gulf of tonkin conspiracy

Two hours later, Captain Herrick reported the sinking of two enemy patrol boats. During a meeting at the White House on the evening of 4 August, President Johnson asked McCone, "Do they want a war by attacking our ships in the middle of the Gulf of Tonkin? 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. By late July 1964, SOG had four Nasty-class patrol boats, designated PTF-3, PTF-4, PTF-5, PTF-6 (PTFfast patrol boat). 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 Maddox was attacked at 1600. The fig leaf of plausible denial served McNamara in this case, but it was scant cover. "1 Most of these would be shore bombardment. The secondary mission of the Gulf of Tonkin patrols was to assert American freedom of navigation in international waters. JCS, "34A Chronology of Events," (see Marolda and Fitzgerald, p. 424); Porter. 1, p. 646. 136-137. Reinforced by Turner Joy, Herrick returned to the area on Aug. 4. 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. The entirety of the original intercepts, however, were not examined and reanalyzed until after the war. https://www.thoughtco.com/vietnam-war-gulf-of-tonkin-incident-2361345 (accessed March 4, 2023). 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. He reported those doubts in his after action report transmitted shortly after midnight his time on August 5, which was 1300 hours August 4 in Washington. It reveals what commanders actually knew, what SIGINT analysts believed and the challenges the SIGINT community and its personnel faced in trying to understand and anticipate the aggressive actions of an imaginative, deeply committed and elusive enemy. William Conrad Gibbons, The U.S. Government and the Vietnam War, Part II, 1961-1964, pp. WebLyndon Johnson signed the Tonkin Gulf resolution on August 10, 1964. To subscribe to Vietnam Magazine, click here! 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. Gulf of Tonkin & the Vietnam War. 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. Given the maritime nature of the commando raids, which were launched from Da Nang, the bulk of the intelligence collecting fell to the Navy. Subscribe now and never hit a limit. Neither Herricks doubts nor his reconnaissance request was well received, however. NSA officials handed the key August SIGINT reports over to the JCS investigating team that examined the incident in September 1964. 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. 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. Both of these messages reached Washington shortly after 1400 hours EDT. Hanoi denied the charge that it had fired on the U.S. destroyers on 4 August, calling the charge "an impudent fabrication. Over the next 12 hours, as the president's team scrambledto understand what hadhappened and to organize a response, the facts remained elusive. Joseph C. Goulden, Truth Is the First Casualty: The Gulf of Tonkin AffairIllusion and Reality (Chicago: Rand McNally & Co., 1969), p. 80. As Communist communications activity was rising rapidly, American senior leaders were increasing support to the South Vietnamese government. 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. And it didnt take much detective work to figure out where the commandos were stationed. Within the year, U.S. bombers would strike North Vietnam, and U.S. ground units would land on South Vietnamese soil. A distinction is made in these pages between the Aug. 2 "naval engagement" and the somewhat more ambiguous Aug. 4 "naval action," although Marolda and Fitzgerald make it clear they accept that the Aug. 4 action left one and possibly two North Vietnamese torpedo-firing boats sunk or dead in the water. The United States Military had three SIGINT stations in the Philippines, one for each of the services, but their combined coverage was less than half of all potential North Vietnamese communications. Unlike much else that followed, this incident is undisputed, although no one from the US government ever admitted publicly that the attack was likely provoked by its covert actions. McNamara and the JCS believed that this intercept decisively provided the smoking gun of the second attack, and so the president reported to the American people and Congress. He has written numerous articles on Vietnam War-era special operations and is the author of two books on the war: 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. Despite this tremendous uncertainty, by midafternoon, the discussion among Johnson and his advisers was no longer about whether to respondbut how. It set a very terrible precedent, which is that he would go on to escalate further, not with any striking confidence that his objectives will be achieved, but only with the assurance that, unless he embarked on these massive military escalations, America would fail in Vietnam and he might well be labeled the only president in American history to lose a war.. They issued a recall order from Haiphong to the port commander and communications relay boat two hours after the torpedo boat squadron command issued its attack order. Nigerians await election results in competitive race. 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. 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. "14, Nasty fast patrol boats demonstrated their versatility in the Pacific Ocean before going to Vietnam.U.S. 17. After several early failures, it was transferred to the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam Studies and Observations Group in 1964, at which time its focus shifted to maritime operations. 4. HistoryNet.com is brought to you by HistoryNet LLC, the worlds largest publisher of history magazines. He spoke out against banning girls education. Quoted in Steve Edwards, "Stalking the Enemys Coast," U.S. The series of mistakes that led to the August 4 misreporting began on August 3 when the Phu Bai station interpreted Haiphongs efforts to determine the status of its forces as an order to assemble for further offensive operations. 12. U.S. soldiers recall Cam Ranh as a sprawling logistic center for materiel bolstering the war effort, but in the summer of 1964 it was only a junk force training base near a village of farmers and fishermen. 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"). When the boats reached that point, Maddox fired three warning shots, but the torpedo boats continued inbound at high speed. 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. In the summer of 1964, President Lyndon Baines Johnson needed a pretext to commit the American people to the already expanding covert war in South East Asia. On July 31, 1964, the destroyer USS Maddox commenced a Desoto patrol off North Vietnam. In 2005 documents were released proving that Johnson had fabricated the Gulf of Tonkin incident in order to justify attacking North Vietnam. 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. 8. 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 combating unconventional opponents and the potential consequences of relying too heavily on a single source of intelligence. Seventh Fleet reduced it to 12 nautical miles. The crews quietly made last-minute plans, then split up. 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. Taking evasive action, they fired on numerous radar targets. 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." To have a Tonkin Gulf conspiracy means that the several hundred National Security Agency and naval communications cited have been doctored. A North Vietnamese patrol boat also trailed the American ships, reporting on their movements to Haiphong. U.S. SIGINT support had provided ample warning of North Vietnams intentions and actions, enabling the American ship to defend itself successfully. 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." WebOn August 7, 1964, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, authorizing President Johnson to take any measures he believed were necessary to retaliate and to promote the maintenance of international peace and security in southeast Asia. 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. At each point, the ship would stop and circle, picking up electronic signals before moving on. But we sure ought to always leave the impression that if you shoot at us, you're going to get hit, Johnson said. 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. 3. Telegram from Embassy in Vietnam to Department of State, 7 August 1964. Ticonderoga ordered four A-1H Skyraiders into the air to support the ships. Or purchase a subscription for unlimited access to real news you can count on. McNamara insisted that the evidence clearly indicated there was an attack on August 4, and he continued to maintain so in his book In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons From Vietnam. Both boats opened fire, scoring hits on the tower, then moved on to other buildings nearby. The captain of Maddox, Commander Herbert L. Ogier Jr., ordered his ship to battle stations shortly after 1500 hours. This was the only time covert operations against the North came close to being discussed in public. In the first few days of August 1964, a series of events off the coast of North Vietnam and decisions made in Washington, D.C., set the United States on a course that would largely define the next decade and weigh heavily on American foreign policy to this day. This was granted, and four F-8 Crusaders were vectored towards Maddox's position. The original radar contacts dropped off the scope at 2134, but the crews of Maddox and Turner Joy believed they detected two high-speed contacts closing on their position at 44 knots.

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