West Wind Clear: Cryptology and the Winds Message Controversy--A Documentary History

4.9. The Winds Controversy Resurfaces: Ralph Briggs' Claim

The Winds controversy virtually disappeared after the conclusion of the Joint Congressional Committee hearings. Some of Safford's supporters kept alive his version, but the general trend for histories of Pearl Harbor written during the next three decades tended to relegate the matter of the Winds message to the role of a curiosity or a mistake on the part of Safford. But this was to change in the late 1970s with the appearance of another source that claimed there had been a Winds Execute message prior to Pearl Harbor, and, furthermore, this source actually had copied it. Within a few years the Winds controversy returned as part of a renewed interest in the charge that the Roosevelt administration ...