McNamara isn’t the only Mac I’d like to interrogate concerning Vietnam.

[Octafish]

I’d also like to know what McGeorge Bundy knew about the Big Lie that was the Gulf of Tonkin Incident.



We shot first.

Essay: 40th Anniversary of the
Gulf of Tonkin Incident

by John Prados

EXCERPT...

Among the most prophetic and disturbing statements in the declassified record are those by national security adviser McGeorge Bundy, at the White House staff meeting at 8 a.m. on August 5, 1964. Bundy told the staff, according to the memorandum for the record drafted by military aide William Y. Smith: "On the first attack, the evidence would be pretty good. On the second one the amount of evidence we have today is less than we had yesterday. This resulted primarily from correlating bits and pieces of information eliminating double counting and mistaken signals. This much seemed certain: There was an attack. How many PT boats were involved, how many torpedoes were fired, etc. - all this was still somewhat uncertain. This matter may be of some importance since Hanoi has denied making the second attack." We now know this denial was accurate and Washington's claims were not, and that senior officials knew of the "double counting and mistaken signals." But when new staffer Douglass Cater - attending his first morning meeting on August 5, 1964 - questioned the need for a Congressional resolution, "Bundy, in reply, jokingly told him perhaps the matter should not be thought through too far. For his own part, he welcomed the recent events as justification for a resolution the Administration had wanted for some time."

SOURCE: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB132/essay.htm

Hear some of the blah blah that led to the big shoot-em-up to stop the Commies and keep the doors open at Brown and Root, nee Halliburton.

Warmongering and a permanent state of warmongering, thanks in no small part to the Dulles brothers and their "good friend," Reinhard Gehlen.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

1. Gulf of Tonkin -

the fucking arrogance of those liars. The lives they took just so that they could keep playing their Old White Men games.......

[Octafish]

2. Ben Bradlee called it the same way, Tangerine LaBamba. War by Lies.

Misinformation? Disinformation? Deceit? Whatever! Lies.

Deceit in American Government: Gulf of Tonkin

By BEN BRADLEE

I would like to talk about government lying. Calculated lies. The willful deception of the public for political end, especially under the disguise of national security, and what an awful price we pay for such lies under any name: misinformation, disinformation, deceit, deception, or just plain dishonesty.

In America, the press is curiously shy, even embarrassed when faced with the need to use some form of the verb 'to lie' even now when public tolerance for the unexplained and for the unbelievable explanation is wearing thin. We seem to drop quickly into a defensive crouch, when even, as now, we are accused of abusing our power by not accepting explanations which often defy acceptance. We are, too often, close enough to the Establishment ourselves to be comfortable in calling a lie, a lie. I am not talking about little lies as in Vice-Admiral Poindexter asked to give up his job as National Security Adviser to return to active duty in the Navy. Little lies as in we did not trade the Soviet spy TK Sakharov for the American journalist Nick Danilov. Little lies like Margaret Heckler has been promoted from Secretary of Health and Human Services to be Ambassador to Ireland. Little lies like that take forever to damage the bonds of confidence that link the people and the press and public policy.

Let us talk about the big lies, lies that change history. Two of them have to do with Vietnam, that war that so outraged Jimmy Cameron. Let me take you back to December 1963 and Tan Son Hut airport in Saigon. At the end of his first fact finding trip to Vietnam for the New American President Lyndon Johnson, the Defense Secretary Robert McNamara was holding a press conference. He told reporters that he was 'optimistic as to the progress that had been made and could be made during the coming year' in the fight against the Vietcong. This was duly reported to an anxious world on that night's television and in next day's newspapers.

Landing at Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington next day, he told another press conference: 'We have every reason to believe that (US military plans for 1964) will be successful. ' And he disappeared into a helicopter for the White House lawn, and a one-on-one session with the President in the Oval Office. Also duly reported.

For 7 1/2 years, there was no report of that conversation. Not until July, 1971 and then only after the Nixon administration took the New York Times and the Washington Post all the way to the Supreme Court in a vain effort to keep them from publishing the so-called Pentagon Papers, did we hear what McNamara really felt.

Buried in those Pentagon papers (which so few people ever read) lay the revelation that McNamara had told President Johnson exactly the opposite of what he had told the press and through us, the world. The Secretary of Defense returned from Vietnam 'laden with gloom' according to documents in the Pentagon papers. 'Vietcong progress had been great,' he reported to the President, 'With my best guess being that the situation has in fact been deteriorating to a far greater extent than we realize. The situation is very disturbing.'

Think for a minute how history could have changed if those comments had been made at Tan Son Hut airport, if those lies had gone unspoken at Andrews Air Force Base.

CONTINUED...

http://www.tenc.net/archive/bradlee.htm

How different this world would be if we'd spent the last 47 years working on peacably living together, rather than spending our Treasury on war and taxbreaks for warmongers.

[Octafish]

3. Cooking the Books for Empire

A bit more on the Big Lie that led to Big War.

Tonkin Gulf reports cooked?

Historian's research finds intelligence errors covered up

Scott Shane, New York Times
Monday, October 31, 2005

(10-31) 04:00 PDT Washington -- The National Security Agency has kept secret since 2001 a finding by an agency historian that NSA officers deliberately distorted critical intelligence during the Tonkin Gulf episode that helped precipitate the Vietnam War, according to two people familiar with the historian's work.

The historian's conclusion represents the first serious accusation that the agency's communications intercepts were falsified to support the belief that North Vietnamese ships attacked American destroyers on Aug. 4, 1964, two days after a previous clash.

Most historians have concluded in recent years that there was no second attack, but they have assumed the NSA intercepts were unintentionally misread, not purposely altered.

The research by Robert Hanyok, the NSA historian, was detailed four years ago in an in-house article that remains classified, 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 familiar with some internal discussions of the matter.

CONTINUED...

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/10/31/MNG99FGN521.DTL

PDF of Skunks, Bogies, Silent Hounds, and the Flying Fish: The Gulf of Tonkin Mystery, 2-4 August 1964 by Robert J. Hanyok

[Octafish]

4. Ben Bradlee pegged the exact moment McNamara sprang the Big Lie that led to Big War.

That was when McNamara -- Bundy's superior in the national security establishment -- publicly propagated the Big Lie -- that the United States was winning in Vietnam.

Of course, nothing was further from the truth, which he told LBJ, who, unlike JFK, was willing to send in combat troops and draftees into Vietnam.

Ben Bradlee's Speech on Tonkin Gulf

Full text of his 1987 remarks about the lie that sold the Vietnam War.

Posted 26 February 2003
From: The Guardian (London) April 29, 1987

Deceit and dishonesty - The first James Cameron Memorial Lecture

By BEN BRADLEE

EXCERPT...

Let us talk about the big lies, lies that change history. Two of them have to do with Vietnam, that war that so outraged Jimmy Cameron. Let me take you back to December 1963 and Tansonhut airport in Saigon. At the end of his first fact finding trip to Vietnam for the New American President Lyndon Johnson, the Defence Secretary Robert McNamara was holding a press conference. He told reporters that he was 'optimistic as to the progress that had been made and could be made during the coming year' in the fight against the Vietcong. This was duly reported to an anxious world on that night's television and in next day's newspapers.

Landing at Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington next day, he told another press conference: 'We have every reason to believe that (US military plans for 1964) will be successful. ' And he disappeared into a helicopter for the White House lawn, and a one-on-one session with the President in the Oval Office. Also duly reported.

===========================================================

What McNamara really thought

===========================================================

For 7 1/2 years, there was no report of that conversation. Not until July, 1971 and then only after the Nixon administration took the New York Times and the Washington Post all the way to the Supreme Court in a vain effort to keep them from publishing the so-called Pentagon Papers, did we hear what McNamara really felt.

Buried in those Pentagon papers (which so few people ever read) lay the revelation that McNamara had told President Johnson exactly the opposite of what he had told the press and through us, the world, the Secretary of Defence returned from Vietnam 'laden with gloom ' according to documents in the Pentagon papers. 'Vietcong progress had been great,' he reported to the President, 'With my best guess being that the situation has in fact been deteriorating to a far greater extent than we realise. The situation is very disturbing. '

Think for a minute how history could have changed if those comments had been made at Tansonhut airport, if those lies had gone unspoken at Andrews Air Force Base. Reflect on one of the eternal verities of our profession - insufficiently understood by us or by our readers - that the truth, the whole truth, emerges over time, and that's the way its supposed to be, as Lippmann pointed out more than 60 years ago. We don't get it all, the first crack out of the box, for lots of reasons, including the fact that people occasionally lie. It can take a long time to get it all, and get it right.

CONTINUED...

http://www.tenc.net/archive/bradlee.htm

After Dallas, McNamara and Bundy stayed team players. Even though the owner changed coaches, they kept doing the coach's bidding.

[CanSocDem]

5. Can't remember...

...when I first heard that the Tonkin Incident was fabricated, but it was still in the 60's. And it certainly made subsequent "attacks" on US interests less believable.

My hat is off to you for your timely history lessons and your commitment to connecting the dots.

.

[Octafish]

6. ''A Policy of Sustained Reprisal''

McGeorge Bundy thought if we kept hitting North Vietnma, they'd stop "infiltrating" South Vietnam. Despite the lessons of the France and Dien Bien Phu, the "Best and Brightest" didn't remember what President Kennedy knew -- the conflict was, in reality, a Civil War.

McGeorge Bundy, "A Policy of Sustained Reprisal," 7 February 1965

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Source: The Pentagon Papers, Gravel Edition, Volume 3, pp. 687-691

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

McG. Bundy
7 Feb 1965

A POLICY OF SUSTAINED REPRISAL

I. INTRODUCTORY

We believe that the best available way of increasing our chance of success in Vietnam is the development and execution of a policy of sustained reprisal against North Vietnam--a policy in which air and naval action against the North is justified by and related to the whole Viet Cong campaign of violence and terror in the South.

While we believe that the risks of such a policy are acceptable, we emphasize that its costs are real. It implies significant U.S. air losses even if no full air war is joined, and it seems likely that it would eventually require an extensive and costly effort against the whole air defense system of North Vietnam. U.S. casualties would be higher--and more visible to American feelings-than those sustained in the struggle in South Vietnam.

Yet measured against the costs of defeat in Vietnam, this program seems cheap. And even if it fails to turn the tide--as it may-the value of the effort seems to us to exceed its cost.

II. OUTLINE OF THE POLICY

1. In partnership with the Government of Vietnam, we should develop and exercise the option to retaliate against any VC act of violence to persons or property.

2. In practice, we may wish at the outset to relate our reprisals to those acts of relatively high visibility such as the Pleiku incident. Later, we might retaliate against the assassination of a province chief, but not necessarily the murder of a hamlet official; we might retaliate against a grenade thrown into a crowded cafe in Saigon, but not necessarily to a shot fired into a small shop in the countryside.

3. Once a program of reprisals is clearly underway, it should not be necessary to connect each specific act against North Vietnam to a particular outrage in the South. It should be possible, for example, to publish weekly lists of outrages in the South and to have it clearly understood that these outrages are the cause of such action against the North as may be occurring in the current period. Such a more generalized pattern of reprisal would remove much of the difficulty involved in finding precisely matching targets in response to specific atrocities. Even in such a more general pattern, however, it would be important to insure that the general level of reprisal action remained in close correspondence with the level of outrages in the South. We must keep it clear at every stage both to Hanoi and to the world, that our reprisals will be reduced or stopped when outrages in the South are reduced or stopped--and that we are not attempting to destroy or conquer North Vietnam.

4. In the early stages of such a course, we should take the appropriate occasion to make clear our firm intent to undertake reprisals on any further acts, major or minor, that appear to us and the GVN as indicating Hanoi's support. We would announce that our two governments have been patient and forbearing in the hope that Hanoi would come to its senses without the necessity of our having to take further action; but the outrages continue and now we must react against those who are responsible; we will not provoke; we will not use our force indiscriminately; but we can no longer sit by in the face of repeated acts of terror and violence for which the DRV is responsible.

5. Having once made this announcement, we should execute our reprisal policy with as low a level of public noise as possible. It is to our interest that our acts should be seen--but we do not wish to boast about them in ways that make it hard for Hanoi to shift its ground. We should instead direct maximum attention to the continuing acts of violence which are the cause of our continuing reprisals.

6. This reprisal policy should begin at a low level. Its level of force and pressure should be increased only gradually-and as indicated above it should be decreased if VC terror visibly decreases. The object would not be to "win" an air war against Hanoi, but rather to influence the course of the struggle in the South.

7. At the same time it should be recognized that in order to maintain the power of reprisal without risk of excessive loss, an "air war" may in fact be necessary. We should therefore be ready to develop a separate justification for energetic flak suppression and if necessary for the destruction of Communist air power. The essence of such an explanation should be that these actions are intended solely to insure the effectiveness of a policy of reprisal, and in no sense represent any intent to wage offensive war against the North. These distinctions should not be difficult to develop.

8. It remains quite possible, however, that this reprisal policy would get us quickly into the level of military activity contemplated in the so-called Phase II of our December planning. It may even get us beyond this level with both Hanoi and Peiping, if there is Communist counter-action. We and the GVN should also be prepared for a spurt of VC terrorism, especially in urban areas, that would dwarf anything yet experienced. These are the risks of any action. They should be carefully reviewed-but we believe them to be acceptable.

9. We are convinced that the political values of reprisal require a continuous operation. Episodic responses geared on a one-for-one basis to "spectacular" outrages would lack the persuasive force of sustained pressure. More important still, they would leave it open to the Communists to avoid reprisals entirely by giving up only a small element of their own program. The Gulf of Tonkin affair produced a sharp upturn in morale in South Vietnam. When it remained an isolated episode, however, there was a severe relapse. It is the great merit of the proposed scheme that to stop it the Communists would have to stop enough of their activity in the South to permit the probable success of a determined pacification effort.

III. EXPECTED EFFECT OF SUSTAINED REPRISAL POLICY

1. We emphasize that our primary target in advocating a reprisal policy is the improvement of the situation in South Vietnam. Action against the North is usually urged as a means of affecting the will of Hanoi to direct and support the VC. We consider this an important but longer-range purpose. The immediate and critical targets are in the South--in the minds of the South Vietnamese and in the minds of the Viet Cong cadres.

2. Predictions of the effect of any given course of action upon the states of mind of people are difficult. It seems very clear that if the United States and the Government of Vietnam join in a policy of reprisal, there will be a sharp immediate increase in optimism in the South, among nearly all articulate groups. The Mission believes--and our own conversations confirm--that in all sectors of Vietnamese opinion there is a strong belief that the United States could do much more if it would, and that they are suspicious of our failure to use more of our obviously enormous power. At least in the short run, the reaction to reprisal policy would be very favorable.

3. This favorable reaction should offer opportunity for increased American influence in pressing for a more effective government-at least in the short run. Joint reprisals would imply military planning in which the American role would necessarily be controlling, and this new relation should add to our bargaining power in other military efforts--and conceivably on a wider plane as well if a more stable government is formed. We have the whip hand in reprisals as we do not in other fields.

4. The Vietnamese increase in hope could well increase the readiness of Vietnamese factions themselves to join together in forming a more effective government.

5. We think it plausible that effective and sustained reprisals, even in a low key, would have a substantial depressing effect upon the morale of Viet Cong cadres in South Vietnam. This is the strong opinion of CIA Saigon. It is based upon reliable reports of the initial Viet Cong reaction to the Gulf of Tonkin episode, and also upon the solid general assessment that the determination of Hanoi and the apparent timidity of the mighty United States are both major items in Viet Cong confidence.

6. The long-run effect of reprisals in the South is far less clear. It may be that like other stimulants, the value of this one would decline over time. Indeed the risk of this result is large enough so that we ourselves believe that a very major effort all along the line should be made in South Vietnam to take full advantage of the immediate stimulus of reprisal policy in its early stages. Our object should be to use this new policy to effect a visible upward turn in pacification, in governmental effectiveness, in operations against the Viet Cong, and in the whole U.S./ GVN relationship. It is changes in these areas that can have enduring long-term effects.

7. While emphasizing the importance of reprisals in the South, we do not exclude the impact on Hanoi. We believe, indeed, that it is of great importance that the level of reprisal be adjusted rapidly and visibly to both upward and downward shifts in the level of Viet Cong offenses. We want to keep before Hanoi the carrot of our desisting as well as the stick of continued pressure. We also need to conduct the application of the force so that there is always a prospect of worse to come.

8. We cannot assert that a policy of sustained reprisal will succeed in changing the course of the contest in Vietnam. It may fail, and we cannot estimate the odds of success with any accuracy--they may be somewhere between 25% and 75%. What we can say is that even if it fails, the policy will be worth it. At a minimum it will damp down the charge that we did not do all that we could have done, and this charge will be important in many countries, including our own. Beyond that, a reprisal policy--to the extent that it demonstrates U.S. willingness to employ this new norm in counter-insurgency--will set a higher price for the future upon all adventures of guerrilla warfare, and it should therefore somewhat increase our ability to deter such adventures. We must recognize, however, that that ability will be gravely weakened if there is failure for any reason in Vietnam.

IV. PRESENT ACTION RECOMMENDATIONS

1. This general recommendation was developed in intensive discussions in the days just before the attacks on Pleiku. These attacks and our reaction to them have created an ideal opportunity for the prompt development and execution of sustained reprisals. Conversely, if no such policy is now developed, we face the grave danger that Pleiku, like the Gulf of Tonkin, may be a short-run stimulant and a long-term depressant. We therefore recommend that the necessary preparations be made for continuing reprisals. The major necessary steps to be taken appear to us to be the following:

(1) We should complete the evacuation of dependents.
(2) We should quietly start the necessary westward deployments of back-up contingency forces.
(3) We should develop and refine a running catalogue of Viet Cong offenses which can be published regularly and related clearly to our own reprisals. Such a catalogue should perhaps build on the foundation of an initial White Paper.
(4) We should initiate joint planning with the GVN on both the civil and military level. Specifically, we should give a clear and strong signal to those now forming a government that we will be ready for this policy when they are.
(5) We should develop the necessary public and diplomatic statements to accompany the initiation and continuation of this program.
(6) We should insure that a reprisal program is matched by renewed public commitment to our family of programs in the South, so that the central importance of the southern struggle may never be neglected.
(7) We should plan quiet diplomatic communication of the precise meaning of what we are and are not doing, to Hanoi, to Peking and to Moscow.
(8) We should be prepared to defend and to justify this new policy by concentrating attention in every forum upon its cause-the aggression in the South.
(9) We should accept discussion on these terms in any forum, but we should not now accept the idea of negotiations of any sort except on the basis of a stand down of Viet Cong violence. A program of sustained reprisal, with its direct link to Hanoi's continuing aggressive actions in the South, will not involve us in nearly the level of international recrimination which would be precipitated by a go-North program which was not so connected. For this reason the International pressures for negotiation should be quite manageable.

SOURCE:

http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/pentagon3/doc250.htm

We know the above because former Senator and Alaska Governor Mike Gravel is a real patriot. Despite the best efforts of Nixon and his allies in Congreff, the guy helped get the Pentagon Papers read into the Congressional Record, a move that got the truth in front of the citizens, which is what democracy is all about. Thank you for the kind words, my Friend. Thanks also for caring about the truth, CanSocDem.

[Octafish]

7. Bundy recommended US use VOLUNTEERS, not draftees, in Vietnam.

McGeorge Bundy speaks with President Lyndon Johnson:

Telephone Conversation Between President Johnson and the President's Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Bundy) Washington, May 27, 1964, 11:24 a.m.


Johnson: What action do we take, though?

Bundy: Well, I think that we really do need to do some target fodder work, Mr. President, that shows precisely what we do and don't mean here. The main object is to kill as few people as possible, while creating an environment in which the incentive to react is as low as possible. But I can't say to you that this is a small matter. There's one other thing that I've thought about, I've only just thought overnight, and it's on this same matter of saying to a guy, you go to Korea, or you go to Vietnam, and you fight in the rice paddies. I would love to know what happened if we were to say in this same speech, and from now on, nobody goes on this task who doesn't volunteer. I think that we might turn around the atmosphere of our own people out there, if it were a volunteer enterprise. I suspect that the Joints Chiefs won't agree to that, but I'd like to know what would happen. If we really dramatized this as Americans against terror and Americans keeping their commitment, and Americans who have only peace as their object, and only Americans who want to go have to go, you might change the temper of it some.

Johnson: Well, you wouldn't have a Corporals' Guard would you?

Bundy: I just don't know, I just don't know. If that's true, then I'm not sure that we're the country to do this job.

CONTINUED...

http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/vietnam/lbjbundy.htm

What gets me is how the nation later made the all-volunteer armed forces national policy.

It may go a long way to explaining the constantly declining job market since Vietnam,
meaning the lousy economy is what drives young people to serve in the armed forces.

[ControlledDemolition]

8. Vietnam was LBJ's payback to his buddy co-conspirators in JFK's demise. n/t

[scarletwoman]

9. k&r (nt)