St Petersburg revolting
Another Vietnam coverup - A Times Editorial - Published November 3, 2005
Military intelligence is a realm of deep shadows where honest mistakes can occur. But when such a mistake remains intentionally uncorrected it becomes the moral equivalent of a deliberate lie.
Was it on such a basis that the United States went to war in Vietnam? And why we are at war in Iraq today?
Lyndon Johnson himself suspected that North Vietnam had not actually attacked the U.S. Navy in the Gulf of Tonkin on Aug. 4, 1964. "Hell, those dumb, stupid sailors were just shooting at flying fish!" he told Undersecretary of State George Ball a few days later.
But intelligence reports maintained that two American destroyers had in fact come under serious fire. On that evidence, the president requested and Congress adopted a resolution that committed the nation to the longest and most regrettable war in its history.
If what the New York Times reported this week is accurate, the National Security Agency realized very soon that the Tonkin translations had been faulty and the conclusions mistaken. But instead of admitting to this, it doctored the records to conceal the error. America remained at war for a decade.
And the coverup continues 41 years later, nearly five years after the NSA's own historian, Robert J. Hanyok, exposed it in a report published within the agency but still withheld from the public.
The NSA told the newspaper that it intends to release the report later this month. The unanswered questions: Why so late? Was it suppressed to avoid comparisons with the faulty intelligence that became the pretext for the war in Iraq?
An NSA spokesman explained only that it had been "delayed in an effort to be consistent with our preferred practice of providing the public a more contextual perspective."
It would be difficult to conceive of a more urgent "contextual perspective" than another regrettable war begun on intelligence that even the government now admits was, at best, faulty.
And if they knew it was faulty and did not correct it, it became the moral equivalent of a lie. Is that what the White House and Congress are afraid for the public to know? Must it take another four decades for the truth to come out?
http://www.sptimes.com/2005/11/03/Opinion/Another_Vietnam_cover.shtml
Military intelligence is a realm of deep shadows where honest mistakes can occur. But when such a mistake remains intentionally uncorrected it becomes the moral equivalent of a deliberate lie.
Was it on such a basis that the United States went to war in Vietnam? And why we are at war in Iraq today?
Lyndon Johnson himself suspected that North Vietnam had not actually attacked the U.S. Navy in the Gulf of Tonkin on Aug. 4, 1964. "Hell, those dumb, stupid sailors were just shooting at flying fish!" he told Undersecretary of State George Ball a few days later.
But intelligence reports maintained that two American destroyers had in fact come under serious fire. On that evidence, the president requested and Congress adopted a resolution that committed the nation to the longest and most regrettable war in its history.
If what the New York Times reported this week is accurate, the National Security Agency realized very soon that the Tonkin translations had been faulty and the conclusions mistaken. But instead of admitting to this, it doctored the records to conceal the error. America remained at war for a decade.
And the coverup continues 41 years later, nearly five years after the NSA's own historian, Robert J. Hanyok, exposed it in a report published within the agency but still withheld from the public.
The NSA told the newspaper that it intends to release the report later this month. The unanswered questions: Why so late? Was it suppressed to avoid comparisons with the faulty intelligence that became the pretext for the war in Iraq?
An NSA spokesman explained only that it had been "delayed in an effort to be consistent with our preferred practice of providing the public a more contextual perspective."
It would be difficult to conceive of a more urgent "contextual perspective" than another regrettable war begun on intelligence that even the government now admits was, at best, faulty.
And if they knew it was faulty and did not correct it, it became the moral equivalent of a lie. Is that what the White House and Congress are afraid for the public to know? Must it take another four decades for the truth to come out?
http://www.sptimes.com/2005/11/03/Opinion/Another_Vietnam_cover.shtml
posted by professor rat at 3:37 AM
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