U.S. Manned Guns And Were "Very Close" To Firing On Iranian Ships - Video Inside

[Gold9472]

US manned guns and were 'very close' to firing on Iranian ships

http://rawstory.com/news/2007/US_manned_guns_and_were_very_0107.html

Published: Monday January 7, 2008

US Navy warships over the weekend came "very close" to shooting at an Iranian Revolutionary Guard vessel, which American officials say provoked US ships in international waters, according to CNN.

"US officials are confirming to CNN that five Iranian Revolutionary guard boats, in their words, 'harassed and provoked' three US Navy warships sailing in the Strait of Hormuz," reports CNN's Barbara Starr. "One of those Iranian boats came within 200 yards of a Navy warship."

The Iranian boats had also transmitted threats via radio, according to officials.

"According to the sources we have spoken to," Starr continued, "the Iranians made threatening moves and threatening radio transmissions. One of those transmissions was...'I am coming at you, you will explode in a couple of minutes.'"

According to the CNN website (http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/01/07/iran.us.navy/index.html), "one of the Iranian ships had been dropping white boxes into the water in front of the US ships."

Following the radio transmission, a Navy ship had prepared to fire on an Iranian vessel.

"This official also tells CNN that when that radio transmission was heard, the Navy went to manning its positions, its gun positions on those ships," Starr reports, "and that they were very close to shooting at one of the Iranian boats. In fact the were ready to shoot, the orders had been given when the Iranians suddenly turned away."

No shots were fired, and there were no injuries.

"It is the most serious provocation of this sort that we've seen yet," an unnamed Pentagon official told the Associated Press (http://www.rawstory.com/news/mochila/Pentagon_says_ships_harassed_by_Ira_01072008.html) . He added that the Iranian boats turned away "literally at the very moment that US forces were preparing to open fire."

AP reports the incident occurred about 5 a.m. local time Sunday as a US Navy cruiser, destroyer and frigate were transiting the strait on their way into the Persian Gulf.

"Five small boats were acting in a very aggressive way, charging the ships, dropping boxes in the water in front of the ships and causing our ships to take evasive maneuvers," the Pentagon official said.

Iranian Revolutionary Guard sailors last March captured 15 British sailors and held them for nearly two weeks.

The 15 sailors from HMS Cornwall, including one woman, were captured on March 23. Iran claims the crew, operating in a small patrol craft, had intruded into Iranian waters — a claim denied by Britain.

Video At Source

[Gold9472]

Iran 'did not harass US warships'

http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=37833&sectionid=351020101

Mon, 07 Jan 2008 21:09:36

An Iranian official has dismissed Washington's claims that IRGC speedboats harassed three US navy warships in the Strait of Hormuz.

The US vessels approached the Iranian boats in the Persian Gulf on Sunday, warning they were in the red zone, the official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Press TV on Monday.

He added that the Iranians had asked the warships to identify themselves, as such radio communications are usual between vessels in the Persian Gulf.

Although the Pentagon claimed that US sailors were given orders to open fire on the Iranian boats, the official confirmed no hostile encounter took place.

[AuGmENTor]

Sounds to me like a Gulf of Tonkin incident. But I'm sure they know they have to do a bit better than that to justify another illegal war.

[PhilosophyGenius]

More like keeping Iran in the news since the election is sucking up all the air time.

[AuGmENTor]

Good point sir, good point. I was just starting to forget how evil Iranians were.

[PhilosophyGenius]

The discussion on foriegn policy started shifting towards Pakistan and back towards Iraq.

[Gold9472]

Bush chastises Iran on Gulf intercept
Bush Calls Iran's Confrontation With U.S. Ships in Persian Gulf a 'Provocative Act'

http://www.rawstory.com/news/mochila/Bush_chastises_Iran_on_Gulf_interce_01082008.html

ANNE FLAHERTY
Jan 08, 2008 15:03 EST

President Bush said Tuesday that Iran's confrontation with the U.S. Navy ships in the Persian Gulf was a "provocative act."

"It is a dangerous situation," he said in a White House news conference. "They should not have done it, pure and simple. . . . I don't know what their thinking was, but I'm telling you what my thinking was. I think it was a provocative act."

The top U.S. Navy commander in the area said an Iranian fleet of high-speed boats charged at and threatened to blow up a three-ship U.S. Navy convoy passing near but outside Iranian waters on Monday, as they headed into the Persian Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz. The Iranian fleet "maneuvered aggressively" and then vanished as the American ship commanders were preparing to open fire, said Vice Adm. Kevin Cosgriff. No shots were fired.

In Tehran, Iran's Foreign Ministry suggested the Iranian boats had not recognized the U.S. vessels. Spokesman Mohammed Ali Hosseini played down the incident. "That is something normal that takes place every now and then for each party," he told the state news agency IRNA.

But White House press secretary Dana Perino said the incident was hardly routine. "It was not normal behavior," she said. "It was out of the ordinary. It was reckless."

"It's just another point of reference for people in the region who are concerned about the behavior of Iran," Perino said of the skirmish early Sunday local time. But, she said that while Iran will be "part of the discussion" during Bush's travels, "it's certainly not the main reason for the trip."

Said Bush: "My message today to the Iranians is they shouldn't have done what they did."

Bush also said that a recent intelligence assessment on Iran, which determined that Tehran had halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003, sent a "mixed signal" to the international community on U.S. policy.

"Iran was a threat. Iran is a threat. And Iran will continue to be a threat if they are allowed to learn how to enrich uranium," he said.

The incident came as Bush got ready to leave Tuesday evening on an eight-day Mideast trip designed in part to counter Iran's influence in the region. Bush is expected to discuss the U.S. posture toward Tehran with Arab allies also worried about Tehran's desire for greater regional power.

[Gold9472]

Rice warns Iran against 'provocations'

http://rawstory.com/news/afp/Rice_warns_Iran_against_provocation_01082008.html

Published: Tuesday January 8, 2008

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warned Tehran in an interview published on Tuesday that it should cease its "provocations" after Iranian vessels confronted US warships in the Gulf.

"Iran should not engage in such provocations," Rice said in an interview to the Jerusalem Post and the Ynet website in Israel after Washington said armed Iranian speedboats had threatened three US warships in the Strait of Hormuz.

"That's what it was and it needs to stop. The US is going to defend its interests. It's going to defend its allies," Rice was quoted as saying.

Iran is "the single greatest threat to the kind of Middle East we all want to see," she added.

The weekend incident, in which the Iranian boats radioed a threat to blow up the US ships, according to US officials, sent tensions rising ahead of the US President George W. Bush's visit to the region.

"It was provocative, and that kind of provocation is dangerous," Rice also told the BBC's Arabic service. "I would sincerely hope that the Iranians would refrain from any such activity."

The Strait of Hormuz is a crucial energy supply route, with about 20-25 percent of the world's crude oil passing through from Gulf oil producers.

The US Fifth Fleet is based in Bahrain and US Navy officials say about three dozen US and coalition warships are in the region at any one time. The aircraft carrier USS Harry Truman currently is in the Gulf.

"The United States under this president has sent a very strong signal that America has strong interests in the Gulf, that the United States will continue to defend its interests in the Gulf, and this goes back for decades," Rice told the BBC.

[Gold9472]

Recordings show Persian Gulf incident
Recordings Show Iranian Boats Confronting 3 US Warships in Persian Gulf

http://www.rawstory.com/news/mochila/Recordings_show_Persian_Gulf_incide_01082008.html

LOLITA C. BALDOR
Jan 08, 2008 16:43 EST

Small Iranian fast boats swarmed around U.S. warships in the Persian Gulf, and a man speaking heavily accented English threatened, "I am coming to you. ... You will explode after ... minutes," according to a video released Tuesday by the Pentagon.

The Iranian boats appeared to ignore repeated warnings from the U.S. ships, including horn blasts and radio transmissions.

In a four-minute, 20-second video, shot from the bridge of the destroyer USS Hopper, the small boats — including a bright blue one — can be seen racing near the wake the U.S. ships and crossing close to each other.

From the Hopper's bridge, after spotting the approaching Iranian boats, a Navy crew member says over the radio: "This is coalition warship. I am engaged in transit passage in accordance with international law. Intend no harm."

Often uneven and shaky, the video condenses what Navy officials have said was a 20-minute or so clash. It ends with a blank screen, as only the audio of the Navy's final warning can be heard, just after the voice warns that they are coming.

"Inbound small craft: You are approaching a coalition warship operating in international waters. Your identity in unknown; your intentions are unclear," the unidentified crew member says. He then cautions the Iranians that if they do no steer clear they will be "subject to defensive measures."

"Request that you alter course immediately to remain clear," the crew member says.

After a pause, the man with the accent issues a final threat: "You will explode after (indecipherable) minutes."

[simuvac]

Is this really doing it for anyone here?

I expected more from the neocons, if they're going to nuke Iran. But speed boats and broken English? Doesn't really say "nukeable" to me.

I would like to add, however, that I predicted at 911blogger many months ago that the precipitating incident for WWIII (or WWIV, if you're Fox) would happen overseas and not at home. I think it's a better gamble for the neocons to fake some kind of confrontation over there, rather than ignite another false flag attack at home.

[PhilosophyGenius]

Is this really doing it for anyone here?

I expected more from the neocons, if they're going to nuke Iran. But speed boats and broken English? Doesn't really say "nukeable" to me.

I would like to add, however, that I predicted at 911blogger many months ago that the precipitating incident for WWIII (or WWIV, if you're Fox) would happen overseas and not at home. I think it's a better gamble for the neocons to fake some kind of confrontation over there, rather than ignite another false flag attack at home.


One could argue that they are waiting until after the primaries so that they could get full coverage.

If they wanna do anything with Iran, they'd first need full media coverage and do it while Bush is in office.

[AuGmENTor]

Well, I don't know guys, they supposedly have video. Place your bets on how long, or IF we'll ever see it.

[Gold9472]

Iranian TV: Pentagon Video, Audio Fake

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hiAbsRG9E-8-NncKn6AqbyYZd09QD8U2DDKO0

By ALI AKBAR DAREINI – 1 hour ago

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran accused the United States on Wednesday of fabricating video and audio released by the Pentagon showing Iranian boats confronting U.S. warships in the Persian Gulf.

The video from Sunday's incident shows small Iranian boats swarming around U.S. warships in the Strait of Hormuz. In the recording, a man speaking in heavily accented English threatened, "I am coming to you. ... You will explode after ... minutes."

"The footage released by the U.S. Navy was compiled using file pictures and the audio has been fabricated," an official in Iran's Revolutionary Guards was quoted as saying by the state-run English-language channel Press TV.

State TV did not give the name of the Revolutionary Guard figure and did not offer any evidence that the footage was fabricated.

The Bush administration continued to denounce the Gulf confrontation as "provocative."

"This is a provocative act — not a smart thing to do, and they are going to have to take responsibility for the consequences, if they do it again," National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley told reporters aboard Air Force One as President Bush flew from Washington to Israel.

Hadley added that his comments should not be seen as a threat.

In the four-minute, 20-second video released Tuesday, the Iranian boats appeared to ignore repeated warnings from the U.S. ships, including horn blasts and radio transmissions. The video was shot from the bridge of the destroyer USS Hopper.

After spotting the approaching Iranian boats, a Navy crew member on the Hopper says over the radio: "This is coalition warship. I am engaged in transit passage in accordance with international law. Intend no harm."

The audio and video recordings were made separately but were pulled together by the Navy. Often uneven and shaky, the video condenses what Navy officials have said was a confrontation of about 20 minutes.

The Iranian fleet of high-speed boats charged the U.S. warships and threatened to blow up the Navy convoy as it passed near but outside Iranian waters, according to Vice Adm. Kevin Cosgriff, the top Navy commander in the Gulf. The Iranian fleet "maneuvered aggressively" and fled as the American ship commanders were preparing to open fire, he said. No shots were fired.

Defense Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar called Western news reports that the boats threatened to blow up the U.S. warships "mischief."

"(Iranian) navy units ... asked them to identify themselves. They responded accordingly and continued their path," the official IRNA news agency quoted Najjar as saying.

He said the encounter was normal.

"The identification of vessels passing through the Strait of Hormuz by Iranian navy units is a natural occurrence," IRNA quoted Najjar as saying. "Islamic Republic of Iran navy units always put questions to passing vessels and warships at the Strait of Hormuz and they need to identify themselves. This is in accordance with the normal procedures."

Cosgriff has said Iran's "provocative" actions were "deadly serious" to the U.S. military.

The confrontation was an unusual flare-up of U.S.-Iranian tensions in the Persian Gulf as Bush prepared for his eight-day Mideast trip, designed in part to counter Iran's influence in the region. Bush, who arrived in Israel on Wednesday, is expected to discuss the U.S. stance toward Iran with Arab allies that are also worried about Tehran's desire for greater regional power.

Many Arab countries fear the Iranian-American rivalry could erupt into a military confrontation that would put them in the crossfire and hurt vital oil traffic through the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran's Revolutionary Guards has said that its high-speed boats never threatened the U.S. vessels during the encounter, insisting it only asked them to identify themselves, then let them continue into the Gulf.

Cosgriff, the commander of U.S. 5th Fleet, which patrols the Gulf and is based in nearby Bahrain, said the American vessels, which were clearly marked, had been identified by Iranian authorities earlier in the day.

[Gold9472]

U.S. dismisses Iran's claim on fabricated video

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-01/10/content_7395617.htm

www.chinaview.cn (http://www.chinaview.cn) 2008-01-10 05:48:50

WASHINGTON, Jan. 9 (Xinhua) -- The United States flatly dismissed on Wednesday the claim by Iran that the video and audio released by the Pentagon showing Iranian boats confronting U.S. warships in the Persian Gulf were fabricated.

"That's just ridiculous. I completely dismiss that," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said at a briefing.

"You know, maybe they're embarrassed by what these individuals do ... I can't account for it, but it's a ridiculous claim," McCormack said.

According to media reports, an official in Iran's Revolutionary Guards told the state-run English-language channel Press TV: "The footage released by the U.S. Navy was compiled using file pictures and the audio has been fabricated."

The United States said Monday that five Iranian boats had harassed and threatened three U.S. Navy warships in international waters in the Strait of Hormuz. However, Iran has played down the incident as "something normal."

On Monday, the Pentagon confirmed the event and Washington immediately warned Iran to refrain from taking "provocative actions that could lead to a dangerous incident in the future."

But Iran responded by calling the incident "something normal" and said the incident has been resolved.

[Gold9472]

Iranian TV airs video it says shows no standoff

http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Iranian_TV_airs_video_showing_no_0110.html

David Edwards and Nick Juliano
Published: Thursday January 10, 2008

Iran has accused the Pentagon of fabricating a video depicting a confrontation between massive Navy warships and small Iranian speedboats the US says posed a threat.

A short video broadcast this week on Iranian TV shows the confrontation as it was videotaped from one of the small Iranian crafts about 100 yards from the US Navy warships, which were operating in international waters in the Persian Gulf.

The grainy, 5-minute video did not show any Iranian boats approaching the U.S. vessels or any provocation. But the short clip likely did not show Sunday's entire encounter, which U.S. Navy officials described as threatening, and said lasted about 20 minutes.

An Iranian TV announcer said the video depicted "a routine and regular measure."

On CBS's Early Show Thursday morning, a retired US Army colonel said the video demonstrated how close the Iranian speedboats came to the US warships and demonstrated that the US was operating in international waters. Co. Jeffrey McCausland, a visited professor at Penn State University's law school, also doubted Iran's assertion that the Pentagon video was fabricated and said Iran has tried to provoke the US in the past.

"We have to think about who would benefit from ratcheting up tensions right now in the Gulf," McCausland said. "As we have seen over the last few weeks and months by the United States at least to reduce tensions. In Iran there have been, periodically, attempts to ratchet up tensions, largely I think, to benefit them internally and politically."

The Pentagon has released its own video of Sunday's incident, showing small Iranian boats swarming around U.S. warships in the Strait of Hormuz.

In the recording, a man threatens in English, "I am coming to you. ... You will explode after ... minutes."

The incident, which ended without any shots fired, has heightened U.S.-Iranian tension as President Bush visits the region. Bush was in the West Bank on Thursday, and heads next to Arab Gulf nations where he is expected to discuss strategy on Iran.

On Thursday, the Web site of the Iranian state broadcasting company quoted a top Revolutionary Guards commander as calling the Pentagon's video "unusual and illogical."

"This attention by the U.S. media and officials to a routine encounter means Americans are taking an unusual approach to (a) very ordinary issue," Gen. Ali Fadavi, the Guards' acting naval chief, was quoted as saying.

The Associated Press contributed to this report

This video is from The Associated Press, broadcast January 10, 2008.

Video At Source

[AuGmENTor]

Is this really doing it for anyone here?

I expected more from the neocons, if they're going to nuke Iran. But speed boats and broken English? Doesn't really say "nukeable" to me.

I would like to add, however, that I predicted at 911blogger many months ago that the precipitating incident for WWIII (or WWIV, if you're Fox) would happen overseas and not at home. I think it's a better gamble for the neocons to fake some kind of confrontation over there, rather than ignite another false flag attack at home.I agree. Don't forget, they have to have a SERIES of events of a smaller caliber, leading up to the one that gets the public backing.

[Gold9472]

U.S.: Voices on Recording May Not Have Been From Iranian Speedboats
Chilling Threat Could Have Come From the Shore or Another Ship, Navy Says

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=4115702&page=1

By MARTHA RADDATZ and JONATHAN KARL
Jan. 10, 2008

Just two days after the U.S. Navy released the eerie video of Iranian speedboats swarming around American warships, which featured a chilling threat in English, the Navy is saying that the voice on the tape could have come from the shore or from another ship.

The near-clash occurred over the weekend in the Strait of Hormuz. On the U.S.-released recording, a voice can be heard saying to the Americans, "I am coming to you. You will explode after a few minutes."

The Navy never said specifically where the voices came from, but many were left with the impression they had come from the speedboats because of the way the Navy footage was edited.

Today, the spokesperson for the U.S. admiral in charge of the Fifth Fleet clarified to ABC News that the threat may have come from the Iranian boats, or it may have come from somewhere else.

We're saying that we cannot make a direct connection to the boats there," said the spokesperson. "It could have come from the shore, from another ship passing by. However, it happened in the middle of all the very unusual activity, so as we assess the information and situation, we still put it in the total aggregate of what happened Sunday morning. I guess we're not saying that it absolutely came from the boats, but we're not saying it absolutely didn't."

The Iranians have denied using the threatening language and are saying U.S.-released video is fabricated. Today, the Iranian government aired its own video of the event on state-run TV there. On the audio, the voice that the Iranians say is the communication from their vessel can be heard identifying itself to the American ship, "Coalition warship No. 73 this is an Iranian navy patrol boat."

The incident ended without shots being fired, but senior defense officials told ABC News that the USS Hopper's gunners were within seconds of firing on the Iranians.

[YouCrazyDiamond]

(I've underlined a couple of segments that might be meaningful and/or relevant.)


http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_7912510

Recordings show Iran-US clash in Gulf

By LOLITA C. BALDOR and SEBASTIAN ABBOT Associated Press Writer

Article Launched: 01/08/2008 09:10:05 AM PST

WASHINGTON—Small Iranian fast boats swarmed around massive U.S. warships in the Persian Gulf, and a man speaking heavily accented English threatened, "I am coming to you. ... You will explode," according to a video released Tuesday by the Pentagon.

The Iranian boats appeared to ignore repeated warnings from the U.S. ships, including horn blasts and radio transmissions, as the ships moved through the Strait of Hormuz into the Gulf.

In a four-minute, 20-second video, shot from the bridge of the destroyer USS Hopper, the small boats—including a bright blue one—can be seen racing near the wake the U.S. ships and crossing close to each other.

From the Hopper's bridge, after spotting the approaching Iranian boats, a Navy crew member says over the radio: "This is coalition warship. I am engaged in transit passage in accordance with international law. I intend no harm. Over."

Often uneven and shaky, the video condenses what Navy officials have said was a 20-minute or so clash early Sunday between three Navy warships and five Iranian fast boats. It ends with a blank screen, as only the audio of the Navy's final warning can be heard, just after the voice warns that they are coming.

"Inbound small craft: You are approaching a coalition warship operating in international waters. Your identity is not known; your intentions are unclear," the unidentified Navy crew member says. He then cautions the Iranians that if they do not steer clear they will be "subject to defensive measures."

"Request that you alter course immediately to remain clear," the crew member says.

After a pause, the man with the accent issues a final threat: "You will explode after (indecipherable) minutes."

A Navy crew member then repeated the threat as he heard it: "He says, 'You will explode after a few minutes.'" At that point the tape ends.

President Bush on Tuesday denounced the incident as a "provocative act."

"It is a dangerous situation," Bush said during a White House news conference. "They should not have done it, pure and simple. ... I don't know what their thinking was, but I'm telling you what my thinking was. I think it was a provocative act."

The audio and video recordings were made separately but were pulled together by the Navy. Internal U.S. Navy transmissions can also be heard on the tape. The Hopper was in the lead, followed by the cruiser USS Port Royal and the frigate USS Ingraham.

The top Navy commander in the Gulf said the Iranian fleet of high-speed boats charged at and threatened to blow up the Navy convoy as it passed near but outside Iranian waters on Sunday. The Iranian fleet "maneuvered aggressively" and then fled as the American ship commanders were preparing to open fire, Vice Adm. Kevin Cosgriff said. No shots were fired.

In Tehran, Iran's Foreign Ministry suggested that the Iranian boats had not recognized the U.S. vessels. Spokesman Mohammed Ali Hosseini played down the incident. "That is something normal that takes place every now and then for each party," he told the state news agency IRNA.

Cosgriff disputed Iranian claims that the incident was a routine encounter, saying Iran's "provocative" actions were "deadly serious" to the U.S. military.

The confrontation was an unusual flare-up of U.S.-Iranian tensions in the Persian Gulf as Bush prepared for an eight-day Mideast trip designed in part to counter Iran's influence in the region. He is expected to discuss the U.S. posture toward Tehran with Arab allies also worried about Tehran's desire for greater regional power.

Many Arab countries fear the Iranian-American rivalry could erupt into a military confrontation that would put them in the crossfire and hurt vital oil traffic through the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran's Revolutionary Guards said that its high-speed boats never threatened the U.S. vessels during the encounter, insisting it only asked them to identify themselves, then let them continue into the Gulf. A Guards commander defended his force's right to identify ships in the sensitive waterway.

Cosgriff, the commander of U.S. 5th Fleet, which patrols the Gulf and is based in nearby Bahrain, said the American vessels had been identified by Iranian authorities earlier in the day.

"The group had been successfully queried by an Iranian ship, possibly a Revolutionary Guards ship, and two or three Iranian (shore) stations and an Omani station," Cosgriff told The Associated Press in a telephone interview Tuesday.

The U.S. commander also said that the American ships were clearly marked and the incident took place during the day when they could be seen. "I can't help but conclude that it was provocative," Cosgriff said.

The Pentagon has said the U.S. ships were on the verge of opening fire on the Iranian boats when they fled.

Cosgriff said the five Iranian boats were outfitted with outboard motors and carrying three to four people each.

Two of the Iranian boats went to the ship's left side, three to the right, he said. The two on the left "were more energetic and made a number of runs toward the lead ship, the USS Hopper." The two boats dumped boxes into the water.

U.S. military officials, including Cosgriff, cautioned, however, that they have not been able to connect definitively the radio call with one of the Revolutionary Guards boats.

"The ships were close enough to shore that the call could have come from a shore station, it could have come from another boat," said Cdr. Lydia Robertson, the 5th Fleet spokeswoman. "But the call did happen while the small boats were there."

Senior Revolutionary Guards commander Ali Reza Tangsiri said Iran had the right to ask any ships to identify themselves upon entering or leaving the Persian Gulf.

"It is a basic responsibility of patrolling units of the Revolutionary Guards to take necessary interception measures toward any vessels entering into the waters of the Persian Gulf," Tangsiri said, according to the Mehr news agency.

Cosgriff objected to Iranian attempts to downplay the incident.

"I hope from this lesson they realize that we are concerned by small, high-speed vessels," said Cosgriff. "I hope they understand we will take those actions we deem appropriate to defend our ships and our sailors."

Riad Kahwaji, a Dubai-based analyst with the Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis, said Iran may have been seeking to send a "political message" to Arab Gulf states to highlight the dangers of military confrontation.

"When somebody gets so close to a big ship then he's very likely asking for trouble or trying to provoke something," he said. "Opening fire means sparking a war. ... Does anyone really want to take that risk?"

———

Abbot reported from Cairo. Associated Press writers Ali Akbar Dareini in Tehran and Barbara Surk in Dubai contributed to this report.

[Gold9472]

Iran showdown has echoes of faked Tonkin attack

http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Echoes_of_Tonkin_seen_in_averted_0111.html

Nick Juliano
Published: Friday January 11, 2008

A dramatic showdown at sea. Crossed communication signals. Apparently-hostile craft nearby. Sketchy intelligence leading to ratcheted up rhetoric.

The similarities between this week's confrontation between US warships and Iranian speedboats and events off the coast of North Vietnam 44 years ago were too hard for many experts to miss, leading to the question: Is the Strait of Hormuz 2008's Gulf of Tonkin?

On Aug. 2nd and 4th, 1964, the USS Maddox and the USS Turner Joy, patrolling off the North Vietnamese coast, intercepted signals indicating they were under attack. Within days, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which paved the way to the escalation of the Vietnam War. However, as some intelligence agents suspected at the time, the Aug. 2nd attack took place after the USS Maddox fired first, according to a National Security Agency report released in 1995.

This week another NSA report surfaced, confirming suspicions that the Aug. 4th attack never happened.

The researcher who uncovered the most recent NSA assessment tells RAW STORY that the Strait of Hormuz confrontation, and the immediate saber-rattling from the Bush administration and its allies, demonstrates the extent to which officials must be wary about politicizing shaky intelligence in times of war.

"The parallels (between Tonkin and Hormuz) speak for themselves, but what they say is that even the most basic factual assumptions can be made erroneously [or] can prove to be false," Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists, told Raw Story. "Therefore extreme caution is always appropriate before drawing conclusions ... that might leave to violent conflict. That's almost so obvious that I feel embarrassed saying it, but there is a history of mistaken interpretations of these kinds of encounters that ought to teach us humility."

Humility and caution, of course, don't seem to be the most popular buzz words in the Bush White House.

"It is a dangerous situation. ... I think it was a provocative act," Bush warned two days after a handful of small Iranian speedboats spooked a fleet of US Navy warships.

The Pentagon's initial account of the Jan. 6 confrontation said the Iranian boats "charged" the US ships, dropped boxes in the water that were thought to be mines and threatened to set up "explosions." An unnamed US Defense Department official told the Associated Press the day after the incident that it was "the most serious provocation of its sort" in the Gulf, although Iranian officials tried to downplay the incident as a simple misunderstanding.

It was not until Thursday, after the Pentagon and Iran had each released videos of the encounter, that the US acknowledged the verbal threats they had associated with the Iranian speedboats from day one could have been broadcast from virtually anywhere.

"I am coming to you .... You will explode after a few minutes," a voice says on the audio recording but Farsi speakers and Iranians have said the voice did not sound Iranian.

Aftergood said he was surprised at the uncertainty regarding the origin of that message, which was broadcast on a public communication channel and superimposed onto the end of the Pentagon video.

"One might've thought that they would be able to pinpoint it exactly, but it turns out that's not so," said Aftergood, who runs FAS's Project on Government Secrecy. "It's also surprising that President Bush was permitted to get so far out in front on this issue, even though there were significant uncertainties on what transpired."

Others have questioned the supposed mines that were claimed to be dropped form the Iranian boats.

"The bit about the 'white boxes' being dropped into the water seems almost equally dubious," writes Glenn Greenwald. "Neither the video of the incident released by the U.S. military, nor the video version released by the Iranian government, includes any such event, nor are there any references to it at all on the audio."

Aftergood said the information should have been more fully vetted before the White House began warning Iran of "serious consequences" of future showdowns.

"What you hear talking is the child on the schoolyard, not the sober national leader," he said. "And i don't think that serves anyone's interest."

Aftergood noted that America is less poorly equipped to avoid international incidents than it was during the Cold War.

"The credibility at least of the administration has taken a hit by the way this episode played out," Aftergood said, but the near-confrontation could provide an opportunity for Bush to learn from his mistakes.

The US has largely given Iran the diplomatic silent treatment during the Bush years, which Aftergood said increases the likelihood that the next Strait of Hormuz-type incident won't de-escalate so quickly.

"If we could have a hotline with the Kremlin while they had thousands of nuclear weapons aimed at our country, one would think we could do the same for Iran," he said. "With some skillful statesmanship ... this could serve as the impetus for that, but it would be one way to turn a negative into a net positive."

[simuvac]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7184400.stm

US reveals new Iran 'incidents'
Iranian speedboats approached US warships in two previously undisclosed incidents in the Strait of Hormuz in December, a US Navy official has said. The USS Whidbey Island fired warning shots during one of the encounters on 19 December, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

He also described a third stand-off on 6 January - that sparked US protests - as the most serious incident.

Iran has accused the US of faking its video of the most recent encounter.

'Radio threat'

The US official said the USS Whidbey Island had to act in response to an Iranian boat that was rapidly approaching the amphibious warship on 19 December.




"One small [Iranian] craft was coming toward it, and it stopped after the Whidbey Island fired warning shots," the official was quoted as saying by the Associated Press.

In the second incident on 22 December, the USS Carr, a guided missile frigate, encountered three small Iranian boats, said the official.

He said that the US vessel blew warning whistles, causing the boats to turn around.

His comments came shortly after Washington had sent Iran a formal protest over the stand-off on 6 January.

New US video

Pentagon officials have said the five speedboats came within about 200m (650ft) of the US vessels.

The US military have said video and audio that it released confirmed its allegation that Iranian speedboats harassed US vessels and threatened to blow them up in a radio communication.

However, senior US navy sources later told the BBC that the alleged threat to blow up the warships "may not have come" from Iranian speedboats.

Iran has rejected Washington's allegations, issuing its own video footage of the incident.

On Friday, the US authorities released what it said was the entire unedited footage of the incident.

Although some images in this longer version - lasting more than 30 minutes - are not very clear, they do not appear to show anything very different from what was already seen in the extract of some five minutes already released, the BBC's Vincent Dowd in Washington says.

The audio track is present throughout and very short exchanges of dialogue can be heard on the bridge of the USS Hopper, the destroyer from which the pictures were taken, our correspondent says.

He says the latest video does not shed more light on the origin of the voice hear on tape which initially the Pentagon came from one of the speedboats.

The confrontation has further inflamed long-running tensions between Iran and the United States.


Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/americas/7184400.stm

Published: 2008/01/11 22:56:39 GMT

© BBC MMVIII

[Gold9472]

I wish America would wake up.

[simuvac]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/12/washington/12navy.html?_r=1&th=&oref=slogin&emc=th&pagewanted=print

January 12, 2008
Iran Encounter Grimly Echoes ’02 War Game

By THOM SHANKER (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/thom_shanker/index.html?inline=nyt-per)
WASHINGTON — There is a reason American military officers express grim concern over the tactics used by Iranian sailors last weekend: a classified, $250 million war game in which small, agile speedboats swarmed a naval convoy to inflict devastating damage on more powerful warships.

In the days since the encounter with five Iranian patrol boats in the Strait of Hormuz, American officers have acknowledged that they have been studying anew the lessons from a startling simulation conducted in August 2002. In that war game, the Blue Team navy, representing the United States, lost 16 major warships — an aircraft carrier, cruisers and amphibious vessels — when they were sunk to the bottom of the Persian Gulf in an attack that included swarming tactics by enemy speedboats.

“The sheer numbers involved overloaded their ability, both mentally and electronically, to handle the attack,” said Lt. Gen. Paul K. Van Riper, a retired Marine Corps officer who served in the war game as commander of a Red Team force representing an unnamed Persian Gulf military. “The whole thing was over in 5, maybe 10 minutes.”

If the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, proved to the public how terrorists could transform hijacked airliners into hostage-filled cruise missiles, then the “Millennium Challenge 2002” war game with General Van Riper was a warning to the armed services as to how an adversary could apply similar, asymmetrical thinking to conflict at sea.

General Van Riper said he complained at the time that important lessons of his simulated victory were not adequately acknowledged across the military. But other senior officers say the war game and subsequent analysis and exercises helped to focus attention on the threat posed by Iran (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/iran/index.html?inline=nyt-geo)’s small, fast boats, and helped to prepare commanders for last weekend’s encounter.

“It’s clear, strategically, where the Iranian military has gone,” Adm. Mike Mullen (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/m/michael_g_mullen/index.html?inline=nyt-per), the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/j/joint_chiefs_of_staff/index.html?inline=nyt-org), told reporters on Friday. “For the years that this strategic shift toward their small, fast boats has taken place, we’ve been very focused on that.”

In the simulation, General Van Riper sent wave after wave of relatively inexpensive speedboats to charge at the costlier, more advanced fleet approaching the Persian Gulf. His force of small boats attacked with machine guns and rockets, reinforced with missiles launched from land and air. Some of the small boats were loaded with explosives to detonate alongside American warships in suicide attacks. That core tactic of swarming played out in real life last weekend, though on a much more limited scale and without any shots fired.

According to Pentagon and Navy officials, five small patrol boats belonging to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/i/islamic_revolutionary_guard_corps/index.html?inline=nyt-org) Corps charged a three-ship Navy convoy, maneuvering around and between an American destroyer, cruiser and frigate during a tense half-hour encounter. The location was where the narrow Strait of Hormuz meets the open waters of the Persian Gulf — the same choke point chosen by General Van Riper for his attack.

In the encounter last Sunday, the commander of one American warship trained an M240 machine gun — which fires upward of 10 armor-piercing slugs per second — on an Iranian boat that pulled within 200 yards of the American vessel. But the Iranians turned away before the commander gave the order to fire.

That was not the case in the simulation, sponsored by the military’s Joint Forces Command. The victory of the force modeled after a Persian Gulf state — a composite of Iran and Iraq — astounded sponsors of what was then the largest joint war-fighting exercise ever held, involving 13,500 military members and civilians battling in nine live exercise ranges in the United States, and double that many computer simulations to replicate a number of different battles.

General Van Riper’s attack was much more complex and sophisticated than anything that could have involved the Iranian boats last weekend. The broad outline of the 2002 war game was reported at the time, but in interviews since last weekend’s episode, General Van Riper and other officers have provided new details about the simulation.

In the war game, scores of adversary speedboats and larger naval vessels had been shadowing and hectoring the Blue Team fleet for days. The Blue Team defenses also faced cruise missiles fired simultaneously from land and from warplanes, as well as the swarm of speedboats firing heavy machine guns and rockets — and pulling alongside to detonate explosives on board.

When the Red Team sank much of the Blue navy despite the Blue navy’s firing of guns and missiles, it illustrated a cheap way to beat a very expensive fleet. After the Blue force was sunk, the game was ordered to begin again, with the Blue Team eventually declared the victor.

In a telephone interview, General Van Riper recalled that his idea of a swarming attack grew from Marine Corps studies of the natural world, where insects and animals — from tiny ant colonies to wolf packs — move in groups to overwhelm larger prey.

“It is not a matter of size or of individual capability, but whether you have the numbers and come from multiple directions in a short period of time,” he said.

Although Washington and Tehran continue to duel over details of the encounter, American officials say the Iranians may have been seeking to provoke a violent confrontation as President Bush was about to visit the region. Or, the officials say, they might have been hoping to test the American reaction. Yet there is no certainty that the encounter was ordered by the government in Tehran.

Pentagon officials on Friday said there were two encounters with small Iranian boats in the region last month. In one, a Navy warship fired warning shots and in the other a warning whistle was sounded. Both encounters ended without injury after the Iranian vessels turned away.

Regardless, American sailors have not forgotten how a small boat that hid among refueling and garbage vessels off a port in Yemen detonated alongside the American destroyer Cole in October 2000, killing 17 Americans and crippling the warship.

[simuvac]

“It is not a matter of size or of individual capability, but whether you have the numbers and come from multiple directions in a short period of time,” he said.


That's what she said!

[YouCrazyDiamond]

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/1/11/us_backs_off_claim_of_naval

January 11, 2008

Gareth Porter: Official Version of U.S.-Iranian Naval Incident Starts to Unravel

The United States has lodged a formal diplomatic protest against Iran for its “provocation” in the Strait of Hormuz on Sunday morning. But new information reveals that the alleged Iranian threat to American naval vessels may have been blown out of proportion. We speak to investigative historian Gareth Porter.


Guest: Gareth Porter, Investigative historian specializing in U.S. national security policy. He writes regularly on Iran for the Inter Press Service. His latest book is called “Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam.”



JUAN GONZALEZ: The United States has lodged a formal diplomatic protest against Iran for its “provocation” in the Strait of Hormuz on Sunday morning. But new information reveals that the alleged Iranian threat to American naval vessels in the Strait might have been blown out of proportion.

On Tuesday, the Pentagon released video of Iranian patrol boats approaching American warships and an audio recording of a direct threat in English. The accented voice says, “I am coming to you,” and then adds, “You will explode after a few minutes.”




IRANIAN VOICE: I am coming to you.

US NAVAL OFFICER: Inbound small craft, you’re approaching a coalition warship operating in international waters. Your identity is not know. Your intentions are unclear. You’re sailing into danger and may be subject to defensive measures. Request you establish communications now or alter your course immediately to remain clear. Request you alter course immediately to remain clear.

IRANIAN VOICE: You will explode after a few minutes.

US NAVAL OFFICER: “You will explode after a few minutes.”



JUAN GONZALEZ: That was an audio recording released by the Pentagon along with the video of the encounter between American warships and Iranian patrol boats in the Strait of Hormuz.

But a Navy spokesperson told ABC News Thursday that the threat might not have come from the Iranian patrol boats, but from the shore or another ship passing by. The spokesperson added, “I guess we’re not saying that it absolutely came from the boats, but we’re not saying it absolutely didn’t.”

Iran has denied all allegations of a confrontation and released its own video of the encounter. This is an excerpt of the Iranian video broadcast on Thursday showing what seems to be a routine exchange between an Iranian Navy patrol boat and the American ship.



IRANIAN NAVAL PATROLMAN: Coalition warship 73, this is Iranian Navy patrol boat. Request side number [inaudible] operating in the area this time. Over.

US NAVAL OFFICER: This is coalition warship 73. I’m operating in international waters.



AMY GOODMAN: Gareth Porter is a historian and national security policy analyst. His latest article for IPS News (http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=40747) analyzes how the official US version of the naval incident has begun to unravel. He joins us now from Washington, D.C. Gareth Porter, welcome.


GARETH PORTER: Good morning, Amy.


AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about everything that happened from Sunday, what President Bush said, what the Pentagon was alleging, and now what we understand?


GARETH PORTER: Well, this alleged crisis or confrontation on the high seas is really much less than what met the eyes of the American public as it was reported by news media. And the story really began from leaks from the Pentagon. I mean, there were Pentagon officials apparently calling reporters and telling them that something had happened in the Strait of Hormuz, which represented a threat to American ships and that there was a near battle on the high seas. The way it was described to reporters, it was made to appear to be a major threat to the ships and a major threat of war. And that’s the way it was covered by CNN, by CBS and other networks, as well as by print media.

Then I think the next major thing that happened was a briefing by the commander of the 5th fleet in Bahrain, the Vice Admiral Kevin Cosgriff, which is very interesting. If you look carefully at the transcript, which was not reported accurately by the media, or not reported at all practically, the commander—or rather, Vice Admiral Cosgriff actually makes it clear that the ships were never in danger, that they never believed they were in danger, and that they were never close to firing on the Iranian boats. And this is the heart of what actually happened, which was never reported by the US media.

So I think that the major thing to really keep in mind about this is that it was blown up into a semi-crisis by the Pentagon and that the media followed along very supinely. And I must say this is perhaps the worst—the most egregious case of sensationalist journalism in the service of the interests of the Pentagon, the Bush administration, that I have seen so far.


JUAN GONZALEZ: And, Gareth Porter, there have been some reports about the apparent splicing of audio onto the actual video that appear to be from two different sources. Could you talk about that?


GARETH PORTER: Well, that’s right. I mean, we don’t yet know exactly what the sequence of events was in this incident. We don’t know exactly when the voices that we hear making what appear to be a threat to the American ships, where—when that occurred in the sequence of events in this incident. And it seems very possible that indeed the Pentagon did splice into the recording, the audio recording of the incident, the two bits of messages from a mysterious voice in a way that made it appear to occur in response to the initial communication from the US ship to the Iranian boats. And it seems very possible that, in fact, those voices came at some other point during this twenty-minute incident.

So this is something that really deserves to be scrutinized and, in fact, investigated by Congress, because of the significance, in the larger sense, of a potential major fabrication of evidence in order to make a political point by the Bush administration.


AMY GOODMAN: Gareth Porter, what about the timing of this, on the eve of President Bush’s visit to the Middle East?


GARETH PORTER: Well, of course, there’s no doubt that the motivation for the Pentagon to blow this incident up was precisely the timing of President Bush leaving on a trip to the Middle East, in which one of his major purposes was to try to keep together a coalition of Arab states, which—a very, very loose and shaky coalition to oppose Iran and to support, hopefully, according to the administration’s policy, the US pressure on Iran through diplomatic and financial means, through the Security Council and through its allies in Europe. So this is definitely part of the reason, very clearly, that what was a very minor incident which did not threaten US ships, as far as we can tell from all the evidence so far, was turned into what was presented as a confrontation and a threat of war.


JUAN GONZALEZ: Gareth Porter, I’d like to ask you, I was watching the Republican debate last night on Fox News and was astonished to see one of the moderators spend quite a bit of time on this topic, questioning every one of the candidates as to whether they believe the Navy commander on the scene did the right thing by not blowing the Iranian boats out of the water. Surprisingly, only Ron Paul, the maverick, even questioned some of the facts of the incident as reported. Your response to this suddenly becoming a topic for the presidential debates?


GARETH PORTER: Well, I think it’s astonishing that you have this incident being regarded as a test of whether the United States is being belligerent enough, when the commanders of the ships themselves clearly did not regard this as a threat to the safety of their ships. This is the point, again, that the commander of the 5th fleet made very clearly. He was asked by reporters whether the commanders were close to firing on the Iranian ships, and he said, “No, that was not the case,” that at no point were they about to fire on the ships and that they did not feel threatened by the Iranian boats. Bear in mind, what has not been reported by the media, that these are essentially small speedboats that are at most armed with machine guns, not with any weapons that were capable of harming those ships.


AMY GOODMAN: Gareth Porter, this also comes right at the time that new documents have—newly declassified documents have revealed that the Johnson administration faked the Gulf of Tonkin incident to escalate the war in Vietnam, to provide a pretext for increased bombing and increased troops there.


GARETH PORTER: Well, you know, this is an incident—the Gulf of Tonkin incident and the policy shenanigans surrounding it are something that I wrote about in my book, [i]Perils of Dominance, about the US involvement in the Vietnam conflict. And what actually happened regarding the Gulf of Tonkin was that the ships, because of anxiety on the part of the crew of these ships in the Gulf of Tonkin, they thought they were under fire originally. They sent back messages saying that.

But within a matter of a couple of hours, the commander of the flotilla had decided that they had been mistaken, and he passed that message on to the Pentagon, and the Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara was informed by early afternoon on the same day. And it is my interpretation, based on the evidence, that he failed—he refused to inform President Johnson of that fact, and that’s why Johnson went ahead with a decision to bomb North Vietnam, which had already been made at noontime.


JUAN GONZALEZ: I’d like to ask you, going back to the incident also, one of the key contradictions now that have surfaced between the initial reports and certainly after the Iranian release of their own video is that initially the public was told that these were Revolutionary Guard boats, and now the Iranian government has said no, that they were actually boats of the Iranian Navy, and they clearly identified themselves as such.


GARETH PORTER: I do not know what the provenance of these Iranian boats was, whether it was IRGC or Iranian Navy. We do have pictures, photographs of the IRGC small speedboats that clearly resemble the boats that are depicted—at least one of them—depicted in the video. But from the evidence that we have right now, it’s really impossible to say what—whether these boats belonged to be on IRGC or not. It is the case, however, that the IRGC does have, apparently, the primary responsibility to patrol in this area of the gulf. I heard yesterday a former commander of the IRGC state very clearly that they do in fact have the primary responsibility to patrol in that area. So it’s certainly the—it’s a possibility, a good possibility, that these were IRGC boats.


AMY GOODMAN: Gareth Porter, I want to thank you for being with us, investigative historian, writes for Inter Press Service. His latest book is called Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam.

[Gold9472]

Nice.

[Gold9472]

CIA, Iran & the Gulf of Tonkin

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2008/011108a.html

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.”

As a current intelligence analyst responsible for Russian policy toward Southeast Asia and China, I worked very closely with those responsible for analysis of Vietnam and China.

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.

At the time, the U.S. had about 16,000 troops in South Vietnam. The war that was “justified” by the Tonkin Gulf resolution of Aug. 7, 1964, led to a buildup of 535,000 U.S. troops in the late Sixties, 58,000 of whom were killed—not to mention the estimated two million Vietnamese who lost their lives by then and in the ensuing 10 years.

Ten years. How can our president speak so glibly about 10 more years of a U.S. armed presence in Iraq? He must not remember Vietnam.

Lessons From Vietnam and Iraq
What follows is written primarily for honest intelligence analysts and managers still on “active duty.”

The issuance of the recent National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran was particularly welcome to those of us who had been hoping there were enough of you left who had not been thoroughly corrupted by former CIA Director George Tenet and his malleable managers.

We are not so much surprised at the integrity of Tom Fingar, who is in charge of national intelligence analysis. He showed his mettle in manfully resisting forgeries and fairy tales about Saddam Hussein’s “weapons of mass destruction.”

What is, frankly, a happy surprise is the fact that he and other non-ideologues and non-careerist professionals have been able to prevail and speak truth to power on such dicey issues as the Iranian nuclear program, the upsurge in terrorism caused by the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and the year-old NIE saying Iraq is headed for hell in a hand basket (with no hint that a “surge” could make a difference).

But those are the NIEs. They share the status of “supreme genre” of analytic product with the President’s Daily Brief and other vehicles for current intelligence, the field in which I labored, first in the analytic trenches and then as a briefer at the White House, for most of my 27-year career.

True, the NIE “Iraq’s Continuing Program for Weapons of Mass Destruction” of Oct. 1, 2002, (wrong on every major count) greased the skids for the attack on Iraq on March 19, 2003. But it is more often current intelligence that is fixed upon to get the country into war.

The Tonkin Gulf events are perhaps the best case in point. We retired professionals who worked through the Tonkin Gulf incident are hopeful that Fingar can ensure integrity in the current intelligence process as well.

Salivating for a Wider War
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.

Those of us in intelligence, not to mention President Lyndon Johnson, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy all knew full well that the evidence of any armed attack on the evening of Aug. 4, 1964, the so-called “second” Tonkin Gulf incident, was highly dubious.

But it fit the president’s purposes, so they lent a hand to facilitate escalation of the war.

During the summer of 1964, President Johnson and the Joint Chiefs of Staff were eager to widen the war in Vietnam. They stepped up sabotage and hit-and-run attacks on the coast of North Vietnam.

Defense Secretary Robert McNamara later admitted that he and other senior leaders had concluded that the seaborne attacks “amounted to little more than pinpricks” and “were essentially worthless,” but they continued.

Concurrently, the National Security Agency was ordered to collect signals intelligence from the North Vietnamese coast on the Gulf of Tonkin, and the surprise coastal attacks were seen as a helpful way to get the North Vietnamese to turn on their coastal radars.

The destroyer USS Maddox, carrying electronic spying gear, was authorized to approach as close as eight miles from the coast and four miles from offshore islands, some of which already had been subjected to intense shelling by clandestine attack boats.

As James Bamford describes it in “Body of Secrets:”

“The twin missions of the 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...

“The Maddox’ mission was made even more provocative by being timed to coincide with commando raids, creating the impression that the Maddox was directing those missions and possibly even lobbing firepower in their support....

“North Vietnam also claimed at least a twelve-mile limit and viewed the Maddox as a trespassing ship deep within its territorial waters.”
(pp 295-296)
On Aug. 2, 1964, an intercepted message ordered North Vietnamese torpedo boats to attack the Maddox. The destroyer was alerted and raced out to sea beyond reach of the torpedoes, three of which were fired in vain at the destroyer’s stern.

The Maddox’s captain suggested that the rest of his mission be called off, but the Pentagon refused. And still more commando raids were launched on Aug. 3, shelling for the first time targets on the mainland, not just the offshore islands.

Early on Aug. 4, the Maddox captain cabled his superiors that the North Vietnamese believed his patrol to be directly involved with the commando raids and shelling. That evening at 7:15 (Vietnam time) the Pentagon alerted the Maddox to intercepted messages indicating that another attack by patrol boats was imminent.

What followed was panic and confusion. There was a score of reports of torpedo and other hostile attacks, but no damage and growing uncertainty as to whether any attack actually took place. McNamara was told that “freak radar echoes” were misinterpreted by “young fellows” manning the sonar, who were “apt to say any noise is a torpedo.”

This did not prevent McNamara from testifying to Congress two days later that there was “unequivocal proof” of a new attack. And based largely on that, Congress passed the Tonkin Gulf resolution bringing 10 more years of war.

Meanwhile, in the Trenches
By the afternoon of Aug. 4, the CIA’s expert analyst on North Vietnam (let’s call him “Tom”) had concluded that probably no one had fired on the U.S. ships. He included a paragraph to that effect in the item he wrote for the Current Intelligence Bulletin, which would be wired to the White House and other key agencies and appear in print the next morning.

And then something unique happened. The Director of the Office of Current Intelligence, a very senior officer whom Tom had never before seen, descended into the bowels of the agency to order the paragraph deleted. He explained:

“We’re not going to tell LBJ that now. He has already decided to bomb North Vietnam. We have to keep our lines open to the White House.”

“Tom” later bemoaned—quite rightly: “What do we need open lines for, if we’re not going to use them, and use them to tell the truth?”
Two years ago, I would have been tempted to comment sarcastically, “How quaint; how obsolete.” But the good news is that the analysts writing the NIEs have now reverted to the ethos in which “Tom” and I were proud to work.

Now the analysts/reporters of current intelligence need to follow suit, and we hope Tom Fingar can hold their feet to the fire. For if they don’t measure up, the consequences are sure to be disastrous.

This should be obvious in the wake of the Tonkin Gulf reporting experience, not to mention more recent performance of senior officials before the attack on Iraq in 2003.

The late Ray S. Cline, who was the current intelligence director’s boss at the time of the Tonkin Gulf incident, said he was “very sure” that no attack took place on Aug. 4. He suggested that McNamara had shown the president unevaluated signals intelligence which referred to the (real) earlier attack on Aug. 2 rather than the non-event on the 4th.

There was no sign of remorse on Cline’s part that he didn’t step in and make sure the president was told the truth.

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’.

Commenting on the interface of intelligence and policy on Vietnam, a senior CIA officer has written about:
“... 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.”

“CIA and the Vietnam Policymakers: Three Episodes, 1962-1968,” Harold P. Ford
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.

Bamford comments on the disingenuousness of Robert McNamara when he testified in 1968 that it was “inconceivable” that senior officials, including the president, deliberately used the Tonkin Gulf events to generate congressional support for a wider Vietnam War.

In Bamford’s words, the Joint Chiefs of Staff had become “a sewer of deceit,” with Operation Northwoods and other unconscionable escapades to their credit. Then-Under Secretary of State George Ball commented, “There was a feeling that if the destroyer got into some trouble, that this would provide the provocation we needed.”

Good News: It’s Different Now
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.

In addition, the intelligence oversight committees in Congress seem to be waking from their Rip Van Winkle-like slumber. It was Congress, after all, that ordered the controversial NIE on Iran/nuclear (and insisted it be publicized).

And the flow of substantive intelligence to Congress is much larger than it was in 1964 when, remember, there were no intelligence committees as such.

So, you inheritors of the honorable profession of current intelligence – I’m thinking of you, Rochelle, and you, Rick – don’t let them grind you down.

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?

By sticking your neck out, you might be able to prevent 10 years of unnecessary war.

[Gold9472]

Threats to US ships in Gulf may have come from heckler: report

http://rawstory.com/news/afp/Threats_to_US_ships_in_Gulf_may_hav_01132008.html

Published: Sunday January 13, 2008

Threatening comments heard at the end of a Pentagon-released audio recording designed to prove harassing maneuvers by Iranian patrol boats in the Strait of Hormuz may have come from a local heckler known as the "Filipino Monkey," The Navy Times reported.

The 36-minute video aired Friday included footage of Iranian boats following the US ships at some distance.

It includes a shot of a dark object floating in the water, but it could not be determined whether this was one of the box-like objects that the Pentagon claims were dumped in the path of a US warship by two speedboats.

The videotape did not include a previously released audiotape of a threat to blow up the ships made in a radio transmission that the Pentagon says was received during the incident.

A voice on the audiotape is heard to say in accented English: "I am coming to you ... You will explode in a few minutes."

Pentagon officials now say they do not know the source of the radio transmission, backing off a previous claim that it came from one of the boats.

The Times said Friday the voice in the audio sounded different from the one belonging to an Iranian officer shown speaking to the cruiser Port Royal over a radio from a small boat in the video released by Iranian authorities.

That is why several Navy experts interviewed by The Times are raising the possibility that a heckler known in the region as the "Filipino Monkey," or an imitator, could be behind the threats.

"Filipino Monkey," who is likely more than one person, listens in on ship-to-ship radio traffic and then jumps on the net shouting insults and vile epithets, the report said.

US Navy women who are overheard on the radio are said to suffer particularly degrading treatment, the paper said.

A civilian mariner with experience in that region said the "Filipino Monkey" phenomenon is worldwide, but it is more likely to occur around the Strait of Hormuz because there is a lot of shipping traffic there, The Times said.

[Gold9472]

How the Pentagon planted a false story

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/JA17Ak03.html

By Gareth Porter
1/17/2008

WASHINGTON - Senior Pentagon officials, evidently reflecting a broader administration policy decision, used an off-the-record Pentagon briefing to turn the January 6 US-Iranian incident in the Strait of Hormuz into a sensational story demonstrating Iran's military aggressiveness, a reconstruction of the events following the incident shows.

The initial press stories on the incident, all of which can be traced to a briefing by deputy assistant secretary of defense for public affairs in charge of media operations, Bryan Whitman, contained similar information that has since been repudiated by the navy itself.

Then the navy disseminated a short video into which was spliced the audio of a phone call warning that US warships would "explode" in "a few seconds". Although it was ostensibly a navy production, Inter Press Service (IPS) has learned that the ultimate decision on its content was made by top officials of the Defense Department.

The encounter between five small and apparently unarmed speedboats, each carrying a crew of two to four men, and the three US warships occurred very early on Saturday January 6, Washington time. No information was released to the public about the incident for more than 24 hours, indicating that it was not viewed initially as being very urgent.

The reason for that absence of public information on the incident for more than a full day is that it was not that different from many others in the Gulf over more than a decade. A Pentagon consultant who asked not to be identified told IPS he had spoken with officers who had experienced similar encounters with small Iranian boats throughout the 1990s, and that such incidents are "just not a major threat to the US Navy by any stretch of the imagination".

Just two weeks earlier, on December 19, the USS Whidbey Island, an amphibious warship, had fired warning shots after a small Iranian boat allegedly approached it at high speed. That incident had gone without public notice.

With the reports from Fifth Fleet commander Vice Admiral Kevin Cosgriff in hand early that morning, top Pentagon officials had all day Sunday, January 6, to discuss what to do about the encounter in the Strait of Hormuz. The result was a decision to play it up as a major incident.

The decision came just as President George W Bush was about to leave on a Middle East trip aimed in part at rallying Arab states to join the United States in an anti-Iran coalition.

That decision in Washington was followed by a news release by the commander of the Fifth Fleet on the incident at about 4am Washington time on January 7. It was the first time the Fifth Fleet had issued a news release on an incident with small Iranian boats.

The release reported that the Iranian "small boats" had "maneuvered aggressively in close proximity of [sic] the Hopper [the lead ship of the three-ship convoy]." But it did not suggest that the Iranian boats had threatened the boats or that it had nearly resulted in firing on the Iranian boats.

On the contrary, the release made the US warships handling of the incident sound almost routine. "Following standard procedures," the release said, "Hopper issued warnings, attempted to establish communications with the small boats and conducted evasive maneuvering."

The release did not refer to a US ship being close to firing on the Iranian boats, or to a call threatening that US ships would "explode in a few minutes", as later stories would report, or to the dropping of objects into the path of a US ship as a potential danger.

That press release was ignored by the news media, however, because later that Monday morning, the Pentagon provided correspondents with a very different account of the episode.

At 9am, Barbara Starr of CNN reported that "military officials" had told her that the Iranian boats had not only carried out "threatening maneuvers", but had transmitted a message by radio that "I am coming at you" and "you will explode". She reported the dramatic news that the commander of one boat was "in the process of giving the order to shoot when they moved away".

CBS News broadcast a similar story, adding the detail that the Iranian boats "dropped boxes that could have been filled with explosives into the water". Other news outlets carried almost identical accounts of the incident.

The source of this spate of stories can now be identified as Bryan Whitman, the top Pentagon official in charge of media relations, who gave a press briefing for Pentagon correspondents that morning. Although Whitman did offer a few remarks on the record, most of the Whitman briefing was off the record, meaning that he could not be cited as the source.

In an apparent slip-up, however, an Associated Press story that morning cited Whitman as the source for the statement that US ships were about to fire when the Iranian boats turned and moved away - a part of the story that other correspondents had attributed to an unnamed Pentagon official.

On January 9, the US Navy released excerpts of a video of the incident in which a strange voice - one that was clearly very different from the voice of the Iranian officer who calls the US ship in the Iranian video - appears to threaten the US warships.

A separate audio recording of that voice, which came across the VHS channel open to anyone with access to it, was spliced into a video on which the voice apparently could not be heard. That was a political decision, and Lieutenant Colonel Mark Ballesteros of the Pentagon's Public Affairs Office told IPS the decision on what to include in the video was "a collaborative effort of leadership here, the Central Command and navy leadership in the field".

"Leadership here", of course, refers to the secretary of defense and other top policymakers at the department. An official in the US Navy Office of Information in Washington, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the issue, said that decision was made in the office of the secretary of defense.

That decision involved a high risk of getting caught in an obvious attempt to mislead. As an official at Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain told IPS, it is common knowledge among officers there that hecklers - often referred to as "Filipino Monkey" - frequently intervene on the VHF ship-to-ship channel to make threats or rude comments.

One of the popular threats made by such hecklers, according to British journalist Lewis Page, who had transited the strait with the Royal Navy is, "Look out, I am going to hit [collide with] you."

By January 11, Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell was already disavowing the story that Whitman had been instrumental in creating only four days earlier. "No one in the military has said that the transmission emanated from those boats," said Morrell.

The other elements of the story given to Pentagon correspondents were also discredited. The commanding officer of the guided missile cruiser Port Royal, Captain David Adler, dismissed the Pentagon's story that he had felt threatened by the dropping of white boxes in the water. Meeting with reporters on Monday, Adler said, "I saw them float by. They didn't look threatening to me."

The naval commanders seemed most determined, however, to scotch the idea that they had been close to firing on the Iranians. Cosgriff, the commander of the Fifth Fleet, denied the story in a press briefing on January 7. A week later, Commander Jeffery James, commander of the destroyer Hopper, told reporters that the Iranians had moved away "before we got to the point where we needed to open fire".

The decision to treat the January 6 incident as evidence of an Iranian threat reveals a chasm between the interests of political officials in Washington and navy officials in the Gulf. Asked whether the navy's reporting of the episode was distorted by Pentagon officials, Lydia Robertson of Fifth Fleet Public Affairs would not comment directly. But she said, "There is a different perspective over there."

[Gold9472]

Order given to fire on Iranian speedboat, but it turned away: Mullen

http://rawstory.com/news/afp/Order_given_to_fire_on_Iranian_spee_02062008.html

2/6/2008

The commander of a US warship gave the order to fire on an approaching Iranian speedboat in the Strait of Hormuz last month but it turned away just in time, the US military chief said Wednesday.

No shots were fired during the incident which occurred January 6 when Iranian boats approached three US warships at high speed as they transited the strait at the mouth of the Gulf.

Admiral Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the United States wanted to a avoid any miscalculations but it had to rely on the judgments of its commanding officers.

"From my perspective there is wisdom in relying on their judgement, as we did the other day," he told the House Armed Services Committee.

One of the commanding officers "had literally given the order to fire and it turns out one of the fast boats turned about simultaneously," Mullen said.

US Defense Secretary Robert Gates he issued a guidance to US forces shortly after taking office that they not provoke the Iranians.

"I wanted to make sure that we were not being provocative, and that we were operating well within the baselines, in terms both where aircraft were flying and also where our ships were steaming," Gates said.

At the same time, he said, "The Iranians can have no illusions about the consequences of trying to attack one of our ships."