 |
Robert McNamara deceived LBJ on Gulf of Tonkin, documents show
Gareth Porter
Raw Story
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Official government documents reveal new side of defense secretary’s legacy
Robert S. McNamara, Secretary of Defense from 1961 to 1967, took many secrets with him when he died Monday at 93. But probably no secret was more sensitive politically than the one that would have changed fundamentally the public perception of his role in Vietnam policy had it been become widely known.
The secret was his deliberate deceit of President Lyndon B. Johnson on Aug. 4, 1964 regarding the alleged attack on US warships in the Gulf of Tonkin.
Documents which have been available for decades in the LBJ Library show clearly that McNamara failed to inform Johnson that the U.S. naval task group commander in the Tonkin Gulf, Captain John J. Herrick, had changed his mind about the alleged North Vietnamese torpedo attack on U.S. warships he had reported earlier that day.
By early afternoon Washington time, Herrick had reported to the Commander in Chief Pacific in Honolulu that “freak weather effects” on the ship’s radar had made such an attack questionable. In fact, Herrick was now saying, in a message sent at 1:27 pm Washington time, that no North Vietnamese patrol boats had actually been sighted. Herrick now proposed a “complete evaluation before any further action taken.”
These documents were reviewed by this reporter in researching my book, Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam.
McNamara later testified that he had read the message after his return to the Pentagon that afternoon. But he did not immediately call Johnson to tell him that the whole premise of his decision at lunch to approve McNamara’s recommendation for retaliatory air strikes against North Vietnam was now highly questionable.
In fact, no call from McNamara to Johnson was recorded until 3:51 pm – 7 minutes after Johnson called him from his private quarters. Had Johnson been accurately informed about the Herrick message, he might have demanded fuller information before proceeding with a broadening of the war. Johnson had fended off proposals from McNamara and other advisers for a policy of bombing the North on four separate occasions since becoming President.
(ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW)
But when McNamara called Pacific Admiral Grant Sharp shortly after speaking with Johnson, it was not to order a full investigation or to seek more detailed information. In fact, McNamara didn’t even bring up the Herrick report. Instead, he seemed determined to obtain a statement from Sharp that would make it unnecessary to wait for further investigation. “There isn’t any possibility there was no attack, is there?” asked McNamara.
Sharp insisted, however, that the commander on the scene was saying “the situation’s in doubt” and suggested that McNamara “hold this execute” – meaning the strike order to CINCPAC and Seventh Fleet — “until we have a definite indication that this happened….” Sharp said he believed he could get a “definite indication” that the event had occurred within two hours.
But McNamara rejected Sharp’s proposal to wait for confirmation of the attack. Instead he said, “[I]t seems to me we ought to go ahead on that basis: get the pilots briefed, get the planes armed, get everything lined up to go. Continue the execute order in effect, but between now and 6 o’clock get a definite fix and you call me directly.”
McNamara didn’t claim that he had authority from Johnson to make that decision.
After the conversation with Sharp, McNamara didn’t call LBJ to report on what Sharp had told him or what they had agreed on, according to White House phone logs. Instead he went ahead on his own to issue the execute order at 4:49 pm.
The next phone call, which came just one minute after that order was sent, did not come from McNamara but from LBJ. That brief phone conversation, which was not recorded, was followed moments later by a call from McNamara to Johnson in which he the Secretary said the story had already been broken by wire services that a meeting at the White House that night would brief congressional leaders about a second attack on U.S. warships.
McNamara urged Johnson to authorize a statement by the Pentagon about the attack. He’d somehow found the time during the previous hour to draft a statement reaffirming the attack, which he read to Johnson. It said two U.S. warships had been attacked by patrol boats, but that the North Vietnamese boats had been “driven off.” It concluded, “We believe several of the patrol boats were sunk. Details won’t be available till daylight.”
Neither McNamara nor Johnson alluded in that conversation to Admiral Sharp’s seeking confirmatory evidence – a matter that would surely have been on LBJ’s mind if McNamara had told him about it.
The record of phone McNamara-Johnson conversations on the afternoon of Aug. 4, 1964 thus shows a President who was blissfully unaware that the original reports of an attack were now in doubt and that the Commander-in-Chief of Pacific forces was still seeking to obtain confirmation of the attack.
Ultimately, National Security Council documents declassified in 2005 (PDF) would reveal that no attack on US warships had taken place.
It “is not simply that there is a different story as to what happened; it is that no attack happened that night,” they said. “In truth, Hanoi’s navy was engaged in nothing that night but the salvage of two of the boats damaged on August 2.”
Reporter confronted McNamara in 2004
This writer confronted McNamara with that record in a phone conversation with him on Feb. 24, 2004. His response was that telephone calls were not the only way he had to communicate with Johnson and that he could have told Johnson about the military’s unresolved doubts at the National Security Council meeting which took place that night at 6:15 pm.
Unfortunately for McNamara’s alibi, detailed official notes of that Council meeting taken by NSC staffer Bromley Smith, marked “Top Secret Sensitive, For the President’s Eyes Only,” show that McNamara again asserted unequivocally that the attack had indeed taken place.
After USIA Director Carl Rowan asked, “Do we know for a fact that the North Vietnamese provocation took place?” McNamara said, “We will know definitely in the morning.”
When I read those quotes to McNamara over the phone, he suggested that the notes were “not complete.” But McNamara was admitting, in effect, that he did not inform LBJ that afternoon about the Herrick report or about Sharp’s plea to hold off the execute order until confirming evidence had been obtained.
The records of the Tonkin Gulf crisis in the LBJ library also include documentation showing LBJ wanted to get the truth about what McNamara knew and when he knew it.
Even before the Gulf of Tonkin resolution was approved by the Senate Aug. 7, LBJ ordered a full account of the communications between the commanders of U.S. Pacific forces and the Pentagon on Aug. 4 and 5. The requested study was referred to as the “inquiry,” according to a handwritten note on a draft chronology prepared at the Pentagon. It was to be based on the original tapes of all such communications, which were tracked down and transcribed.
McNamara altered transcripts of calls
The clearest evidence that McNamara was afraid of what the inquiry would reveal about his maneuvering on Aug. 4 is that the chronology produced under his personal guidance — where numerous changes were made on previous drafts in McNamara’s own handwriting — deliberately suppressed the most damning words from the transcript of his conversation with Sharp.
Not only did the official Defense Department chronology change the wording of McNamara’s question to Sharp so that it was no longer obviously a leading question, it also failed to mention Sharp’s revelation that Herrick considered the “whole situation” to be “in doubt” and was calling for “daylight recce” — or reconnaissance.
In addition, the McNamara’s chronology portrayed him as agreeing with Sharp that the execute order should be delayed until definite evidence of an attack was obtained. It reports, “McNamara says that even if definite confirmation of an attack is not forthcoming for another 2 hours, an hour would still remain and the execute order could then be issued.”
But McNamara had not said that the executive order could be issued after getting confirmation of an attack. He had said the opposite: “Continue the execute order in effect, but between now and 6 o’clock get a definite fix and you call me directly.” So that crucial sentence was omitted from the chronology.
McNamara did not want LBJ to know that he had rejected Sharp’s proposal to hold the execute order until the situation was clarified and had not even informed him.
There is more evidence in the presidential tapes at the LBJ Library that Johnson believed that McNamara had misinformed him about what had happened in the Tonkin Gulf. Six weeks later, McNamara and then-Secretary of State Dean Rusk went to Johnson with yet another claim that North Vietnamese boats had attacked a U.S. warship in the Tonkin Gulf and again urged a retaliatory bombing of the North.
This time Johnson expressed skepticism and complained about McNamara’s claim of an attack on Aug. 4. “You just came in a few weeks ago and said they’re launching an attack on us – they’re firing at us,” Johnson tells McNamara on the tape recording of the conversation, “and we got through with the firing and concluded maybe they hadn’t fired at all.”
Whether or not Johnson understood the seriousness of McNamara’s deception Aug. 4, he seemed to become even more resistant to McNamara’s views on Vietnam after the incident. That fall, during the presidential election campaign, Johnson began to challenge McNamara for his advocacy of bombing North Vietnam, even referring to his proposal as “your bombing bullshit,” according to accounts given by Assistant Secretary of Defense John McNaughton to Daniel Ellsberg, his then-assistant (who later leaked what would be known as the Pentagon papers).
McNamara’s deception was one of many maneuvers aimed at pulling Johnson into an escalated war in Vietnam. But it is perhaps the only one in which McNamara’s role shifted from tough bureaucratic in-fighting to usurping presidential authority, in effect, on an issue involving the use of military force.
On the following audio file from The Lyndon Baines Johnson Library, Johnson can be heard telling McNamara that he had misinformed him about the alleged attack:
A pdf file of the McNamara/Sharp transcript can be accessed at this link.
A pdf file of the chronology of events that McNamara prepared for Johnson can be accessed at this link.
Gareth Porter is an investigative journalist and historian who covered the Vietnam War as Saigon Bureau Chief for Dispatch News Service International in 1970-71 and taught international studies at the City College of New York and American University from 1982 to 1990. His book Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam, documents US policymaking on Vietnam during the Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson administrations. He has a doctorate in Southeast Asian politics from Cornell University, and currently covers diplomatic and military affairs for Inter Press Service.
Prison
Planet.tv Members Can Watch
Fall Of The Republic
Right Now Online -
Don't Miss Out! Get
Your Subscription Today!
CANCER CONSPIRACY? Are
"they" suppressing the cure? Will YOU
be the next victim? Learn
the Secret Truth! - READ FULL STORY
-
- Social bookmarks
- Email this article
-
- Print this page
43 Responses to “Robert McNamara deceived LBJ on Gulf of Tonkin, documents show”
 |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  | |||||||
| By N2H | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
July 8th, 2009 at 12:04 pm
1st! McNamara is my hero
7upwithvodka Reply:
July 8th, 2009 at 6:49 pm
Please do me a favor and check out this site that I found yesterday. You won’t find a site with more information anywhere… It will freak you out.. From New World Order to Illuminati to all of the Beautiful Spiritual Things That Will Create Our Future…
http://www.thegrandawakening.com
July 8th, 2009 at 12:12 pm
watch FOG OF WAR and excellent film with lots of mcNamara footage and background on vietnam . I never understood why we have such a short attention span and though we give lip service to “history repeats itself”- we don’t refer to events in our own lifetime to draw parallels to the obvious corporate self interest and hawkish military run USA manipulations to our psyche . In the sixties people were in the streets protesting and now those same people and their progeny have fallen into the abyss of denial and resignation.
g Reply:
July 9th, 2009 at 10:54 am
Check out my Cartoons Of The Day. The one about McNamara says it all.
http://iblowminds.com/2009/07/.....he-day-62/
July 8th, 2009 at 12:21 pm
LBJ was deceived? Being willfully ignorant isn’t an excuse. Look at what the criminal did after he found out. Maybe he was deceived, but he was more than happy to go along with it and killi millions.
Nahrgang Reply:
July 8th, 2009 at 2:47 pm
I like MacNamara and I hate LBJ…This article is smearing someone who I think was on our side. Sure maybe he made some mistakes, but we’re talking about a man who had JFKs trust. I know JFKs trust in his protection clearly was misplaced, and I know Mac came from Ford, but I think we “conspiracy nuts” need to be careful that we dont get disinformed into shooting down good men. I’ve have Fog of War and I felt his tears when he was talking about JFK were genuine. I dont like seeing this article on the site without one mention of him being good friends with a man everyone here considers the last good president. This article is completely biased and it is disrespectful to post it soon after he dies.
nm Reply:
July 8th, 2009 at 4:53 pm
JFK had lots of dangerous “friends”. Mcnamara may have seen the error in some of his ways but a “good man”? Might be a bit of a stretch.
RightofRush Reply:
July 8th, 2009 at 8:57 pm
McNamara’s legacy is not complicated. If he was as intelligent as claimed, what he did was to show that incompetence does not negatively correlate to intelligence.
McNamara’s legacy is really that of either knowingly or unknowingly that of a traitor.
Once again, if he was as intelligent claimed, then he may have truly intended the outcome of not only a lost war, but a lost generation of our young and the ability of our military to perform.
I have long had the opinion that the unstated purpose of every war that we have been in for the last one hundred years was to cost us our productive young and exhaust our treasury.
If I were a true “conspiracy nut”, then I would add the success of Marxism and progression toward a one world government.
LBJ may have been the most venal President that we have had.
FDR, the most evil,
Clinton, the most amoral, and Lincoln destroyed our Republic.
l Reply:
July 9th, 2009 at 4:39 am
Bush 1 is easily the most evil. Head of CIA. Involved in numerous assassinations including the Kennedys(both of them). Business with our enemies(including Bin Ladens family) etc. And Clinton sucks, but is he the most amoral simply because of Lewisnky? News flash, lots of presidents cheated on their wives. I think its more amoral to kill people(i know Clinton ok’ed that too but not on the level of others. Like Bush 2 for instance.)
July 8th, 2009 at 12:25 pm
I think all the U.S.S. Liberty survivors will drink a toast to war criminal McNamara’s death!
yeager Reply:
July 9th, 2009 at 12:49 pm
Amen!!!!
July 8th, 2009 at 12:53 pm
This is the same Mcnamara that tried to pull “Operation Northwoods”
He has a history of misleading people! I’m sure he went to Hell!
reconmarine Reply:
July 8th, 2009 at 1:50 pm
There is no such thing as “U.S.S, Liberty” or “Gulf of Tonkin Incident” etc.. There are and were never any conspiracies. As that great faggot J. Edgar Hoover said, there is no mob or La Cosa Nostra. There is no such thing as a “conspiracy” ever. I said so. There is nothing in the penal code against “conspiracy” as there is no such thing
bb Reply:
July 8th, 2009 at 9:47 pm
reconmarine, you are a complete idiot.
The RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act of 1970) Act SPECIFICALLY covers “conspiracy”.
conspiracy n. 1) an agreement among conspirators 2) a group of conspirators
If you know how, look it up for yourself. Here I’ll help you.
GOOGLE search: RICO ACT conspiracy
CATAIN AMERICA Reply:
July 9th, 2009 at 7:59 am
RECONMARINE, YOU ARE FUNNY HA!HA!HA!HA!HA!HA! I LOVE YOUR JOKE’S, CALL PEOPLE NAME’S NEVER GET TO THE TRUTH! HA!HA!
July 8th, 2009 at 12:59 pm
Will the Americans ever wake up to the corporate gangsters who do them so much harm?I do hope so for the sake of all of us.Have a nice day.Peter. Orwell’s 1984 UK. Things are getting out of hand and more scary by the day,this comment has been by Orwell’s spies.
Peter Orwell's UK Reply:
July 8th, 2009 at 1:03 pm
Sorry everyone I mean all the comments have been SEEN by Orwell’s spies.Have a nice day if you can.
July 8th, 2009 at 1:03 pm
If your feeling something’s just “not right” lately…our dead on! Our Federal Government is going for broke on a quick take over of the U.S. Republic. We are NOT a Democracy and never have been. It is a lie pushed through by the mass media. We were established as a Constitutional Republic, which respects individual State’s rights. Here:http://www.thegrandawakening.com/
July 8th, 2009 at 1:17 pm
Crop Circles predicting Solar Storms? Woah. There is an energy in the air….can you FEEL it? You are now changing..your DNA is being modified to ascend to the next level. Dig deep in your heart and you will feel change….learn about the changes of 2012. Its not the end…but a new beginning: http://www.thegrandawakening.com/about_us.html
Beavis Reply:
July 8th, 2009 at 3:02 pm
I feel better already. Where are these crop circles?
July 8th, 2009 at 3:22 pm
Do not really know who to believe or who not to, any longer.
One can undersatnd a TRUTH or a LIE, but how can one know a partial truth and that is why partial truths are worst than a lie.
nader paul kucinich gravel Reply:
July 8th, 2009 at 3:42 pm
Wait until the war is over
And we’re both a little older
The unknown soldier
Breakfast where the news is read
Television children fed
Unborn living, living dead
Bullet strikes the helmet’s head ~
July 8th, 2009 at 4:09 pm
Let’s see, deceived people to get us into war resulting in millions of dead, AND member of CFR and Trilateral Commission? And yes, the Liberty:
http://www.counterpunch.org/heller06012007.html
July 8th, 2009 at 4:20 pm
It’s kind of incredible timing that Mcnamara dies and all of the sudden documents showing how evil and corrupt he was begin to be shown to the public.
It will probably be the same way when G.HW.Bush dies, the fact that he planned and executed the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
Lies is all you will get from a Government that is controlled by an outside entity!
Urban Moving Systems Reply:
July 8th, 2009 at 4:56 pm
Bush was involved certainly, but I dont think he personally planned it. I think his taking part in it “made” him in the eyes of the criminal elite and put him on the fast track to head the CIA. And when Bush dies I dont expect anything to come out, the Bushs have been hard wired into our government for far too long. Hope im wrong.
RightofRush Reply:
July 8th, 2009 at 9:17 pm
You need to do more research. JFK’s assination: Inspired by the Federal Reserve, carried out by the CIA and Mosad, and blessed by LBJ and J Edgar Hoover.
Reasons:
1. JFK bypassed the Fed and issued silver certificates
2. JFK wanted out of Viet Nam
3. Hoover wanted job securit
4. Israel wanted to keep its nukes
and to make more.
5. LBJ realy wanted his job. A lot.
Incriminally Sane Reply:
July 9th, 2009 at 3:30 pm
DUH!!!!!
July 8th, 2009 at 5:32 pm
Sources Added To Free Collaborative Research Database: http://infowardocs.org
July 8th, 2009 at 5:41 pm
http://911essentials.com wonders what else LBJ didn’t know or supposedly didn’t know about JFK and more … McNamara is the archetype villain that Rumsfeld seems to be a genetic clone.
911essentials is a primer portal introduction to the New World Order Corporate Banking Police State, its plans for one world government and their worship of the fake science Eugenics.
July 8th, 2009 at 6:16 pm
Jim Morrison’s dad, George Morrison, a retired US Navy admiral, was at the Gulf of Tonkin. It’s worth noting even if you don’t like the Door’s music.
July 8th, 2009 at 6:33 pm
The USS Liberty was attacked by the Israelis on LBJ’s (another Illuminati puppet) orders and that happened well before the Gulf of Tonkin. The Illuminati want just two things: more war and debt. Well they’ve got it. This shit is so well documented you’ll puke. McNamara’s deception doesn’t make any sense to me. He knew full well what LBJ’s intentions were, hell the guy (LBJ) was up to his eyeballs with his munitions portfolio. If you think constant murdering of our military and foreign peoples is good, what would you define as bad? Can’t the Department of Defense be used for defense one fucking time in my lifetime?
July 8th, 2009 at 7:13 pm
LLLLMMMMAAAOOOO……………..I bet LBJ thought he was part of the “big boys club”
July 8th, 2009 at 7:55 pm
Unless someone is “incapable of handling the the truth” … the truth is:
1) the U.S. Government falsified data to prod the country into a war in Vietnam
2) the U.S. Government falsified data to prod the country into a war in Iraq.
What? Did I offend some red neck, pension receiving, pin head who grew up on John Wayne & Clint Eastwood movies and actually believed them? Get a life!
In his farewell speech, the WW2 hero/turned Prez –General Ike Eisenhower –specifically warned us against the influence of the Military Industrial Complex.
Now days that “mojo” has since moved on to the large investment banks (although as Iraq & Afghanistan shows… the Military Industrial Complex is hanging on in 2nd place)
The enemy is among/within us….. repeat, look at the domestic news or even in the mirror and you will see the ENEMY.
RightofRush Reply:
July 8th, 2009 at 9:22 pm
Add to that: The “Civil” war, Spanish-American War, WWI, WWII, and Korea.
July 8th, 2009 at 8:49 pm
I do not agree with the author of this article. I believe that Johnson and McNamara both had full knowledge of the actual events take took place at the bay of Tonkin, and both men partook in the staged event. There was never a serious attempt by Johnson nor McNamara to wage a successful war campaign only to prolong the war. Both Johnson and McNamara were war mongers equally guilty of a fraudulent war and the death of 57,000 military personnel. Johnson lived 5 years after living office and died a pathetic fool. McNamara in the 1990s wrote a book saying the war was all wrong and a big mistake. The thing was the American soldiers payed the price and he cashed in the chips……………………………………………………………………….
AbuBakerSmith Reply:
July 9th, 2009 at 12:09 pm
McNamara was stifiling field reports from recon teams about NVA Troop movements and strength as well as foreign Soviet and Chinese Troop and advisor activity in order to present a more favorable picture of what was happening on the ground. He did this for the most part to protect his position and career.
July 8th, 2009 at 9:26 pm
I’m surprised Alex is lazily promoting this story with that headline. Its total crap and Alex knows this.
This is very much like Janet Reno stepping out of the office while they seiged Waco.
Its all about plausable deniablity.
There has been no knew info, only a dead guy that they can pin all blame on for the FALSE FLAG EVENT that got the US hot in Vietnam.
July 8th, 2009 at 9:33 pm
MCNAMARA BURN IN HELL!!!
My father was born in 1927. My father lied about his age and served in the military at 17 yrs old. My father served from the end of WWII(1944) to TWO tours of Vietnam(1976). My father spent 32 years in the military. My father past away in 1999. McNamara is a certified piece of garbage, and my father would very much agree. Since, it was my father who told me about Vietnam, McNamara, and Kissinger(Butcher of Cambodia). McNamara and Kissinger killed more U.S troops than the Vietcong! McNamara sent orders to PURPOSELY send unarmed U.S troops to get captured by the Vietcong and in Cambodia. People who support McNamara are absolute IDIOTS that have NO idea the damage McNamara caused. You know what….When McNamara left politics, where did McNamara get his next job? I’ll tell you…as an exectuive then president of the World Bank Group…hmmm….I wonder if Kissinger, John and David Rockefeller had anything to do with that. McNamara is complete utter scum….a book of lies written by McNamara or crocodile tears in a video of McNamara gives NO merit otherwise to the fact that he is a scumbag. Rot in hell, McNamara.
July 9th, 2009 at 12:38 am
Requiem for Robert Strange McNamara courtesy of Slayer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTO1s_ARrBk .
July 9th, 2009 at 12:49 am
Lyrics for McNamara’s requiem:
Frantic minds are terrified
Life lies in a grave
Silent death rides high above
On the wings of revelation
Multi death from chemicals
Arrogance has won
Annihilation must be swift
Destroy without destruction
Gods on the throne must be watching from hell
Awaiting the mass genocide
Soldiers defeated by death from a smell
Bodies lie dormant no life
Rising new souls on the lands where they fell
Demons not ready to die
Nothing to see where the sleeping souls lie
Chemical warfare
Artificial fucking peace
Line up in a death row
Generals in their slow defeat
Diminished from this hell
Banished from the dying world
The lords of hell await
Dogs of war are helpless prey
To immortality
Gods on the throne must be watching from hell
Awaiting the mass genocide
Soldiers defeated by death from a smell
Bodies lie dormant no life
Rising new souls on the lands where they fell
Demons not ready to die
Nothing to see where the sleeping souls lie
Chemical warfare!!!
Fuck it up!
Liquidate
The torture kills the troops that try to fight
Terminate
Human pesticide bring days of doom
Mist falls
The deadly gas that brings them to their knees
Sacrifice
Steal the soul and send his corpse to hell
Hahahahahaha
Mummified regions lying in dust
Fall victim to this game
Petrified corpses bathing in rust
Taken without being blamed
Falsified spirits farther they fall
Soon they will join us in hell
See the sky burning the gates are ablaze
Satan awaits eager to merge
Gods on the throne must be watching from hell
Awaiting the mass genocide
Soldiers defeated by death from a smell
Bodies lie dormant no life
Rising new souls on the lands where they fell
Demons not ready to die
Nothing to see where the sleeping souls lie
Chemical warfare
Warfare!
Fuck global warming. Here’s a real environmental catastrophe: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXu2KmzAX-A
July 9th, 2009 at 5:02 am
During the presidential election campaign, Johnson began to challenge McNamara for his advocacy of bombing North Vietnam.
July 9th, 2009 at 8:28 am
McNamara is a WAR CRIMINAL!!!!!
1 Down – MANY MANY more to GO!!!!!!!
July 9th, 2009 at 12:02 pm
Note the “Gore” LBJ mentions in the recording is Al Gore’s father. LBJ’s biggest argument between McNamara and Gore was that they were claiming an attack when there wan not one and figuratively using the example of a woman hollering rape claiming or assuming she was attacked simply because a man walked into a room and she felt threatened.