WASHINGTON, Oct. 28 - The National Security Agency has kept secret since 2001 a finding by an agency historian that during the Tonkin Gulf episode,
which helped precipitate the Vietnam War, N.S.A. officers deliberately distorted critical intelligence to cover up their mistakes, two people familiar
with the historian's work say.
The historian's conclusion is the first serious accusation that communications intercepted by the N.S.A., the secretive eavesdropping and
code-breaking agency, were falsified so that they made it look as if North Vietnam had attacked American destroyers on Aug. 4, 1964, two days after a
previous clash. President Lyndon B. Johnson cited the supposed attack to persuade Congress to authorize broad military action in Vietnam, but most
historians have concluded in recent years that there was no second attack.
The N.S.A. historian, Robert J. Hanyok, found a pattern of translation mistakes that went uncorrected, altered intercept times and selective citation
of intelligence that persuaded him that midlevel agency officers had deliberately skewed the evidence.
Mr. Hanyok's findings were published nearly five years ago in a classified in-house journal, and starting in 2002 he and other government
historians argued that it should be made public. But their effort was rebuffed by higher-level agency policymakers, who by the next year were fearful
that it might prompt uncomfortable comparisons with the flawed intelligence used to justify the war in Iraq, according to an intelligence official
familiar with some internal discussions of the matter.
Both men said Mr. Hanyok believed the initial misinterpretation of North Vietnamese intercepts was probably an honest mistake. But after months of
detective work in N.S.A.'s archives, he concluded that midlevel agency officials discovered the error almost immediately but covered it up and
doctored documents so that they appeared to provide evidence of an attack.
Source:
New York Times
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?
Bombs in the Building: World Trade Center 'Conspiracy Theory' is a Conspiracy Fact
A Little bit of History Repeating?
[edit on 2/11/05 by Souljah]
