The Truth About Tonkin:
Questions about the Gulf of Tonkin incidents have persisted for more than 50 years. But once-classified documents and tapes released in the past several years, combined with previously uncovered facts, make clear that high government officials distorted facts and deceived the American public about events that led to full U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War.
On 2 August 1964, North Vietnamese patrol torpedo boats attacked the USS Maddox (DD-731) while the destroyer was in international waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. There is no doubting that fact. But what happened in the Gulf during the late hours of 4 August—and the consequential actions taken by U.S. officials in Washington—has been seemingly cloaked in confusion and mystery ever since that night.
https://www.usni.org/magazines/navalhistory/2008-02/truth-about-tonkin
Johnson Lied, 55,000 Died
National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 132 ^ | August 2004 | John Prado
Posted on 8/22/2006, 8:34:54 AM by Hillary’sMoralVoid
Forward: During this election season, you will certainly hear the mantra “Bush lied”. To counter that, here is a REAL example of how intelligence was distorted, resulting in TENS of THOUSANDS of American lives lost.
“The Gulf of Tonkin Incident, 40 Years Later — Flawed Intelligence and the Decision for War in Vietnam”
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 (Emphasis added)
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 on Vietnam.
https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB132/
https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB132/press20051201.htm
FIFTY YEARS LATER, NSA KEEPS DETAILS OF ISRAEL’S USS LIBERTY ATTACK SECRET
Miriam Pensack, June 6 2017, 8:58 a.m.
ON JUNE 8, 1967, an Israeli torpedo tore through the side of the unarmed American naval vessel USS Liberty, approximately a dozen miles off the Sinai coast. The ship, whose crew was under command of the National Security Agency, was intercepting communications at the height of the Six-Day War when it came under direct Israeli aerial and naval assault.
Reverberations from the torpedo blast sent crewman Ernie Gallo flying across the radio research room where he was stationed. Gallo, a communications technician aboard the Liberty, found himself and his fellow shipmates in the midst of an attack that would leave 34 Americans dead and 171 wounded.
This week marks the 50th anniversary of the assault on the USS Liberty, and though it was among the worst attacks in history against a noncombatant U.S. naval vessel, the tragedy remains shrouded in secrecy. The question of if and when Israeli forces became aware they were killing Americans has proved a point of particular contention in the on-again, off-again public debate that has simmered over the last half a century. The Navy Court of Inquiry’s investigation proceedings following the incident were held in closed sessions, and the survivors who had been on board received gag orders forbidding them to ever talk about what they endured that day.
Now, half a century later, The Intercept is publishing two classified documents provided in the cache of files leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden related to the attack and its aftermath. They reveal previously unknown involvement by Government Communications Headquarters, the U.K. signals intelligence agency; internal NSA communications that seem to bolster a signals intelligence analyst’s account of the incident, which framed it as an accident; as well as a Hebrew transliteration system unique to the NSA that was in use at least as recently as 2006.
USS Pueblo (AGER-2) is a Banner-class environmental research ship, attached to Navy intelligence as a spy ship, which was attacked and captured by North Korean forces on 23 January 1968, in what is known today as the “Pueblo incident” or alternatively, as the “Pueblo crisis”.
The seizure of the U.S. Navy ship and her 83 crew members, one of whom was killed in the attack, came less than a week after President Lyndon B. Johnson’s State of the Union address to the United States Congress, a week before the start of the Tet Offensive in South Vietnam during the Vietnam War, and three days after 31 men of North Korea’s KPA Unit 124 had crossed the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) and killed 26 South Koreans in an attempt to attack the South Korean Blue House (executive mansion) in the capital Seoul. The taking of Pueblo and the abuse and torture of her crew during the subsequent 11-month prisoner drama became a major Cold War incident, raising tensions between the western powers, and the Soviet Union and China.
North Korea stated that Pueblo deliberately entered their territorial waters 7.6 nautical miles (14 km) away from Ryo Island, and that the logbook shows that they intruded several times.[1] However, the United States maintains that the vessel was in international waters at the time of the incident and that any purported evidence supplied by North Korea to support its statements was fabricated.[2]
Pueblo, still held by North Korea today, officially remains a commissioned vessel of the United States Navy.[3] Since early 2013, the ship has been moored along the Potong River in Pyongyang, and used there as a museum ship at the Pyongyang Victorious War Museum.[4] Pueblo is the only ship of the U.S. Navy still on the commissioned roster currently being held captive.[5]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Pueblo_%28AGER-2%29
I think I recognize a common thread.
TRUE: Radio contact between Pueblo and the Naval Security Group in Kamiseya, Japan had been ongoing during the incident.
Sort of TRUE: As a result, Seventh Fleet command was fully aware of Pueblo's situation. [Given circumstances of communications.]
TRUE: Air cover was promised but never arrived.
RE AIRCRAFT AVAILABILITY: The Fifth Air Force had no aircraft on strip alert, and estimated a two-to-three-hour delay in launching aircraft.
IMHO: Fifth Air Force was ordered to not send help.
I miss Tonk
The entire classification system needs reformed.
It is over used and abused.
The classification system has become a way to avoid public scrutiny or even culpability.
If the public don’t know, you can basically lead them around like fools and that has become standard MO.