Memorandum, Navy Secretary Frank Knox-Attorney General Francis Biddle, June 26, 1942

Source: Memorandum, Navy Secretary Frank Knox-Attorney General Francis Biddle, June 26, 1942 Date: Jun 26, 1942 Archive: NARA, RG-60, Case File 146-7-23-25, box 1, file: “Serial 7: August 14, 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 Wartime Clearance Mishap

On June 26, 1942 Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox wrote to Attorney General Francis Biddle about the “Johnston case,” a brief but revealing episode that illustrates how the rush to field correspondents during the early Pacific war sometimes outpaced the bureaucratic safeguards meant to protect operational security. Knox’s memorandum was prompted by a conversation with Biddle the previous day, during which the two men apparently discussed whether the Army or Navy had any prior intelligence on the journalist in question. Knox immediately ordered an inquiry, and the reply he received from Admiral Hepburn—summarized in the memo—shows that both the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) and the War Department’s G‑2 had cleared the man, even involving the FBI, and reported no derogatory findings. The clearance, however, was based on British intelligence files that had only just become available, suggesting a reliance on foreign sources that were themselves imperfect.

The Context of the Pacific Correspondent Program

In the months after Pearl Harbor, the Navy launched an aggressive public‑relations campaign to showcase the fleet’s actions against Japan. Correspondents were granted unprecedented access to warships, but the administration quickly realized the need for a written pledge obligating them to submit all material for review before publication. The memorandum Knox references notes that this pledge had not yet reached the Pacific Fleet when the Lexington’s journalist—identified only as “Mr. Johnston”—embarked. Consequently, Admiral Sherman, commander of the carrier USS Lexington, relied on oral instructions and a copy of a standard correspondent memorandum. The episode therefore highlights a gap between policy and practice: a formal security protocol existed, but its dissemination lagged behind operational demands.

What the Memo Reveals About Inter‑Agency Coordination

Knox’s letter is more than a routine status report; it is a snapshot of wartime inter‑agency coordination. By citing both ONI and the Army’s G‑2, Knox underscores that the Navy did not act in isolation when vetting civilian journalists. The involvement of the FBI, a domestic law‑enforcement agency, indicates that the clearance process extended beyond purely military intelligence channels. Yet the memo also hints at a blind spot: the clearance was “approved for war correspondent with the United States armed forces” without any derogatory information, but the document provides no detail on what the British files actually contained or why they mattered to U.S. officials. The phrase “nothing derogatory was reported from any source” reads like a legalistic reassurance rather than a thorough vetting, suggesting that the agencies were more interested in a quick green light than a deep background check.

Legacy and Why It Still Matters

The Johnston clearance episode foreshadows later, more infamous disputes over press freedom and national‑security leaks, such as the 1945 “Chicago Tribune” case that led to the first peacetime prosecution of a newspaper under the Espionage Act. Knox’s memo shows that even senior officials were aware of the tension between open reporting and operational secrecy, and that they sometimes relied on informal oral directives when formal paperwork lagged. The incident also illustrates how the wartime expansion of the press corps created new vulnerabilities that the military had to manage on the fly. For contemporary scholars, the memo offers a concrete example of how bureaucratic inertia and the urgency of wartime communication intersected, shaping the evolving doctrine of media‑military relations that would later be codified in the 1949 Department of Defense Directive on press accreditation.

Reading Between the Lines

The tone of Knox’s letter—polite, almost collegial—belies the seriousness of the underlying issue. By addressing Biddle as “My dear Francis,” Knox signals a personal rapport that likely facilitated rapid inter‑departmental cooperation. The memo’s attachment of a “memorandum from the Fleet dealing with this case” suggests that the Navy kept detailed internal records, yet those documents remain classified or lost, leaving historians to piece together the full narrative from fragments. The fact that the clearance relied on British intelligence files, which were themselves subject to wartime secrecy, raises the possibility that the U.S. agencies were operating with incomplete or second‑hand information. This uncertainty may have contributed to later, more stringent clearance requirements for correspondents.

In sum, the June 26, 1942 memorandum is a microcosm of the early Pacific war’s administrative challenges: the need to balance public morale, press access, and operational security; the reliance on inter‑agency vetting mechanisms; and the inevitable gaps that arise when policy trails practice. Its relevance endures as a reminder that the friction between a free press and military secrecy is not a post‑Cold‑War invention but a wartime reality that has shaped American national‑security policy from the outset.

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