Several years ago, after CBC Fifth Estate produced a story I had brought to them, with success, (McLoughlin, 1993) they asked if I had anything else in mind. I suggested a history of Canadian signals intelligence, an important topic which was unknown to the Canadian public. “Go ahead”, they said. “If you find anything interesting, let us know.” Which brought me to interviewing persons who had been in that activity in Canada, by two organizations, the civilian “Examination Unit”, the EU, and the Canadian Army’s Military Intelligence 2″, MI2, the headquarters for Canadian military signals intelligence, headquartered in Ottawa. From 1939 to 1942, at the south-east corner of the intersection of Bank and Somerset, Somerset House, which, abandoned and neglected, remains to this day.
What took place there, during several days and weeks of November 1940 – December 1941, makes Somerset House is one of the most important historical sites in Canada. Of which, given the secrecy of that history, the Canadian public has no knowledge.
A state of affairs that that Canadian, and several other, public authorities would very much like to maintain.
The Interview
Of the several interviews I made in Ottawa was with one Tom (TGS) Colls, who as Lieutenant was with MI2 during the Second World War, including at Somerset House, as intelligence analyst. More specifically, involved in traffic analysis, or TA, the primary task of MI2, which involved analyzing the external characteristics of targeted communications traffic, such as call signs, frequency, location, visual form of the signal on screens, distinctive tempo of sending operators, and much more. Everything apart from the message itself, which was the concern of decryption and communications intelligence in regard to meaning.
Colls became an important figure in Canadian postwar signals intelligence organization, Communications Branch National Research Council (CBNRC). Several years as Head of Group “O”, responsible for Communications Intelligence (COMINT); advisor to CBNRC Directors; Liaison Officer to the leading members of the world’s most exclusive association, the ‘Five Eyes’, Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), and USA’s National Security Agency (NSA).
In sum, an important figure in Canada’s most secret intelligence activity. And of its most significant success. Which became the topic of discussion for our interview: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the 7th of December 1941.
More specifically, the answers to the two questions that remain: What did Winston Churchill, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, know about the attack on Pearl Harbor?, and, most important, When did they know it?
Questions that five special Congressional inquiries, numerous investigations by historians and other specialists, learned academics and observers, knowledgeable and curious about the true meaning of the Second World War, have been unable to answer. At the cost of much disputation and risk to reputation. Answers that he, the MI2 team that in 1941 he led, and MI2, under the brilliant leadership of Director Colonel Edward Michael Drake, discovered, in one of the most brilliant achievements of Canadian most secret intelligence. Of which of Canada and the world has precisely no knowledge.
The interview began abruptly with the statement “I solved the problem of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. He went on to say that he discovered that Kido Butai, the Japanese attack fleet, “was in movement”, after leaving Hitokappu-Wan, where it had ‘staged’ after the vessels arrived from ports in the Home Islands. “We did not know where it was headed, but not long after concluded that the three most likely targets were Singapore, Philippines, and Pearl Harbor.
Days before the attack, he determined, and reported, that the target was Pearl Harbor.
An extraordinary discovery, one that provided much of the answer to the great mystery of the attack on Pearl Harbor. But not quite. That would come much later.
An answer that would be given by a document, which I discovered in Canada’s National Archives, a dozen blocks from Somerset House, where Colls and the MI2 team he headed made their discovery. A document that not only tells us What Churchill and Roosevelt knew, and When they knew it, but provides the undeniable, concrete, evidence that over eighty years of inquiry has failed to produce.
Which brings us to a further drama in the great mystery of the attack on Pearl Harbor, and insight as to its origin, and why it has existed as long as it has.
The Theft
It had been over a decade that I had refrained from writing about my discovery with regard to the true story of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, for a quite simple reason. There had been such an orchestrated denial of the truth, I reasoned, that the public would be incapable of escaping that denial. Unless, I reasoned, I could discover documentary evidence. Which I recently discovered, two documents in Canada’s National Archives. One, a single page in an unbound file of draft entries to a diary, one page with a brief penciled note by Colonel Ed Drake, Commanding Officer of MI2, on duty December 6, 1941, about the “grave matter of the emergency meeting to be held that evening. And about his travels to the Pacific Coast, both Canada’s British Columbia and Washington State of the US. A day that ended with a visit to Washington DC, home of OP-20-G, the headquarters of the US Navy’s signals intelligence organization, close to the White House, closely allied and interoperative with Canada’s MI2. A precious access to the truth of Pearl Harbor. The second document, a bound volume, entitled “Diary 1940”, for which the draft entries in the loose sheets were ment.
It so happened that on 30 January 2024 mentioned my discovery of the two precious documents to an acquaintance, who had spent several years in Canada’s signals intelligence CBNRC, later renamed CSE, Communications Security Establishment. He left CSE and joined Canadian Security Intelligence Service. On the 29th of February, I visited Canada’s National Library and Archives, with the intention of again studying the two predious documents, and discovered they were missing from the LAC volumes where they had been. I made inquiries, and learned that two CSIS agents had visited LAC, obtained accessed records assigned to me. More recently, I have learned that a group of CSIS agents were filmed goinan g through the records, and removing several.
Which has brought the wish to bring an action against both Library and Archives Canada, and CISIS, for a denial of Charter Rights, specifically contrary to Section 8, Search and Seizure, without Judicial Warrant.