IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF ILLINOIS IN RE PETITION OF ELLIOT CARLSON REPORTERS COMMITTEE FOR FREEDOM OF THE PRESS AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION NATIONAL SECURITY ARCHIVE Miscellaneous Action No ____________ NAVAL HISTORICAL FOUNDATION NAVAL INSTITUTE PRESS ORGANIZATION OF AMERICAN HISTORIANS AND SOCIETY FOR MILITARY HISTORY DECLARATION OF DR JOHN PRADOS I John Prados hereby declare as follows 1 I am a senior fellow at the National Security Archive at George Washington University in Washington D C where I am the project director of documentation projects for Vietnam and the CIA 2 I am the author of more than 20 books on national security foreign affairs and military subjects including Combined Fleet Decoded The Secret History of American Intelligence and the Japanese Navy in World War II 1995 which won a book award from the New York Military Affairs Symposium Safe for Democracy The Secret Wars of the CIA 2009 The Family Jewels The CIA Secrecy and Presidential Power 2013 and Keepers of the Keys A History of the National Security Council from Truman to Bush 1991 I have edited other collections including Inside the Pentagon Papers 2004 and my writing has appeared in The New York Times Washington Post The Journal of National Security Law Policy the Journal of American History The Quarterly Journal of Military History and Naval History among many other publications 3 I hold a Ph D in political science from Columbia University 4 I have written about the Chicago Tribune grand jury investigation in 1942 in my book Combined Fleet Decoded and consider the investigation to be of historical significance 5 The grand jury in this case examined issues surrounding one of the central intelligence developments of the time the breaking of Japanese Navy codes in a way that enabled the United States to anticipate enemy military moves Because this activity was highly classified at the time the publication on June 7 1942 immediately following the battle of Midway of details that had appeared in the intelligence reporting appeared suspect 6 Subsequent declassification of documents and other historical research has established that the actual source of the leak as reported in the Tribune was not the codebreaking material but rather a U S Navy internal memorandum issued from Pearl Harbor by Pacific fleet commander Admiral Chester Nimitz and shown to the responsible reporter by a friend who was a naval officer There are several questions regarding this record which the public has an interest in resolving One is the question of what the grand jury was told about U S codebreaking since the Navy sought to keep this secret and absent a showing of that sort it would seem difficult to prove a violation of the Espionage Act 2 7 A second question is whether the prosecutors aimed at the reporter the naval officer the newspaper or all three The direction prosecutors took is directly relevant to issues of freedom of the press which are still contested today The grand jury's reasoning in balancing considerations involved in this solicitation for an indictment can shed light on similar legal actions attempted against reporters and news outlets more recently Only release of the testimony can show whether the action against the Chicago Tribune which Attorney General Francis Biddle sought amounted to a persecution on punitive grounds That could be the case if the Navy had established prior to August 7 1942 when Biddle moved action that the reporter's source was other than a leak of codebreaking material 8 A third question that may be resolved by release of these grand jury proceedings is whether the prosecutors were attempting by this effort at indictment to punish the Tribune for articles it had run on U S defense policy even before the war began These are questions of continuing historical importance on which light can reasonably be expected to be shown by the release of these grand jury records Pursuant to 28 U S C 1746 I declare under penalty of perjury that the foregoing is true and correct Executed on ________________________ 2014 in Silver Spring Maryland Dr John Prados 3                     National Security Archive    Suite 701  Gelman Library  The George Washington University    2130 H Street  NW  Washington  D C  20037    Phone  202 994‐7000  Fax  202 994‐7005  nsarchiv@gwu edu