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3. The World is a public radio program that crosses borders and time zones to bring home the stories that matter. 5. In November of 2001, the LBJ Presidential library and museum released tapes of phone conversations with the President and then Defense As the torpedo boats continued their high-speed approach, Maddox was ordered to fire warning shots if they closed inside 10,000 yards. Hanoi pointed out what Washington denied: "On July 30, 1964 . It is not NSA's intention to prove or The boats followed at their maximum speed of 44 knots, continuing the chase for more than 20 minutes. The Pentagon had already released details of the attack, and administration officials had already promised strong action. 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. Both sides, however, spent August 3 reviewing their contingency plans and analyzing lessons learned from the incident. Johnsonasked for, and received, a resolution of war from the US Congress that led to further escalation in the conflict. 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. Despite this tremendous uncertainty, by midafternoon, the discussion among Johnson and his advisers was no longer about whether to respondbut how. 15. Carl Schuster is a retired U.S. Navy intelligence officer with 10 years of experience as a surface line officer. Interview, authors with James Hawes, 31 March 1996. A brief account of the raids is in MACVSOG 1964 Command History, Annex A, 14 January 1965, pp. Then, everyones doubts were swept away when a SIGINT intercept from one of the North Vietnamese torpedo boats reported the claim that it had shot down two American planes in the battle area. "The North Vietnamese are reacting defensively to our attacks on their offshore islands. Midday on August 1, NSGA San Miguel, the U.S. Marine Corps SIGINT detachment co-located with the U.S. Army at Phu Bai, and Maddoxs own DSU all detected the communications directing the North Vietnamese torpedo boats to depart from Haiphong on August 2. The captain of Maddox, Commander Herbert L. Ogier Jr., ordered his ship to battle stations shortly after 1500 hours. 1. 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. The only solution was to get rid of the evidence. The entirety of the original intercepts, however, were not examined and reanalyzed until after the war. At Hon Nieu, the attack was a complete surprise. 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. It can be deceived and it is all too often incomplete. The stage was set. The contacts were to the northeast of the ship, putting them about 100 nautical miles from North Vietnam but very close to Chinas Hainan Island. 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. 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 attack is a signal to us that the North Vietnamese have the will and determination to continue the war." Unlike McNamara, Johnson, on the morning of Aug.4,1964, was in less of a hurry to respond to an attack. Moving in closer, the crew could see their targeta communications towersilhouetted in the moonlight. The North Vietnamese believed that, although they had lost one boat, they had deterred an attack on their coast. And who is going to believe that? 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. 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. Everything went smoothly until the early hours of 2 August, when intelligence picked up indications that the North Vietnamese Navy had moved additional Swatows into the vicinity of Hon Me and Hon Nieu Islands and ordered them to prepare for battle. The USS Maddox in the Gulf of Tonkin is shown in 1963. In response, the North Vietnamese boat launched a torpedo. The North Vietnamese didnt buy the distinction; they attacked the USS Maddox. 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. 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. The first critic report from Phu Bai reached Washington at about 0740 hours, Eastern Daylight Time (EDT). Sign up to get updates about new releases and event invitations. Declassified NSA documents show that US intelligence members concealed relevant reports from Congress to push the narrative of a second attack. A long-standing program, the Desoto patrols consisted of American warships cruising in international waters to conduct electronic surveillance operations. Two days later, the Gulf of Tonkin resolution sailedthrough both houses of Congress by a vote of 504 to 2. 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. 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. A lesser-known fact is that Jim Morrisons father, Captain George Stephen Morrison, commanded the Carrier Division during the Gulf of Tonkin Incident. Based on this, they launched the political process that led to the wars escalation. "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 While 34A and the Desoto patrols were independent operations, the latter benefited from the increased signals traffic generated by the attacks of the former. After 15 minutes of maneuvering, the F-8s arrived and strafed the North Vietnamese boats, damaging two and leaving the third dead in the water. . 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. Scattered small-arms sent tracers toward the commandos, but no one was hurt. CIA Bulletin, 3 August 1964 (see Edward J. Marolda and Oscar P. Fitzgerald, 5. Quoted in Steve Edwards, "Stalking the Enemys Coast," U.S. . The Maddox planned to sail to 16 points along the North Vietnam coast, ranging from the DMZ north to the Chinese border. 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. Subsequent SIGINT reporting and faulty analysis that day further reinforced earlier false impressions. JCS, "34A Chronology of Events," (see Marolda and Fitzgerald, p. 424); Porter, Vietnam: The Definitive Documentation (Stanfordville, NY: 1979), vol. WebTo many online conspiracy theorists, the biggest false flag operation of all time was the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. 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. . Despite McNamaras nimble answers, North Vietnams insistence that there was a connection between 34A and the Desoto patrols was only natural. 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. https://www.thoughtco.com/vietnam-war-gulf-of-tonkin-incident-2361345 (accessed March 4, 2023). 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. 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. At this point, U.S. involvement in Vietnam remained largely in the background. "11 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. NSA analysts from shore-based stations shared Herricks belief and transmitted an immediate warning to all major Pacific Theater commandsexcept to Herrick and Maddox. This along with flawed signals intelligence from the National Security Agency led Johnson to order retaliatory airstrikes against North Vietnam. Fluoride. This article is based on the PRI podcast, LBJ's War, hosted by David Brown. Until 1964, Desoto patrols stayed at least 20 miles away from the coast. 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 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. This explanation held briefly, long enough for President Johnson -- admittedly not inclined to engage in what might be called oververification -- to rush the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution through Congress. 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. The U.S. in-theater SIGINT assets were limited, as was the number of Vietnamese linguists. WebNational Security Agency/Central Security Service > Home 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. The only opposition came from a few scattered machine guns on shore, but they did no damage. Both men believed an attack on the American ships was imminent. Like all intelligence, it must be analyzed and reported in context. ThoughtCo. Today, it is believed that this second attack did not occur and was merely reports from jittery radar and sonar operators, but at the time it was taken as evidence that Hanoi was raising the stakes against the United States. The fig leaf of plausible denial served McNamara in this case, but it was scant cover. Nonetheless, the North Vietnamese boats continued to close in at the rate of 400 yards per minute. ", "No," replied McCone. We have ample forces to respond not only to these attacks on these destroyers but also to retaliate, should you wish to do so, against targets on the land, he toldthe president. Media reporting on the NSA reports assessments sparked a brief rehash of the old arguments about the Gulf of Tonkin. By late 1958 it was obvious that a major Communist buildup was underway in South Vietnam, but the American SIGINT community was ill-placed and ill-equipped to deal with it. Subsequent research and declassified documents have essentially shown that the second attack did not happen. Whether they produced battlefield images of the dead or daguerreotype portraits of common soldiers, []. Unable to catch the fast South Vietnamese PTFs, the government in Hanoi elected to strike instead at USS Maddox. "13 As far as the State Department was concerned, there was no need to "review" the operations. 11. In a conversation with McNamara on Aug. 3, after the first incident, Johnson indicated he hadalready thought about the political ramifications of a military response and hadconsulted with several allies. Operation Fast and Furious 10 But on 7 January, the Seventh Fleet eased the restriction, allowing the destroyers to approach to within four milesstill one mile beyond North Vietnamese territorial waters as recognized by the United States.