But it was too late. President Johnson, influenced by McNamara, had made up his mind. He ordered air strikes against North Vietnamese targets, which were then launched from carriers in the area. He then drafted the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which was passed by Congress within the next two days after impassioned testimony from McNamara, who exaggerated the Vietnamese aggression and greatly downplayed the role of the Maddox. The resolution authorized the president to do whatever he deemed necessary to assist the South Vietnamese.
Of course, throughout the debate over the resolution, evidence suggesting that no such attack had taken place was brought up. But by then, it didn’t matter.
The Explanation
It is no secret that McNamara, and much of the rest of the US government, was eager for any excuse to bomb Ho Chi Minh’s Communist North Vietnam in the early 1960s. This was widely understood at the time, and has been ever since. The United States was already secretly engaged in operations against the North, having paid for unmarked Norwegian fast patrol boats and skippers crewed by South Vietnamese sailors. For about three years prior to the Gulf of Tonkin, these boats had been launching strikes against the North Vietnamese. And of course, there were already tens of thousands of American troops stationed in South Vietnam to support their defense against a potential invasion from the North.
The Maddox was stationed off the coast of Vietnam to intentionally provoke the North. This strategy included having the clandestine Norwegian boats make nighttime strikes against the North Vietnamese coast, not really to cause any damage, but simply to get the North Vietnamese to turn on their coastal radars. This accomplished two goals: first, it allowed the Maddox to see where those radars were located; and second, it showed the North Vietnamese that the Maddox was right there off their coast!
Because of the Cold War between the Communist Bloc and the West, many in the US government were determined to escalate the American presence in the Vietnam War, and were looking for any pretext to do so. People who were against this escalation, like Senator Morse, were keenly aware of this, and were actively on the lookout for anything that would get the United States into the war under false pretenses. The newspapers had been exhaustively covering this conflict of interests for years, and it was an absolutely well-known, public fact.
All the important facts about the incident were publicly known as they happened. Even as the Maddox was firing, and even as Captain Herrick was radioing to Washington that there was no attack taking place, and even as Senator Morse repeated this to Congress and to the press, Johnson was already drafting the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, and everyone knew it. There was never any moment when this fictional naval battle existed as a conspiracy theory. Instead it is evidence that real conspiracies do happen and are discovered all the time, and nothing more.
Military Dolphins
* * *
Date: 1964–Present
Location: Worldwide
The Conspirators: US Navy
The Victims: Marine animals and enemy divers
* * *
The Theory
Given the speed and agility of dolphins underwater, it’s always seemed reasonable that they might be trained to attack enemy divers. And in fiction they’ve been used to attach limpet mines to ships. So for a long time, there was speculation that the US Navy (and other navies) were doing just these things with dolphins and keeping it a secret both to prevent enemy spies from learning about it, and also to keep the public from knowing about its inhumane treatment of the animals.
The Truth
Dolphins and other aquatic mammals such as sea lions, pilot whales, and belugas have, in fact, been used by many navies worldwide for just about any task you can imagine. Their current duties are relatively benign and humane, but in the past, this was not always the case.
The Backstory
There are good reasons for navies to look at dolphins and other aquatic mammals for a great variety of underwater tasks. Dolphins are far faster and more agile than either divers or any underwater vehicles. They are inexpensive, they go very deep very fast, their echolocation is far superior to anything we’ve developed, and they are intelligent enough to train.
In 1967 a French novel came out that put the idea of military dolphins into the public consciousness. The novel, titled Un animal doué de raison (A Sentient Animal), was about a virtuous couple who studied and trained dolphins, but then the government came in and used their dolphins for violent purposes. The novel was turned into a popular movie, 1973’s The Day of the Dolphin.
When the movie came out, the media instantly began seeking experts to interview, and they got them. The two most public faces were Dr. James Fitzgerald, a sonar expert who was the godfather of the US Navy’s dolphin program; and Michael Greenwood, a former CIA agent who had worked under Fitzgerald, but had resigned when he became disillusioned with the inhumane aspects of the work. Both men were interviewed on separate episodes of the TV news program 60 Minutes in 1973.
What was revealed in these broadcasts was that dolphins had never been weaponized. They might retrieve lost objects or find mines or perform underwater sentry duties, but attacking divers and attaching mines to ships was never something that was done. Dolphins can’t be trained to make decisions, both experts said, so it would be too risky to arm them.
Skeptoid ® Says . . .
Throughout the Middle East conflicts, the US Navy Marine Mammal Program has been used extensively to guard ships, to find mines, and to clear lanes for beach landings. Although bottlenose dolphins and California sea lions do all the work today, in the past the US Navy program has experimented with at least nine other species of cetaceans (including killer whales) and five other pinnipeds (including giant elephant seals).
The Explanation
Once Fitzgerald and Greenwood said their piece, the public’s interest in the military’s use of dolphins died down a bit. But then it roared back in 1977 with information that has kept the story in prime time ever since. Penthouse magazine published a long and detailed article that told a much more sordid tale than the one told in 1973. Penthouse used Greenwood as its main source, and while Greenwood confirmed that Fitzgerald had never been able to reliably get dolphins to attach limpet mines to ships, he said that the government had used them to attach listening devices. In one specific story, a CIA boat disguised as a Caribbean rumrunner released a dolphin through an underwater door; it then swam to a nearby Russian nuclear ship and attached a listening device to its hull. The article also revealed that Fitzgerald had attempted to sell the dolphin technology he’d developed for the CIA to Mexico, Peru, Colombia, Chile, Argentina, and Brazil.
As this was basically charging him with espionage, Fitzgerald sued Penthouse for libel. But in the lawsuit, it was revealed that he had in fact done those things, and he lost the case. Greenwood then became much freer on the interview circuit, and revealed that dolphins were in fact trained to kill, armed with either a knife or a modified version of an anti-shark weapon called a Shark Dart, a dagger-like weapon charged with CO2 to blow up a victim. This was in stark contrast to what Fitzgerald and other official sources had always claimed, which was that dolphins had been trained to rip off a diver’s air mask and force him to surface, but nothing more violent than that.
This use of marine mammals was dramatically demonstrated during the Vietnam War, when American and Soviet special forces would sometimes clash . . . if unofficially. The records of Soviet Spetsnaz (special forces) reported that two divers of an underwater demolition team called Delfin (ironically, the Russian word for dolphin) were killed in Vietnam by a dolphin when they were trying to mine an American ship. In response to this, Delfin training thereafter included underwater defense techniques against dolphins. Records show that Delfin divers successfully killed a number of these militarized dolphins off the coast of Nicaragua during the 1970s.
Over time, much of the US Navy Marine Mammal Program (but not all) has by now been declassified. A primary mission of Navy marine mammals—
which include not only dolphins but also sea lions—is port surveillance and defense against enemy divers. In one program called SWIDS (Shallow Water Intruder Detection System), which is attached to the mission, sea lions are trained to “mark” enemy divers, which involves spearing their leg with a barbed harpoon to which trackers or other devices can be attached. Human divers then go in to determine what else needs to be done (and, presumably, to do it).
Is this a conspiracy theory proven true? It has sometimes been cited as one, but it’s not really a conspiracy. We all know that the military does a lot of what they do in secret; they have to, just as they often spread a smoke screen about their exact capabilities. Calling standard military secrecy a conspiracy cheapens the definition of what a conspiracy really is.
Skeptoid ® Says . . .
It turns out that if you wanted to see the wildest examples of trained dolphins, you’d have to look at the former Soviet Union. In 1998 a Western dolphin expert, Doug Cartlidge, was invited to go see what they had. Soviet dolphins had been trained to find and attach markers with a lethal remote-triggered CO2 device to enemy divers. Soviet dolphins had also been trained as kamikaze bombers, delivering explosives to ships or submarines. Finally, there were dolphin paratroopers. Dolphins in fabric slings attached to parachutes could be dropped from as high as 3,000 meters, with whatever hardware they were to use once in the water.
CIA Drugs for Guns
* * *
Date: 1980s
Location: Nicaragua
The Conspirators: CIA, drug cartels, Contra rebels
The Victims: American drug addicts, Sandinistas
* * *
The Theory
Nicaragua had long been ruled by the US-backed Somoza Administration. But in 1979, Somoza was overthrown by the Socialist Sandinistas in the Nicaraguan Revolution, who then took control. The CIA then funded and trained the right-wing Contra rebels to try to retake control from the Sandinistas. Both the Sandinistas and the Contras had ties to the drug cartels, but the CIA looked the other way and knowingly continued funding the Contras despite their cartel connections.
However, conspiracy theorists take this indirect relationship between the CIA and the drug cartels to another level. These theorists believe that the CIA assumed a leading role in the actual transport and sale of the cartel’s drugs to American citizens, whom they purposefully got addicted to crack cocaine in order to maximize profits, resulting in more money to buy guns for the Contras. Media revelations and Senate hearings, conspiracy theorists claim, have endorsed their view and proven them right.
The Truth
The relationship between the Contras and the cartels existed with or without the CIA, and the CIA never participated in the sale of drugs to Americans to fund the Contras.
The Backstory
Since the United States didn’t want a Socialist government in Nicaragua, the CIA began funding and training the Contra rebels in 1981. The United States’ war against Socialism in the Western hemisphere, fought on the ground between the Contras and the Sandinistas, was the basic background for this whole conspiracy theory.
It was impossible to ignore the fact that factions on both sides had ties to the major drug cartels; the drug economy was simply woven into the fabric of Nicaragua during those turbulent times. But the CIA didn’t really care, because their main concern was getting the Socialist Sandinistas out of the way. However, the abundance of drug money as a source of funding for the Contras did conveniently fit into their plans, since it was a funding source that didn’t have to be funneled through Washington.
Newspapers began reporting the ties between the Contras and the drug cartels in 1984, and this reporting increased through 1986. The association with drug cartels was something of a public relations nightmare for the United States. The Reagan administration downplayed the ties, saying that they were minor, that they were without the knowledge of Contra leaders, and that they’d already severed any such ties, but few people were persuaded.
In 1986 the Senate Foreign Relations Committee held a series of hearings and ultimately prepared what became known as the Kerry Committee Report. This report essentially confirmed what everyone basically already knew: that narcotics trafficking and Contra activities were intertwined. They shared resources, business relationships, and supply operations. The cartels provided direct support to the Contras including cash, weapons, planes, pilots, air supply services, and other materials. By then, Nicaragua had begun general elections, and in 1990 a coalition of anti-Sandinista parties assumed power. The CIA’s war with the Sandinistas was over. From then on, things on the “CIA drugs for guns” front were essentially quiet. But everything changed in 1996, when the modern conspiracy theory received its greatest boost.
In 1996 reporter Gary Webb published a series of articles in the San Jose Mercury News titled “Dark Alliance,” which he later expanded into a book. Webb’s premise was that the crack cocaine epidemic among the African-American population in South Central Los Angeles was the direct work of a handful of major drug dealers tightly connected to the CIA, and that the CIA was fully complicit in a solid pipeline of cocaine from the Contras to these dealers and to Los Angeles. Getting African Americans in Los Angeles addicted to crack was, Webb claimed, fundamental to the CIA’s plan to fund the Contras.
Skeptoid ® Says . . .
Gary Webb’s Dark Alliance book and articles remain a topic of debate. While Webb’s reporting contained a number of factual inaccuracies, he correctly captured the general truth of the entire affair, according to most analyses: that the CIA was more concerned with overthrowing the Socialists than with the welfare of American drug addicts.
There was a tremendous response to Webb’s series from all quarters, very little of it positive. The Washington Post, The New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times all assigned teams of reporters to scrutinize the “Dark Alliance” articles and found Webb’s claims to be poorly supported and greatly exaggerated. The African-American community was especially outraged at Webb’s claims. California senators and the Justice Department demanded that Webb’s claims about the CIA be investigated. Three major federal investigations were launched, plus one by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. These investigations found little to substantiate Webb’s claims that went beyond what was already known from the Kerry Committee Report. The CIA did work with parties they knew to be connected to the cartels, but there is a lack of evidence that the CIA took any active role in the drug trade.
The Explanation
Although theorists love to claim the “CIA drugs for guns” debacle as a victory for conspiracy theories being proven true, there are two major problems with this: First, the links between the Contras and the cartels had been public information almost from the very beginning, as the newspapers were all reporting it. Conspiracy theorists can hardly claim credit for revealing something that they read in the papers.
Second, what they claim today widely misses the mark. The conspiracy theories trumpeted today are of activities that were investigated and then dismissed. The theorists claim that the CIA was involved in selling cocaine to Americans and even actively trying to get them addicted in order to sell more, but not even Gary Webb ever alleged that anything like that happened, and there was certainly never any evidence of it. The crack epidemic in Los Angeles had no connection to the CIA and was not caused by them, but in fact had myriad complex real causes. Conspiracy theorists can hardly claim vindication for believing something that is demonstrably wrong.
Ample evidence proves that the CIA was aware that the Contras they worked with were linked to the drug trade. The CIA knew that much of the Contras’ supplies were financed by drug money. Although this would have been the case even if the CIA had never become involved, the CIA did get involved to a higher degree. They authorized and made payments to people they knew to be drug traffickers. They used their influence to protect Contra officials from prosecution for drug-related crimes. They even hired drug trade professionals to perf
orm certain tasks, such as aerial transport.
But as far as taking an active role in the drug trade and taking actions to distribute drugs in Los Angeles and get African Americans addicted, there is no evidence whatsoever that anything like this took place.
Acknowledgments
My thanks to a plethora of colleagues with whom I’ve spent much of the preceding decade exploring myths and mysteries from popular culture, in the quest to promote public understanding of science and the tenets of scientific skepticism. They include (in alphabetical order): Rachael Dunlop, Mark Edward, Emery Emery, Pamela Gay, Susan Gerbic, Ryan Johnson, Karl Kruszelnicki, Michael Mann, Joe Nickell, Steven Novella and company, Ben Radford, James Randi, Natalia Reagan, John Rennie, Tamara Robertson, Lee Sanders, Kirsten Sanford, Richard Saunders, Eugenie Scott, Michael Shermer, Blake Smith, Joe Uscinski, and Reichart Von Wolfsheild.
About the Author
Brian Dunning is a science writer who since 2006 has been the host and producer of the podcast Skeptoid®: Critical Analysis of Pop Phenomena (Skeptoid.com), applying critical thinking to urban legends and popular pseudoscientific subjects promoted by the mass media. Skeptoid® has a weekly audience of more than 150,000 listeners. Brian has lectured on conspiracy theories at universities and conferences nationwide and internationally, including an annual appearance at a national security course at American University in Washington, DC. He has appeared on numerous radio shows and TV documentaries, and also hosts the science video series inFact with Brian Dunning. He is a member of the National Association of Science Writers.
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