Gulf of Tonkin second attack, I thought it was a sure thing conspiracy for years. Then I read the actual NSA doc from 2005.

Back in the 90s I was deep into the whole "they fabricated everything" angle on Vietnam. I remember arguing with my history teacher in 1997 that the second attack never happened at all, that we knew about it being fake right after. He just shook his head. So about 2 years ago I finally sat down and read that 2005 NSA internal history that declassified a lot of the signals intel. It's not clean. There were real transmissions, there was confusion about radar returns, and there actually was some real enemy activity around the destroyers that night, just not a full attack like reported. That mix of genuine chaos and exaggerated reporting is way more messy than the pure fabrication story I grew up with. It made me rethink how a lot of government coverups work. It's rarely a clean lie, more like a fog of half-truths that gets weaponized. Does anyone else ever find the boring, complicated truth worse than the neat conspiracy?

2 comments

2 Comments

simonp4724d ago

Hang on, you're basically falling for the sanitized version now. The whole point of that 2005 doc is that it's still the agency covering its own butt, framing things as "confusion" instead of just saying, yeah, we blew it, or worse, we stretched it. The neat conspiracy might be too clean, sure, but the "fog of half-truths" story is exactly what they want you to believe so you stop digging. If you're honest, look at how fast McNamara and Johnson went on TV with a full-blown attack story, no hesitation, and how they kept repeating it for years. That's not fog, that's a choice. Sometimes the boring truth is just people lying for a war they already wanted, and the messy details are just noise to make the lie look human.

alice33624d ago

Think about whose careers depended on the fog staying thick. @simonp47 makes a solid point about McNamara and Johnson, but nobody ever brings up the Naval officers on those destroyers. They got medals, promotions, and public praise for staying cool under fire that night. If the whole thing was a clean lie from the top, then those guys were either in on it or duped, and both options mess with the Navy's whole honor thing. The 2005 doc being messy actually protects their legacy too, because it gives them an out that they saw something real. So the boring truth might not just be what the government wants, it might be what the institution needs to keep its own stories straight, and that's almost scarier than a straight up conspiracy.