spartans_in_darkness

'fOP SE6REl'1i'60MIN'fO*1
during the critical hours leading up to the retaliatory
air strikes of 5 August, remains its most glaring
shortcoming in this incident.
(~//~I) We have seen as well the many technical
problems with the supposed "after-action"
translation. This product, upon which the administration
based so much of its case, appears to
have been the result of a gross analytic error of
combining two separate messages, each dealing
with separate incidents, into a single translation.
There were more problems, such as the actual
translation of the term "comrades" and how it
was rendered into "boats" by NSA. Here, the analytic
problems mix with those discovered about
the available records: the original decrypted
Vietnamese text, and an important translation
from San Miguel cannot be located. Considering
the importance of this translation to the administration's
case, the fact that the original text cannot
be found (and was not used as earlv as October
1964) is unusual. That these original texts and
translation are the only missing papers in the San
Miguel reports allows for suspicion to shade any
further discourses.
(£//£1) What we are confronted with is the
same conundrum that confronted the NSA analysts
at the time. We have discussed earlier that,
for the most part, the NSA personnel in the crisis
center who reported the second Gulf of Tonkin
incident believed that it had occurred. The problem
for them was the SIGINT evidence. The evidence
that supported the contention that an
attack had occurred was scarce and nowhere as
strong as would have been wanted. The overwhelming
body of reports, if used, would have
told the story that no attack had happened. So a
conscious effort ensued to demonstrate that the
attack occurred.
(£//£I) The exact "how" and "why" for this
effort to provide only the SIGINT that supported
the claim of an attack remain unknown. There are
no "smoking gun" memoranda or notes buried in
the files that outline any plan or state a justification.
Instead, the paper record speaks for itself on
what happened: what few product (six) were
actually used, and how 90 percent of them were
kept out of the chronology; how contradictory
SIGINT evidence was answered both with speculation
and fragments lifted from context; how the
complete lack of Vietnamese C31 was not
addressed; and, finally, how critical original
Vietnamese text and subsequent product were no
longer available. From this evidence, one can easily
deduce the deliberate nature of these actions.
And this observation makes sense, for there was a
purpose to them: This was an active effort to
make SIGINT fit the claim of what happened during
the evening of 4 August in the Gulf of Tonkin.
(S//£I) The question why the NSA personnel
handled the product the way they did will probably
never be answered. The notion that they were
under "pressure" to deliver the story that the
administration wanted simply cannot be supported.
Ifthe participants are to be believed, and they
were adamant in asserting this, they did not bend
to the desires of administration officials. Also,
such "environmental" factors as overworked crisis
center personnel and lack of experienced linguists
are, for the most part, not relevant when
considering the entire period of the crisis and
follow-up. As we have seen, the efforts to ensure
that the only SIGINT publicized would be that
which supported the contention that an attack
had occurred continued long after the crisis had
passed. While the product initially issued on the 4
August incident may be contentious, thin, and
mistaken, what was issued in the Gulf of Tonkin
summaries beginning late on 4 August was deliberately
skewed to support the notion that there
had been an attack. What was placed in the official
chronology was even more selective. That the
NSA personnel believed that the attack happened
and, as a result, rationalized the contradictory
evidence away is probably all that is necessary to
know in order to understand what was done.
They walked alone in their counsels.
'fOP SEeRE1'N60Mltml*1 Page 223