National Affairs: The Admiral's Story

For four years and a month Rear Admiral Husband E. Kimmel had waited to tell his story of the Pearl Harbor disaster. Now he had his chance.

White-haired at 63, he was still burly, still erect. Going to the witness chair, he walked into the glare of cameramen's klieg lights with the air of a man expecting complete vindication. For two days, with the flat authority of the quarterdeck, he hammered away at the central theme of his defense—that the Navy had kept him so inadequately informed that he had been "misled" into believing an...