ATS: NSA Study From 2001 Might Show Tonkin Resolution Falsified

Mr. Hanyok concluded that they had done it not out of any political motive but to cover up earlier errors, and that top N.S.A. and defense officials and Johnson neither knew about nor condoned the deception.

Originally posted by Amorymeltzer
It also seems as if this was a simple NSA job. Defense Secretary McNamara not only claims to have had no idea about this, but also feels 100% everything, report and background information, should be declassified.

HANOI, Vietnam (Nov 9, 1995 - 16:06 EST) -- When former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara met the enemy's leading strategist Thursday, he raised a question he'd saved for 30 years: What really happened in the Tonkin Gulf on Aug. 4, 1964?

"Absolutely nothing," replied retired Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap.

Both sides agree that North Vietnam attacked a U.S. Navy ship in the gulf on Aug. 2 as it cruised close to shore. But it was an alleged second attack two days later that led to the first U.S. bombing raid on the North and propelled America deep into war.

Many U.S. historians have long believed the Johnson administration fabricated the second attack to win congressional support for widening the war. But for McNamara, Giap's word was the clincher.

"It's a pretty damned good source," he said after the meeting.

As defense secretary from 1961-68 under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, McNamara was one of the leading proponents of U.S. support for South Vietnam against the Communist North. But he left office convinced the war was doomed to failure, he says, revealing his change of heart in memoirs published this year.

Of course, none of this was known to Congress, which demanded an explanation for the goings-on in the Tonkin Gulf. On 6 August, Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara told a joint session of the Senate Foreign Relations and Armed Services Committees that the North Vietnamese attack on the Maddox was ". . . no isolated event. They are part and parcel of a continuing Communist drive to conquer South Vietnam. . . ." McNamara did not mention the 34A raids.

* Signals Intercepts, Cited at Time, Prove Only August 2nd Battle, Not August 4; Purported Second Attack Prompted Congressional Blank Check for War

* Johnson-McNamara Tapes Show Readiness to Escalate, Even on Suspect Intel; Top Aides Knew of Mistaken Signals, but Welcomed Justification for Vote

Washington, D.C., 4 August 2004 - Forty years ago today, President Johnson and top U.S. officials chose to believe that North Vietnam had just attacked U.S. destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin, even though the highly classified signals intercepts they cited to each other actually described a naval clash two days earlier (a battle prompted by covert U.S. attacks on North Vietnam), according to the declassified intercepts, Johnson White House tapes, and related documents posted today by the National Security Archive at George Washington University.

Compiled by Archive senior fellow and Vietnam expert John Prados, today's 40th anniversary electronic briefing book includes Dr. Prados's detailed analysis of the intercepts - only declassified in 2003 - together with audio files and transcripts of the key Tonkin Gulf conversations between President Johnson and Defense Secretary Robert McNamara. The latter are excerpted from Dr. Prados's book, The White House Tapes (New York: The New Press, 2003). The posting also contains photographs and charts from the Tonkin Gulf incident courtesy of the U.S. Naval Historical Center, a detailed documentary chronology compiled by the State Department's Office of the Historian for the Foreign Relations of the United States series, a CIA Special National Intelligence Estimate on possible North Vietnamese responses to U.S. actions from May 1964 (just declassified in June 2004), and links to previous and upcoming Archive publications on Vietnam.

Some serious Skeletons in the Closet, huh?

Interesting information, that really makes you think, if the Army and the Intel agencies really "Fake" Evidence to start Wars in the majority of the cases. Certainly makes you ask yourself:

"If they Lied to us Yesterday, why would they tell the Truth Today?"

This "Mistake" has caused a Bloody 10-Year War, 250.000+ South Vietnamese Dead, 1.100.000 North Vietnamese Dead and 58.000+ US Soldiers Dead with Civilan Casualties somewhere from 2-4 Million People.

Think about it - and remember these Threads:

Fabricated Al-Qaeda Links?

Who Forged Uranium Reports?

Originally posted by Benevolent Heretic
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