spartans_in_darkness

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1. 4.. (c)
OKAY." Unfortunately, the original, decrypted
Vietnamese language version of the message cannot
be located in the NSA Archives. Also, a possible
original translation of the entire message (or
part of it), numbered "T162-64" and issued by the
navy site at San Miguel, cannot be found in the
NSA Archives file of that site's 1964 translations.
Without either document, we are left with the
conjecture of what Vietnamese words were seen
by the navy analysts and linguists at San Miguel
and their counterparts at NSA.
(S//SI) However, from the existing records,
what we do know is that the translation finally
issued by NSA was not what was initially reported
by San Miguel. At 1550Z (2250G) on 4 August,
when the American destroyers were shooting
away at those radar returns, San Miguel intercepted
a message which it identified as being sent
from T-142 to an unidentified entity at My Due
(19°52'N, 105()57'E). In total, the report, numbered
"R38," read:
WE SHOT AT TWO ENEMY AIRPLANES AND
AT LEAST ONE WAS DAMAGED. WE SACRI­
FICED TWO COMRADES BUT ALL ARE
BRAVE AND RECOGNIZE OUR OBLIGA­
TION. 13 6
(U) How the translation changed from "comrades"
in the San Miguel version to "boats" in the
NSA version is unknown. Edwin Moise, in his
study of the Tonkin Gulf, suggests that a
Vietnamese sentence to the effect of losing two
comrades [dong chi] could hardly be construed
to mean two ships: "HAl DONG CHI HY SINH"
or "HAl DONG CHI BI HY SINH" are possible
Vietnamese phrases which could be translated to
"sacrificing two comrades." 137 The Vietnamese
word for boat, "TAU," had been seen in earlier
intercepted messages. This would be consistent,
since Hanoi's messages usually shortened the
word to just the letter "T" from where the same
letter designators for Hanoi's boats comes from,
such as "T-142," "T-146," etc.
(S//SI) A possible argument that there was.a
garble in the encryption of the message whirh
could have led to confusion does not hold.!
(U) There is an additional point of interest:
President Johnson in his memoirs noted that
"The North Vietnamese skipper reported that his
unit had 'sacrificed two comrades'. " Our experts
said that this meant either two enemy boats or
two men in the attack group." 139 (My italics in all
cases.) This is an interesting admission, for it suggests,
and rather strongly, that even the day that
the NSA translation was issued, the intercept was
considered, at best, ambiguous in its meaning.
Why NSA opted for "boats" instead of "comrades"
in its final translation is not clear, especially if the
difference was enough to tell the president.
(8//51) The third problem is with the time of
the intercept and the file time listed on the NSA
translation. The file time, 2242G (1542Z), is barely
one hour after the Turner Joy and Maddox
opened fire on the first radar returns. As we saw
with the messages from 2 August, this entry is the
time that the Vietnamese communications center
(or a radio operator) assigned to the message
when it arrived ready for transmission, which, as
it turns out, in this case took another eight minutes
to complete. If we allow any time for the
message's drafting, coordination, and encryption
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