbor. We can delete that one another talk show. Debate, did we garner any information from that collection that helped break the code later on . Mr. Carlson youre asking me what was rocheforts unit during the battle . They were stumped. Rochefort often said he got half of it right. He did predict the Imperial Navy west. The west to the singapore and east asia. He saw that coming and reported that a week before it happened. He wasnt totally asleep at the switch. He thought that all of the Imperial Navy capital ships were tied down on these other had nothing left over. Of pearl harbor. He had a suspicion in his bones something might happen. There was no question he missed it. When ships travel, if they dont emit signals, there is no way your signal people can pick up a signal that is not there. The japanese maintained radio silence up until pearl harbor. Good morning. Mr. Carlson yes sir. On the morning of june 4 at dawn, how close was rocheforts where theyto actually were when pby discovered them . Mr. Carlson i didnt quite hear that. How close was rocheforts the japanese where would be relative to where they actually were . Mr. Carlson they were a most in the same spot. Passed on his estimate to the fleet Intelligence Officer. Topassed on this estimate nimitz. After the bottle, nimitz told him, you are off by have a degree. They were very close. They had it down precisely and accurately. [inaudible] it seemed to me they were out of position relatively speaking if rocheforts prediction was right on. Mr. Carlson there is an argument over this. That is a point of view said two task forces move into and let their planes move at a distance that was greater than appropriate. I will let some logistical experts argue that. My own guess is no. They closed the distance rather rapidly. That fletcher held back in yorktown for very good reasons. He wanted to make sure she did not have a he did pearl sea surprise, with two Imperial Fleet carriers coming from his flank that he was not expecting. E stayed behind this might have graded the impression of a lag. When it came to moving the to where the Japanese Task force was, fletcher was ahead of the other two areas. There is another factor to take that hallsey was not there. The formation of the planes and their organization for takeoff in the hands of captain browning, who had been hallseys chief of staff, and did a lot of thinking for him on Organization Strategy and so forth. It would have been interesting if halsey had been there. People forget browning being there was almost like halsey being there. If halsey made the mistake of letting our planes stacked up, browning might have done the same. There is no simple yes or no. I have no more than what i have just sent. Just said. Thank you very much. [applause] thanks elliot for that fantastic presentation. Interested in American History tv . Visit our website, www. Cspan. Org history. Schedule,ew our tv what college lectures, archival films, and more. American history tv at www. Cspan. Org history. Cspan, where history unfolds daily. In 1979, cspan was created as a Public Service by americas Cable Television companies and is brought to you today by your cable or satellite provider. On lectures in history, university of notre dame professor teaches a class about mid20th century oil interests. He describes the expansion of u. S. Oil businesses abroad to places like saudi arabia and alberta, canada. He argued that religion played a significant role in the Business Practices of Global Companies and individual product testers. Individual prospectors. This class is one hour and 15 minutes. Good morning. Welcome back from spring break and welcome back to our history of oil in american life. Today we are going to look at a theical phase between 1930s and 1950s. A moment in which some important turns take place in the life of american oil. Two sectors we have been looking at, major oil and independent oil. This is a period in which the nation itself is kind of awakened to a new role in global