Former CIA agent tells of fake Vietnam incidents

March 22, 1982

Former CIA officer Philip Liechty said he inadvertently ran across documents in the early 1960s that indicated the intelligence agency faked evidence to hasten US involvement in the Vietnam war, the Washington Post reported. He said one set of documents involved a plan to load a Vietnam-style cargo boat with large amounts of communist-bloc ammunition, sink it in a fake battle, then display it to Western journalists as proof the Vietnamese were being supplied from outside.

Mr. Liechty said he was dismissed in 1978 for complaining about the agency's tactics.