LAT/AP: Analysis Casts Doubt on Vietnam War (Gulf of Tonkin) Claims

[DeepModem Mom]

Analysis Casts Doubt on Vietnam War Claims
By CALVIN WOODWARD, Associated Press Writer


WASHINGTON -- A spy-agency analysis released Thursday contends a second attack on U.S. ships in the Gulf of Tonkin never happened, casting further doubt on the leading rationale for escalation of the Vietnam War.

Much as faulty U.S. intelligence preceded the invasion of Iraq, the mishandling of intercepted communications 40 years earlier is blamed in the National Security Agency paper for giving President Johnson carte blanche in the conflict.

The agency put out more than 140 long-secret documents in response to requests from researchers trying to get to the bottom of an episode that unfolded in the South China Sea on Aug. 4, 1964, and has been disputed since.

Among the documents is an article written by one of the agency's historians for its classified publication, Cryptologic Quarterly, declaring that his review of the complete intelligence shows beyond doubt "no attack happened that night."

Claims that North Vietnamese boats attacked two warships that Aug. 4 -- just two days after an initial assault on one of those ships -- rallied Congress behind Johnson's buildup of the war. The Gulf of Tonkin resolution passed three days later empowered him to take "all necessary steps" in the region and opened the way for large-scale commitment of U.S. forces....


http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/wire/ats-ap_top14dec01,0,1300678.story

[DS1]

1. kicked and nominate

when the American public realizes that war is about profit, on their dollar, they'll quickly change their minds

[Warren Stupidity]

2. I'm sorry but this is not news.

Not that everyone shouldn't be aware that going to war under fraudulent circumstances is not unique to the busholini administration, not that those who don't know about the Gulf of Tonkin bullshit shouldn't read up, but those of us old enough to remember those times know that this was revealed as total bullshit around the time of the pentagon papers. That was 35 years ago or so.

[Peace Patriot]

18. Yes, it IS news! It is a new revelation. And by creating a subject line,

"I'm sorry but this is not news," you are not only misinforming people, you are making certain that at least some readers WILL pass it by, will NOT read up on it, and may remain ignorant of the tremendous lesson that the "Gulf of Tonkin" incident represents.

I voted for LBJ that year--my first vote for president. He advertised himself as the "peace candidate." I bought it. I was very young.

Lesson: Beware of Democrats talking peace--after Republicans (in that case, Eisenhower) set up a regional war!

[KellyW]

3. a footnote

the USS Turner Joy, one of the ships involed, is now a Museum in Bremerton Washington

[annabanana]

4. the link is gone...

(link is now hooked to gulf coast story)

[Dover]

5. Links to some other story. Here's another source >

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1155AP_Vietnam_Skewed_Intelligence.html

[lanlady]

6. James Bamford covers this

in his excellent book Body of Secrets. The NSA communications were "sexed up" by Johnson et al.

[The Backlash Cometh]

7. 54,000 boys died for that one.

Now I have to ask myself, what corporate interest was served that we don't yet know about?

[acmejack]

8. The usual suspects.

Dow, Olin, MacDonnell Douglas, the usual. Arms, aircraft, fuel and ammo. It takes a lot of stuff to equip & maintain a large military force.

[The Backlash Cometh]

21. If war is the price we have to pay to keep our arms manufacturers

in business, then maybe the cost of privatizing arms manufacturers is too great to pay?

[StrafingMoose]

40. CIA director McCone in 64-65 owned 1 million worth of stock...

in Standard Oil, the 2nd most active oil corp in Southeast Asia. That's 1 million in 64-65.

While this doesn't explain Vietnam totally, it doesn't help the "just cause" rationale...

[UpInArms]

9. related: Vietnam War Intelligence 'Deliberately Skewed,' Secret Study Says

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/02/politics/02tonkin.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1133527748-Jpk0ExpsV7To2VxGoqKwXw

WASHINGTON, Dec. 1 - The National Security Agency has released hundreds of pages of long-secret documents on the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident, which played a critical role in significantly expanding the American commitment to the Vietnam War.

The material, posted on the Internet overnight Wednesday, included one of the largest collections of secret intercepted communications ever made available. The most provocative document is a 2001 article in which an agency historian argued that the agency's intelligence officers "deliberately skewed" the evidence passed on to policy makers and the public to falsely suggest that North Vietnamese ships had attacked American destroyers on Aug. 4, 1964.

Based on the assertion that such an attack had occurred, President Lyndon B. Johnson ordered airstrikes on North Vietnam and Congress passed a broad resolution authorizing military action.

The historian, Robert J. Hanyok, wrote the article in an internal publication and it was classified top secret despite the fact that it dealt with events in 1964. Word of Mr. Hanyok's findings leaked to historians outside the agency, who requested the article under the Freedom of Information Act in 2003.

Some intelligence officials said they believed the article's release was delayed because the agency was wary of comparisons between the roles of flawed intelligence in the Vietnam War and in the war in Iraq. Mr. Hanyok declined to comment on Wednesday. But Don Weber, an agency spokesman, denied that any political consideration was involved.

...more...

Insanity is doing the same thing over and expecting different results.

[Toots]

10. Insanity is doing the same thing over and expecting different results

But they don't expect different results. They Profit from War. They always have and they always will. War Profiteering was something FDR tried very very hard to put a stop to but the Bush family still did quite well from WWII ans is doing quite well from war to this day..

[tvfipp]

11. Analysis Casts Doubt on Vietnam War Claims

The following story is all over the place this morning.... are we to be surprised? Repukes are the freakin biggest lier's and manipulators.

By CALVIN WOODWARD
The Associated Press
Friday, December 2, 2005; 5:31 AM
<snip>
WASHINGTON -- Another war, another set of faulty intelligence findings behind it.

Forty years before the United States invaded Iraq believing Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, it widened a war in Vietnam apparently convinced the enemy had launched an unprovoked attack on two U.S. Navy destroyers.
<snip>
Among the documents released Thursday is an article written by NSA historian Robert J. Hanyok for the agency's classified publication, Cryptologic Quarterly. In it, he declares that his review of the complete intelligence shows beyond doubt "no attack happened that night."
<snip>
But, also like Iraq, it did not find that top administration officials ordered up fabricated evidence to suit their wishes.

link (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/02/AR2005120200206.html )

[Dhalgren]

12. So how does this work?

"...his review of the complete intelligence shows beyond doubt "no attack happened that night."
But, also like Iraq, it did not find that top administration officials ordered up fabricated evidence to suit their wishes."

So the intelligence existed back in '64 that "no attack happened", so someone (plural) lied about it. They justified their lies using...what? Shadow puppets and cream-filled pastries? They used some form of falsified evidence to justify belief in the Tonkin incident - they HAD to. This is beyond bullshit! Except in so far as it shows anyone willing to look that Bush lied/lies now just like Johnson did in '64 - '68...

[zanne]

13. Haven't we known about this for decades?

How is this "news"?

[HereSince1628]

14. Just because Gulf of Tonkien was untrue its not SOP to lie about

things just to get a war started.

Not to say it doesn't sometimes seem like such deceit isn't SOP.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

19. Read "Day of Deceit" by Robert Stinnett about Pearl Harbor....

...if you really believe that deceit to get Americans to buy into going to war is not SOP. Stinnett discovered the fact that the U. S. had broken the Japanese Naval codes in 1940, thereby allowing the U. S. military to know exactly what the Japanese Navy was doing prior to Pearl Harbor, and exactly where they were going. His book also details the McCollum 8-Point Memo, a documant adopted by FDR that detailed how to provoke Japan into attacking U. S. military assets. FDR needed the Japanese to attack U. S. military assets so that U. S. public opinion would be overwhelmingly stampeded toward support for entering WWII. In light of this event, the PNACers written comment in the document "Rebuilding America's Defenses" that Americans would need "another Pearl Harbor" to support going to war in the Middle East is particularly chilling, IMHO.

Also, do some research on the sinking of the Lusitania, an event that contributed to America entering WWI. The Germans seemed to know exactly where the Lusitania would be steaming, and she took no evasive (zig-zag course) action to make it much more difficult for a German submarine to hit her with torpedoes. Recent research also indicates that the Lusitania was carrying war materials, a clear violation of her status as a noncombatant.

And finally, do a little digging into the sinking of the USS Maine, an event that led to the U. S. going to war against Spain in 1898. It is very difficult to believe that a mine attached to the OUTSIDE of a ship's hull will create a hole in the hull clearly blown from the inside out.

By the way, do you remember the "babies pulled from incubators and left to die" story that was presented to Congress prior to the U. S. attacking Iraq the first time? Did you know that the young woman was the daughter of a Kuwaiti diplomat, was never a nurse as was claimed, and never saw the events she described?

And now we come to the most recent collection of "reasons" produced by the NeoCons for the sole purpose of illegally invading and occupying Iraq. If it looks like SOP, walks like SOP, and talks like SOP, it is pretty apparent to me that it's SOP.

[DemoTex]

17. At the war museum in Hanoi are two torpedo tubes ..

The sign in front of these two torpedo tubes reads:

Belonging to the torpedo boat of the Navy 135th Section which chased away the American Maddox destroyer on August 2nd, 1964.

Why would the government of Viet Nam go along with the charade?

[Media_Lies_Daily]

20. That was not the day upon which the "Gulf of Tonkin Resolution" was....

...based. The resolution was based on a nonexistent event that took place about two days later, one that the late Admiral Stockdale described very well in his book "In Love and War", published in 1985.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Stockdale>

QUOTE:

On August 4, 1964, squadron commander Stockdale was one of the US pilots flying overhead during the Gulf of Tonkin Incident. About which he said in the early 1990s: " had the best seat in the house to watch that event, and our destroyers were just shooting at phantom targets—there were no PT boats there.... There was nothing there but black water and American fire power." Stockdale said his superiors ordered him to keep quiet about this. After he was captured, this knowledge threw a burden upon him. He later said he was concerned that his captors would eventually force him to reveal that he knew the most terrible secret about the Vietnam War.

[DeepModem Mom]

15. SO SORRY -- LAT CHANGED THE LINK. THANKS FOR ALTERNATE LINKS

POSTED ELSEWHERE IN THE THREAD.

[cal04]

16. US Vietnam intelligence 'flawed' (BBC)

Newly-released US documents suggest the US escalated the war in Vietnam based on skewed intelligence.
The documents cast doubt on the existence of an attack on a US warship by the North Vietnamese in the Gulf of Tonkin on 4 August 1964. The incident prompted President Lyndon Johnson to ask Congress, in effect, to declare war on Vietnam.

The revelations, released by the National Security Agency, were written by its own historian in 2001. Robert Hanyok declares his review of all the intelligence shows beyond doubt that "no attack happened that night". The USS Maddox had been attacked two days earlier.

He claims errors were made in the translation of the intercepted signals from the North Vietnamese, and officials gave too much weight to flimsy evidence. But he clears President Johnson and his ministers of any blame. They were only shown intelligence supporting the claim of an attack, not a wealth of contradictory material, he says. Instead, he blames the intelligence-gathers. "They walked alone in their counsels," he wrote.

Three days later, President Johnson asked Congress to empower him to take "all necessary steps" in the region, opening the way for a war that resulted in the deaths of 58,000 Americans and three million Vietnamese. The US government is said to have fought the declassification of the documents over fears of comparisons with the handling of Iraq, says the BBC's defence and security correspondent Rob Watson.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4492190.stm

[gordianot]

22. Fool me once(Vietnam), shame on you. Fool me twice--"ask Bush"

In the case of Iraq it took "a fool-*" to fool them twice.

Actually America has a long history of contrived wars.

[NVMojo]

23. Analysis Casts Doubt on Vietnam War Claims

WASHINGTON (AP) -

Another war, another set of faulty intelligence findings behind it. Forty years before the United States invaded Iraq believing Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, it widened a war in Vietnam apparently convinced the enemy had launched an unprovoked attack on two U.S. Navy destroyers.

Papers declassified by the National Security Agency point to a series of bungled intelligence findings on the purported clash in the Gulf of Tonkin that led Congress to endorse President Johnson's escalation of the Vietnam conflict in August 1964.

Among the documents released Thursday is an article written by NSA historian Robert J. Hanyok for the agency's classified publication, Cryptologic Quarterly. In it, he declares that his review of the complete intelligence shows beyond doubt "no attack happened that night."

Claims that North Vietnamese boats attacked two U. S. Navy destroyers on Aug. 4, 1964 - just two days after an initial assault on one of those ships - rallied Congress behind Johnson's build-up of the war. The so-called Gulf of Tonkin resolution passed three days later empowered him to take "all necessary steps" in the region and opened the way for large-scale commitment of U.S. forces.

more...

http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/bw-other/2005/dec/02/120209934.html

[kenny blankenship]

24. What I thought was interesting about the report was that

the lower rungs of the intelligence community were getting it right, or looking at all the evidence at least. But somewhere up in the hierarchy approaching the political appointees and the Administration there was a active, selective preference only for evidence that supported the idea of an attack. Something like 90% of the evidence was discarded in order to hand the political leadership an assessment that said "hostilities took place".
Did the higher ups present a skewed case because they knew the Johnson Administration already favored a widened conflict and they wanted to make themselves useful for political advancement, or did they favor anything leading to a widened conflict because of their own ideological leanings? And who exactly was responsible for distorting the findings--political appointees or career civil service personnel?

[Kagemusha]

26. Of course such theories have been around since the incident

And of course much effort was made to cover up the actions involved and the motives behind them...

Logic would dictate some mix of "all of the above" though, giving the answer that the leadership of America collectively wanted to hear, both military and civilian. An isolated intelligence blooper would never and could never have led to the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. It was the straw that broke the camel's back; just because the straw was suspect, did not mean that the camel's back was not ready to be broken by something or other, sooner or later. This just ensured it was "sooner," you see.

Wish I could say this with certainty but, I've studied a lot of history and analysis that teaches me a simple rule: go by human nature and you'll be right more often than not. In this case, bureaucratic, make-the-boss-happy human nature.

[nashville_brook]

27. maybe look at LBJ and kellogg, brown, root connection -- $$

[Redstone]

25. Everybody has known that "incident" was bullshit for at least 30 years.

This is hardly news.

Redstone

[newscott]

29. Yeah, I learned that in high school and that was almost 30 years ago.

[Stand and Fight]

28. Who's had their head up their hindquarters?

I've known this since I was a kid, and I have barely been alive thirty years. Where's the news in this?

[Name removed]

30. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[RamboLiberal]

31. The Bushies were trying to block the release of this info

because of the uncomfortable comparisons to the WMD intelligence debacle. I remember reading an article about that recently. A frustrated historian who had seen the info took it public.

Guess the Bushies had to give in to history!

[Deja Q]

32. If it's proven the root causes for Vietnam were phony...

how will all the Vietnam vets who have flashbacks and other nightmares react?

Damn. Played for as pawns.

[StrafingMoose]

33. We know, we know...

all 20th centuries wars had a fake "trigger"...

[StrafingMoose]

34. I think people from Austin

can dig up tapes at the LBJ library on which you can clearly hear McNamara and Johnson speaking on terms of how to use this even if they knew it's fake.

[Selatius]

36. If that's true, it shows how corrupt LBJ was behind the scenes

I like his social policies, but this is intolerable.

[Selatius]

35. Faulty (or cooked?) intel. may have led America into Vietnam

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051202/ap_on_go_ot/vietnam_skewed_intelligence_5

"As with the intelligence that convinced the administration and lawmakers that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, the article asserts officials gave much weight to scant evidence."

Cold comfort to the millions of civilians that died and the 58,000 Americans who came home in coffins.

[happydreams]

37. I think Johnson was duped by war mongering CIA cowboys.

Johnson didn't have anymore control over the CIA than Kennedy did.

Operation Northwoods shows what length the war mongers were willing to go to get a war on.

[Selatius]

38. Yeah, but Kennedy was harder to dupe

Thanks to the work of diplomats like Galbraith, JFK eventually reversed course on Vietnam and wanted all troops out of there by 1965, but coincidentally, he was killed in front of the whole country.

[happydreams]

39. I agree, he was harder to dupe, and that is why they killed him.

He threatened to break the CIA into a thousand pieces and fired Director Allen Dulles, a fascist loving cretin.