The fig leaf of plausible denial served McNamara in this case, but it was scant cover. The after-action reports from the participants in the Gulf arrived in Washington several hours after the report of the second incident. Shortly after ordering the airstrikes, Johnson went on television and addressed the nation regarding the incident. The North Vietnamese believed that, although they had lost one boat, they had deterred an attack on their coast. And so, in the course of a single day, and operating on imperfect information,Johnson changedthe trajectory of the Vietnam War. Gulf of Tonkin & the Vietnam War. . In an effort to increase pressure on North Vietnam, several Norwegian-built fast patrol boats (PTFs) were covertly purchased and transferred to South Vietnam. Moreover, the subsequent review of the evidence exposed the translation and analysis errors that resulted in the reporting of the salvage operation as preparations for a second attack. The report covers all aspects of the efforts of the various American SIGINT agencies from the early postWorld War II years through the evacuation of Saigon. The most popular of these is that the incident was either a fabrication or deliberate American provocation. The history stops with the U.S. Navy moving into full combat duty -- the naval and air interdictions in South and North Vietnam -- the subject of future volumes. The Dollar Bill . Midday on August 1, NSGA San Miguel, the U.S. Marine Corps SIGINT detachment co-located with the U.S. Army at Phu Bai, and Maddoxs own DSU all detected the communications directing the North Vietnamese torpedo boats to depart from Haiphong on August 2. The stage was set. That initial error shaped all the subsequent assessments about North Vietnamese intentions, as U.S. SIGINT monitored and reported the Norths tracking of the two American destroyers. Returning fire, Maddox scored hits on the P-4s while being struck by a single 14.5-millimeter machine gun bullet. Each sides initial after-action review was positive. As the enemy boat passed astern, it was raked by gunfire from the Maddox that killed the boats commander. The Commander-in-Chief, Pacific, Admiral Harry D. Felt, agreed and suggested that a U.S. Navy ship could be used to vector 34A boats to their targets.6. "We believe that present OPLAN 34A activities are beginning to rattle Hanoi," wrote Secretary of State Dean Rusk, "and [the] Maddox incident is directly related to their effort to resist these activities. originally appeared in the June 2008 issue of Vietnam magazine. In response, the North Vietnamese built up their naval presence around the offshore islands. Subscribe to receive our weekly newsletter with top stories from master historians. But, to me, the more pernicious deception was this idea that American ships were sailing innocently in the Gulf of Tonkin and were attacked without provocation, he continues. Keep supporting great journalism by turning off your ad blocker. https://www.historynet.com/case-closed-the-gulf-of-tonkin-incident/, Jerrie Mock: Record-Breaking American Female Pilot, When 21 Sikh Soldiers Fought the Odds Against 10,000 Pashtun Warriors, Few Red Tails Remain: Tuskegee Airman Dies at 96. Telegram from Embassy in Vietnam to Department of State, 7 August 1964. 8. At about the same time, there were other "secret" missions going on. The boats followed at their maximum speed of 44 knots, continuing the chase for more than 20 minutes. The NSA report exposes translation and analytical errors made by the American SIGINT analystserrors that convinced the naval task force and national authorities that the North had ordered a second attack on August 4, and thus led Maddoxs crew to interpret its radar contacts and other information as confirmation that the ship was again under attack. The reports conclusions about the Gulf of Tonkin Incident are particularly relevant as they offer useful insights into the problems that SIGINT faces today in Mr. Andrad is a Vietnam War historian with the U.S. Army Center of Military History, where he is writing a book on combat operations from 1969 through 1973. In fact, the North Vietnamese were trying to avoid contact with U.S. forces on August 4, and they saw the departure of the Desoto patrol ships as a sign that they could proceed to recover their torpedo boats and tow them back to base. But the administration dithered, informing the embassy only that "further OPLAN 34A operations should be held off pending review of the situation in Washington. 3. These types of patrols had previously been conducted off the coasts of the Soviet Union, China, and North Korea. During the afternoon of 3 August, another maritime team headed north from Da Nang. ThoughtCo, Feb. 16, 2021, thoughtco.com/vietnam-war-gulf-of-tonkin-incident-2361345. To have a Tonkin Gulf conspiracy means that the several hundred National Security Agency and naval communications cited have been doctored. History is who we are and why we are the way we are.. The intelligence community, including its SIGINT component, responded with a regional buildup to support the increase in U.S. operational forces. The SIGINT intercepts also detected that the North Vietnamese coastal radar stations were tracking Maddox and reporting its movements to the outbound torpedo boats. 2. For the rest of the war they would be truly secretand in the end they were a dismal failure. 1. Within the year, U.S. bombers would strike North Vietnam, and U.S. ground units would land on South Vietnamese soil. He is the author of. Taking evasive action, they fired on numerous radar targets. One element of American assistance to South Vietnam included covert support for South Vietnamese commando raids against North Vietnams coastal transportation facilities and networks. Kennedy Hickman is a historian, museum director, and curator who specializes in military and naval history. We have no intention of yielding to pressure. The World is a public radio program that crosses borders and time zones to bring home the stories that matter. Alerted to the threat, Herrick requested air support from the carrier USS Ticonderoga. History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. PTF-3 and PTF-6 broke off and streaked south for safety; they were back in port before 1200. LBJ was looking for a pretext to go to Congress to ask for a resolution that would give him the authority to do basically whatever the hell he wanted to do in Vietnam, without the intense public debate that a declaration of war would have required, says historian Chris Oppe. These secret intelligence-gathering missions and sabotage operations had begun under the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in 1961, but in January 1964, the program was transferred to the Defense Department under the control of a cover organization called the Studies and Observations Group (SOG). The Johnson administration had made the first of several secret diplomatic attempts during the summer of 1964 to convince the North Vietnamese to stop its war on South Vietnam, using the chief Canadian delegate to the ICC, J. Blair Seaborn, to pass the message along to Hanoi. George C. Herring, ed., The Secret Diplomacy of the Vietnam War: The Negotiating Volumes of the Pentagon Papers (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1983), p. 18. It still is not clear whether the order was intended to halt the attack or to delay it until after nightfall, when there was a much greater chance for success. ." Everything went smoothly until the early hours of 2 August, when intelligence picked up indications that the North Vietnamese Navy had moved additional Swatows into the vicinity of Hon Me and Hon Nieu Islands and ordered them to prepare for battle. A subsequent review of the SIGINT reports revealed that this later interceptMcNamaras smoking gunwas in fact a follow-on, more in-depth report of the August 2 action. The North Vietnamese turned for shore with the Maddox in pursuit. The Taliban silenced him. A U.S. Navy SEAL (Sea Air Land) team officer assigned to the SOG maritime operations training staff, Lieutenant James Hawes, led the covert boat fleet out of Da Nang and down the coast 300 miles to Cam Ranh Bay, where they waited out the crisis in isolation. Surprised by the North Vietnamese response, Johnson decided that the United States could not back away from the challenge and directed his commanders in the Pacific to continue with the Desoto missions. Forced Government Indoctrination Camps . To have a Tonkin Gulf conspiracy means that the several hundred National Security Agency and naval communications cited have been doctored. In August 1964, Congress passed the Tonkin Gulf resolutionor Southeast Asia Resolution, as it is officially knownthe congressional decree that gave President Lyndon Johnson a broad mandate to wage war in Vietnam. Conducted under the nationally approved Operations Plan, OPLAN-34A, the program required the intelligence community to provide detailed intelligence about the commando targets, the Norths coastal defenses and related surveillance systems. WebLyndon Johnson signed the Tonkin Gulf resolution on August 10, 1964. When Did the U.S. This time, however, President Johnson reacted much more skeptically and ultimately decided to take no retaliatory action. Hanoi was more than willing to tell the world about the attacks, and it took either a fool or an innocent to believe that the United States knew nothing about the raids. Quoted in Steve Edwards, "Stalking the Enemys Coast," U.S. On the night of 4 August, both ships reported renewed attacks by North Vietnamese patrol boats. WebJoe Rogan interview on the 911 Conspiracy Theory. As the torpedo boats continued their high-speed approach, Maddox was ordered to fire warning shots if they closed inside 10,000 yards. But the light helped the commandos as well, revealing their targets. This is another government conspiracy that's true. The Gulf of Tonkin incident led to the expansion of the Vietnam War that resulted in a lot of American soldier casualties. Historians still argue about what exactly happened in the Gulf of Tonkin in August of 1964. 17. Perhaps that is the most enduring lesson from Americas use of SIGINT in the Vietnam War in general and the Gulf of Tonkin Incident in particular. Shortly after taking office following the death of President John F. Kennedy, President Lyndon B. Johnson became concerned about South Vietnam's ability to fend off the Communist Viet Cong guerillas that were operating in the country. The Geneva Conference in 1954 was intended to settle outstanding issues following the end of hostilities between France and the Viet Minh at the end of the First Indochina War. Subscribe now and never hit a limit. The entirety of the original intercepts, however, were not examined and reanalyzed until after the war. With that false foundation in their minds, the on-scene naval analysts saw the evidence around them as confirmation of the attack they had been warned about. Through the evening of Aug. 4, while no new information arrivedto clarify the eventin the Gulf, the White House narrative was firmly in place. Despite the on-scene commanders efforts to correct their errors in the initial after-action reports, administration officials focused instead on the first SIGINT reports to the exclusion of all other evidence. So, whether by accident or design, American actions in the Tonkin Gulf triggered a response from the North Vietnamese, not the other way around. Suns and Stars Originally begun by the Central Intelligence Agency in 1961, 34A was a highly-classified program of covert operations against North Vietnam. Summary Notes of the 538th Meeting of the NSC, 4 August 1964, 6:15-6:40 p.m., Foreign Relations of the United States 1964-1968, vol. But for a band of South Vietnamese commandos and a handful of U.S. advisers, not much had changed. For 25 minutes the boats fired on the radar station, then headed back to Da Nang. When you visit the site, Dotdash Meredith and its partners may store or retrieve information on your browser, mostly in the form of cookies. . If there had been any doubt before about whose hand was behind the raids, surely there was none now. 10. The historian here is obliged to deal with two basic considerations in offering up an accounting: the event itself -- that is, what actually happened there in the waters off North Vietnam in early August 1964; and the uses made of it by President Lyndon Johnson and his administration. It can be deceived and it is all too often incomplete. He spoke out against banning girls education. The U.S. Navy stressed that the two technically were not in communication with one another, but the distinction was irrelevant to the North Vietnamese. Although the total intelligence picture of North Vietnams actions and communications indicates that the North Vietnamese did in fact order the first attack, it remains unclear whether Maddox was the originally intended target. HistoryNet.com is brought to you by HistoryNet LLC, the worlds largest publisher of history magazines. The study debunks two strongly held but opposing beliefs about what happened on both dayson the one hand that neither of the reported attacks ever took place at all, and on the other that there was in fact a second deliberate North Vietnamese attack on August 4. The Gulf of Tonkin incident was a complex naval event in the Gulf of Tonkin, off the coast of Vietnam, that was presented to the U.S. Congress on August 5, 1964, as two unprovoked attacks by North Vietnamese torpedo boats on the destroyers Maddox and Turner Joy of the U.S. The North Vietnamese Ministry of Foreign Affairs made all this clear in September when it published a "Memorandum Regarding the U.S. War Acts Against the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in the First Days of August 1964." Nonetheless, the North Vietnamese boats continued to close in at the rate of 400 yards per minute. Naval Institute. Changing course in time to evade the torpedoes, the Maddox again was attacked, this time by a boat that fired another torpedo and 14.5-mm machine guns. Signals Intelligence is a valuable source but it is not perfect. The Maddox fired againthis time to killhitting the second North Vietnamese boat just as it launched two torpedoes. PTF-6 took up station at the mouth of the Ron River, lit up the sky with illumination rounds, and fired at the security post. The Gulf of Tonkin Incident famously gave the Johnson Administration the justification they needed to escalate the Vietnam War. Listen to McNamara's conversation with Johnson. Summary Notes of the 538th Meeting of the NSC, 4 August 1964, 6:15-6:40 p.m.. 13. Meanwhile, by late August 3, the North Vietnamese had learned the condition of their torpedo boats and ordered a salvage tug to recover the damaged craft. The publicity caused by the Tonkin Gulf incident and the subsequent resolution shifted attention away from covert activities and ended high-level debate over the wisdom of secret operations against North Vietnam. Ships radar detected five patrol boats, which turned out to be P-4 torpedo boats and Swatows. Both of these messages reached Washington shortly after 1400 hours EDT. At 0354 on 2 August, the destroyer was just south of Hon Me Island. Two days later, August 4, Maddox returned to the area, supported by the destroyer Turner Joy (DD-951). The only opposition came from a few scattered machine guns on shore, but they did no damage. This was granted, and four F-8 Crusaders were vectored towards Maddox's position. In response, the North Vietnamese boat launched a torpedo. In 2005 documents were released proving that Johnson had fabricated the Gulf of Tonkin incident in order to justify attacking North Vietnam. Two days later, the Gulf of Tonkin resolution sailedthrough both houses of Congress by a vote of 504 to 2. Like all intelligence, it must be analyzed and reported in context. Telegram from the Department of State to the Embassy in Vietnam, 3 August 1964. Robert S. McNamara, In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam (New York: Times Books, 1995), pp. The first such Desoto mission was conducted off the North Vietnamese coast in February 1964, followed by more through the spring. And who is going to believe that? 4. That night, on national television, Johnson addressedthe American people, saying,Renewed hostile actions against United States ships on the high seas in the Gulf of Tonkin have today required me to take action and reply. Not all wars are made for navies, and the U.S. Navy had to insinuate itself into the Vietnam one and carve out a role. While 34A and the Desoto patrols were independent operations, the latter benefited from the increased signals traffic generated by the attacks of the former. All missed, probably because the North Vietnamese had fired too soon. 10. Thus, this is an "official" history, not an official one because "the authors do not necessarily speak for the Department of Navy nor attempt to present a consensus." Not reported at the time, Herrick instructed his gun crews to fire three warning shots if the North Vietnamese came within 10,000 yards of the ship. PTF-1 and PTF-2 were U.S.-built 1950s vintage boats pulled out of mothballs and sent to Vietnam. LBJ knew the Vietnam War was a disaster in the making. This volume deals only with the former. AIDS Brotherhood Symbology The Illuminati Flame . No one was hurt and little damage wasdone in the attack, but intercepted cables suggested a second attack might be imminent. By including the orders and operational guidance provided to the units involved, the study develops the previously missing context of the intelligence and afteraction reports from the Gulf of Tonkin Incident. This was the first of several carefully worded official statements aimed at separating 34A and Desoto and leaving the impression that the United States was not involved in the covert operations.9 While many facts and details have emerged in the past 44 years to persuade most observers that some of the reported events in the Gulf never actually happened, key portions of the critical intelligence information remained classified until recently. The NSA report is revealing. . In Saigon, General William C. Westmoreland, the new commander of Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV), approved of the plan, and SOG began testing 81-mm mortars, 4.5-inch rockets, and recoilless rifles aboard the boats. Formerly an analyst with the Washington-based Asian Studies Center, Mr. Conboy is vice president of Lippo Group, a large financial services institution in Jakarta, Indonesia. Based on the intercepts, Captain John J. Herrick, the on-scene mission commander aboard nearby Turner Joy, decided to terminate Maddoxs Desoto patrol late on August 1, because he believed he had indications the ship was about to be attacked.. Despite Morses doubts, Senate reaction fell in behind the Johnson team, and the question of secret operations was overtaken by the issue of punishing Hanoi for its blatant attack on a U.S. warship in international waters. The secondary mission of the Gulf of Tonkin patrols was to assert American freedom of navigation in international waters. McNamara took advantage of Morses imprecision and concentrated on the senators connection between 34A and Desoto, squirming away from the issue of U.S. involvement in covert missions by claiming that the Maddox "was not informed of, was not aware [of], had no evidence of, and so far as I know today had no knowledge of any possible South Vietnamese actions in connection with the two islands Senator Morse referred to." The Health Conspiracy. including the use of armed force" to assist South Vietnam (the resolution passed the House 416 to 0, and the Senate 88 to 2; in January 1971 President Nixon signed legislation that included its "repeal"). Speculation about administration motives surrounding the Tonkin Gulf incident itself and the subsequent withholding of key information will probably never cease, but the factual intelligence record that drove those decisions is now clear. "The North Vietnamese are reacting defensively to our attacks on their offshore islands. NSA officials handed the key August SIGINT reports over to the JCS investigating team that examined the incident in September 1964. Under cover of darkness, four boats (PTF-2, PTF-3, PTF-5, and PTF-6) left Da Nang, racing north up the coast toward the demilitarized zone (DMZ), then angling farther out to sea as they left the safety of South Vietnamese waters.2 About five hours later they neared their objective: the offshore islands of Hon Me and Hon Nieu. At the White House, administration officials panicked as the public spotlight illuminated their policy in Vietnam and threatened to reveal its covert roots. "13 As far as the State Department was concerned, there was no need to "review" the operations. 313-314. Consequently, while Maddox was in the patrol area, a South Vietnamese commando raid was underway southwest of its position. The Pentagon had already released details of the attack, and administration officials had already promised strong action. Here's why he couldn't walk away. The North Vietnamese did not react, probably because no South Vietnamese commando operations were underway at that time. Although Washington officials did not believe Hanoi would attack the Desoto ships again, tensions ran high on both sides, and this affected their respective analyses of the events to come. In turn, that means a minimum of several hundred persons were party to a plot that has remained watertight in sieve-like Washington for two decades. Heavy machine-gun bullets riddled PTF-6, tearing away part of the port bow and wounding four South Vietnamese crewmen, including Lieutenant Son. But Morse did not know enough about the program to ask pointed questions. Both were perceived as threats, and both were in the same general area at about the same time. Captain John J. Herrick, Commander Destroyer Division 192, embarked in the Maddox, concluded that there would be "possible hostile action." Easily outdistancing the North Vietnamese boat, the commandos arrived back at Da Nang shortly after daybreak.8, North Vietnam immediately and publicly linked the 34A raids and the Desoto patrol, a move that threatened tentative peace feelers from Washington that were only just reaching Hanoi. For the Navys official account stating that both incidents occurred and that 34A and Desoto were "entirely distinct," see Marolda and Fitzgerald, pp. The people who are calling me up, they want to be damned sure I don't pull 'em out and run, and they want to be damned sure that we're firm. 9. CIA Bulletin, 3 August 1964 (see Edward J. Marolda and Oscar P. Fitzgerald, 5. When the enemy boats closed to less than 10,000 yards, the destroyer fired three shots across the bow of the lead vessel. Did Johnson learn something from the first experience? "11 It also outlined the Maddoxs path along the coast on 2 August and the 34A attacks on Vinh Son the following day. Both U.S. ships opened fire on the radar contacts, but reported problems maintaining a lock on the tracking and fire control solution. Gulf of Tonkin - A secret report reveals how easily soldiers, spies and politicians can jump to a conclusion and plunge the country into war. Despite this tremendous uncertainty, by midafternoon, the discussion among Johnson and his advisers was no longer about whether to respondbut how. He has appeared on The History Channel as a featured expert. Fluoride. . U.S. SIGINT support had provided ample warning of North Vietnams intentions and actions, enabling the American ship to defend itself successfully. Because the North Vietnamese had fewer than 50 Swatows, most of them up north near the important industrial port of Haiphong, the movement south of one-third of its fleet was strong evidence that 34A and the Desoto patrols were concerning Hanoi. At each point, the ship would stop and circle, picking up electronic signals before moving on. In the future, conventional operations would receive all the attention. But, interestingly, on Sept. 18, a similar incident occurred in the Gulf of Tonkin. And it didnt take much detective work to figure out where the commandos were stationed. Westmoreland reported that although he was not absolutely certain why the Swatows were shifted south, the move "could be attributable to recent successful [34A] operations. Both orders were repeated, but only the latter was relayed to the torpedo boats before the attack was launched. A brief account of the raids is in MACVSOG 1964 Command History, Annex A, 14 January 1965, pp. Then, everyones doubts were swept away when a SIGINT intercept from one of the North Vietnamese torpedo boats reported the claim that it had shot down two American planes in the battle area. Today, it is believed that this second attack did not occur and was merely reports from jittery radar and sonar operators, but at the time it was taken as evidence that Hanoi was raising the stakes against the United States. Mr. Andrad is a Vietnam War historian with the U.S. Army Center of Military History, where he is writing a book on combat operations from 1969 through 1973. The rounds set some of the buildings ablaze, keeping the defenders off balance. One of the great ironies of the Gulf of Tonkin incident for President Johnson is that it was for him, politically, a great success, he continues.