Following is a quote of much interest, from pages 246/247 of The Secret War and Other Conflicts by General Pete Piotrowski, published in 2014.
“Nearly twenty years later, former Secretary of State Dean Rusk being interviewed by Peter Arnett on a CBC documentary called ‘The Ten Thousand Day War.' Mr Arnett asked, ‘It has been rumored that the United States provided the North Vietnamese government the names of the targets that would be bombed the following day. Is there any truth to that allegation?' To everyone's astonishment and absolute disgust, the former Secretary responded, ‘Yes. We didn't want to harm the North Vietnamese people, so we passed the targets to the Swiss embassy in Washington with instructions to pass them to the NVN government through their embassy in Hanoi.1
“As we watched in horror, Secretary Rusk went on to say, ‘All we wanted to do is demonstrate to the North Vietnamese leadership that we could strike targets at will, but we didn't want to kill innocent people. By giving the North Vietnamese advanced warning of the targets to be attacked, we thought they would tell the workers to stay home.'
“No wonder all the targets were so heavily defended day after day! The NVN obviously moved as many guns as they could overnight to better defend each target they knew was going to be attacked. Clearly, many brave American Air Force and Navy fliers died or spent years in NVN prison camps as a direct result of being intentionally betrayed by Secretary Rusk and Secretary McNamara, and President Johnson himself.
“I cannot think of a more duplicitous and treacherous act of American government officials. Dean Rusk served as Secretary of State from January 21, 1961, through to January 20, 1969, under President John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. Mr. Peter Arnett opined that “this would be a treasonous act by anyone else.” A very sad revelation.”
Phi Beta Iota: This is a part of a pattern of treason across the entire US political system. Treason is embedded in the US political system, and the FBI is not allowed to do its job. This is what we have to change. This treason is on a scale with Henry Kissinger killing 20,000 US troops and millions more by sabotaging the Paris Peace talks to help Nixon win the election, only to settle for the same terms four years later. The first instinct of even the most experienced is to go into denial — to refuse to believe that such treachery might be possible. It is not. It is “business as usual” in a system where corruption determines what we build, what we buy, and what we do. It must be noted that the heaviest bombing of the North occurred under President Nixon from 1970 onwards — with no evidence targets were provided during his tenure — but was explicitly made possible by Henry Kissinger's treason in undermining the peace talks in the first place. It is important to note that Clark Clifford as the new Secretary of Defense persuaded Lyndon Johnson that he needed to get out of Viet-Nam. This was not what Kissinger (and the Rockefellers) wanted.
Datum: Twenty-one aircraft carriers conducted 86 war cruises and operated 9,178 total days on the line in the Gulf of Tonkin. 530 aircraft were lost in combat and 329 more to operational causes. Resulting in the deaths of 377 naval aviators, with 64 airmen reported missing and 179 taken prisoner-of-war. From Wikipedia/Aircraft losses of the Vietnam War
Quotes from the videos:
Lyndon Johnson says “we have carefully limited those raids, they are directed at concrete and steel, not human lives.”
From 5:06 discussion of targeting. Possible point where Dean Rusk section has been replaced. What is there now makes no sense.
Phi Beta Iota: We have people looking for the actual clip. We believe General Piotrowski on the fact of the original statement as aired.
Other Sources:
Don Jewell, “Flying Without GPS One Dark, Stormy Night,” GPS World, March 11, 2015
YouTube, “Vietnam – The Ten Thousand Day War,” 13 48-minutre segments
See Especially:
Review DVD: The Fog of War – Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara
Review: Killing Hope – US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II
See Also:
Counterintelligence @ Phi Beta Iota
