[...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.
" ... 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."
Really ... potentially controversial documents in the NSA archives grew legs. The pattern continues ... Who knew!