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US govt skewed intelligence to enter Vietnam War
(AP)
Updated: 2005-12-02 09:20

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."

File photo dated 27 October 1973 of the 37th President of the United States, Richard Millhouse Nixon, as he speaks to journalists during a press conference.
File photo dated 27 October 1973 of the 37th President of the United States, Richard Millhouse Nixon, as he speaks to journalists during a press conference. [AFP/file]
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.

"The parallels between the faulty intelligence on Tonkin Gulf and the manipulated intelligence used to justify the Iraq war make it all the more worthwhile to re-examine the events of August 1964 in light of new evidence," said researcher John Prados.

Prados is a specialist on the Gulf of Tonkin at George Washington University's National Security Archive, which is not affiliated with the National Security Agency, and which pressed for release of the documents through Freedom of Information requests and other means.

The article, by NSA historian Robert J. Hanyok, reviews signals intelligence, or SIGINT, from that time and concludes top administration officials were only given material supporting the claim of an Aug. 4 attack �� not the wealth of contradictory intelligence. His study was published in 2001 and does not necessarily reflect the agency's position.
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