Manufactured consent
Viet War cover-up revealed - From: Agence France-Presse By Stephen Collinson in Washington December 02, 2005
Vietnam war - The end ... Evacuation of the US embassy in Saigon ( pic)
A TOP US spy agency has declassified data showing agents skewed intelligence to back claims of a communist attack on a US destroyer in 1964, an incident which led to the escalation of the Vietnam war.
The National Security Agency (NSA) today admitted defeat in a long battle to keep the explosive article, printed in 2001 in its in-house journal, secret.
Senior NSA officers had apparently feared the findings could prompt comparisons to claims the Bush administration twisted intelligence to justify the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
The article, by NSA historian Robert Hanyok, based on signals intelligence or SIGINT, concludes what historians have long suspected – there was no second attack by North Vietnamese torpedo boats on US destroyers on August 4, 1964.
President Lyndon B Johnson used the supposed second attack, two days after a confirmed initial strike, to argue for retaliatory air strikes on North Vietnam and to ask Congress for authority to act with a free hand in Vietnam.
It was the start of a fateful series of events which would lead to full scale war between the US and North Vietnam, which would kill 58,000 Americans, three million Vietnamese and scar both nations for decades.
Mr Hanyok's article concludes that neither Johnson nor his secretary of defence Robert McNamara were personally involved in manipulating intelligence on the incident, and believed it authentic.
The article, titled Skunks, Bogies, Silent Hounds, and the Flying Fish, the Gulf of Tonkin mystery, concludes mid-level National Security Agency officials provided military and political leaders with "skewed" intelligence over the alleged attack.
"Two startling findings emerged from the new research. First, it is not simply that there is a different story as to what happened; it is that no attack happened that night," the article said.
"SIGINT intelligence was presented in such a manner as to preclude responsible decision makers in the Johnson administration from having the complete and objective narrative of events on August 4, 1964.
"Instead, only SIGINT that supported the claim that the communists had attacked the two destroyers was given to administration officials."
Mr Hanyok uncovered a string of uncorrected translation errors and selective citation of intelligence in the communications intercepts which had never before been analysed together.
Independent historian Matthew Aid told AFP on November 2 he believed the NSA's deputy director blocked release of the internal history in August because of a possibly embarrassing parallel with the controversy over Iraq war intelligence.
"I am told that he rejected the request ... because of the sensitivity of the material for a political reason," Aid said.
Mr Hanyok's article concludes that the reason why the intelligence was "skewed" will probably never be known, but that the idea that agents were bending to administration pressure was not tenable.
The documents were issued through the National Security Archive, a public interest law firm and research institute based at George Washington University in the US capital.
Archive research fellow John Prados said Americans deserved to know the truth about the Gulf of Tonkin incident.
"The parallels between the faulty intelligence on Tonkin Gulf and the manipulated intelligence used to justify the Iraq war makes it all the more worthwhile to re-examine the events of August 1964 in the light of new evidence," Mr Prados said.
Vietnam war - The end ... Evacuation of the US embassy in Saigon ( pic)
A TOP US spy agency has declassified data showing agents skewed intelligence to back claims of a communist attack on a US destroyer in 1964, an incident which led to the escalation of the Vietnam war.
The National Security Agency (NSA) today admitted defeat in a long battle to keep the explosive article, printed in 2001 in its in-house journal, secret.
Senior NSA officers had apparently feared the findings could prompt comparisons to claims the Bush administration twisted intelligence to justify the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
The article, by NSA historian Robert Hanyok, based on signals intelligence or SIGINT, concludes what historians have long suspected – there was no second attack by North Vietnamese torpedo boats on US destroyers on August 4, 1964.
President Lyndon B Johnson used the supposed second attack, two days after a confirmed initial strike, to argue for retaliatory air strikes on North Vietnam and to ask Congress for authority to act with a free hand in Vietnam.
It was the start of a fateful series of events which would lead to full scale war between the US and North Vietnam, which would kill 58,000 Americans, three million Vietnamese and scar both nations for decades.
Mr Hanyok's article concludes that neither Johnson nor his secretary of defence Robert McNamara were personally involved in manipulating intelligence on the incident, and believed it authentic.
The article, titled Skunks, Bogies, Silent Hounds, and the Flying Fish, the Gulf of Tonkin mystery, concludes mid-level National Security Agency officials provided military and political leaders with "skewed" intelligence over the alleged attack.
"Two startling findings emerged from the new research. First, it is not simply that there is a different story as to what happened; it is that no attack happened that night," the article said.
"SIGINT intelligence was presented in such a manner as to preclude responsible decision makers in the Johnson administration from having the complete and objective narrative of events on August 4, 1964.
"Instead, only SIGINT that supported the claim that the communists had attacked the two destroyers was given to administration officials."
Mr Hanyok uncovered a string of uncorrected translation errors and selective citation of intelligence in the communications intercepts which had never before been analysed together.
Independent historian Matthew Aid told AFP on November 2 he believed the NSA's deputy director blocked release of the internal history in August because of a possibly embarrassing parallel with the controversy over Iraq war intelligence.
"I am told that he rejected the request ... because of the sensitivity of the material for a political reason," Aid said.
Mr Hanyok's article concludes that the reason why the intelligence was "skewed" will probably never be known, but that the idea that agents were bending to administration pressure was not tenable.
The documents were issued through the National Security Archive, a public interest law firm and research institute based at George Washington University in the US capital.
Archive research fellow John Prados said Americans deserved to know the truth about the Gulf of Tonkin incident.
"The parallels between the faulty intelligence on Tonkin Gulf and the manipulated intelligence used to justify the Iraq war makes it all the more worthwhile to re-examine the events of August 1964 in the light of new evidence," Mr Prados said.
posted by professor rat at 8:52 PM
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