Memorandum, Seaman W. B. D. Stroud to Captain W. B. Phillips (USS Barnett ) re Access to naval communications for Stanley Johnston, June 13, 1942

Source: Memorandum, Seaman W. B. D. Stroud to Captain W. B. Phillips (USS Barnett ) re Access to naval communications for Stanley Johnston, June 13, 1942 Date: Jun 13, 1942 Archive: NARA, RG-60, Case File 146-7-23-25, box 1, file: “Serial 5, June 24-30, 1942.” Collection: Secrecy And Leaks: When The U.S. Government Prosecuted The Chicago Tribune Oct 25, 2017

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Editorial Analysis

Original analysis by the DriftSeas editorial desk. The complete primary-source document, transcribed from the National Security Archive scan, appears in full below.

A Leaked Briefing for a War Correspondent

On June 13, 1942 Seaman W. B. D. Stroud sent a short memorandum to Captain W. B. Phillips, commanding officer of the destroyer USS Barnett. The note records a conversation that had taken place aboard the Barnett’s chart house a few days earlier, when a civilian journalist, Stanley Johnston of the Chicago Tribune, was being granted unusually broad access to “restricted charts” and other classified material. Stroud’s memo is not a formal request for clearance; it is a backstage report of a verbal agreement among senior naval officers—namely the executive officer of the aircraft carrier USS Lexington and a staff officer identified only as Mr. Bontecou—that Johnston could view “all secret and confidential matter except” an illegible category, provided he kept the information to himself.

The timing is critical. The memorandum was written just days after the Battle of the Coral Sea (May 4‑8, 1942) and weeks before the pivotal Battle of Midway (June 4‑7, 1942). Both engagements were shrouded in extreme operational secrecy; the Navy’s ability to conceal carrier movements and aircraft‑strike plans was a matter of national survival. At the same time, the Tribune’s war correspondent Stanley Johnston had been cultivating a reputation for aggressive, sometimes speculative reporting on naval operations in the Pacific. His by‑line story on the Coral Sea, published on June 1, hinted at a Japanese carrier defeat before the Navy officially confirmed it, raising alarm in Washington about the leak of classified intelligence.

The Context of a Controversial Leak

Johnston’s “inside” story set off a chain reaction that culminated in the famous Tribune headline, “The Day the Japanese Lost a Carrier,” on June 9, 1942, the day after Midway. The article relied on information that could only have come from a source with direct access to fleet communications. The Navy’s internal investigation quickly identified a small circle of officers who had, in private, allowed Johnston to see operational charts and messages. Stroud’s memorandum is a rare piece of that puzzle because it records the conversation verbatim, revealing the Navy’s own acknowledgment that the journalist was being “trusted” to see classified material.

The memo also exposes the paradoxical attitude of senior officers. The executive officer of the Lexington, identified only as Mr. Seligman, explicitly states that Johnston must remain “quiet” about what he sees, warning that any breach would “ruin his career as a correspondent.” Yet the same officer encourages the journalist to travel to Washington to brief the Secretary of the Navy on the very action that had just occurred. This duality—granting access while demanding silence—illustrates the Navy’s desperate gamble: using a trusted reporter to shape public perception and perhaps to pressure political leaders into supporting aggressive carrier tactics, while hoping the press would not expose operational details to the enemy.

What the Memo Reveals About Institutional Culture

First, the memo shows that the Navy’s chain of command was willing to bypass formal security protocols in an ad‑hoc manner. Rather than filing a written clearance request through the Office of Naval Intelligence, the officers relied on an informal conversation in a chart house, later documented only as a personal note. Second, the language of the memo—“permitted access to all secret and confidential matter except the …”—suggests that the officers believed they could compartmentalize information, a notion later disproven when the Tribune published specifics that matched the content of the restricted charts.

Finally, the document’s provenance—filed under the National Archives’ RG‑60 “Naval Records Collection” and later declassified under authority NND 76716—indicates that the Navy retained the memo as evidence of internal awareness of the leak. It likely served as part of the case file used to prosecute the Tribune and Johnston under the Espionage Act, a rare peacetime application of the law that underscored the administration’s willingness to defend operational secrecy at the cost of press freedom.

Legacy of the Stroud Memorandum

The Stroud memo is a micro‑cosm of the broader struggle between a wartime press eager to inform the public and a military establishment terrified of compromising its strategic advantage. It adds nuance to the narrative that Johnston acted alone; the memo shows that senior officers actively facilitated his access, blurring the line between sanctioned briefing and illicit leak.

In the decades since, historians have debated whether the Tribune’s Midway scoop saved the war effort by forcing the Navy to accelerate its own public messaging, or whether it endangered future operations by establishing a precedent for civilian access to classified material. Stroud’s note does not resolve that debate, but it does confirm that the decision to let a reporter see secret charts was a conscious, if risky, policy choice made in the heat of a rapidly evolving Pacific campaign. For scholars of wartime media, intelligence, and civil‑military relations, the memorandum remains a vivid reminder that the boundaries of secrecy are often drawn in informal conversations, not just in statutes.

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The memorandum is reproduced in full in the National Security Archive’s collection “Secrecy and Leaks: When the U.S. Government Prosecuted the Chicago Tribune,” and can be consulted for the exact phrasing of the officers’ assurances.

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