Watch Conspiracy online: Episode 3 FDR and Pearl Harbor

The attack on Pearl Harbor - often called the worst military disaster in American history - shocked the U.S. The world wondered how it was possible for a great military power be so utterly defeated by a country barely out of the Medieval stage. To many, the official explanations of misguided assumptions and missed clues did not begin to account for the enormity of the catastrophe. They argued that a plot was hatched in Washington to solve FDR’s "problem" - his need to convince a reluctant nation to fight the Nazis. Soon after the attack, "alternative" explanations arose… It has been argued that U.S. intelligence officers had in fact tracked the Japanese attack fleet as it approached Hawaii, but that President Roosevelt and his advisors withheld vital information. It is also argued that the U.S, having broken the Japanese naval codes, were actually aware of the Japanese plans but failed to inform the commanders at Pearl Harbor. Days before the attack FDR and his closest military aides sent a secret cable to the Pearl Harbor chiefs telling them to "stand down." And American intelligence intercepted a message from Tokyo asking its spies in Hawaii to map the harbor at Pearl for an imminent air attack. More than six decades later, the controversy over Pearl Harbor still boils under the surface of recent American history. It ignites heated debates over collusion, intrigue, and thousands of American dead.

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