Henry C. Clausen

Henry C. Clausen was a trial lawyer and an assistant US attorney in San Francisco. In 1944 secretary of war Henry L. Stimson ordered young Major Clausen to investigate the proximate causes of the disaster at Pearl Harbor. For the first time, witnesses were forced to tell the truth about the military’s failure to exploit the priceless intelligence obtained by the United States before the attack.

In 1945 Clausen was awarded the Legion of Merit, then the highest honor a citizen could receive for service during wartime. He also served as president of the Scottish Rite’s Mother Supreme Council of the World and as the sovereign grand commander of the Supreme Council of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry. With coauthor Bruce Lee, Clausen wrote Pearl Harbor, which critics have acclaimed as being “so well grounded it makes all further speculation on the subject seem pointless.”