Over the last few years, a regular cottage industry has sprung up in publishing and Hollywood to celebrate what Tom Brokaw dubbed The Greatest Generation. Mr. Brokaw’s 1998 book by the same name is only one of numerous works hailing the generation of Americans who led the nation through the Great Depression and World War II. Others include Mr. Brokaw’s sequel, The Greatest Generation Speaks, Stephen Ambrose’s D-Day: June 6, 1944, James Bradley’s Flags of Our Fathers and the Steven Spielberg movie Saving Private Ryan. It has even led to the establishment of a D-Day museum in New Orleans.

It was perhaps inevitable that Congress would join what has become a wave of national nostalgia. Besides their recent vote to erect a monument to World War II veterans in the middle of the Washington Mall, lawmakers have fallen over themselves to propose a host of new measures either honoring or compensating the wartime generation. These have included a ”Rosie the Riveter” monument to women who worked on the home front, indemnities to American and Filipino veterans, the commemoration of interned Japanese-Americans, demands for Japanese apologies for war crimes and even an investigation into whether Italian-Americans suffered civil-liberties abuses during the war.

Few would quarrel with such accolades or demands for redress. Yet the recent rush to honor has included a more contentious tribute—an attempt by Congress to essentially rewrite history and enshrine the main tenet of a widely discredited conspiracy theory in legislation. As part of a defense bill approved on Oct. 30, 2000 Congress called on President Clinton to exculpate the commanders at Pearl Harbor of any responsibility for the devastating surprise attack that pushed America into World War II. A section of the bill claims that Pearl Harbor’s commanders at the time, Adm. Husband E. Kimmel and Gen. Walter C. Short, ”were not provided necessary and critical intelligence that would have alerted them to prepare for the attack.” It asks President Clinton to posthumously give both men back their highest wartime ranks, which they lost upon their forced retirement after the battle.

But what the bill also does, by implication, is pass on responsibility for American unpreparedness at Pearl Harbor to the high command in Washington at the time—the most prominent of whom were President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Gen. George C. Marshall. It thus gives credence to an old and discredited conspiracy theory—that Roosevelt and others maneuvered America into the war by deliberately keeping the Pearl Harbor garrison in the dark about the impending attack.

The measure, which is still awaiting a decision by Mr. Clinton, was sponsored by Delaware’s senators, William V. Roth Jr. and Joseph R. Biden, and backed by a broad coalition of senators from both parties. Its supporters seemed largely ignorant of the enveloping conspiracy theories and disavowed any intention of passing the buck to anyone. ”I am not interested in shifting blame,” Senator Roth said in a statement. ”Pearl Harbor was a systemic failure in which the gravest mistakes were made by the Washington authorities. This amendment is a matter of justice and fairness that goes to the core of our military tradition and our nation’s sense of military honor.”

It is also the culmination of a tenacious effort by Edward R. Kimmel, son of the late admiral, to restore the reputation of his father and General Short. Mr. Kimmel, 79, a retired Delaware lawyer and World War II veteran himself, does not believe in any conspiracy but insists, ”There was ample information in Washington in hands of the high command that the attack was going to be on Pearl Harbor.”

Yet if critical knowledge was withheld from the Pearl Harbor commanders—intentionally or not—isn’t someone to blame for the loss of 2,403 American lives on Dec. 7, 1941, the ”date which will live in infamy”?

A long series of Army and Navy inquiries and Congressional hearings in the 1940’s all declined to restore Admiral Kimmel and General Short to their highest ranks. A 1995 Pentagon review concurred, finding that responsibility for the attack ”should be broadly shared” but that ”the intelligence available to Admiral Kimmel and General Short was sufficient to justify a higher level of vigilance than they chose to maintain.” The vast majority of historians seem to agree, and many are outraged over what they see as an attempt to change the historical record by legislative fiat. ”In the end, no, historical facts should not be decided by legislation,” said Richard Snow, editor of American Heritage magazine, who says the officers were ”absolutely not” missing information critical to the base’s defense.

William J. vanden Heuvel, chairman of the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute, said ”Congress did its job in 1942,” referring to the earlier hearings. ”There should be new hearings if there is new evidence.”

Indeed, others are concerned that using official venues to advance dubious history is becoming a trend. Last December, for example, relatives of the late Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. used an uncontested wrongful death suit to press their belief that Dr. King was assassinated not by James Earl Ray but by a much wider government conspiracy, perhaps orchestrated by President Lyndon Johnson.

With the cooperation of the defendant—an obscure Memphis bar owner who claimed to have played a role in the assassination—the Kings’ lawyer was able to fill the court record with speculation about the civil rights leader’s murder, thereby preempting a thorough new Justice Department inquiry that found no evidence of a conspiracy.

”What a perversion of history, to pass a resolution that effectively endorses an Oliver Stone-type conspiracy about withheld critical information about Pearl Harbor,” said Gerald L. Posner, whose book Killing the Dream (Random House, 1998) debunked a number of conspiracy theories about the King assassination. ”It fits with our national obsession to absolve anyone of any responsibility for their actions.”

Perhaps this is the sharpest irony surrounding the Pearl Harbor legislation. After all, ”the greatest generation” has been lauded above all for its intestinal fortitude, its willingness to accept responsibility and to lead. Now it may be that Congress has officially transformed the greatest generation into the blameless generation.