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Spanish Civil War by a Nationalist general, Emilio Mola Vidal, as four columns of troops were fighting their way to Madrid to overthrow the elected Republican government. Mola Vidal stated he expected support from secret Nationalists in the Spanish military and government offices—a secret “Fifth Column” that would provide information to the Nationalist forces and rise up as combatants if needed.
    In the end, Ringle concluded that perhaps thirty-five hundred Japanese or Japanese Americans in the United States posed potential security risks.
    That information was pretty much ignored by the navy, because naval authorities considered homeland intelligence an army matter, and so it never got to army intelligence. It did, however, get to President Roosevelt, who had a personal spy service—financed by a secret White House fund managed by Secretary of War Henry Stimson—which included some government officials, businessmen, and journalists who reported to him and to him only. One of FDR’s private spies was a Chicago businessman named Curtis B. Munson, who was dispatched to the West Coast by John Franklin Carter, a secret FDR spy who was a syndicated newspaper columnist under the name “Jay Franklin.”
    Munson, who conferred with Ringle and with the FBI, wrote to Carter and the president as early as November 7, 1941, saying “99 percent of the most intelligent views on the Japanese were crystallized by Lt. Commander K.D. Ringle.” Summarizing all of the reports, Carter wrote to FDR:
There will be no armed uprising of Japanese.… The essence of what Munson has to report is that, to date, he has found no evidence which would indicate that there is a danger of widespread anti-American activities among this population group. He feels that the Japanese are in more danger from the whites than the other way around.… There will undoubtedly be some sabotage financed by Japan and executed largely by imported agents or agents already imported. There will be the odd case of fanatical sabotage by some Japanese “crackpot.” … The Japanese are hampered as saboteurs because of their easily recognized physical appearance. It will be hard for them to get near anything to blow up if it is guarded . … The dangerous part of their espionage is that they would be very effective as far as movement of supplies, movement of troops, and movement of ships out of harbor mouths and over railroads is concerned.… Japan will commit some sabotage largely depending on imported Japanese as they are afraid of and do not trust the Nisei.
    A week later Munson added in his report to the president: “The Nisei are universally estimated from 90 to 98 percent loyal to the United States if the Japanese-educated Kibei are excluded. The Nisei are pathetically eager to show this loyalty. They are not Japanese in culture. They are foreigners to Japan.”
    Added Carter in a cover note: “For the most part the local Japanese are loyal to the United States or, at worst, hope that by remaining quiet they can avoid concentration camps or irresponsible mobs. We do not believe that they would be at least any more disloyal than any other racial group in the United States with whom we went to war.”
    Carter, who worked in the National Press Building, near the White House, passed more Munson and Ringle opinions to Roosevelt on December 16. The president responded to only one point, that unguarded bridges and other infrastructure might be vulnerable to sabotage. The president asked for more information on that problem.
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    For about two weeks after Pearl Harbor, newspapers and public officials in California called for calm and tolerance. West Coast newspapers were printing stories about Japanese Americans and their alien parents pledging loyalty to the United States. Editorials and radio broadcasts often mirrored this one in the San Francisco Chronicle on December 9: “The roundup of Japanese citizens in various parts of the country … is not a