the secure TWX line. Briggs was subsequently given a four-day pass as a reward (and was away in Cleveland on the 7th). At the FIO, Commander Laurance Safford states he reported this message to his superiors in Washington. At this point there is no further record of the message. Some eight other Army and Navy officers testified that they, too, had seen a winds execute message. But two of the men completely reversed their original testimony and the others turned out to have only vague recollections. None of the official inquiries took Safford's statement as fact; the most generous reporting that he was "misled" and that his memory was faulty. His case was not helped by his uncertainty over the date, although Lt Alwin Kramer also agreed in 1944 that he had seen Safford's yellow teletype sheet. It has been claimed that in the week after the attack there was significant document 'loss' at the Office of Naval Intelligence in Washington. In 2008 historians from the National Security Agency went back and analyzed all American and foreign intelligence sources and decrypted cables. They came to the conclusion that "winds execute" message never reached Washington. If there was a message then the blame would fall on the military for not passing it on. Following the end of the war, Japanese officials advised General MacArthur that no Winds signal was ever sent relating to the United States. This is supported by the testimony of Commander Joseph Rochefort (based in Naval HQ in Pearl Harbor). However an American intelligence team in Japan led by Colonel Abraham Sinkov of Central Bureau in September and October 1945 found they were told "half-truths or outright lies" by Japanese intelligence specialists, partly as there were rumours that the Americans would execute those involved in intelligence. The team was not allowed to reveal American intelligence successes. However some Japanese (Arisue and Nishimura) were more forthcoming when they saw that the Americans were interested in Japanese help against the Soviets. The coded Winds message was reported from Hong Kong, late on Sunday 7 December local time. The signal was "higashi no kaze, ame; nishi no kaze, hare" ("Easterly wind, rain; Westerly wind, fine"); meaning that Japan was about to declare war on Britain and America (and attacked British Malaya before Hawaii). A skeleton staff had been left behind in Hong Kong when the British Far East Combined Bureau (FECB)