A surprise attack? Not quite
In the mass media, this issue is barely raised and if it is, it's raised to dismiss it as a half-baked "conspiracy theory."
But in serious academic military history circles, the consensus of real historians is that the US not only deliberately provoked the Japanese into the attack on Pear Harbor, they also knew it was coming and let it happen.
The comment by the Project for the New American Century, headed by people like Dick Cheney, that the US needed a "new Pearl Harbor' takes on new significance in the light of these facts.
