Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)
Posted on 01/09/2008 9:31:50 AM PST by RDTF
US signals intelligence during the war came up short in major turning points, according to an NSA history.
WASHINGTON -- US signals intelligence – the much-vaunted ability of American military and spy units to eavesdrop on the radio calls and other electronic communications of an adversary – failed at crucial moments during the Vietnam War, according to a just-declassified National Security Agency history of the effort.
The 10,000 cryptographers and other signals personnel in Southeast Asia at the time did not predict the start of the Tet offensive on Jan. 31, 1968. Prior to that, signals intelligence may have actually misled President Johnson and other top policymakers about the nature of the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident, in which a supposed North Vietnamese attack on US forces triggered a major escalation in the war.
US eavesdroppers had many successes during the war, according to the lengthy document, particularly in picking up the tactical communications of North Vietnamese and Viet Cong fighters in the field.
But when it comes to major events, signals intelligence is not magic, as the history makes clear. That is a point current policymakers would do well to remember as they struggle to interpret intelligence dealing with the complex modern problems of nuclear proliferation and Islamist extremism.
In both the Tet and Gulf of Tonkin cases, "critical information was mishandled, misinterpreted, lost, or ignored," writes NSA historian Robert Hanyok in the agency history.
Yet both were major turning points of the Vietnam conflict. The Gulf of Tonkin led to open US involvement in the fighting. Tet, though a tactical military defeat for the North, was a surprise for a US public that had been led to believe victory might be imminent. It may have contributed to declining support for the American intervention.
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at csmonitor.com ...
Interesting. This information has been available for a few years, but gets published fairly shortly after a certain incident in the Straits of Hormuz.
When I say “gets published,” I mean that it is put in print by the MSM.
article says it was just de-classified
Along with CBS' Walter Cronkite's 'reporting'.
Well, the information was available a little over two years ago on a publicly accessible part of the the NSA website. I know, because I read it.
And what is this "may" crap? Uncle Walter went on the air and lied to the American people that Tet was a military defeat for the US, which lead directly to public support for the war drying up.
interesting
SIGINT eh? Interesting...so then I have been wrong all these years about the Democrats, Walter Cronkite and the MSM, and the Looney Left in general?
That is not the first time that Uncle Walter lied in wartime, just the most glaring and blatant example. I have zero respect for the traitorous bastard.
-Walter Cronkite’s ‘reporting’-
LOL
What’s incredible is that the only parrallels to Vietnam and Iraq are over looked by those whom it applies too, the MSM.
The 10,000 cryptographers and other signals personnel in Southeast Asia at the time did not predict the start of the Tet offensive on Jan. 31, 1968.
Total Bull Shit! I was personally involved and know the truth.
Happens in every war, always has, always will as long as humans are involved and probably more so when the machines take over.
Intelligence in War: Knowledge of the Enemy from Napoleon to by John Keegan
Sometimes bad intelligence leads to the right decision and sometimes good intelligence leads to the wrong decision. One never knows, do one?
Phooey!
LBJ micromanaged the war and the results are a stark reminder that in time of war the Generals should be in charge and all to often its the politicians who "betray" us!
ping
bump
NSA RELEASES HISTORY OF AMERICAN SIGINT AND THE VIETNAM WAR
During the Vietnam War, North Vietnamese intelligence units sometimes succeeded in penetrating Allied communications systems, and they could monitor Allied message traffic from within. But sometimes they did more than that.
On several occasions "the communists were able, by communicating on Allied radio nets, to call in Allied artillery or air strikes on American units."
That is just one passing observation (at p. 392) in an exhaustive history of American signals intelligence (SIGINT) in the Vietnam War that has just been declassified and released by the National Security Agency.
>From the first intercepted cable -- a 1945 message from Ho Chi Minh to Joseph Stalin -- to the final evacuation of SIGINT personnel from Saigon, the 500-page NSA volume, called "Spartans in Darkness," retells the history of the Vietnam War from the perspective of signals intelligence.
The most sensational part of the history (which was excerpted and disclosed by the NSA two years ago) is the recounting of the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Incident, in which a reported North Vietnamese attack on U.S. forces triggered a major escalation of the war. The author demonstrates that not only is it not true, as Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara told Congress, that the evidence of an attack was "unimpeachable," but that to the contrary, a review of the classified signals intelligence proves that "no attack happened that night."
Several other important Vietnam War-era episodes are elucidated by the contribution of SIGINT, including the Tet Offensive, the attempted rescue of U.S. prisoners of war from Son Tay prison, and more.
The author, Robert J. Hanyok, writes in a lively, occasionally florid style that is accessible even to those who are not well-versed in the history of SIGINT or Vietnam.
The 2002 study was released in response to a Mandatory Declassification Review request filed by Michael Ravnitzky. About 95% of the document was declassified. (Unfortunately, several of the pages were poorly reproduced by NSA and are difficult to read. A cleaner, clearer copy will need to be obtained.)
See "Spartans in Darkness: American SIGINT and the Indochina War, 1945-1975" by Robert J. Hanyok, Center for Cryptologic History, National Security Agency, 2002:
http://www.fas.org/irp/nsa/spartans/index.html
Some background on the Tonkin Gulf Incident from the National Security Archive with links to related documents may be found here:
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB132/press20051201.htm
Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)
” Just days earlier, US commander in chief Gen. William Westmoreland had assured them the enemy was largely beaten.”
Westmoreland was right. Militarily the Tet offensive was disastrous for the communists.
“The attack demoralized the US public and many of its political and military leaders.”
The attack didn’t demoralize the US public. Cronkite and company did.
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