Government lies declassified: Gulf of Tonkin
By Anthony Dorunda
Published: Saturday, January 31, 2009
Updated: Sunday, February 1, 2009
For many reasons ranging from economic instability to security challenges, U.S. citizens need to look to their government with confidence perhaps more than ever before. Truth goes a long way toward building confidence.
In 1964, a major bond of trust was broken by the US government, and did not surface again until decades later in late 2005.
On August 2, 1964, naval forces of the United States and North Vietnam skirmished in the waters of the Gulf of Tonkin. Just two days later, the USS Maddox reported yet further engagement with North Vietnamese torpedo boats.
Upon the news of the second clash, it took a mere three days for Congress to pass the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which stated that President Lyndon B. Johnson, could give aid to any Asian country whose government was in harms way of a communist invasion.
Recently, the National Security Agency, declassified over 140 formerly top secret documents on the August 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident. Included in these documents were histories, chronologies, signals intelligence reports, and oral history interviews that drove home the point that has long been suspected, but never proven that there was no second attack on US ships.
Dr. Diane Wenger, associate professor of history at Wilkes acknowledged that this resolution gave President Johnson “…a free hand to escalate the war.” In essence, it gave him the justification he needed to convince skeptical Americans that more involvement was needed in Vietnam.
Why, though, did the truth take more than 40 years to surface?
Wenger offers a simple answer: The U.S. did not want its image to be blemished.
“The National Security Agency naturally wanted to portray the United States in the best light; to continue the justification for the nation defending itself against the attacks,” said Wenger. “As a reporter for The New York Times has suggested, releasing the news might have caused unwelcome comparisons with the war in Iraq and the misleading information about weapons of mass destruction that led Americans to support that war.”
The declassification of the documents has left many Americans with the nagging question, “What else are we not being told?”
In 2004, a poll conducted by both The New York Times and CBS reported that 28% of Americans felt the government was lying or covering up specific details regarding September 11.
An untruthful and misleading government creates an uneasy feeling for citizens. With the power to decide what truths to release and what to cover up, it is hard not to ask how often the people do not get all the necessary information.
Wenger said, “This was not the first time that U.S. government officials made a decision that later proved questionable. I was skeptical of attempts to link the invasion of Iraq to 9/11 attacks and the war on terrorism.”
Wenger is also skeptical about the government’s policies of detaining suspects without due process as well as the use of torture and notes that aspects of the Patriot Act wrongly deprived citizens of their guaranteed rights.
Any lies, distortions or withholding of important information diminishes any credibility government officials hope to have among citizens. President Obama’s new administration would be wise to avoid hiding behind the curtain of half-truths, given public outrage over the Gulf of Tonkin realities.
The U.S. is a democracy, a government “For the people, by the people, and of the people.” If what our founding fathers wrote centuries ago is true, then there should be no secrets, no misleading ideas, and no distortion of fact from reality.
Source:
The Beacon - Government lies declassified: Gulf of Tonkin
