Carter W. Clarke

Carter W. Clarke (c. 1897 – September 3, 1987) was a U.S. Army intelligence officer and brigadier general. He was the military intelligence officer who prepared intercepted Japanese Magic cables for U.S. officials. He also headed a War Department investigation into the role that military intelligence leading up to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. He died of a heart attack in 1987 at his home in Clearwater, Florida.

Clarke joined the Army in 1916 during World War I and also served during World War II and the Korean War. In his work for the Military Intelligence Division he in 1943 was instrumental in starting the Venona project. Later he ignored an order to destroy all records of Soviet espionage that were collected in this project. During the Korean War he commanded forces in Osaka, Japan. Late in his career he also worked as an assistant to Allen W. Dulles, then Director of Central Intelligence. He retired in 1954.

In a 1959 interview, he said he disagreed with the decision to drop atomic bombings on Japan at the end of World War II, believing it unnecessary as Japan was:

"...down to an abject surrender through the accelerated sinking of their merchant marine and hunger alone, and when we didn't need to do it, and we knew we didn't need to do it, and they knew we knew we didn't need to do it, we used them as an experiment for two atomic bombs."

General Clarke was married to Jessie Clarke and had a son, Carter Clarke Jr. (born c. 1928), and two grandchildren. Carter Clarke Jr. is a retired United States Army brigadier general who in 1996 founded Gemesis Corporation, the largest manufacturer of gem-quality synthetic diamonds. Clarke died on September 3, 1987 in Clearwater, Florida at the age of 90 from a heart attack.