Spy agency faked key Vietnam War data

Spy agency faked key Vietnam War data

London Telegraph/Francis Harris | November 1 2005

Comment: The spin here is that it was all one big mistake. The LBJ Presidential tapes prove that LBJ knew the incident never happened and he was discussing how to politically spin it for war propaganda.

FLASHBACK: LBJ Tapes on the Gulf of Tonkin Incident

FLASHBACK: LBJ admitted in secret tape that Gulf of Tonkin Incident never happened

FLASHBACK: 30-year Anniversary: Tonkin Gulf Lie Launched Vietnam War

One of America's spy agencies faked key intelligence used to justify its intervention in the Vietnam War, it was disclosed yesterday.

But the revelation was kept secret by the National Security Agency, partly because of fears that it would boost criticism of the intelligence services over the war in Iraq.

According to material uncovered by the NSA's own historian, Robert Hanyok, middle-ranking officers altered material relating to the Gulf of Tonkin incident.

Two US destroyers, Maddox and Turner Joy, were attacked by North Vietnamese craft in the gulf on Aug 2 1964.

Two days later, amid bad weather and considerable confusion in the US chain of command, Maddox reported that she had been fired on a second time.

Although its commander soon cast doubt on the reports, signals intelligence reported that the North Vietnamese admitted "we sacrificed two ships".

In revenge President Lyndon Johnson ordered air raids against North Vietnamese naval facilities and Congress authorised "all necessary steps including the use of armed force" to defend South Vietnam.

But Mr Hanyok found that timings on key intelligence intercepts had been changed and the "two ships" probably referred to the loss of two sailors in the first attack.

He blamed middle-ranking staff who realised the NSA's mistakes almost immediately but covered them up, not for political reasons, but to hide the original mistakes.

At the time, senior administration officials cited the faked paperwork in testimony before Congress.

It has even been suggested that President Johnson was so keen to deploy troops that he fabricated the whole episode. More than 58,000 Americans and a million Vietnamese died in the ensuing conflict.

I guess you and Nick studied history together! :thumbsup:

Hiding the Gulf of Tonkin Lie

Kurt Nimmo | November 2 2005

It should come as no surprise the NSA â??has kept secret a 2001 finding by its own historian that its officers deliberately distorted critical intelligence during the Tonkin Gulf episode that helped precipitate the Vietnam War,â?� according to the New York Times. â??Most historians have concluded in recent years there was no second attack [against US destroyers on August 4, 1964], but they have assumed the agencyâ??s intercepts were unintentionally misread, not purposely altered. The research by Robert Hanyok, the agencyâ??s historian, was detailed four years ago in an in-house article that remains secret, in part because agency officials feared its release might prompt uncomfortable comparisons with the flawed intelligence used to justify the war in Iraq, according to an intelligence official.â?�

Of course, it makes perfect sense for the NSA to hide the findings, especially now as the American people are beginning to realize Bush and crew â??deliberately distorted critical intelligenceâ?� (in other words, they lied) in regard to the fantasy Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. â??This material is relevant to debates we as Americans are having about the war in Iraq and intelligence reform,â?� Matthew Aid, an independent historian, told the Times.

Lies are employed invariably to sell wars. Recall â??Nayirah,â?� supposedly a normal fifteen year old Kuwaiti girl, who claimed to witness â??Iraqi soldiers come into the [al-Addan hospital] with guns, and go into the room where â?¦ [32] babies were in incubators. They took the babies out of the incubators, took the incubators, and left the babies on the cold floor to die.â?� As it turns out, â??Nayirahâ?� was a member of the Kuwaiti Royal Family. â??Her father, in fact, was Saud Nasir al-Sabah, Kuwaitâ??s Ambassador to the US, who sat listening in the hearing room during her testimony,â?� according to John R. MacArthur (Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf WarBerkeley; see How PR Sold the War in the Persian Gulf). Nayirahâ??s tearful story was a lie fabricated by Hill & Knowlton, then the worldâ??s largest PR firm, in collusion with California Democrat Tom Lantos and Illinois Republican John Porter.

Three months passed between Nayirahâ??s testimony and the start of the war. During those months, the story of babies torn from their incubators was repeated over and over again. President Bush told the story. It was recited as fact in Congressional testimony, on TV and radio talk shows, and at the UN Security Council. â??Of all the accusations made against the dictator,â?� MacArthur observed, â??none had more impact on American public opinion than the one about Iraqi soldiers removing 312 babies from their incubators and leaving them to die on the cold hospital floors of Kuwait City.â?�

â??[C]onscious, manipulative lies were also at the root of American attacks on Cuba in 1898, US intervention into World War I in 1917 and in Vietnam. These lies are as proven and irrefutable as the unconscionable deception that dragged the US into Iraq in 2003,â?� writes Harvey Wasserman. â??In Cuba, the 1898 sinking of the battleship Maine brought the US into war with Spain. The people of Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines were in revolt against the crumbling Spanish empire. Media baron William Randolph Hearst, the eraâ??s Rupert Murdoch, wanted a war to sell papers and promote â??jingoâ?? power. He portrayed the Spaniards barbaric rapists and worse. In the name of democracy and freedom, Hearst and pro-war fanatics like Theodore Roosevelt demanded US intervention.â?�

The sinking of the passenger ship Lusitania on May 7, 1915 was portrayed as a barbaric crime by the â??Hunsâ?� of Germany and was used to get the United States involved in World War I. As it turns out, the Lusitania â??carried, under the guise of bales of fur and cheese boxes, 3 inch (76mm) shells and millions of rounds of rifle ammunition. These materials comprised â??a contraband and explosive cargo which was forbidden by American law andâ?¦ should never have been placed on a passenger liner,â??â?� according to the historian Colin Simpson (The Lusitania; see this Wikipedia entry). Immediately after the sinking, Germany accused Britain of deliberately conspiring to have the Lusitania sunk to draw the United States in World War I on the side of the Allies. â??A substantial majority of Americans angrily opposed US intervention, saying only bankers would profit and that war,â?� adds Wasserman.

But in April 1917, reviving bloody images of the Lusitania, Wilson dragged the US into the slaughter. More than 100,000 Americans died. Under cover of war, federal marshals burned and blew up offices of the Socialist Party and radical unions like the Industrial Workers of the World. Wilson shredded the Bill of Rights and jailed, deported or killed thousands of organizers. Eugene V. Debs, the beloved leader of the American labor movement, was thrown in federal prison.

As Charles C. Tansill, professor of diplomatic history at Georgetown University, notes, the bankers and corporate bosses, through their appointed presidents and bought and paid for â??representativesâ?� of the American people, plan their profitable wars far in advance. â??The policy of pressure upon Japan antedated [President Rooseveltâ??s Secretary of War Henry] Stimson some two decades,â?� writes Tansill.

Under Woodrow Wilson, a three-pronged offensive was launched against Nippon [Japan]â?¦ In January, 1915, the American minister at Pekingâ?¦ sent to the Department of State a series of dispatches so critical in tone that they helped to create in American minds a fixation of Japanese wickedness that made eventual war with Japan a probability.

â??Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars,â?� Roosevelt lied during the 1940 election campaign. â??FDRâ??s military and State Department leaders were agreeing that a victorious Nazi Germany would threaten the national security of the United States,â?� writes Doug Cirignano. â??In White House meetings the strong feeling was that America needed a call to action. This is not what the public wanted, though. Eighty to ninety percent of the American people wanted nothing to do with Europeâ??s war. So, according to Stinnett, Roosevelt provoked Japan to attack us, let it happen at Pearl Harbor, and thus galvanized the country to war.â?�

Americans are generally ignorant of this sordid history of war waged under false pretense, as the so-called Plame Affair demonstrates. At the core of the Plame Affair is the conspiracy to invade the Middle East, bomb defenseless countries, sow chaos, destroy recalcitrant societies and culture, and steal natural resources. The NSA kept the Tonkin Gulf report secret because they knew releasing the information would â??prompt uncomfortable comparisons,â?� in other words the American people would put two and two together and arrive at the conclusion that the invasion and occupation of Iraq was predicated on lies, as was the Vietnam War.

well if you had even bothered to actually listen to the D.A. outline the case you would have heard him say that this HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE WAR. he made a point to say that. Get with it and stop repeating what you are told to believe on those silly sites you can only quote. Silly girl.

heres a little more on the C.I.A. and their battle against the administration to save face.

http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/opinion/1105/02edmiller.html?COXnetJSessionIDbuild102=DpICsoeXn 1GNFXprsEA1AZ9UiQg63kGGuelt0fndf1mfmO3I9OBY!640968 73&UrAuth=aN%60NUOcNVUbTTUWUXUTUZTZU_UWUbU]UZUaU_UcTYWVVZV&urcm=y