gulf of tonkin conspiracy

(The recent NBC television movie In Love and War had Navy pilot James B. Stockdale flying over the scene at the time saying, "I see nothing"; now a retired vice admiral, Stockdale has reiterated the "phoney attack" charge in writings and public speaking.). 11. . "Vietnam War: Gulf of Tonkin Incident." You've read 1 out of 5 free articles of Naval History this month. Vietnam War: Gulf of Tonkin Incident. Or purchase a subscription for unlimited access to real news you can count on. He readthe chiefs a cable from the captain of the Maddox. The only solution was to get rid of the evidence. On July 31, 1964, the destroyer USS Maddox commenced a Desoto patrol off North Vietnam. Summary Notes of the 538th Meeting of the NSC, 4 August 1964, 6:15-6:40 p.m.. 13. The Gulf of Tonkin act became more controversial as opposition to the war mounted. 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. In the subsequent exchange of fire, neither American nor North Vietnamese ships inflicted significant damage. Conspiracy Just after midnight on 4 August, PTF-6 turned for home, pursued by an enemy Swatow. The Health Conspiracy. 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. 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. Listen to McNamara's conversation with Johnson. Vaccines. The lack of success in SOGs missions during the first few months of 1964 made this proposal quite attractive. What will be of interest to the general reader is the treatment of the Gulf of Tonkin Incident. 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. . LBJ was looking for a pretext to go to Congress to ask for a resolution that would give him the authority to do basically whatever the hell he wanted to do in Vietnam, without the intense public debate that a declaration of war would have required, says historian Chris Oppe. 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 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 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. The 122 additional relevant SIGINT products confirmed that the Phu Bai station had misinterpreted or mistranslated many of the early August 3 SIGINT intercepts. "Vietnam War: Gulf of Tonkin Incident." Returning fire, Maddox scored hits on the P-4s while being struck by a single 14.5-millimeter machine gun bullet. Neither ships crew knew about the North Vietnamese salvage operation. Approved on Aug. 10, 1964, the Southeast Asia (Gulf of Tonkin) Resolution, gave Johnson the power to use military force in the region without requiring a declaration 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. Although North Vietnamese General Vo Nguyen Giap admitted in a 1984 discussion with Robert S. McNamara that the first attack was deliberate, he denied that a second attack had ever taken place. The entirety of the original intercepts, however, were not examined and reanalyzed until after the war. 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 Despite the on-scene commanders efforts to correct their errors in the initial after-action reports, administration officials focused instead on the first SIGINT reports to the exclusion of all other evidence. At the White House, administration officials panicked as the public spotlight illuminated their policy in Vietnam and threatened to reveal its covert roots. Haiphong again repeated the recall order after the attack. WebNational Security Agency/Central Security Service > Home The Gulf of Tonkin incident led to the expansion of the Vietnam War that resulted in a lot of American 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. 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." 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. When the enemy boats closed to less than 10,000 yards, the destroyer fired three shots across the bow of the lead vessel. The U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) decided to resume Maddoxs Desoto patrol, but at a greater distance from the coast, accompanied by Turner Joy and supported by aircraft from Ticonderoga. Gulf of Tonkin - Wikipedia 1, Vietnam 1964 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1992), p. 611. In addition, the US Navy was instructed to conduct Desoto patrols off North Vietnam. The secondary mission of the Gulf of Tonkin patrols was to assert American freedom of navigation in international waters. Each boat carried a 16-man crew and a 57-mm recoilless rifle, plus machine guns. The most comprehensive and authoritative history site on the Internet. 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. The string of intelligence mistakes, mistranslations, misinterpretations and faulty decision making that occurred in the Tonkin Gulf in 1964 reveals how easily analysts and officials can jump to the wrong conclusions and lead a nation into war. It also outlined the Maddoxs path along the coast on 2 August and the 34A attacks on Vinh Son the following day. What did and didnt happen in the Gulf of Tonkin on August 2 and 4 has long been in dispute, but the decisions that the Johnson Administration and Congress made based on an interpretation of those events were undeniably monumental. 14. At each point, the ship would stop and circle, picking up electronic signals before moving on. Forced Government Indoctrination Camps . 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. CIA Bulletin, 3 August 1964 (see Edward J. Marolda and Oscar P. Fitzgerald, 5. WHAT REALLY HAPPENED IN THE GULF OF TONKIN? 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. The only opposition came from a few scattered machine guns on shore, but they did no damage. The Geneva Conference in 1954 was intended to settle outstanding issues following the end of hostilities between France and the Viet Minh at the end of the First Indochina War. If there had been any doubt before about whose hand was behind the raids, surely there was none now. The report also identifies what SIGINT couldand could nottell commanders about their enemies and their unreliable friends in the war. For 25 minutes the boats fired on the radar station, then headed back to Da Nang. But by the end of June, the situation had changed. To increase the chances of success, SOG proposed increased raids along the coast, emphasizing offshore bombardment by the boats rather than inserting commandos. 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. 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. The Gulf of Tonkin Incident famously gave the Johnson Administration the justification they needed to escalate the Vietnam War. 5. SOG took the mounting war of words very seriously and assumed the worstthat an investigation would expose its operations against the North. 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. JCS, "34A Chronology of Events," (see Marolda and Fitzgerald, p. 424); Porter. 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. Changing course in time to evade the torpedoes, the Maddox again was attacked, this time by a boat that fired another torpedo and 14.5-mm machine guns. It can be deceived and it is all too often incomplete. 9/11. Over the next 12 hours, as the president's team scrambledto understand what hadhappened and to organize a response, the facts remained elusive. Around midday on Aug. 4, Adm. Grant Sharp, the top navy commander in the Pacific, made a call to the Joint Chiefs, and it was clear there were significant doubts about this second incident. 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. The Maddox fired againthis time to killhitting the second North Vietnamese boat just as it launched two torpedoes. 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. Consequently, while Maddox was in the patrol area, a South Vietnamese commando raid was underway southwest of its position. 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. 13. In response, the North Vietnamese built up their naval presence around the offshore islands. 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." Both sides claimed successes in the exchange that they did not actually achieve. Keep supporting great journalism by turning off your ad blocker. That very night, the idea was put to the test. 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. . The after-action reports from the participants in the Gulf arrived in Washington several hours after the report of the second incident. Send the First Troops to Vietnam? Gulf of Tonkin incident, 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 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. Then they boarded their boats and headed back to Da Nang.12 The U.S. in-theater SIGINT assets were limited, as was the number of Vietnamese linguists. Seventh Fleet reduced it to 12 nautical miles. Conspiracy FACT #8: The Gulf of Tonkin Incident - YouTube ", "No," replied McCone. Kennedy Hickman is a historian, museum director, and curator who specializes in military and naval history. Top Essentials to Know About the Vietnam War, Timeline of the Vietnam War (Second Indochina War), Vietnam War: General William Westmoreland, M.S., Information and Library Science, Drexel University, B.A., History and Political Science, Pennsylvania State University. Gulf of Tonkin & the Vietnam War. 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. WebUnderground Knowledge host James Morcan discloses what really happened in 1964's Gulf of Tonkin Incident which started the Vietnam War. You can find out more about our use, change your default settings, and withdraw your consent at any time with effect for the future by visiting Cookies Settings, which can also be found in the footer of the site. Non-subscribers can read five free Naval History articles per month. Until the ICC investigation blew over a week later, the commandos camped on a small pier. Gulf of Tonkin Resolution The battle was over in 22 minutes. Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/vietnam-war-gulf-of-tonkin-incident-2361345. The truth about 'False Flags' from Nazi Germany to the Vietnam War Through the evening of Aug. 4, while no new information arrivedto clarify the eventin the Gulf, the White House narrative was firmly in place. 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 Science of Conspiracy Theories - Gulf of Tonkin conspiracy At about the same time, there were other "secret" missions going on. 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. 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. Any escalation in the bombing of the North risked provoking the Russians or, more likely, the Chinese. In addition, the destroyer USS Turner Joy began moving to support Maddox. Not reported at the time, Herrick instructed his gun crews to fire three warning shots if the North Vietnamese came within 10,000 yards of the ship. Oklahoma City Bombing. Meanwhile, by late August 3, the North Vietnamese had learned the condition of their torpedo boats and ordered a salvage tug to recover the damaged craft. 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.. WebThe Senate passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution with only two opposing votes, and the House of Representatives passed it unanimously. 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. This is another government conspiracy that's true. American SIGINT analysts assessed the North Vietnamese reporting as probable preparations for further military operations against the Desoto patrol. 10. The World is a public radio program that crosses borders and time zones to bring home the stories that matter. Both boats opened fire, scoring hits on the tower, then moved on to other buildings nearby. Sign up for The Top of the World, delivered to your inbox every weekday morning. In turn, that means Quoted in Steve Edwards, "Stalking the Enemys Coast," U.S. 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. 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 Maddox planned to sail to 16 points along the North Vietnam coast, ranging from the DMZ north to the Chinese border. Office of the Historian There remains some disagreement among historians about the second (Aug. 4) incident, which involved the Maddox and another destroyer, the USS Turner Joy. 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. AIDS Brotherhood Symbology The Illuminati Flame . The rounds set some of the buildings ablaze, keeping the defenders off balance. This was granted, and four F-8 Crusaders were vectored towards Maddox's position. This was almost certainly a reaction to the recent 34A raids. 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. Until 1964, Desoto patrols stayed at least 20 miles away from the coast. HistoryNet.com contains daily features, photo galleries and over 25,000 articles originally published in our nine magazines. 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. Naval Institute. Hanoi denied the charge that it had fired on the U.S. destroyers on 4 August, calling the charge "an impudent fabrication. He is the author of. However, planes from the aircraft carrier Ticonderoga (CVA-14) crippled one of the boats and damaged the other two. The subsequent North Vietnamese reporting on the enemy matched the location, course and speed of Maddox. Hickman, Kennedy. 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. Congress supported the resolution with the Gulf of Tonkin "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 Subsequent SIGINT reporting and faulty analysis that day further reinforced earlier false impressions. :: 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.". The crews quietly made last-minute plans, then split up. 4. Even in the darkness, the commandos could see their targeta water tower surrounded by a few military buildings. 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? Efforts to communicate with the torpedo boats failed, probably because of language and communications equipment incompatibility. This time, however, President Johnson reacted much more skeptically and ultimately decided to take no retaliatory action. 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 In 2005 documents were released proving that Johnson had fabricated the Gulf of Tonkin incident in order to justify attacking North Vietnam. As such, its personnel in Vietnam were the envy of their Army counterparts in the bush since, as it was commonly put, sailors sleep between clean sheets at night (the grunts were also envious of the Air Force, where you fight sitting down). This article is based on the PRI podcast, LBJ's War, hosted by David Brown. Subscribe now and never hit a limit. 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. Over the next few years, Johnson used the resolution to rapidly escalate American involvement in the Vietnam War. The first reports of the encounter from the destroyers reached the White House at 1000 EDT. Ticonderoga ordered four A-1H Skyraiders into the air to support the ships. But the administration dithered, informing the embassy only that "further OPLAN 34A operations should be held off pending review of the situation in Washington. Both sides, however, spent August 3 reviewing their contingency plans and analyzing lessons learned from the incident. Both U.S. ships opened fire on the radar contacts, but reported problems maintaining a lock on the tracking and fire control solution. 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. The captain of Maddox, Commander Herbert L. Ogier Jr., ordered his ship to battle stations shortly after 1500 hours. WebGulf of Tonkin Resolution, also called Tonkin Gulf Resolution, resolution put before the U.S. Congress by Pres. The Johnson administration had made the first of several secret diplomatic attempts during the summer of 1964 to convince the North Vietnamese to stop its war on South Vietnam, using the chief Canadian delegate to the ICC, J. Blair Seaborn, to pass the message along to Hanoi. "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. Two hours later the Phu Bai SIGINT station transmitted a critic report warning of possible [North Vietnamese] naval operations planned against the Desoto patrol. Twenty-five minutes later, Phu Bai sent a second critic report that said, imminent plans of [North Vietnamese] naval action possibly against Desoto Mission.. Originally begun by the Central Intelligence Agency in 1961, 34A was a highly-classified program of covert operations against North Vietnam. When the boats reached that point, Maddox fired three warning shots, but the torpedo boats continued inbound at high speed. By late July 1964, SOG had four Nasty-class patrol boats, designated PTF-3, PTF-4, PTF-5, PTF-6 (PTFfast patrol boat). Mr. Our response, for the present, will be limited and fitting. Telegram from Embassy in Vietnam to Department of State, 7 August 1964. 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. 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 Resolution authorized President Lyndon Johnson to take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States Naval Institute Proceedings (February 1992), p. 59. THE UNITED STATES NAVY AND THE VIETNAM CONFLICT Volume II: From Military Assistance to Combat, 1959-1965 By Edward J. Marolda and Oscar P. Fitzgerald Government Printing Office for The Naval Historical Center 591 pp. The maximum closure distance was originally established at 20 nautical miles, but the commander of the U.S. In Saigon, General William C. Westmoreland, the new commander of Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV), approved of the plan, and SOG began testing 81-mm mortars, 4.5-inch rockets, and recoilless rifles aboard the boats. 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.

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