Gulf of Tonkin Incident
The Gulf of Tonkin Incident refers to the August 2 and 4, 1964 incidents in which a genuine North Vietnamese attack on the USS Maddox was followed by a second 'attack' on August 4 that almost certainly never occurred, yet was used by the Johnson administration to obtain the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution authorizing open-ended military escalation in Vietnam - a deception confirmed by NSA declassified documents released in 2005.
The Gulf of Tonkin Incident refers to two separate events on August 2 and August 4, 1964, in the Gulf of Tonkin off the coast of North Vietnam, the second of which was used by the Johnson administration to obtain congressional authorization for the dramatic escalation of American involvement in the Vietnam War. Subsequent declassification - principally of NSA documents released in 2005 - confirmed what internal doubts at the time suggested: the August 4 "attack" almost certainly did not occur.1
August 2: The Real Attack
On August 2, 1964, the USS Maddox, a destroyer conducting electronic intelligence collection operations in the Gulf of Tonkin, was attacked by three North Vietnamese torpedo boats. The Maddox returned fire; U.S. aircraft from the nearby carrier USS Ticonderoga joined the engagement. The torpedo boats were damaged or sunk; the Maddox was not hit. The attack was real and documented.1
The Maddox was conducting DESOTO patrols - intelligence-gathering missions that collected electronic signals from North Vietnamese radar and communications installations. The patrols ran in coordination with South Vietnamese commando raids against North Vietnamese coastal targets. North Vietnam apparently attacked the Maddox in response to those raids, believing American vessels were directly supporting the attacks.
August 4: The Fabricated Attack
On August 4, 1964, the Maddox and USS Turner Joy reported that they were under attack in the Gulf of Tonkin at night in rough weather. Sonar operators reported torpedo sounds; the ships took evasive action and returned fire at targets that appeared on radar. No visual contact with attacking vessels was ever made. The ship commanders themselves were uncertain what had happened.
Captain John Herrick, commanding the Maddox, sent a message to Washington the same day stating that many of the reported "torpedoes" were likely false readings from sonar conditions and that there was "freak weather effects on radar" and "overeager sonar men." He recommended a "complete evaluation before any further action." This cable was available to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and the Johnson White House.1
Despite these doubts, Johnson and McNamara presented the August 4 incident to Congress and the public as a clear unprovoked attack requiring a military response. NSA signals intelligence was cited as corroborating the attack; in fact, the signals were later determined to have been misinterpreted or fabricated by NSA analysts seeking to confirm the attack rather than evaluate it objectively.
Gulf of Tonkin Resolution
On August 7, 1964, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution (formally the Southeast Asia Resolution) with 98-2 votes in the Senate and unanimously in the House. The resolution authorized the President to take "all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression." Only Senators Wayne Morse and Ernest Gruening voted against.
The resolution became the legal basis for the Johnson and Nixon administrations' escalation of the Vietnam War, including the introduction of ground combat troops in 1965 and the sustained bombing campaigns against North Vietnam. By 1968, over 500,000 American troops were deployed in Vietnam.1
Subsequent Disclosure
The Pentagon Papers, leaked to the press by Daniel Ellsberg in 1971, revealed that the Johnson administration had harbored serious doubts about the August 4 attack from the beginning and that planning for escalation in Vietnam had preceded the Tonkin incident.
In 2005, the NSA released previously classified documents including a 2001 internal history by NSA historian Robert Hanyok, "Skunks, Bogies, Silent Hounds, and the Flying Fish: The Gulf of Tonkin Mystery, 2-4 August 1964." Hanyok concluded that NSA signals intelligence had been deliberately skewed by analysts to support the conclusion that an attack occurred, and that there had been "a willful distortion of the evidence" in the reports forwarded to policy makers. The actual intelligence, properly read, showed no attack on August 4.1
Significance
The Gulf of Tonkin Incident is significant both as a historical event - the manufactured pretext for the most costly American military engagement of the Cold War - and as a paradigm case in discussions of false-flag operations and government deception. Read alongside the declassified Operation NORTHWOODS document proposing staged incidents to justify Cuba intervention (1962), Tonkin demonstrated that American officials were not only willing to plan such fabrications but to execute them.
The incident also illustrated the institutional dynamics of intelligence assessment under political pressure: the NSA analysis that confirmed the August 4 attack reflected what policymakers wanted to hear rather than what the evidence showed - a pattern subsequently analyzed in discussions of intelligence and policy.2
Sources
- Hanyok, Robert J. "Skunks, Bogies, Silent Hounds, and the Flying Fish: The Gulf of Tonkin Mystery, 2-4 August 1964." Cryptologic Quarterly. NSA. Declassified 2005; available at nsarchive.gwu.edu. Moise, Edwin E. Tonkin Gulf and the Escalation of the Vietnam War. University of North Carolina Press, 1996. ↩
- The Pentagon Papers (Senator Gravel edition). Beacon Press, 1971. Mann, Robert. A Grand Delusion: America's Descent into Vietnam. Basic Books, 2001. ↩
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