Posted on 10/30/2005 9:58:21 PM PST by baseball_fan
WASHINGTON, Oct. 28 - The National Security Agency has kept secret since 2001 a finding by an agency historian that during the Tonkin Gulf episode, which helped precipitate the Vietnam War, N.S.A. officers deliberately distorted critical intelligence to cover up their mistakes, two people familiar with the historian's work say.
The historian's conclusion is the first serious accusation that communications intercepted by the N.S.A., the secretive eavesdropping and code-breaking agency, were falsified so that they made it look as if North Vietnam had attacked American destroyers on Aug. 4, 1964, two days after a previous clash. President Lyndon B. Johnson cited the supposed attack to persuade Congress to authorize broad military action in Vietnam, but most historians have concluded in recent years that there was no second attack.
The N.S.A. historian, Robert J. Hanyok, found a pattern of translation mistakes that went uncorrected, altered intercept times and selective citation of intelligence that persuaded him that midlevel agency officers had deliberately skewed the evidence.
Mr. Hanyok concluded that they had done it not out of any political motive but to cover up earlier errors, and that top N.S.A. and defense officials and Johnson neither knew about nor condoned the deception.
Mr. Hanyok's findings were published nearly five years ago in a classified in-house journal, and starting in 2002 he and other government historians argued that it should be made public. But their effort was rebuffed by higher-level agency policymakers, who by the next year were fearful that it might prompt uncomfortable comparisons with the flawed intelligence used to justify the war in Iraq, according to an intelligence official familiar with some internal discussions of the matter.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
"...You're not going to find elegant transcripts under these circumstances..."
Thank you for the insight. I can see where that is the most likely case. When the official is saying, however, that it is "missing," it sounds like there was a log of somekind showing they (the archives) had possession at one point and now it cannot be accounted for (a la Sandy Berger in a different situation). Otherwise it seems like they would have said it wasn't retained originally for the very understandable reasons you list. In the Sandy Berger case if I recall correctly the archives still had copies of the originals he was given. I assume since there were no copies here, they never had the original. Given how important an historical document it is, I have to assume the archives would have made a copy of it if it ever came into their possession. All the more reason, as you indicate, that the Times may have given this story a slant. Look forward to the secret report being released for final clarification.
You're right about the xlations. I flew with VQ-1 as part of NAVCOMMSTA PHIL Det Bravo. The linguists used 7.5" Akai tape decks with voice activated recording.
Post mission, in Danang, they would xcribe the tapes, show the xlations to the OIC, who would decide what was forwarded.
the next day, they would write over the same tapes.
If we got something hot (either vox or code) we would send it out from the acft. DIRNSA was "always" on the cc: list.
You have incorrectly assumed that RSM was trying to do the right thing.
Instead, try assuming that he was trying to subvert our Constitution, sink our country's effort in Vietnam, and build the case for globalism.
Kinda puts his achievements in a whole new light, doesn't it?
"If we got something hot (either vox or code) we would send it out from the acft."
Wouldn't this have been considered "hot" at the time? It seems like its historical importance was appreciated even then (possible vote to go to war) and would have been retained either in tape or xlation format somewhere along the way as proof in anticipation of going before the U.N. Is there a reason why some were retained during that period and made it to the archives but others not: coming from different gathering points?
I got there right after TET in '68. Don't know how sophisticated the comms were then, or what their procedures were wrt how they handled intercepts. Although the article mentions San Miguel, PI (NAVCOMMSTAPHIL).
From the first two para's of the article, it seems that an analyst/xlator was reviewing the tapes/xlations and said, "Oops, that's not what it really means," and "fixed" it.
The article was right about the xlators. They went to school in Pensacola to learn the electronics part of the job and "The Trade." Then they spent a year at the Defense Language School in Monterrey, Calif. And just like every other specialty, some were good, some were very good, and some were just taking up space.
Take a look see.
bump
The farmer put his hand on his son's shoulder and said "Well son, you got the facts right but your conclusion's all wrong."
Thanks for the direct information. Many years later I passed through a strategic collection operation, a side trip in a career mostly dedicated to more operational stuff.
People who form their opinions of how intelligence works from TV or films or Tom Clancy books are seeing a simplified, streamlined, and error-corrected version of what's really an irreducibly inexact, inefficient process.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
Amen to that last sentence.
It always amazes me when I'm critiqueing a Clancy book with a non-veteran friend, that how much at face value they take what he writes. It wasn't that way at all. And, I liked Clancy's early works. Still, way too much embellishment in them.
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