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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. The Gulf of Tonkin incident, like others in our nation's history, has become the center of considerable controversy and debate. Thousands of passengers are stranded after Colombias Viva Air grounds flights, The last of Mexicos artisanal salt-makers preserve a 2,000-year-old tradition, I cannot give up: Cambodian rapper says he will sing about injustice despite threats from govt, Ukrainian rock star reflects on a year of war in his country, Ukrainian refugees in Poland will now be charged to stay in state-funded housing, This Colombian town is dimming its lights to attract more tourists to view the night sky, Kneel and apologize!: 76 years after island-wide massacre, Taiwan continues to commemorate and debate the tragedy. 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. 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 WebKnown today as the Gulf of Tonkin Incident, this event spawned the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution of 7 August 1964, ultimately leading to open war between North Vietnam and Neither Herricks doubts nor his reconnaissance request was well received, however. 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. Over the next few years, Johnson used the resolution to rapidly escalate American involvement in the Vietnam War. Sign up to get updates about new releases and event invitations. Keep supporting great journalism by turning off your ad blocker. 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. 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. WebNational Security Agency/Central Security Service > Home American SIGINT analysts assessed the North Vietnamese reporting as probable preparations for further military operations against the Desoto patrol. Both were perceived as threats, and both were in the same general area at about the same time. Background intelligence on North Vietnam, its radar networks and command-and-control systems was limited. People are human and make mistakes, particularly in the pressure of a crisis or physical threat to those they support. 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." Captain John J. Herrick, Commander Destroyer Division 192, embarked in the Maddox, concluded that there would be "possible hostile action." Forty-five minutes after beginning their attack, the commandos withdrew. This along with flawed signals intelligence from the National Security Agency led Johnson to order retaliatory airstrikes against North Vietnam. 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. Early Military Career It also outlined the Maddoxs path along the coast on 2 August and the 34A attacks on Vinh Son the following day. 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 In late 2007, that information was finally made public when an official National Security Agency (NSA) history of signals intelligence (SIGINT) in Vietnam, written in 2002, was released in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. Gulf of Tonkin - A secret report reveals how easily soldiers, spies and politicians can jump to a conclusion and plunge the country into war. Gulf of Tonkin incident Facts Ticonderoga ordered four A-1H Skyraiders into the air to support the ships. "Vietnam War: Gulf of Tonkin Incident." The battle was over in 22 minutes. Typically, the missions were carried out by a destroyer specially outfitted with sensitive eavesdropping equipment. Quoted in Steve Edwards, "Stalking the Enemys Coast," U.S. 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. 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. Tonkin Gulf Resolution (1964) | National Archives PTF-1 and PTF-5 raced toward shore. no isolated event. The intelligence community, including its SIGINT component, responded with a regional buildup to support the increase in U.S. operational forces. To have a Tonkin Gulf conspiracy means that the several hundred National Security Agency and naval communications cited have been doctored. 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. A long-standing program, the Desoto patrols consisted of American warships cruising in international waters to conduct electronic surveillance operations. Carl Schuster is a retired U.S. Navy intelligence officer with 10 years of experience as a surface line officer. Suns and Stars 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. 2, pp. Vietnam is a very watery country. . Soon came a second more sinister interpretation -- that the incident was a conspiracy not only provoked by the Johnson administration but one in fact "scenarioed." Naval Institute. "I think we are kidding the world if you try to give the impression that when the South Vietnamese naval boats bombarded two islands a short distance off the coast of North Vietnam we were not implicated," he scornfully told McNamara during the hearings.16 The Secret Side of the Tonkin Gulf Incident | Naval History McNamara did not mention the 34A raids.15. With that report, after nearly four decades, the NSA officially reversed its verdict on the events of August 4, 1964, that had led that night to President Lyndon Johnsons televised message to the nation: The initial attack on the destroyer Maddox, on August 2, was repeated today by a number of hostile vessels attacking two U.S. destroyers with torpedoes. 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. Two days later, the Gulf of Tonkin resolution sailedthrough both houses of Congress by a vote of 504 to 2. A brief account of the raids is in MACVSOG 1964 Command History, Annex A, 14 January 1965, pp. AIDS Brotherhood Symbology The Illuminati Flame . 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. 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." Badly damaged, the boat limped home. 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. 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. Whether they produced battlefield images of the dead or daguerreotype portraits of common soldiers, []. On the afternoon of Aug. 2, three Soviet-built P-4 motor torpedo boats were dispatched to attack the destroyer. On the night of 4 August, both ships reported renewed attacks by North Vietnamese patrol boats. 313-314. The House passed the resolution unanimously.17 The Maddox planned to sail to 16 points along the North Vietnam coast, ranging from the DMZ north to the Chinese border. In any event, the attack took place in broad daylight under conditions of clear visibility. 14. Along with other American warships, Maddox was steaming in international waters some 28 nautical miles off North Vietnams coast, gathering information on that countrys coastal radars. 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. 5. As far as the headlines were concerned, that was it, but the covert campaign continued unabated. 13. It can be deceived and it is all too often incomplete. 8. Herrick requested aerial reconnaissance for the next morning to search for the wreckage of the torpedo boats he thought he had sunk. Under the operational control of Captain John J. Herrick, it steamed through the Gulf of Tonkin collecting intelligence. 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. 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." The U.S. in-theater SIGINT assets were limited, as was the number of Vietnamese linguists. Despite McNamaras nimble answers, North Vietnams insistence that there was a connection between 34A and the Desoto patrols was only natural. As the enemy boat passed astern, it was raked by gunfire from the Maddox that killed the boats commander. 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. Consequently, while Maddox was in the patrol area, a South Vietnamese commando raid was underway southwest of its position. Two nearly identical episodes six weeks apart; two nearly opposite responses. 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. On July 31, 1964, the destroyer USS Maddox commenced a Desoto patrol off North Vietnam. Sign up for The Top of the World, delivered to your inbox every weekday morning. 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? While 34A and the Desoto patrols were independent operations, the latter benefited from the increased signals traffic generated by the attacks of the former. Reinforced by Turner Joy, Herrick returned to the area on Aug. 4. There was more or less general acceptance of the Navy's initial account -- there was an unprovoked attack on Aug. 2 by three North Vietnamese patrol boats on an American warship, the destroyer USS Maddox in international waters. Each boat carried a 16-man crew and a 57-mm recoilless rifle, plus machine guns. NSA officials handed the key August SIGINT reports over to the JCS investigating team that examined the incident in September 1964. . 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 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. 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. He readthe chiefs a cable from the captain of the Maddox. And who is going to believe that? Senator Morse was one of the dissenters. Hickman, Kennedy. 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. 1. Listen to McNamara's conversation with Johnson. To have a Tonkin Gulf conspiracy means that the several hundred National Security Agency and naval communications cited have been doctored. 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. LBJ's War is a new, limited-edition podcast that unearths previously unheard audio that helps us better understand the course of the Vietnam War and how Lyndon Johnson found himself where he did. WebThe Gulf of Tonkin While Kennedy had at least the comforting illusion of progress in Vietnam (manufactured by Harkins and Diem), Johnson faced a starker picture of confusion, disunity, and muddle in Saigon and of a rapidly growing Viet Cong in the countryside. Hickman, Kennedy. Both countries were backing North Vietnam, but so far they were staying out of the conflict and the White House wanted to keep it that way. He has appeared on The History Channel as a featured expert. 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. The Gulf of Tonkin incident was a brief confrontation between United States and North Vietnamese warships, off the coast of northern Vietnam in August 1964. 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. 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. However, planes from the aircraft carrier Ticonderoga (CVA-14) crippled one of the boats and damaged the other two. It authorized the president to "prevent further aggression . 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. 1, Vietnam 1964 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1992), p. 611. Then they boarded their boats and headed back to Da Nang.12 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. Telegram from the Department of State to the Embassy in Vietnam, 3 August 1964, FRUS, Vietnam, 1964, p. 603. Gulf of Tonkin Resolution It is not NSA's intention to prove or 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). Nonetheless, the North Vietnamese boats continued to close in at the rate of 400 yards per minute. This mission coincided with several 34A attacks, including an Aug. 1 raid on Hon Me and Hon Ngu Islands. :: Douglas Pike, director of the Indochina Studies Program at the University of California-Berkeley, is the author of the forthcoming "Vietnam and the U.S.S.R.: Anatomy of an Alliance.". Even in the darkness, the commandos could see their targeta water tower surrounded by a few military buildings. 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. Ogier then opened fire at 1508 hours, when the boats were only six minutes from torpedo range. We still seek no wider war.. 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. The after-action reports from the participants in the Gulf arrived in Washington several hours after the report of the second incident. The Vietnam War buff will find it fascinating for its wealth of detail carefully set down in understated prose (a welcome relief, I might add, from the hysterical tone that marks much Vietnam War writing). 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. In the end the Navy agreed, and in concert with MACV, took steps to ensure that "34A operations will be adjusted to prevent interference" with Desoto patrols.7 This did not mean that MACV did not welcome the information brought back by the Desoto patrols, only that the two missions would not actively support one another. As it turns out, Adm. Sharp failed to read to the Joint Chiefs the last line of the cable, whichread: Suggest a complete evaluation before any further actions.. These warning shots were fired and the P-4s launched a torpedo attack. 10. It took only a little imagination to see why the North Vietnamese might connect the two. Subscribe now and never hit a limit. Moving in closer, the crew could see their targeta communications towersilhouetted in the moonlight. IV-2 to IV-4. 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. Senate investigations in 1968 and 1975 did little to clarify the events or the evidence, lending further credence to the various conspiracy theories. 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. Gulf of Tonkin Resolution | History, Facts, & Significance 9/11. They arrived on station overhead by 2100 hours. On 28 July, the latest specially fitted destroyer, the Maddox (DD-731), set out from Taiwan for the South China Sea. The Truth About Tonkin | Naval History Magazine - February 2008 Like all intelligence, it must be analyzed and reported in context. The accords, which were signed by other participants including the Viet Minh, mandated a temporary ceasefire line, which separated southern and northern Vietnam to be governed by the State of Vietnam an Did Johnson learn something from the first experience? Non-subscribers can read five free Naval History articles per month. As is common with specialized histories -- what I call the "tunnels of Cu Chi" syndrome -- this book will tell most readers more about the U.S. Navy in Vietnam than they care to know. The entirety of the original intercepts, however, were not examined and reanalyzed until after the war. "The North Vietnamese are reacting defensively to our attacks on their offshore islands. In 2005 documents were released proving that Johnson had fabricated the Gulf of Tonkin incident in order to justify attacking North Vietnam. Suddenly, North Vietnamese guns opened fire from the shore. Telegram from Embassy in Vietnam to Department of State, 7 August 1964. 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 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. 17. 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. Seventh Fleet reduced it to 12 nautical miles. On 6 August, Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara told a joint session of the Senate Foreign Relations and Armed Services Committees that the North Vietnamese attack on the Maddox was ". 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. More important, they did not know the North Vietnamese had begun to react more aggressively to the commando raids. 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. 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. The 522-page NSA official history Spartans in Darkness: American SIGINT and the Indochina War, 1945-1975, triggered a new round of media reporting and renewed debate about what really happened in the Gulf of Tonkin. In less than 25 minutes, the attack was over. It was 1964, an election year, and the Republicans had just nominated Barry Goldwater, a former jet fighter pilot, and hardcore hawk, to run against Johnson in November. The first such Desoto mission was conducted off the North Vietnamese coast in February 1964, followed by more through the spring. Ships radar detected five patrol boats, which turned out to be P-4 torpedo boats and Swatows. Message, COMUSMACV 291233Z July 1964, CP 291345Z July 1964. But by the end of June, the situation had changed. Just after midnight on 4 August, PTF-6 turned for home, pursued by an enemy Swatow. Forced Government Indoctrination Camps . 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." Gradually, the Navy broadened its role from supply/logistics to aid/advisory -- training Vietnamese and developing the South Vietnamese navy's famed "brown water force," those riverine units operating in the country's matrix of rivers and canals and through the coastal network of islands and archipelagos. Herricks concerns grew as the SIGINT intercepts indicated that the North Vietnamese were concentrating torpedo boats off Hon Me Island, 25 nautical miles to his southwest. 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. 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." Gulf of Tonkin incident | Definition, Date, Summary, Significance WebGulf of Tonkin conspiracy. Defense Secretary McNamara called the president about the second Phu Bai critic report at approximately 0940 that morning. President Johnson himself apparently questioned the sailorsu0019 report of an attack. 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. 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. 136-137. The Gulf of Tonkin incident led to the expansion of the Vietnam War that resulted in a lot of American 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. 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. No one was hurt and little damage wasdone in the attack, but intercepted cables suggested a second attack might be imminent. The Gulf of Tonkin act became more controversial as opposition to the war mounted. Based on this, they launched the political process that led to the wars escalation. 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. In Saigon, Ambassador Maxwell Taylor objected to the halt, saying that "it is my conviction that we must resume these operations and continue their pressure on North Vietnam as soon as possible, leaving no impression that we or the South Vietnamese have been deterred from our operations because of the Tonkin Gulf incidents."