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Doubts Cast on Vietnam Incident, but Secret Study Stays Classified
NYTimes ^ | October 31, 2005 | SCOTT SHANE

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 ...


TOPICS: Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: vietnam
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1 posted on 10/30/2005 9:58:21 PM PST by baseball_fan
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To: baseball_fan
President Lyndon B. Johnson cited the supposed attack to persuade Congress

Hell, everybody knows that LBJ was crooked as a dogs hind leg, so this shouldn't come as a surprise.

2 posted on 10/30/2005 10:01:56 PM PST by cowboyway (My heroes have always been cowboys.)
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To: cowboyway

>>
Hell, everybody knows that LBJ was crooked as a dogs hind leg, so this shouldn't come as a surprise.
<<

Sir, you defame me.

-- Sincerely,
A Dog's Hind Leg


3 posted on 10/30/2005 10:10:06 PM PST by noblejones
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To: baseball_fan

The incidents about Vietnam that cast doubt are the ones referring to John Kerry's medals.


4 posted on 10/30/2005 10:12:06 PM PST by exit82 (Ray Nagin, the mayor of Oz:"If I only had a brain.........")
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To: noblejones

Sorry, Dogs Hind Leg. No offense meant.


5 posted on 10/30/2005 10:13:59 PM PST by cowboyway (My heroes have always been cowboys.)
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To: baseball_fan

Did you know I was in Vietnam?
Let me tell you what happened...
6 posted on 10/30/2005 10:17:09 PM PST by Andy from Beaverton (I only vote Republican to stop the Democrats)
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To: Andy from Beaverton

Why the long face, John?


7 posted on 10/30/2005 10:19:36 PM PST by henderson field
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To: baseball_fan

[...they involved discrepancies between the official N.S.A. version of the events of Aug. 4, 1964, and intercepts from N.S.A. listening posts at Phu Bai in South Vietnam and San Miguel in the Philippines that are in the agency archives.

One issue, for example, was the translation of a phrase in an Aug. 4 North Vietnamese transmission. In some documents the phrase, "we sacrificed two comrades" - an apparent reference to casualties during the clash with American ships on Aug. 2 - was incorrectly translated as "we sacrificed two ships." That phrase was used to suggest that the North Vietnamese were reporting the loss of ships in a new battle Aug. 4, the intelligence official said.

The original Vietnamese version of that intercept, unlike many other intercepts from the same period, is missing from the agency's archives, the official said.

The intelligence official said the evidence for deliberate falsification is "about as certain as it can be without a smoking gun - you can come to no other conclusion."]

> The fact that the original Vietnamese version of the intercept is missing while many of the other intercepts for the same time period are there looks doubly suspicious.


8 posted on 10/30/2005 10:22:58 PM PST by baseball_fan (Thank you Vets)
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To: baseball_fan

This article is crap. Ridiculously slanted.


9 posted on 10/30/2005 10:24:32 PM PST by JmyBryan
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To: baseball_fan

Do I have this wrong, or is the NYT here trying to use anonymous sources to frame dead NSA officers -- in order to rehabilitate the weakling of the 1960s, LBJ?

d.o.l.

Criminal Number 18F


10 posted on 10/30/2005 10:41:02 PM PST by Criminal Number 18F
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To: cowboyway

"Hell, everybody knows that LBJ was crooked as a dogs hind leg, so this shouldn't come as a surprise."

I'm trying to recall, wasn't Johnson trying to get to the right of Goldwater in the Presidential election in 1964 and the Tonkin Gulf episode conveniently played into that strategy, some thinking even then the intelligence about that episode might be misleading?


11 posted on 10/30/2005 10:48:40 PM PST by baseball_fan (Thank you Vets)
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To: baseball_fan

I was told if I voted for Goldwater, that we would get into a long unwinnable war, and have riots in the streets. I did, and darned if they weren't right.


12 posted on 10/30/2005 10:50:24 PM PST by dfwgator
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To: baseball_fan
I hope Bill O'Reilly et al apoligize.
13 posted on 10/30/2005 10:59:02 PM PST by nickcarraway (I'm Only Alive, Because a Judge Hasn't Ruled I Should Die...)
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To: dfwgator

"I was told if I voted for Goldwater, that we would get into a long unwinnable war, and have riots in the streets. I did, and darned if they weren't right."

[Many historians believe that even without the Tonkin Gulf episode, Johnson might have found a reason to escalate military action against North Vietnam. They note that Johnson apparently had his own doubts about the Aug. 4 attack and that a few days later told George W. Ball, the under secretary of state, "Hell, those dumb, stupid sailors were just shooting at flying fish!"]


14 posted on 10/30/2005 11:22:21 PM PST by baseball_fan (Thank you Vets)
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To: nickcarraway

"I hope Bill O'Reilly et al apoligize."

Not sure I understand what you mean by why he would need to apologize. According to McNamara the North Vietnamese were forcing our hand one way or the other:

[Robert S. McNamara, who as defense secretary played a central role in the Tonkin Gulf affair, said in an interview last week that he believed the intelligence reports had played a decisive role in the war's expansion.

"I think it's wrong to believe that Johnson wanted war," Mr. McNamara said. "But we thought we had evidence that North Vietnam was escalating."]


15 posted on 10/30/2005 11:34:13 PM PST by baseball_fan (Thank you Vets)
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To: baseball_fan

Bill O'Reilly and others have a almost patholigal hatred for LBJ, and the focal point seems to be the fact that he engineered the Gulf of Tonkin incident.


16 posted on 10/30/2005 11:36:29 PM PST by nickcarraway (I'm Only Alive, Because a Judge Hasn't Ruled I Should Die...)
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To: baseball_fan; All
The Gulf of Tonkin Incident, Early provocation, or early example of "spin..."
17 posted on 10/31/2005 12:46:41 AM PST by backhoe (-30-)
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To: baseball_fan

I knew the sonar operator on one of the destroyer's and he said they didn't know if they were shooting at each other or what was happening. It was a royal cluster f..., like a monkey trying to f a coconut. Johnson, the crook made it what it was, an opportunity at hand he could use to reinforce his in his own plan to escalate.


18 posted on 10/31/2005 3:31:52 AM PST by boomop1
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To: baseball_fan
"I think it's wrong to believe that Johnson wanted war," Mr. McNamara said.

Signifiant achievements of Robert S. MacNamara. As head of the Ford Motor Division and Ford Motor Corporation:

As Secretary of Defense:

As head of the World Bank:

In looking at the career of Robert Strange MacNamara, you are hard pressed to find a single worthwhile achievement or success. He might have failed at one thing, but he also failed at all the others. And he sure failed big.

To sum the man up: a total waste of sperm and egg.

d.o.l.

Criminal Number 18F

19 posted on 10/31/2005 3:51:10 AM PST by Criminal Number 18F
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To: baseball_fan
For decades the N. Vietnamese kept the torpedo tubes used to launch the first strike against US ships in their museum in Hanoi. They bragged about such...

However, much confusion exists. US was inserting S. Vietnamese Special Ops troops along coast of N. Vietnam. Some were using "Nasty Boats" made in Norway. Regular Navy not clued in as to Special ops and type of boats used. Much confusion. Fog of war and all that.

20 posted on 10/31/2005 4:09:21 AM PST by donozark (Restraining orders are just another way of saying I love you.)
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