F 4 DECLASSIFIED 1 Authority MIEZD I 6 M T SELIGMAN CALLED BEFORE THE GRAND JURY THURS Commander U S Navy P 77 P 78 My full name is M T SELIGMAN I am a Commander U 3 Navy I am originally from New Mexico that is I was brought up there I was born in Utah I I have been in the Navy for twenty-eight years My rank is Commander Three stripes is a full Commander and two broad stripes and a narrow one is Lieutenant Commander Four stripes is a Captain and an Ensign is one stripe A Lieutenant Junior Grade is one stripe and one narrow line That is equivalent to First Lieutenant in the Army Lieutenant Senior Grade is two stripes I was Executive Officer of the Carrier LEXINGTON when she sailed from Honolulu I acted on her in that capacity until she finally sank I remember that STANLEY JOHNSTON came on board the LEXINGTON at Honolulu Here MR MITCHELL showed the witness a letter to the Commanding Officer of the Carrier LEXINGTON from Admiral Nimitz the Commander-in Chief of the Pacific Fleet dated April 19M2 I do not remember that letter being delivered on board the at Honolulu I have no personal recollection of it I remember JOHNSTON coming on board He was accompanied by an officer from Admiral Nimitz's staff Lieutenant Bessett and prior to that I don't recall Just when my memory has been pretty well shattered because I got blown up and I can't remember little details but I am trying to past it together I think Lieutenant Commander Drake Authority 1 WE DECLA-SSIFIED -2- cons M T SELIGMAN i he 7 9 P 80 contfd called up and the Captain wasn't aboard He was the Senior Public Relations Officer for Admiral Nimitz and he called up I being second in command he got me on the telephone We were about to 3311 He said that the Admiral was very anxious to have NR JOHNSTON accompany us on this trip I believe at that time we were very shy of rooms We had a very large number of officers on board We would do our best to give him accommodations but to be sure that he was accompanied by somebody so we would know who he was because we were very particular about who came on board ship I don't remember Just the interval of time when JOHNSTON came down but Lieutenant Bassett whom I personally knew accompanied' him and said This is MR JOHNSTON and the man that Lieutenant Commander Drake spoke to you about over the telephone MR JOHNSTON had his regular Navy press credentials This letter if it came it would have come in the regular mail and it might have come subsequent to the time that MR JOHNSTON came aboard and in the great stack of mail Just when you are sailing you probably look at something and the man is aboard and you Just forget about it That's why I can't remember A letter means nothing if they send an officer over with him If that letter was received on board the LEXINGTON in the ordinary course it would have gone into the ship s files When the ship went down we didn't have time to save anything and very little to save ourselves If the original letter reached the LEXINGTON it would have been in our file and that's the end of that I was blown out of a scuttle on the LEXINGTON and got a 5 I P 81 DECLASSIFIED AuthorityMIED 2% 1 6 A -3- COMM M T SELIGMAN back injury which gave me not only something wrong with the sacroiliac I don't know the medical terms but it also gave me con- cussion which they have been treating me for in the hospital I stayed with the men as long as I could until I got them more or less squared away and rehabilitated to some extent and the doctors then insisted that I go to the hospital on the 11th of June That was after I got to San Diego and I have been there ever since We were passengers on the BARNETT as LEXINGTON officers proceeding on her to San Diego I Some arrangement was made on board the BARNETT by which cer- tain officers of the LEXINGTON were named as officers to whom de- _coded secret dispatches would be exhibited as received I don t remember the details-of the arrangement I don't remember whether the Captain of the BARNETT told me or whether he talked about it with Duckworth I didn't get over there until a day after the rest of them did because I was working with Admiral Sherman on some other reports I recall that the Captain of the BARNETT said that we had volunteered the services of any of our officers that he might require in any way we could help out and our communication watch officers were among those people they figured could help out Captain Phillips said that as far as the designation of information was concerned among the LEXINGTON officers that we would follow the same practice as had been followed on the LEXINGTON The officers on board the BARNETT who would have received the exhibition of secret messages from C P 82- P 83 P 8h DECLASSIFIED Authority MED 2g 1 '6 COMM M T SELIGMAN cont'd the LEXINGTON werethe heads of departments I will try to name sense There was a gunnery officer O'Donnell myself of course Commander Junker chief engineer Commander Duckworth the air officer Terry communications officer Terry Was sick but he received every- thing a communications officer always receives everything Terry Isaw them all _but I don't believe he realized what he was looking at half the time he was very 111 MR MITCHELL asked the witness if the decoded message received on board the BARNETT on the evening of May 31 1942 from Admiral Nimitz in a cipher that indicated it held first rank as a secret message was exhibited to him to which the witness replied that he-did not remember the specific message that the secret messages at that time were in two classifications one was what they call an ADIAC message which was not supposed to be decoded I the witness do not know what the abbreviation was for but those messages were the highest rank of secrecy The witness said to HR MITCHELL You mentioned this was the highest rank of secrecy That is not correct This message came along with the regular group of secret correspondence presumably As I say I don't recall this particular individual message because we saw hundreds of them The Navy regulation classifies these messages into secret confidential and restricted A secret message is marked on the folder It is marked by the recipient It is not in the message itself that it is secret The originator of the message de- termines its classification It was a type of secret message that '5 P085 P 86 DECLASSIFIED Authority MED lg 6 COMM cont'd was not supposed to be decoded at all That is something that was puzzling every body in the Fleet for some time because they would get partway through some of these soacalled ADIAC messages and they would have the whole message laid out there They were not supposed to decode it but they wouldn't find out it was a decode message This is hearsay on my part These messages were only to be decoded by Admirals Task Force Commanders people like that It would not be decoded on the BARNETT for instance because we were not a Task Force This message as it came was directed to Commanders of Task Forces by Admiral Nimitz from CINCPAC that is Commander in Chief of the Pacific I have not studied the message because I have never had an Opportunity to I donft remember it specifically I don't remember that message I don't remember'any discussion that night about that parti cular message having been received from Admiral Nimitz on May 31st MR MITCHELL put the following question to the witness There were two officers here who said that on that night in this room or suite rather a part of which you occupied JOHNSTON occupied and Terry had quarters there a group of officers was around the table looking at a document that was on Navy paper with blue lines and it had written on it in pencil an estimate of the supposed striking force of the Japanese the support force and the occupation force with a list under each force of the Jap ships that were in it Do you remember seeing anything of that kind u P 87 Authority MM COMM M I SELIGMAN cont'd The witness replied as follows don't remember it specifically sir but it certainly may have been there I was in a terrific mental state I had at tremendous amount of work to do We had men that we had to get rehabilitated We had discussions constantly There were any number of messages that came in and naturally if you are out there you are going to discuss the war We had a great many discussions from time to time I would be called here and there I being the senior officer on board I had to take care of a lot of details and it is perfectly possible that this message was discussed but I don't remember the specific message although I know perfectly well we discussed the possibilities our own chances and so forth in the Midway affair We had before us the fact that some Japanese Fleet was approaching or headed for Midway we had that under discussion As a matter of fact that came out in the Radio News as I recall it I don't remember when that was but I do remember one thing The Captain showed me two of these so-called ADIAC messages that he had in his possession and he said am not passing these around I am going to burn them up But it is interesting'information I can't remember the contents of those messages but it was very clear from those messages that a serious battle was impending It was very clear that the Japs were making a move toward Midway or Pearl Harbor oerutch Harbor or both 7 As I remember I have to fall back on a very poor memory again this was several days before the 31st because we were very DECLA-SSIFIED Authoritympi D 26 I I6 6 P086 P 89 COMM M T SELIGMAN Cont close to shore on the 31st of May and there were a tremendous number of last-minute details that I had to attend to prior to coming into port After we landed in San Diego I remember having some contact with JOHNSTON He said that he was going to stay at the Coronado Hotel and I told him when we left the ship that Admiral Sherman was very anxious to talk to him It was Captain Sherman at that time I thought this is only conjecture until this morning I didn't know Just exactly what the Admiral wanted to talk to him about but I thought he wanted to Sort of read over stories on the Coral Sea and check for their accuracy not censorship but check for their accuracy MR JOHNSTON was very much concerned about getting in touch with the Public Relations officers in the Eleyehth Naval District that is in San Diego in order to get his material sent to Washington censored and released As far as I knew that is the material about the Coral Sea In my conversations with JOHNSTON in that contact I managed to put him in touch with the Public Relations office so that he could get the stories he was writing his experiences on the LEXINGTON through to Washington to be censored before publication The fact that the material JOHNSTON got on the Fleet had to be censored was reiterated to him by Admiral Sherman and Admiral Fitch and he brought it up constantly himself and his one thought apparently when we got ashore was to get in touch with these people so that he could make some special arrangement to get it released r P 90 P 91 DECLASSIFIED Authority COMM M T SELIGMAN Cont'd JOHNSTON was anxious to publish his material quickly He felt he had a very fine story and he wanted to get it released as soon as he could To go on with this so called contact there were some reprea sentatives of the Commandant's office on the dock It was dark when he got off the ship dusk when we started and by the time we got off it was pitchudark I don t know what time it was and I spoke to one of the officers down there and asked him where we could get in touch with Lieutenant Requa who was the Public Relations man and gave him a brief idea of what it was about But he couldn't be reached until the following morning as I remember it At that time JOHNSTON made some arrangement with him and I understood that the material was submitted to the Commandant Admiral Holm at San Diego uho read it over He thought it was very good and he arranged for an airplane to take it to Washington where it was subsequently censored and published There was never any mention made of anything beyond the Coral See as far as these articles were concerned JOHNSTON neither on the ship BARNETT or after he got on shore never told me that he found on the table of this room this document with a penciled description of the supposed Japanese fleet and these three forces He never mentioned that he had seen that document or a copy of it If he had regardless of the fact that I was feeling very badly and very ill I would have immediately said What is this He never told me that he had found that or a copy of it DECLASSIFIED Authorityw 8 92 COMM M T SELIGMAN Cont'd If I or any other officer had known that JOHNSTON had infor nation that he should not have we would have inquired into it However there is a distinction there JOHNSTON never mentioned to me the fact that he had got this memorandum and copied it As a matter of fact I introduced him to Lieutenant Requa and I canit remember whether Lieutenant Commander Anderson was there or not Admiral Sherman a day or so later said to me Where is Johnston I said don't know I haven't laid eyes on him The Admiral was very upset He said You try to get hold of I tried all over San Diego to trace him down and finally we found out that he had taken a plane He had drOpped his material in the Public Relations Office and immediately taken a plane back East and I have not Seen him from that day to this MR JOHNSTON shared the same room in which this document or this note was being passed from one to the other You could not exactly call this a suite It was a very makeshift affair We had dozens of peeple in there all day long I could possibly make a sketch of it if it would help anybody MR JOHNSTON occupied a bunk in this one little section and MR TERRX occupied a bunk in the other side of the section Out in the middle we used it as a reception room and a coffee room There was so little space for us refugees to hang out on the ship They wouldn't let us have coffee except in this one little room so that the officers used to come in there through the day and they would get coffee and this and that and the other thing Of course there were diacussions elseWhere on the ship in the wardrocm The wardroom is the general eating place g P 93 Ll Authoritym gp 2g 2 -10- COMM M T SELIGMAN Cont'd This little place was in the middle I think they had previously used it as a dining room when they had an Admiral on board Then there was another little cubby hele that I had where I was preparing the various reports I had to make The Admiral had ordered me to prepare or collect and edit all of the reports of the various heads of de- partments on the Coral Sea battle which was a tremendous Job He also had ordered me to prepare complete muster lists of these men who were scattered among a great many ships and to prepare all of the recommendations foreward to people that he considered had per- formed heroic service and that required a lot of sifting down so I used this little room as an office We often eat out in this general gathering and no matter where you were aboard ship the officer who took the messages around would Just find you wherever he could and show you the message I mean the-decoded radio messages that were brought around and shown to the officers They would bring it around and show it to you and we might have a stack this thick indicating maybe 20 MO or 50 of them We would run through them this way and put our initials on On some we might stop and make some notes because that is a very common practice in the Navy You are not allowed to make any copy of any message but you could not possibly avoid it you couldn't fight this war without it nobody could remember everything in every message You could not make a copy which would compromise the code There is a distinction there You have to be very careful not to compromise the code MR MITCHELL showed the witness the original of a decipher from Admiral Nimitz to all Taskaorce Commanders that came in on the BARNETT on the of May was there decoded and marked Secret DECLASSIEIED Authoritywl ji P-95 P 96 COMM M T SELIGMAN Cont'd because of the nature of the cipher or code in which it came and which was taken around to several of the officers on board the BARNETT and exhibited to them and initialed The witness was asked to look at it and see if he could identify any of the initials on The witness replied as follows I can identify my initials those are mine right under that is up in the left-hand corner we put them anywhere My initials are very scrawly but that is mine That is my handwriting under the words To All Task Force Commanders those are my initials I don't deny having seen this message because if my initials are on it I must have seen it I don't have any recollec- tion of the specific message because there were hundreds and hundreds of messages came through and I can't remember the details of every specific message It is possible that when this message came in and was shown to me that I did what officers frequently do made a memorandum of the contents of it in such a way as to have the information without giving away the code I could have done that I might have done it- without my having any present recollection of it I made excerpts I have my own little way of doing shorthand abbreviating this that and the other thing I have made little netes from any number of messages because it was necessary for me not on the BARNETT but on the LEXINGTON being second in command it was necessary for me to know what was going on We always endeavored if we did make a note to be sure that when we got through with it it was destroyed The contents of our waste baskets were burned every day P 98 P-99 DECLA-SSIFIED AuthorityM ELD I I6 -12- COMM M T SELIGMAN Cont'd made a note from this particular message it would have been in my own kind of Anybody could of course read it But it would not be a copy of the message because we are not supposed to make copies of messages It might have said I Striking Force and then listed the same ships and it might have said Support Force and then named the vessels or classes of vessels that were named in the diapatch it may have contained Support Force and then under that listed them That was a very natural thing for an officer to do The witness here asked about the heading of the message that he didn't remember what it was MR MITCHELL showed the wit- ness the original and said The first words on it are that is Gommander-in-Chief FLEET ESTIMATE MIDWAY EDRCE The witness replied as follows That is the thing you would not put on the piece of paper the paper wouldn't mean anything unless you had on it what you read If you Just wrote down Striking Fdrde and a list of all the ships under that and then Occupation Force and listed under that all the names but you didn't say it was the estimate then you would be on the safe side because in that case it merely becomes a list of ships However if sons smart chap picked up that piece of paper and knew what was going on and of these discussiOnsthat had been going on he could readily deduce Here is my information Inside dope in other sords The Foreman of the Grand Jury asked the witness if in his ropinion wouldn't he say that that perhaps should be considered as DECLASSIFIED -- -- Authority P 100 COMM M T SELIGMAN Cont'd carelessness or negligence on the part of the officers present to permit_such information to be found or left on the table so that some smart chap might come along and deduce or make his own con clusions The witness replied as follows I We try to do the best that we can We were living in a terrific state of confusion We have been through a rather difficult experience and we had a tremendous volume of papers Under ordinary conditions I would say that if I personally left a paraphrase of important a message that contained information lying about I would be very careless However if I merely left a list of ships accidentally on my desk a list of ships doesn't mean anything anybody can make a list of ships Unless you know that the list came from a message like this it doesn't mean anything Practically everybody on this vessel were officers or en- listed men in the Navy except Johnston There was not a single civilian on the ship that I know of except JOHNSTON These officers trusted each other that is they wouldn't think a brother officer would grab a message like that take it away secretly and publish it or anything JOHNSTON had been traveling around with all of us on the LEXINGTON We had quite a high opiniOn of him on the LEXINGTON We had such a high opinion that the Captain recommended him for a decoration When a civilian is on a fighting Ship in actual naval operation he cannot be treated as an outcast You absolutely can't be quiet every time he comes into the room You have to treat him as an honorable fellow you have to1reat him as one of DECLASSIFIED i a l Authority P 101 P 102 COMM M T SELIGMAN Cont'd the officers and rely on the censorship obligation that if he does pick up anything he ought not to have to check him on it MR JOHNSTON had the highest credentials he could get Both-Admiral Fitch and Admiral Sherman were very much impressed with him They reiterated that statement on several occasions Although none of us would deliberately show JOHNSTON anything we are not detectives and the Navy Department puts him on board and vouches for him We assume as naval officers that when he gets ashore he is going to carry out his obligations to the Navy I have never been connected with the CensOrship -- but as I understand it before they can get accredited their background has to be looked into and they get an accredited card from the Navy Department Then they are further looked into before they are allowed aboard ship in Honolulu They are further instructed then to submit everything to the Navy censor I know that Admiral Sherman on a number of occasions reiterated that to Mr Johnston Witness excused                     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