FAS on Tonkin Gulf

by Cliopatria

Steven Aftergood, director of the FAS project on government secrecy . . . said that probably the"most historically significant feature" of the declassified report was the retelling of the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident . . .

"What this study demonstrated is that the available intelligence shows that there was no attack. It's a dramatic reversal of the historical record," Aftergood said.

"There were previous indications of this but this is the first time we have seen the complete study," he said.

Just checked the FAS website, which doesn't seem to have posted the documents yet. [Update, 12.27pm: FAS has posted the full file of documents, here.

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Stuart McGeady - 1/10/2008

Thanks, KC, for putting the Hanyok article in perspective. I met Hanyok and enjoyed a conversation with him about his article and the history of signals intelligence. Now we know more!

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Draw a line. I hope it's okay to go off topic.

DIW readers are looking forward to your Q&A at DSED. In the meantime, the Duke Chronicle is back on line, John in Carolina and the vigilant Debrah are watching Duke and Durham, and the peanut gallery at LieStoppers never fails to entertain. Stu Daddy

Robert KC Johnson - 1/10/2008

A quick followup: the LBJ tapes are pretty disappointing on the attack. There are some interesting conversations about the passage of the resolution, but not nearly as many substantive calls as I had hoped.

Robert KC Johnson - 1/10/2008

Indeed it has--arguably, the story was told by Wayne Morse(!) in his 1964 speech against the resolution (Morse had been leaked some of the intelligence data from Pentagon officials skeptical of the second attack) and thereafter by the Fulbright hearings of 1968, the Moise book, and by the National Security Archive material.

The FAS release is the first I've seen that has the full NSA documents not only for the TGR but for other Vietnam-related activities, dating back to 1945.

Stuart McGeady - 1/10/2008

KC, if you haven't already reviewed the items, please look at Tonkin Gulf Intelligence "Skewed"
According to Official History and Intercepts, posted in December 2005 at National Security Archive (George Washington University).

There are links there to a well known and once controversial article by National Security Agency historian Robert Hanyok, "Skunks, Bogies, Silent Hounds, and the Flying Fish: The Gulf of Tonkin Mystery, 2-4 August 1964". It was declassified in November 2005.

Since the article and other documents (there are LBJ tapes, too) were declassified by the agency a while ago, are the newly declassified documents mentioned by FAS something altogether new? I thought the true story of the Gulf of Tonkin incident already had been told.