# 52. Manipulation of Memory ## 52.5. Methodology/Refinements/Sub-species ### 52.5.19. Misinformation effect Misinformation affects people's reports of their own memory. This is an important phenomenon because it refers to the way misinformation can actually affect our own memories. Misinformation, well presented, and repeated often enough, can develop its own life, allowing a victim to start to re-invent the past based on a tainted memory, overwhelmed by many forms of misinformation. This can be used by a manipulator to alter an entire historical narrative for a single victim, a group or an entire society. The US war in Vietnam, which led finally to the ignominious scenes of the last US officials fleeing from the roof of their embassy in Saigon by helicopters to a waiting aircraft carrier, are a piece of factual and well documented history of US military defeat and humiliation. However, the words "defeat" or "retreat" are impossible to use for many Americans, even to this day. And so, gradually, the defeat of the USA by Vietnam has been altered with waves of US misinformation to the point that popular opinion is that the USA left the country voluntarily as part of a strategic "Vietnamisation". This is an amazing contention and hard to digest when one watches the documentary films of panicky US marines desperately holding back the crowds on the roof of the US embassy in Saigon as selected citizens scramble up rope ladders to escaping helicopters. Meanwhile US marines dump escape helicopters into the sea to make space for more on the deck of the aircraft carrier standing off in the China Sea. It is hardly a scene from a "planned and dignified withdrawal", really.