Casus Belli Magazine

[Dionisio Sechser]

CasusBelli est cr par Franois Marcela-Froideval (qui sera notamment plus tard le scnariste de la bande dessine Chroniques de la lune noire), qui venait d'tre embauch comme ludologue chez Jeux Descartes. Froideval avait fond quelque temps auparavant la Fdration franaise des jeux de simulation stratgique et tactique (FFJSST), le magazine Casus Belli devant tre l'outil de communication de cette association loi de 1901[1]. Il recrute pour la circonstance un jeune illustrateur et maquettiste, Didier Guiserix, avec qui il ralise ensuite des jeux en encart dans le magazine Jeux & Stratgie (appartenant galement au groupe Excelsior Publications).

Deux ans plus tard, le magazine finit par trouver son crneau, plus d'ailleurs parmi les rlistes que parmi les belliludistes (wargameurs) auxquels il tait pourtant plus particulirement destin au dpart. Froideval dcide alors que la FFJSST doit lui vendre le journal, ce qui fut fait pour un franc symbolique[rf. ncessaire].

L'affaire se conclut par la revente du magazine pour 10 000 francs Excelsior Publications. Casus Belli no 10 (septembre 1982) sort sous ce nouvel diteur. Par la suite, Froideval part aux tats-Unis collaborer avec l'auteur Gary Gygax des supplments du jeu Advanced Donjons & Dragons ; Didier Guiserix est alors promu rdacteur en chef sa place[6]. Le journal est enfin distribu en kiosque.[rf. souhaite]

Casus Belli connat sa priode la plus faste entre 1985 et 1992, priode qui voit l'ge d'or du jeu de rle en France.[rf. souhaite] En effet, au dbut des annes 1990, une tude indpendante sur les habitudes des Jeunes Instruits (secondaire et premier cycle) mentionnait Casus Belli en le crditant de 100 000 lecteurs.[rf. ncessaire]

Mais, la fin des annes 1990, la mauvaise sant du march du jeu de rle fait que le magazine devient dficitaire. En 1999, le propritaire Excelsior Publications met fin l'aventure Casus Belli avec le no 122.[rf. ncessaire]

Le no 1 de la nouvelle srie est publi en mars 2000. La nouvelle accroche du magazine est Jeux de rle, jeux online et cultures de l'imaginaire , dnotant ainsi une approche pluri-sectorielle destine ouvrir les rlistes d'autres horizons et marquer la place du jeu de rle au carrefour de plusieurs cultures.

Aprs la liquidation judiciaire de Multisim, prononce le 11 septembre 2003 et annonce dans le no 23 du magazine, celui-ci voit le dpart d'une grande partie de ses contributeurs. La rdaction de Casus Belli devint alors collgiale, et seule la rdactrice en chef demeure salarie d'Arkana Press, les autres collaborateurs du magazine tant tous sous le statut de pigistes. Ce poste est ensuite supprim en avril 2006, et la pagination du magazine diminue de 84 68 pages.

Le premier numro de cette troisime srie parat en aot 2010[14]. Le magazine tait (thoriquement) mensuel, sa couverture portant un dessin couleur sur un cadre noir et blanc, avec une pagination de 76 pages en couleurs.[rf. souhaite]

Le no 1 du nouveau Casus Belli quatrime poque est dat de novembre/dcembre 2011, avec Didier Guiserix[17] et Stphane Gallot co-rdacteurs en chef. Le magazine, dit par Black Book ditions[17] (socit base Lyon), est disponible sous forme papier ou fichier pdf dans les boutiques de jeu et les librairies.

The Gulf of Tonkin incidents of 2 to 4 August 1964 have come to loom over the subsequent American engagement in Indochina. The incidents, principally the second one of 4 August, led to the approval of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution by the U.S. Congress, which handed President Johnson the carte blanche charter he had wanted for future intervention in Southeast Asia. From this point on, the American policy and programs would dominate the course of the Indochina War. At the height of the American involvement, over a half million U.S. soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines would be stationed there. The war would spread across the border into Cambodia and escalate in Laos. Thailand assumed a greater importance as a base for supporting the military effort, especially for the air war, but also for SIGINT purposes of intercept and direction finding.

At the time, the Gulf of Tonkin incidents of August were not quite so controversial. According to the Johnson administration, the issue of the attacks was pretty much cut and dried. As the administration explained, our ships had been in international waters - anywhere from fifty to eighty miles from the DRV coastline by some calculations, during the alleged second attack - and were attacked twice, even though they were innocent of any bellicose gestures directed at North Vietnam. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara had assured the Senate that there had been no connection between what the U.S. Navy was doing and any aggressive operations by the South Vietnamese.1

However, within the government, the events of 4 August were never that clear. Even as the last flare fizzled in the dark waters of the South China Sea on that August night, there were conflicting narratives and interpretations of what had happened. James Stockdale, then a navy pilot at the scene, who had "the best seat in the house from which to detect boats," saw nothing. "No boats," he would later write, "no boat wakes, no ricochets off boats, no boat impacts, no torpedo wakes - nothing but black sea and American firepower."2 The commander of the Maddox task force, Captain John J. Herrick, was not entirely certain what had transpired. (Captain Herrick actually was the commander of the destroyer division to which the Maddox belonged. For this mission, he was aboard as the on-site commander.) Hours after the incident, he would radio the Commander-in-Chief, Pacific (CINCPAC) telling them that he was doubtful of many aspects of the "attack."

It would be years before any evidence that an attack had not happened finally emerged in the public domain, and even then, most reluctantly. Yet, remarkably, some of the major participants in the events still maintained that the Gulf of Tonkin incident had occurred just as it had been originally reported. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, in his memoirs In Retrospect, considered the overall evidence for an attack still convincing.3 The U.S. Navy's history of the Vietnam conflict, written by Edward J. Marolda and Oscar P. Fitzgerald (hereafter referred to as the "Marolda-Fitzgerald history"), reported that the evidence for the second attack, especially from intelligence, including a small amount of SIGINT, was considered conclusive.4

The public literature on the Gulf of Tonkin for years has been overwhelmingly skeptical about the 4 August battle. Articles that appeared in magazines within a few years illustrated the general inconsistency in the descriptions of the incident of 4 August by simply using the conflicting testimony from the officers and crews of both ships. The first major critical volume was Joseph Goulden's Truth Is the First Casualty, published in 1969. The most complete work to date is Edwin Moise's Tonkin Gulf and the Escalation of the Vietnam War. Moise's work has the dual advantage of using some Vietnamese sources, as well as small portions of a few SIGINT reports released to the author under a Freedom of Information Act request. Yet, even what few scraps he received from NSA were enough to raise serious questions about the validity of the SIGINT reports cited by the administration which related to the 4 August incident.5

The issue of whether the available SIGINT "proved" that there had been a second attack has been argued for years. In 1968, Robert McNamara testified before Senator William Fullbright's Foreign Relations Committee's hearings on the Gulf of Tonkin that the supporting signals intelligence was "unimpeachable." On the other hand, in 1972 the deputy director of NSA, Louis Tordella, was quoted as saying that the 4 August intercepts pertained to the 2 August attacks. In a 1975 article in the NSA Magazine Cryptolog, the Gulf of Tonkin incident was retold, but the SIGINT for the night of August 4 was not mentioned, except for the "military operations" intercept, and even then without comment.6 The Navy's history of the Vietnam War would misconstrue the SIGINT (disguised as unsourced "intelligence") associating portions of two critical intercepts and implying a connection in the evidence where none could be established.7

Except for the sizable collection of SIGINT material within NSA, and a much smaller amount from the archives of the Naval Security Group (which essentially duplicates portions of the NSA holdings), almost all relevant material relating to the Gulf of Tonkin incidents has been released. Although the questions about what happened in the Gulf of Tonkin on the night of 4 August have been fairly well answered by the evidence from all of the other sources - radar, sonar, eyewitness, and archival - the SIGINT version needs to be told. This is because of the critical role that SIGINT played in defining the second attack in the minds of Johnson administration officials. Without the signals intelligence information, the administration had only the confused and conflicting testimony and evidence of the men and equipment involved in the incident. It is difficult to image the 5 August retaliatory air strikes against North Vietnamese naval bases and installations being ordered without the SIGINT "evidence."8 Therefore, it is necessary to recount in some detail what signals intelligence reported.

For the first time ever, what will be presented in the following narrative is the complete SIGINT version of what happened in the Gulf of Tonkin between 2 and 4 August 1964. Until now, the NSA has officially maintained that the second incident of 4 August occurred. This position was established in the initial SIGINT reports of 4 August and sustained through a series of summary reports issued shortly after the crisis. In October 1964, a classified chronology of events for 2 to 4 August in the Gulf of Tonkin was published by NSA which furthered the contention that the second attack had occurred.

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