The grandson of the naval commander in charge of the US Pacific Fleet when it was attacked in Pearl Harbor in 1941 is visiting Bermuda this week.

And the events of 65 years ago remain at the forefront of former FBI agent Tom Kimmel?s thoughts. He is guest speaker onboard the cruise ship during its current visit from New Jersey, and has a repertoire of nine talks he delivers to various audiences in the US and to cruise ship passengers.

Terrorism, spying and Pearl Harbor are his specialist topics. Mr. Kimmel had a feeling of poignancy as he set sail for Bermuda this time and viewed New York?s iconic skyline because when he last made the same trip, in March 2001, the twin towers of the World Trade Center still stood.

The inner workings of the FBI, the role of whistleblowers and international espionage might appear an unlikely choice of subjects to lure cruise ship passengers from their cabins and other onboard activities to listen to a guest speaker, but Mr. Kimmel?s most recent talk the day before reached Hamilton attracted a packed audience.

Stormy weather made it tricky to stand up on the swaying ship and despite being a former US Navy man, Mr. Kimmel suffered a brief bout of sea sickness moments before delivering his lecture. Coming to Bermuda is a rare detour for Mr. Kimmel, who is more accustomed to being an in-demand guest speaker on cruise ships that travel West Coast routes to Hawaii where there is high interest in the Pearl Harbor story.

Taking time out during his stay in Bermuda, Mr. Kimmel spoke to about his mission to get the US Government to acknowledge that his late grandfather Admiral Husband E. Kimmel was unjustly made a scapegoat for the unpreparedness of the US Pacific Fleet when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, propelling the US into World War II.

Admiral Kimmel was a four-star Admiral at the time. Following a 36-day investigation in the immediate aftermath of the attack he was demoted to the status of Rear Admiral. His Army counterpart in Hawaii at the time General Walter Short was reduced in rank to Lieutenant General. The two men remain the only US flag and general officers not to be officially retired on their highest achieved military rank. That is an injustice that Mr. Kimmel continues to seek to be redressed. He has a compelling case, which has been backed up by an increasing body of secret documents declassified in the US and the former Soviet Union in recent years that reveal a web of intrigue and duplicity that supports his increasingly widely-held belief that his grandfather and Lt. Gen. Short were the ?fall guys? for the Pearl Harbor attack.

In a nutshell vital information was withheld, either deliberately or by mismanagement, from the two military commanders in Hawaii about the increasing likelihood that the Japanese were planning an audacious surprise attack.

Mr. Kimmel lays out the case that has at its centre a wartime double agent called Dusko Popov who was working for the Germans and the British. The British secret service passed on details to the FBI about the areas of intelligence the spy was seeking to gain information.

The anti-torpedo capabilities of Pearl Harbor were one of the areas of interest. The FBI fed the spy with worthless plans of torpedo nets that had been planned for the US base but had been mothballed as unworkable. Ironically, the information about the nets would appear to have had some bearing on the Japanese decision to use devastating ?shallow water dropped torpedoes? from attacking aircraft which sunk or damaged 21 ships of the US Pacific Fleet. Mr. Kimmel said his grandfather was never informed of the Axis powers? interest in the defences at Pearl Harbor, nor of a diplomatic ultimatum delivered by the US to the Japanese less than two weeks before the Pearl Harbor attack requesting it to desist from its military interventions in China. The late Admiral was also not made aware that aircraft-dropped torpedoes capable of being used in the shallow waters of Pearl Harbor even existed despite higher echelons of the US military being aware at the time that the technology had been developed by the British and had therefore possibly been developed elsewhere.

It is only with the declassification of documents in the past 20 years that evidence has been gathered to show how much pertinent intelligence was never passed on to Admiral Kimmel by his superiors in the US military.

?A 1995 investigation concluded that Lt. Gen. Short and my grandfather should not have been held responsible,? said Mr. Kimmel. Unfortunately the investigators did not go so far as to say who should share the blame for the attack or that the two military commanders in Hawaii be restored posthumously to their highest ranks.

And so the fight goes on. Mr. Kimmel has gathered support from the US Congress, 33 four-star Admirals, and a growing number of organisations and individuals who agree that his late grandfather be given his four-star Admiral ranking for posterity. On August 27 Captain Vince Colan, a 92-year-old wartime veteran who served with Mr. Kimmel?s grandfather on thein 1938 and 1939, intends to picket the White House to protest at the US Government?s continuing denial of Rear Admiral Kimmel?s posthumous return to the rank of Admiral. Mr. Kimmel said: ?My grandfather was left out in the wilderness.?

And without an acknowledgement of the mistakes of the past, which in his grandfather?s case include a breakdown in communication and a lack of intelligence sharing between sections of the military hierarchy, Mr. Kimmel says the same mistakes will be repeated in the future.

An example came with the September 11 2001 terrorism attacks on the US. In subsequent investigations it was found that some 20 months before the attacks the CIA intelligence agency had information about the hijackers but did not share this information with the FBI.

Mr. Kimmel said: ?I cringe every time I hear about the CIA and the FBI having different information and not sharing. We need better management of this problem.? Anyone wishing to find out more about his campaign and to add support should visit the website www.pearlharbor911attacks.com