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Drea is one of two Asia specialists added to the commission appointed by Clinton to finesse the files out of the cabinets of the CIA's culture of secrecy. So far, the commission has spent all of its time on Nazi records.

''I'd like to see the documents declassified and let the chips fall where they may so that scholars and interested people can have access to them,'' says Drea.

Lovell, who was active in Quaker efforts to avert war and a former official in the Agriculture Department under Roosevelt, sometimes talked about his contacts with Thomsen, says his son, Malcolm Lovell Jr.

''He was working with Hans Thomsen and Lord Lothian, who was the British ambassador, if he could be any help advancing the cause of peace,'' he says. ''He was opposed to the war. Most Quakers were.''

The younger Lovell, a former undersecretary of Labor under President Reagan, says ''I think my father felt that Roosevelt knew that Japan was going to attack somewhere.''

Of the many discussions of where there might have been an intelligence, communications, or policy breakdown, one theory that rarely seems to be raised, but which can be found among the historical extracts of World War II at the US Army's Web site, says simply that the Japanese deftly pulled off a daring raid:

''The attack on Pearl Harbor was one of the most brilliant tactical feats of the war.''