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 [un]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. 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.
Now
let me ask you to jump ahead some eight months to August 1964, still more
than 20 years ago, to There were
at least six of them, Russian-designed Swatow gunboats armed with 37-mm
and 28-mm guns, and P-4's. At 9.52 they opened fire on the destroyers with
automatic weapons, and this time from as close as 2,000 yards. The night
glowed early with the nightmarish glare of air dropped flares and boat's
searchlights. Two of the enemy boats went down. '
That's the kind of vivid detail that the news magazines have made famous.
I don't mean to single out Time. On the same date Life said
almost the same thing and that week's issue of Newsweek had
torpedoes whipping by, US ships blazing out salvo after salvo of shells.
It had a PT boat bursting into flames.
There was only one trouble. There was no battle. There was not a single
intruder, never mind six of them. Never mind Russian designed Swatow
gunboats armed with 37mm and 28mm guns. They never opened fire. They never
sank. They never fired torpedoes. They never were.
It has really taken 20 years for this truth to emerge. My authority is
Admiral Jim Stockdale, who has written a fascinating book. In Love
and War. Jim Stockdale was shot down over Vietnam a few days later
and was a prisoner of the Vietnamese for more than seven years.
 But on the night in question he was in a Sabre jet fighter flying cover
over the Maddox and the Turner Joy, and he scoured the seas for more than
two hours; and he is as sure as man can be that they were fighting phantom
blips on a radar screen.
In case the Vietnam years have blurred in your minds, or even disappeared
from your screens, may I remind you that this so-called Battle of Tonkin
Gulf was the sole basis of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, which was the
entire justification for the United States' war against Vietnam. This
non-event happened on August 4, 1964. President Johnson went on television
that very night to ask the country to support a Congressional resolution.
The resolution went to Congress the next day. Two days later it was
approved unanimously by the House and 88-2 by the Senate.
The 'facts' behind this critically important resolution were quite simply
wrong. Misinformation? Disinformation? Deceit? Whatever! Lies.
(C) Guardian 1987 * Reprinted for Educational Use Only
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Remembering Kent State 1970 When
thirteen students were shot by Ohio National Guard Troops during a war
demonstration on the Kent State University Campus on the first week of May
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and interviews, Remembering Kent State tracks the events that led up to
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Survivor In 1942 a US Navy destroyer was shipwrecked off
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Remembering Kent State 1970 When thirteen students were shot by Ohio
National Guard Troops during a war demonstration on the Kent State University Campus on the
first week of May 1970, four young lives were ended and a nation was stunned. More than 30
years later, the world at war is a different place. However, those thirteen seconds in May,
1970 still remain scorched into an Ohio hillside. Through archival tape and interviews,
Remembering Kent State tracks the events that led up to the shootings. Listen to Remembering Kent State 1970 with Real Player
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War Comes to Twin Peaks explores the rumblings of protest at home during
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