ALL KNOWING, ALL THE TIME

INTELLIGENCE DEMANDS secrecy.  Mistakes in intelligence need the light of day so similar mistakes don’t end in disaster. [story]

The National Security Agency has kept secret since 2001 a finding by an agency historian that during the Tonkin Gulf episode, which helped precipitate the Vietnam War, N.S.A. officers deliberately distorted critical intelligence to cover up their mistakes, two people familiar with the historian's work say.

IF A LESSON is to be learned, the books must be open. Neither the present nor the future are served by hiding the past.  The initial mistakes made by N.S.A officers was not deliberate, but the cover up of the mistakes was.

The historian's conclusion is the first serious accusation that communications intercepted by the N.S.A., the secretive eavesdropping and code-breaking agency, were falsified so that they made it look as if North Vietnam had attacked American destroyers on Aug. 4, 1964, two days after a previous clash. President Lyndon B. Johnson cited the supposed attack to persuade Congress to authorize broad military action in Vietnam, but most historians have concluded in recent years that there was no second attack. . . . Mr. Hanyok concluded that they had done it not out of any political motive but to cover up earlier errors, and that top N.S.A. and defense officials and Johnson neither knew about nor condoned the deception.

SECRECY HAS ITS OWN inertia.  Once something moves toward cover, cover remains.  That blanket is most hard to pull off when to do so would reveal a body of lies.

Mr. Hanyok's findings were published nearly five years ago in a classified in-house journal, and starting in 2002 he and other government historians argued that it should be made public. But their effort was rebuffed by higher-level agency policymakers, who by the next year were fearful that it might prompt uncomfortable comparisons with the flawed intelligence used to justify the war in Iraq, according to an intelligence official familiar with some internal discussions of the matter.

THOSE WHO WORK in secret cover mistakes not their own, because it is to their benefit, not our nation’s.  The intelligence cult of the all seeing, all knowing eye guards well its secrets.  The secret that must not be revealed is that sometimes the eye is blind.

RECOMMENDED ADDITIONAL READING
[Avedon Carol] the whole of history is an embarrassment to this administration, because looking at it - any of it - shows you how absolutely ghastly their policies are.

AND MAGUIRE’S ON FIRE [Just One Minute] "Uncomfortable comparisons"?  Never.  If the current crop of CIA leakers say that they were right and that the White House pressured them to be wrong, well, that is God's own truth.

By odd coincidence, we will illustrate the CIA's eternal and unquestionable veracity with this old Knight-Ridder story, which can be contrasted with the Senate Intelligence Committee report from a year later.

Inexplicably, the national media expressed doubts about the CIA's credibility and impartiality in this amicus brief filed as part of the Plame investigation.

THE HERETIK WILL NOTE agendas clash eternal, but odd it is the Times story is dated October 28, last Friday, a bad day for intelligence to be sure, and only published today.  Hmm. 

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[Amygdala] This is the first hint of actual faking of the original intelligence, let alone the notion that it started as a genuine mistake at the lowest level, which was then covered up down there. This is huge historical news, since it sounds fairly definitive (although always beware first, and second, and third, and all, reports, of course; if this doesn't reteach that lesson, what does?). If you care, you'll darn well read the rest of the article.

What I found extra-fascinating is that while for about a decade I've greatly enjoyed reading pretty much everying posted by Studies In Intelligence, the unclassified historical journal of the CIA (which I post about from time to time; I have more sitting in the "To Blog" file, along with ~400 other articles just now), it never occurred to me that the NSA would have a similar institution. Turns out they do. And have similar papers (if an uglier webpage design).

Comments

[Neil Shakespeare]

Speaking of "Secrecy Inc.",H., do you know what happened to the Abu Ghraib photos and videos that a judge (in the latest round) said the Pentagon had to release a couple weeks ago...and which we've been waiting for now for a couple of years?

[shystee]

Yo Heretik,

You broke our blog by posting an URL in the title of your comment:

http://www.correntewire.com/nice_try_w#comment-1279

It's stretched out the sidebar so the site looks all wacked out. Please go back and edit the comment. Lambert is the only one with admin privileges and he doesn't seem to be around right now.

Always appreciate your comments but URL's don't work in comment titles.

Gracias and happy All Hallows,

Shystee

[shystee]

Oops, please disregard the above. I was wrong. Just jumping to conclusions as I'm wont to do. Deepest Apologies.

[shystee]

OK, turns out I was right. Lambert is back from trick-or-treating and fixed it so no worries. Sorry for the fuss. Rock on.

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