Gulf of Tonkin Incident
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The Gulf of Tonkin Incident was a pair of alleged attacks by North Vietnamese gunboats on two American destroyers, the USS Maddox and the USS C. Turner Joy, in August of 1964 in the Gulf of Tonkin. Later research, including a report released in 2005 by the National Security Agency, indicates that the second attack did not occur while also trying to dispell the long-standing rumor that U.S. President Lyndon Johnson had knowingly lied about the existence of the incident.
The implication of the incident was the passage of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution which granted the President authority to assist any Southeast Asian country whose governments were jeopardized. This was used as legal backing by Johnson for introducing American troops in the Vietnam War.
Background
The Vietnam War had begun in the late 1950s with the Hanoi-backed National Front for the Liberation of Vietnam carrying out attacks against the Saigon government of South Vietnam. The U.S. provided support to the South in the form of aid and a number of military advisors that grew from 600 at the start to 16,000 at the end of Kennedy's presidency in 1963.
The Tonkin incident occurred during the first year of the Lyndon B. Johnson administration — less than a year after the Kennedy assassination. While Kennedy had originally supported the policy of sending "military advisors" to Vietnam in an "advisory role", he had begun to change his thinking and shortly before his death in November 1963, he had begun limited recall of American forces. Johnson's views had been likewise complex, but had supported escalation in Vietnam as a means to challenge Soviet-Communist expansion in a policy called "containment". After Kennedy's death, Johnson would order more forces to support the west-allied South Vietnam government, beginning the United States' protracted presence in Southeast Asia.
According to the U.S. Naval Institute,[link], a highly classified program of covert attacks against North Vietnam had begun under the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in 1961 and in 1964 the program was transferred to the Defense Department under the control of a cover organization called the Studies and Observations Group (SOG). For the maritime part of the covert operation, Nasty-class fast patrol boats were purchased quietly from Norway. Although the personnel in the boats were South Vietnamese, approval of the plan came directly from General William C. Westmoreland in Saigon. After the attacks began, Hanoi lodged a complaint with the International Control Commission (ICC), which had been established in 1954 to oversee the terms of the Geneva Accords, but the United States denied involvement. Four years later, McNamara admitted to Congress that the US ships had in fact been cooperating in South Vietnamese attacks against the North. The Maddox, however, was not directly involved in these attacks.
Veterans of US Navy SEAL teams say that US-trained South Vietnamese commandos were active in the area on the days of the attacks. Deployed from Da Nang in Norwegian-built fast patrol boats, the Lien Doi Nguoi Nhai (LDNN, soldiers that fight under the sea), made attacks in the Gulf area on both of the nights in question. However, the Maddox operation was for intelligence purposes and did not directly support the covert operations. Also, since the U.S. only recognised the North-Vietnamese territorial waters to the extent of 3 miles from shore, the U.S. was under the impression that their ship was in international waters, sailing 8 miles from shore.
On July 31, LDNN in "Nastys" (the name commandos gave to the fast attack boats) attacked a radio transmitter on the island of Hon Nieu. On Aug. 3, they used a shipboard-mounted cannon to bombard a radar site at Cape Vinh Son. The North Vietnamese responded by attacking hostile ships visible in the area. While US officials were less than honest about the full extent of hostilities that led to the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, critical claims that a naval commander fired weapons solely to create an international incident tend to overlook circumstances and opportunistic responses that suggest a less intentional motivation.
The Incident
Daniel Ellsberg, who was on duty in the Pentagon that night receiving messages from the ship, reports that the ships were on a secret mission (codenamed DeSoto Patrols) near North Vietnamese territorial waters. Their purpose was to provoke the North Vietnamese into turning on their coastal defense radar so they could be plotted. [[Citing sources citation needed]]
On July 31, 1964, the American destroyer USS Maddox (DD-731) began a reconnaissance mission in the Gulf of Tonkin and was attacked by five North Vietnamese patrol boats, in international waters, on August 2, 1964. Admiral George Stephen Morrison was in command of the local fleet from his flagship USS Bon Homme Richard (CVA-31). The Maddox evaded a torpedo attack and chased the ships away.
The Maddox, suffering only very minor damage by a single machine gun bullet, retired to South Vietnamese waters where she was joined by the destroyer C. Turner Joy.
On August 4, another DESOTO patrol to North Vietnam coast was launched by Maddox and the C. Turner Joy. The latter received radar and radio signals that they believed to signal another attack by the North Vietnamese. For some two hours the ships fired on radar targets and maneuvered vigorously amid electronic and visual reports of foes. It is highly unlikely that any North Vietnamese forces were actually in the area during this gunfight. Captain John J. Herrick even admitted that it was nothing more than an "overeager sonarman" who "was hearing his ship's own propeller beat."
Although information obtained well after the fact indicates that there was actually no North Vietnamese attack that night, U.S. authorities and all of the crew at the time said they were convinced at the time that an attack had taken place. As a result, planes from the carriers Ticonderoga and Constellation were sent to hit North Vietnamese torpedo boat bases and fuel facilities (Operation Pierce Arrow).
Differing views of the Incident
There are differing views about whether or not the August 2 incident was provoked by the U.S. One view is that the actions of the Maddox were provocative to the North Vietnamese because they coincided with the covert South Vietnamese raids. The destroyer's presence also may have been mistaken by the Communists as a sign that it was also involved in the raids.
Others, such as U.S. Admiral Grant Sharp, Commander in Chief of the Pacific at the time, maintained that U.S. actions did not provoke the confirmed August 2 attack. He claims that North Vietnamese radar tracked the Maddox along the coast, thus being aware that the destroyer had not actually attacked North Vietnam. Yet they ordered their PT boats to engage it anyway. He also notes that orders given to the Maddox to stay eight miles from the North Vietnamese coast put the ship inside international waters, as North Vietnam claimed only five nautical miles as their ocean territory. In addition, many nations had previously carried out some similar missions all over the world, and the U.S.S. Craig had earlier conducted an intelligence-gathering mission in similar circumstances to the Maddox without incident. Adm. U.S. Grant Sharp, Strategy for Defeat--Vietnam in Retrospect (San Rafael, CA: Presidio Press, 1978) P. 42
Later statements
In 1995, retired Vietnamese General Nguyen Giap meeting with former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, categorically denied that Vietnamese gunboats had attacked American destroyers on Aug. 4, 1964 while admitting to the attack on August 2. A taped conversation was released in 2001 of a meeting several weeks after passage of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, revealing that Robert McNamara expressed doubts to President Johnson that the attack had even occurred.
In October, 2005 the New York Times reported that Robert J. Hanyok, a historian for the United States National Security Agency, concluded that the NSA deliberately distorted intelligence reports passed on to policy-makers regarding the August 4 incident. He concluded that the motive was not political but was probably to cover up honest intelligence errors.
Mr. Hanyok's conclusions were initially published within the NSA in the Winter 2000/Spring 2001 Edition of Cryptologic Quarterly, about five years before being revealed in the New York Times article. According to intelligence officials, the view of government historians that the report should become public was rebuffed by policymakers concerned that comparisons might be made to intelligence used to justify the Iraq war that commenced in 2003.
Reviewing the NSA's archives, Mr. Hanyok concluded that the NSA had initially (probably innocently) misinterpreted North Vietnamese intercepts so as to make it appear there was an attack on August 4. Midlevel NSA officials almost immediately discovered the error, he concluded, but covered it up by altering documents, so as to make it appear the second attack had happened. Robert McNamara, who was defense secretary at the time of the incident, said in October, 2005 that he believed intelligence reports regarding the Gulf of Tonkin incident were decisive to the war's expansion.
On November 30, 2005, the NSA released the first installment of previously classified information regarding the Gulf of Tonkin incident, including Mr. Hanyok's article, "Skunks, Bogies, Silent Hounds, and the Flying Fish: The Gulf of Tonkin Mystery, 2-4 August 1964" Cryptologic Quarterly, Winter 2000/Spring 2001 Edition, Vol. 19, No. 4 / Vol. 20, No. 1.
The Hanyok article states that intelligence information was presented to the Johnson administration "in such a manner as to preclude responsible decisionmakers in the Johnson administration from having the complete and objective narrative of events of 4 August 1964." Instead, "only information that supported the claim that the communists had attacked the two destroyers was given to Johnson administration officials."
Gulf of Tonkin Resolution
Lyndon Johnson, who was up for election that year, launched retaliatory strikes and went on national television on August 4. Although the Maddox had been involved in providing intelligence support for South Vietnamese attacks at Hon Me and Hon Ngu, Johnson's Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, went before Congress and denied that the United States Navy was supporting South Vietnamese military operations. He thus characterized the attack as "unprovoked" since the ship had been in international waters. He also claimed before Congress that there was "unequivocable proof" of an "unprovoked" second attack against the Maddox.
As a result of McNamara's testimony, on August 7 Congress passed a joint resolution (), known as the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, that facilitated increased U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. The Resolution gave President Johnson approval "to take all necessary steps, including the use of armed force, to assist any member or protocol state of the Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty requesting assistance in defense of its freedom." Both Johnson and President Richard Nixon used the Resolution as a justification for escalated involvement in Indochina.
Interpretation
The "Gulf of Tonkin Incident" defined the beginning of large-scale involvement of U.S. armed forces in Vietnam. Historians have shown that the second incident was, at its best interpretation, an overreaction of eager naval forces, or at its worst, a crafted pretext for making overt the American covert involvement in Vietnam.North Vietnam's Navy Anniversary Day is August 5, the date of the second attack, Vietnamese time, where "one of our torpedo squadrons chased the U.S.S. Maddox from our coastal waters, our first victory over the U.S. Navy". Pike, PAVN, p. 110
Trivia
- Admiral George Stephen Morrison was the father of The Doors lead singer Jim Morrison.
See also
References
External links
- [NSA declassified documents released on 11/30/05]
- [Vietnam Study, Casting Doubts, Remains Secret]
- [Tonkin Gulf reports cooked? Historian's research finds intelligence errors covered up]
- [LBJ's address to the nation, August 5, 1964]
- Pentagon Papers [link]
- [Cronkite: Gulf of Tonkin's Phantom Attack]
- [US Navy Historical Site showing charts and photos of the incident]
- [FAIR.ORG: 30-Year Anniversary: Tonkin Gulf Lie Launched Vietnam War]
- [Analysis Casts Doubt on Vietnam War Claims] - Calvin Woodward, Associated Press, Dec. 1, 2005. "A spy-agency analysis released Thursday contends a second attack on U.S. ships in the Gulf of Tonkin never happened, casting further doubt on the leading rationale for escalation of the Vietnam War."
- [Robert J. Hanyok, "Skunks, Bogies, Silent Hounds, and the Flying Fish: The Gulf of Tonkin Mystery, 2-4 August 1964" Cryptologic Quarterly, Winter 2000/Spring 2001 Edition, Vol. 19, No. 4 / Vol. 20, No. 1.]
- [30-year Anniversary: Tonkin Gulf Lie Launched Vietnam War- Media Beat (7/27/94)]
- [Tonkin Gulf Intelligence "Skewed" According to Official History and Intercepts]
- [Ronnie E. Ford "New Light on Gulf of Tonkin"]
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