gulf of tonkin conspiracy gulf of tonkin conspiracy

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 first reports of the encounter from the destroyers reached the White House at 1000 EDT. Moments later, one of the crewmen spotted a North Vietnamese Swatow patrol boat bearing down on them. The secondary mission of the Gulf of Tonkin patrols was to assert American freedom of navigation in international waters. At the White House, administration officials panicked as the public spotlight illuminated their policy in Vietnam and threatened to reveal its covert roots. 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. With this information, back in Washington President Johnson and his advisers considered their options. By 1400 hours EDT, the president had approved retaliatory strikes against North Vietnamese naval bases for the next morning, August 5, at 0600 local time, which was 1900 EDT on August 4 in Washington. On July 31, 1964, the destroyer USS Maddox commenced a Desoto patrol off North Vietnam. 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. Few areas of the world have been as hotly contested as the India-Pakistan border. North Vietnams immediate concern was to determine the exact position and status of its torpedo boats and other forces. The North Vietnamese coastal radars also tracked and reported the positions of U.S. aircraft operating east of the ships, probably the combat air patrol the Seventh Fleet had ordered in support. History is who we are and why we are the way we are.. In fact, the United States had been waging a small, secret war against North Vietnam since 1961. The conspiracy theory has been dying for several years, and this work will probably be a stake through its heart. Forty-eight hours earlier, on Aug. 2, two US destroyers on patrol in the Gulf of Tonkin the Maddox and the Turner Joy were attacked by North Vietnamese boats. CIA Director John McCone was convinced that Hanoi was reacting to the raids when it attacked the Maddox. The North Vietnamese believed that, although they had lost one boat, they had deterred an attack on their coast. 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. This is not the place to establish the final truth on the Gulf of Tonkin matter and certainly I am not the person to render the ultimate judgment. The Maddox planned to sail to 16 points along the North Vietnam coast, ranging from the DMZ north to the Chinese border. The Americans claimed they sank two torpedo boats and damaged a third, while the torpedo boats claimed to have shot down two American aircraft. WebJoe Rogan interview on the 911 Conspiracy Theory. We have no intention of yielding to pressure. . This article is based on the PRI podcast, LBJ's War, hosted by David Brown. Historians still argue about what exactly happened in the Gulf of Tonkin in August of 1964. The SIGINT intercepts also detected that the North Vietnamese coastal radar stations were tracking Maddox and reporting its movements to the outbound torpedo boats. Thats what all the country wants, because Goldwater's raising so much hell about how he's gonna blow 'em off the moon, and they say that we oughtn't to do anything that the national interest doesn't require. U.S. and South Vietnamese warships intruded into the territorial waters of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and simultaneously shelled: Hon Nieu Island, 4 kilometers off the coast of Thanh Hoa Province [and] Hon Me Island, 12 kilometers off the coast of Thanh Hoa Province." THIS SECOND volume of the U.S. Navy's multivolume history of the Vietnam War is bound in the same familiar rich blue buckram that has styled official Navy histories since the Civil War and hence resembles its predecessors. The Gulf of Tonkin Incident and many more recent experiences only reinforce the need for intelligence analysts and decision makers to avoid relying exclusively on any single intelligence sourceeven SIGINTparticularly if other intelligence sources are available and the resulting decisions might cost lives. Covert maritime operations were in full swing, and some of the missions succeeded in blowing up small installations along the coast, leading General Westmoreland to conclude that any close connection between 34A and Desoto would destroy the thin veneer of deniability surrounding the operations. A joint resolution of Congress dated August 7, 1964, gave the president authority to increase U.S. involvement in the war between North and South Vietnam and served as the legal basis for escalations in the Johnson and Nixon administrations that likely dwarfed what most Americans could have imagined in August 1964. The North Vietnamese didnt buy the distinction; they attacked the USS Maddox. Typically, the missions were carried out by a destroyer specially outfitted with sensitive eavesdropping equipment. President Johnson himself apparently questioned the sailorsu0019 report of an attack. McNamara did not mention the 34A raids.15. For the maritime part of the covert operation, Nasty-class fast patrol boats were purchased quietly from Norway to lend the illusion that the United States was not involved in the operations. Sign up to get updates about new releases and event invitations. 302-303. The stakes were high because Hanoi had beefed up its southern coastal defenses by adding four new Swatow gunboats at Quang Khe, a naval base 75 miles north of the DMZ, and ten more just to the south at Dong Hoi. Carl Schuster is a retired U.S. Navy intelligence officer with 10 years of experience as a surface line officer. For some reason, however, the second Desoto Mission, to be conducted by Maddox, was not canceled, even though it was scheduled to start at the same time that a late July commando mission was being launched. 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. It also outlined the Maddoxs path along the coast on 2 August and the 34A attacks on Vinh Son the following day. JCS, "34A Chronology of Events," (see Marolda and Fitzgerald, p. 424); Porter. Early Military Career The Gulf of Tonkin act became more controversial as opposition to the war mounted. The lack of success in SOGs missions during the first few months of 1964 made this proposal quite attractive. This time, however, President Johnson reacted much more skeptically and ultimately decided to take no retaliatory action. Naval Institute Proceedings (February 1992), p. 59. 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. (2021, February 16). Within the year, U.S. bombers would strike North Vietnam, and U.S. ground units would land on South Vietnamese soil. Defense Secretary McNamara called the president about the second Phu Bai critic report at approximately 0940 that morning. But Morse did not know enough about the program to ask pointed questions. After the incident, Herrick was unsure that his ships had been attacked, reporting at 1:27 a.m. Washington time that "Freak weather effects on radar and overeager sonarmen may have accounted for many reports. The entirety of the original intercepts, however, were not examined and reanalyzed until after the war. "11 On Tuesday morning, Aug. 4, 1964, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara called President Lyndon Johnson with a report about a possible confrontation brewing in southeast Asia. . 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. After a suspected torpedo attack by North Vietnamese patrol torpedo boats led to plans for US retaliation,the captain of the Maddox sent a cable to the Joint Chiefs that advised "complete evaluation before any further action"due to grave doubts over whether an attackhad reallyoccurred. Two days later, the Gulf of Tonkin resolution sailedthrough both houses of Congress by a vote of 504 to 2. All missed, probably because the North Vietnamese had fired too soon. 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. However, unlike the good old days when -- as the wizened cynical Frenchmen put it, history was a lie agreed-on -- no longer can governments after the battle simply set down how it went and that is that. 3. The disclaimer is required, if for no other reason than because of Chapter 15, "The American Response to the Gulf of Tonkin Attacks," about which more later. In July, General Westmoreland asked that Desoto patrols be expanded to cover 34A missions from Vinh Son north to the islands of Hon Me, Hon Nieu, and Hon Mat, all of which housed North Vietnamese radar installations or other coastwatching equipment. That night and morning, while cruising in heavy weather, the ships received radar, radio, and sonar reports that signaled another North Vietnamese attack. Over the next 12 hours, as the president's team scrambledto understand what hadhappened and to organize a response, the facts remained elusive. Senator Wayne Morse (D-OR) challenged the account, and argued that despite evidence that 34A missions and Desoto patrols were not operating in tandem, Hanoi could only have concluded that they were. Unfortunately, much of the media reporting combined or confused the events of August 2 and 4 into a single incident. Here's why he couldn't walk away. AND THERE is the fact of Vietnam's position today. A long-standing program, the Desoto patrols consisted of American warships cruising in international waters to conduct electronic surveillance operations. It can be deceived and it is all too often incomplete. Both sides, however, spent August 3 reviewing their contingency plans and analyzing lessons learned from the incident. 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." The Navys seaborne SIGINT effort in support of OPLAN-34, called Desoto Missions, played a key role in the events that ultimately led to the Gulf of Tonkin incident. 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. In the meantime, aboard Turner Joy, Captain Herrick ordered an immediate review of the nights actions. Vaccines. There was no way to get a commando team ashore to plant demolition charges; they would have do what damage they could with the boats guns.3 Related:LBJ knew the Vietnam War was a disaster in the making. When the contacts appeared to turn away at 6,000 yards, Maddoxs crew interpreted the move as a maneuver to mark a torpedo launch. On 30 July, Westmoreland revised the 34A maritime operations schedule for August, increasing the number of raids by "283% over the July program and 566% over June. 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. 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 first Desoto Mission was conducted by USS Craig (DD-885) in March 1964. Both of these messages reached Washington shortly after 1400 hours EDT. Two hours later, Captain Herrick reported the sinking of two enemy patrol boats. After the Tonkin Gulf incident, the State Department cabled Seaborn, instructing him to tell the North Vietnamese that "neither the Maddox or any other destroyer was in any way associated with any attack on the DRV [Democratic Republic of Vietnam, or North Vietnam] islands." The Tonkin Gulf Incident in the past two decades has been treated by at least three full-scale studies, dealt with at length by Congressional committees and extensively referenced in general histories, presidential memoirs and textbooks on the U.S. legislative function. Interview, authors with James Hawes, 31 March 1996. 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. This volume deals only with the former. WebLyndon Johnson signed the Tonkin Gulf resolution on August 10, 1964. Subscribe to receive our weekly newsletter with top stories from master historians. Air action is now in execution against gunboats and certain supporting facilities in North Vietnam which have been used in these hostile operations., The next day, the president addressed Congress, seeking the power to to take all necessary measures in support of freedom and in defense of peace in Southeast Asia.. . 9. Shortly thereafter, the Phu Bai station intercepted the signal indicating the North Vietnamese intended to conduct a torpedo attack against the enemy. Phu Bai issued a Critic Reportshort for critical message, meaning one that had priority over all other traffic in the communications system to ensure immediate deliveryto all commands, including Maddox. Reinforced by Turner Joy, Herrick returned to the area on Aug. 4. And who is going to believe that? Send the First Troops to Vietnam? Senate investigations in 1968 and 1975 did little to clarify the events or the evidence, lending further credence to the various conspiracy theories. This was almost certainly a reaction to the recent 34A raids. At the time, the Navy relied heavily on Naval Support Group Activity (NSGA), San Miguel, Philippines, for SIGINT support, augmented by seaborne SIGINT elements called Direct Support Units (DSUs). This was reinforced by statements by retired Vietnamese Defense Minister Vo Nguyen Giap who admitted to the Aug. 2 attack but denied ordering another two days later. 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." These types of patrols had previously been conducted off the coasts of the Soviet Union, China, and North Korea. The departure of the North Vietnamese salvage tug en route to the damaged craft was reported to the American ships as a submarine chaser, not a serious threat but certainly more so than an unarmed seagoing tug. Just before midnight, the four boats cut their engines. Cookies collect information about your preferences and your devices and are used to make the site work as you expect it to, to understand how you interact with the site, and to show advertisements that are targeted to your interests. 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 battle was over in 22 minutes. Hanoi pointed out what Washington denied: "On July 30, 1964 . Heavy machine-gun bullets riddled PTF-6, tearing away part of the port bow and wounding four South Vietnamese crewmen, including Lieutenant Son. Media Manipulation. Just after midnight on 31 July, PTF-2 and PTF-5, commanded by Lieutenant Huyet, arrived undetected at a position 800 yards northeast of the island. PTF-3 and PTF-6 broke off and streaked south for safety; they were back in port before 1200. For additional reading, see the recently declassified NSA study by Robert J. Hanyok, Spartans in the Darkness: American SIGINT and the Indochina War, 1945-1975; and Tonkin Gulf and The Escalation of the Vietnam War, by Edward Moise. Neither the United States nor State of Vietnam signed anything at the 1954 Geneva Conference. In truth, two of the torpedo boats were damaged, of which one could not make it back to port, while a single American aircraft sustained some wing damage. The attack is a signal to us that the North Vietnamese have the will and determination to continue the war." Gulf of Tonkin incident, 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 When the enemy boats closed to less than 10,000 yards, the destroyer fired three shots across the bow of the lead vessel. They arrived on station overhead by 2100 hours. Carl Otis Schuster, U.S. Navy (ret.) It took only a little imagination to see why the North Vietnamese might connect the two. Based on this, they launched the political process that led to the wars escalation. Robert S. McNamara, In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam (New York: Times Books, 1995), pp. In 1964 an Ohio woman took up the challenge that had led to Amelia Earharts disappearance. Mr. Then North Vietnams naval authorities either became confused or were seized by indecision. The most comprehensive and authoritative history site on the Internet. This was granted, and four F-8 Crusaders were vectored towards Maddox's position. The only solution was to get rid of the evidence. 12. For the maritime war specialist, it is of course invaluable. 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. (Hanoi remains muzzy on the second incident, Aug. 4, presumably since clearly it took place in international waters, the Vietnamese claim of "defensive reaction" is a bit wobbly.). Cruising twenty-eight miles offshore in international waters, Maddox was approached by the North Vietnamese. 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. Through the evening of Aug. 4, while no new information arrivedto clarify the eventin the Gulf, the White House narrative was firmly in place. The report also identifies what SIGINT couldand could nottell commanders about their enemies and their unreliable friends in the war. Both South Vietnamese and U.S. maritime operators in Da Nang assumed that their raids were the cause of the mounting international crisis, and they never for a moment doubted that the North Vietnamese believed that the raids and the Desoto patrols were one and the same. . Four boats, PTF-1, PTF-2 (the American-made patrol boats), PTF-5, and PTF-6 (Nasty boats), were on their way to bombard a North Vietnamese radar installation at Vinh Son and a security post on the banks of the nearby Ron River, both about 90 miles north of the DMZ. In the days leading up to the first incident of August 2nd, those secret operations had intensified.. Non-subscribers can read five free Naval History articles per month. By then, the two American ships were approximately 80 nautical miles from the nearest North Vietnamese coastline and steaming southeast at 20 knots. The only opposition came from a few scattered machine guns on shore, but they did no damage. 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. Hickman, Kennedy. Illumination rounds shot skyward, catching the patrol boats in their harsh glare. Moving in closer, the crew could see their targeta communications towersilhouetted in the moonlight. PTF-2 had mechanical troubles and had to turn back, but the other boats made it to their rendezvous point off the coast from Vinh Son.