Tonkin Gulf or Strait of Hormuz: SSDD

CIA, Iran & the Gulf of Tonkin
By Ray McGovern, January 12, 2008
When the Tonkin Gulf incident took place in early August 1964, I was a journeyman CIA analyst in what Condoleezza Rice refers to as “the bowels of the agency.”
Out of that experience I must say that, as much as one might be tempted to laugh at the bizarre theatrical accounts of Sunday’s incident involving small Iranian boats and U.S. naval ships in the Strait of Hormuz, this is—as my old Russian professor used to insist—nothing to laugh.
The situation is so reminiscent of what happened—and didn’t happen—from Aug. 2-4, 1964, in the Gulf of Tonkin and in Washington, it is in no way funny.
[...] What follows is written primarily for honest intelligence analysts and managers still on “active duty.”
[...] Given the confusion last Sunday in the Persian Gulf, you need to remember that a “known known” in the form of a non-event has already been used to sell a major war—Vietnam. It is not only in retrospect that we know that no attack occurred that night.
[...] As James Bamford describes it in “Body of Secrets:”
“The twin missions of the [USS] Maddox were in a sense symbiotic. The vessel’s primary purpose was to act as a seagoing provocateur—to poke its sharp gray bow and the American flag as close to the belly of North Vietnam as possible, in effect shoving its 5-inch cannons up the nose of the Communist navy. In turn, this provocation would give the shore batteries an excuse to turn on as many coastal defense radars, fire control systems, and communications channels as possible, which could then be captured by the men...at the radar screens. The more provocation, the more signals...
[...] We in the bowels knew there was no attack; and so did the Director of Current Intelligence as well as Cline, the Deputy Director for Intelligence. But all knew, as did McNamara, that President Johnson was lusting for a pretext to strike the North and escalate the war. And, like B’rer Rabbit, they didn’t say nothin’.
[...] “... the dilemma CIA directors and senior intelligence professionals face in cases when they know that unvarnished intelligence judgments will not be welcomed by the President, his policy managers, and his political advisers...[They] must decide whether to tell it like it is (and so risk losing their place at the President’s advisory table), or to go with the flow of existing policy by accentuating the positive (thus preserving their access and potential influence). In these episodes from the Vietnam era, we have seen that senior CIA officers more often than not tended toward the latter approach.”
[...] Back to Iran. This time, we all know what the president and vice president are lusting after—an excuse to attack Iran. But there is a big difference from the situation in the summer of 1964, when President Johnson had intimidated all his senior subordinates into using deceit to escalate the war.
[...] It is my view that the only thing that has prevented Bush and Cheney from attacking Iran so far has been the strong opposition of the uniformed military, including the Joint Chiefs.
As the misadventure last Sunday in the Strait of Hormuz shows, our senior military officers need all the help they can get from intelligence officers more concerned with the truth than with “keeping lines open to the White House” and doing its bidding.
[...] If you’re working in the bowels of the CIA and you find that your leaders are cooking the intelligence once again into a recipe for casus belli, think long and hard about your oath to protect the Constitution. Should that oath not transcend any secrecy promise you had to accept as a condition of employment?
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2008/011108a.html