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. The Gulf of Tonkin act became more controversial as opposition to the war mounted. In 1964 the Navy was attempting to determine the extent of North Vietnams maritime infiltration into the South and to identify the Norths coastal defenses so that Military Assistance Command Vietnam (MACV) could better support South Vietnams commando operations against the North. 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. In addition, the US Navy was instructed to conduct Desoto patrols off North Vietnam. His assessment of the evidence now raised doubts in his mind about what really had happened. 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. The report also identifies what SIGINT couldand could nottell commanders about their enemies and their unreliable friends in the war. 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 tug departed Haiphong at approximately 0100 hours on August 4, while the undamaged torpedo boat, T-146, was ordered to stay with the crippled boats and maintain an alert for enemy forces. At about 0600, the two U.S. destroyers resumed the Desoto patrol. Kennedy Hickman is a historian, museum director, and curator who specializes in military and naval history. Telegram from the Department of State to the Embassy in Vietnam, 3 August 1964. Within days, Hanoi lodged a complaint with the International Control Commission (ICC), which had been established in 1954 to oversee the provisions of the Geneva Accords. Naval Institute. Moises book, however, was based on only the few SIGINT reports he was able to obtain through the Freedom of Information Act. This was granted, and four F-8 Crusaders were vectored towards Maddox's position. Congress supported the resolution with Launching on Aug. 5, Operation Pierce Arrow saw aircraft from USS Ticonderoga and USS Constellation strike oil facilities at Vinh and attack approximately 30 North Vietnamese vessels. The truth about 'False Flags' from Nazi Germany to the Vietnam War 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. It took only a little imagination to see why the North Vietnamese might connect the two. 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. These PTFs were manned by South Vietnamese crews and conducted a series of coastal attacks against targets in North Vietnam as part of Operation 34A. ThoughtCo. The lack of success in SOGs missions during the first few months of 1964 made this proposal quite attractive. Our response, for the present, will be limited and fitting. Hanoi denied the charge that it had fired on the U.S. destroyers on 4 August, calling the charge "an impudent fabrication. PRX is a 501(c)(3) organization recognized by the IRS: #263347402. Subsequent research and declassified documents have essentially shown that the second attack did not happen. Until the ICC investigation blew over a week later, the commandos camped on a small pier. Office of the Historian "11 The Health Conspiracy. Captain Herrick had been ordered to be clear of the patrol area by nightfall, so he turned due east at approximately 1600. The Gulf of Tonkin Incident took place on Aug. 2 and 4, 1964, and helped lead to greater American involvement in the Vietnam War. For the Navys official account stating that both incidents occurred and that 34A and Desoto were "entirely distinct," see Marolda and Fitzgerald, pp. Americas Vietnam War had begun in earnest. The fig leaf of plausible denial served McNamara in this case, but it was scant cover. AND THERE is the fact of Vietnam's position today. It is difficult to imagine that the North Vietnamese could come to any other conclusion than that the 34A and Desoto missions were all part of the same operation. 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. Such arguments are rooted in the information and documents released by Daniel Ellsberg and others, and were reinforced over the decades by anniversary interviews with some of the participants, including ships crewmen and officers. In 2005 documents were released proving that Johnson had fabricated the Gulf of Tonkin incident in order to justify attacking North Vietnam. President Johnson ordered a halt to all 34A operations "to avoid sending confusing signals associated with recent events in the Gulf of Tonkin." The three torpedo boats continued through the American barrage and launched their torpedoes at 1516. Background intelligence on North Vietnam, its radar networks and command-and-control systems was limited. On July 31, 1964, the destroyer USS Maddox commenced a Desoto patrol off North Vietnam. Holding their vector despite the gunfire, the boats rushed in, pouring 20-mm and 40-mm fire and 57-mm recoilless rifle rounds into their target. Gulf of Tonkin Resolution 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. 17. The U.S. ships were supposed to remain well outside North Vietnams claimed five nautical mile territorial limit. Arguing that he did not seek a "wider war," Johnson stated the importance of showing that the United States would "continue to protect its national interests." . 5. The entirety of the original intercepts, however, were not examined and reanalyzed until after the war. Just before midnight, the four boats cut their engines. CIA Director John McCone was convinced that Hanoi was reacting to the raids when it attacked the Maddox. The Taliban silenced him. He readthe chiefs a cable from the captain of the Maddox. 3. By then, early news accounts had already solidified some opinions, and the Johnson Administration had decided to launch retaliatory strikes. NSA officials handed the key August SIGINT reports over to the JCS investigating team that examined the incident in September 1964. 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. The Pentagon had already released details of the attack, and administration officials had already promised strong action. "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. LBJ knew the Vietnam War was a disaster in the making. Quoted in Steve Edwards, "Stalking the Enemys Coast," U.S. When the contacts appeared to turn away at 6,000 yards, Maddoxs crew interpreted the move as a maneuver to mark a torpedo launch. The subsequent North Vietnamese reporting on the enemy matched the location, course and speed of Maddox. Historians still disagree over whether Johnson deliberately misled Congress and the American people about the Tonkin Gulf incident or simply capitalized on an opportunity that came his way. 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. . As Communist communications activity was rising rapidly, American senior leaders were increasing support to the South Vietnamese government. Within the year, U.S. bombers would strike North Vietnam, and U.S. ground units would land on South Vietnamese soil. Most uncertainty has long centered on the alleged second attack of August 4. Telegram from Embassy in Vietnam to Department of State, 7 August 1964, FRUS 1964, vol. Maddox detected the torpedo boats on radar at a range of almost 20,000 yards and turned away at its top speed of 32 knots. Efforts to communicate with the torpedo boats failed, probably because of language and communications equipment incompatibility. 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. The Gulf of Tonkin incident: the false flag operation that started the Vietnam war. Something Isnt Working Refresh the page to try again. Something Isnt Working As far as the headlines were concerned, that was it, but the covert campaign continued unabated. 136-137. 4. Returning fire, Maddox scored hits on the P-4s while being struck by a single 14.5-millimeter machine gun bullet. The errors made in the initial analysis were due to a combination of inexperience, limited knowledge of North Vietnams operations and an operational imperative to ensure that the U.S. Navy ships would not be caught by surprise. Those early mistakes led U.S. destroyers to open fire on spurious radar contacts, misinterpret their own propeller noises as incoming torpedoes, and ultimately report an attack that never occurred. The U.S. in-theater SIGINT assets were limited, as was the number of Vietnamese linguists. Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/vietnam-war-gulf-of-tonkin-incident-2361345. 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 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. Then they boarded their boats and headed back to Da Nang.12 The only solution was to get rid of the evidence. Send the First Troops to Vietnam? Vietnam War: Gulf of Tonkin Incident. What really happened in the Gulf of Tonkin in 1964? After suggesting a "complete evaluation" of the affair before taking further action, he radioed requesting a "thorough reconnaissance in daylight by aircraft." Few areas of the world have been as hotly contested as the India-Pakistan border. 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. 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. 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. WebJoe Rogan interview on the 911 Conspiracy Theory. 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. . 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"). 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. President Johnson himself apparently questioned the sailorsu0019 report of an attack. 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. 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." There remains some disagreement among historians about the second (Aug. 4) incident, which involved the Maddox and another destroyer, the USS Turner Joy. AIDS Brotherhood Symbology The Illuminati Flame . WebThe Gulf of Tonkin and the Vietnam War. 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 In response, the North Vietnamese built up their naval presence around the offshore islands. Nonetheless, the North Vietnamese boats continued to close in at the rate of 400 yards per minute. The first reports of the encounter from the destroyers reached the White House at 1000 EDT. 12. The USS Maddox in the Gulf of Tonkin is shown in 1963. 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. More important, they did not know the North Vietnamese had begun to react more aggressively to the commando raids. And who is going to believe that? The Maddox planned to sail to 16 points along the North Vietnam coast, ranging from the DMZ north to the Chinese border. 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. On 3 August, the CIA confirmed that "Hanois naval units have displayed increasing sensitivity to U.S. and South Vietnamese naval activity in the Gulf of Tonkin during the past several months. 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. the Gulf of Tonkin In July 1964, Operational Plan 34A was taking off, but during the first six months of this highly classified program of covert attacks against North Vietnam, one after the other, missions failed, often spelling doom for the commando teams inserted into the North by boat and parachute. A Senate investigation revealed that the Maddox had been on an intelligence Whether they produced battlefield images of the dead or daguerreotype portraits of common soldiers, []. ." ThoughtCo, Feb. 16, 2021, thoughtco.com/vietnam-war-gulf-of-tonkin-incident-2361345. A National Security Agency report released in 2007 reveals unequivocally that the alleged Aug. 4, 1964, attack by North Vietnam on U.S. destroyers never actually happened. The Gulf of Tonkin incident - Vietnam War Neither Herricks doubts nor his reconnaissance request was well received, however. PTF-1 and PTF-2 were U.S.-built 1950s vintage boats pulled out of mothballs and sent to Vietnam. Although McNamara did not know it at the time, part of his statement was not true; Captain Herrick, the Desoto patrol commander, did know about the 34A raids, something that his ships logs later made clear. Incidentally, the first volume, Setting the Stage: To 1959, contains one of the best brief summaries I've read of Vietnam history from the end of World War II through the 1954 Geneva Conference. 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. A long-standing program, the Desoto patrols consisted of American warships cruising in international waters to conduct electronic surveillance operations. He also requested air support. A lesser-known fact is that Jim Morrisons father, Captain George Stephen Morrison, commanded the Carrier Division during the Gulf of Tonkin Incident. One element of American assistance to South Vietnam included covert support for South Vietnamese commando raids against North Vietnams coastal transportation facilities and networks. Tonkin Gulf Resolution (1964) | National Archives Despite this tremendous uncertainty, by midafternoon, the discussion among Johnson and his advisers was no longer about whether to respondbut how. Case Closed: The Gulf of Tonkin Incident - HistoryNet 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. But only a few minutes later, McNamara was back on the line with news of a second incident in the Gulf of Tonkin. Any escalation in the bombing of the North risked provoking the Russians or, more likely, the Chinese. Interview, authors with James Hawes, 31 March 1996. 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.
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gulf of tonkin conspiracy