Interesting, if Wrong

On my trip, I picked up and read "Betrayal at Pearl Harbor", written by two British (OK, one Australian) intelligence experts, one of whom was deeply involved in breaking Japanese codes in the Pacific during the second world war. Their premise is that not only did some Americans have knowledge of the Japanese strike on Pearl Harbor in time to minimize damage, but failed to recognize it, but that the British had broken the Japanese military codes (as opposed to the Japanese diplomatic codes, which had been broken by the Americans as well) but failed to tell the Americans. (This is a loose paraphrase; details may be not quite correct, but you get the gist)

The result was that the British could have told the Americans about the Japanese preparation for the attack.

OK, so the two countries did not work totally in concert (after all, the Americans were not in the war), and even within each country's multi-headed intelligence operations, cooperation was not always there (as it has not been in the US with respect to CIA, FBI, etc).

But the premise is that Churchill wanted Pearl Harbor to be attacked, because he knew that would bring America into a fight he would otherwise lose. This novel theory has, according to what I can see on the internet, not been accepted by others.