15. Gulf of Tonkin Never Happened:
The Gulf of Tonkin Incident is the name given to two
separate incidents involving the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and the United
States in the waters of the Gulf of Tonkin. On August 2, 1964 two American
destroyers engaged three North Vietnamese torpedo boats, resulting in the
sinking of one of the torpedo boats. This was also the single most important
reason for the escalation of the Vietnam War.
After Kennedy was assassinated, the Gulf of Tonkin gave the
country the sweeping support for aggressive military action against the North
Vietnamese. The outcome of the incident was the passage by Congress of the Gulf
of Tonkin Resolution, which granted President Lyndon B. Johnson the authority
to assist any Southeast Asian country whose government was considered to be
jeopardized by “communist aggression”.
In 2005, an internal National Security Agency historical
study was declassified; it concluded that USS Maddox had engaged the North
Vietnamese on August 2, but that there may not have been any North Vietnamese
vessels present during the engagement of August 4. The report stated “It is not
simply that there is a different story as to what happened; it is that no
attack happened that night…” In truth, Hanoi’s navy was engaged in nothing that
night but the salvage of two of the boats damaged on August 2.
In 1965, President Johnson commented privately: “For all I
know, our Navy was shooting at whales out there.” In 1981, Captain Herrick and
journalist Robert Scheer re-examined Herrick’s ship’s log and determined that
the first torpedo report from August 4, which Herrick had maintained had
occurred—the “apparent ambush”—was in fact unfounded.
In 1995, retired Vietnamese Defense Minister Vo Nguyen Giap,
meeting with former Secretary of Defense McNamara, categorically denied that
Vietnamese gunboats had attacked American destroyers on August 4, while
admitting to the attack on August 2.
In the Fall of 1999, retired senior CIA engineering
executive S. Eugene Poteat wrote that he was asked in early August 1964 to
determine if the radar operator’s report showed a real torpedo boat attack or
an imagined one. In October, 2005 the New York Times reported that Robert J.
Hanyok, a historian for the U.S. National Security Agency, had concluded that
the NSA deliberately distorted the intelligence reports that it had passed on
to policy-makers regarding the August 4, 1964 incident. He concluded that the
motive was not political but was probably to cover up honest intelligence
errors.
----------------------
The Gulf of Tonkin incident (or the USS Maddox incident)
- ( [1] )
is the name given to two separate confrontations, one actual
and one false, involving North Vietnam and the United
States in the waters of the Gulf of Tonkin. On August 2, 1964, the
destroyer USS Maddox, while performing a signals
intelligencepatrol as part of DESOTO operations, engaged three North
Vietnamese Navy torpedo boats of the 135th Torpedo Squadron. A sea
battle resulted, in which the Maddox expended over two hundred
and eighty 3-inch and 5-inch shells, and in which four USN F-8
Crusader jet fighter bombers strafed the torpedo boats. One US aircraft
was damaged, one 14.5 mm round hit the destroyer, three North
Vietnamese torpedo boats were damaged, and four North Vietnamese sailors
were killed and six were wounded; there were no U.S. casualties.
The second Tonkin Gulf incident was originally claimed by
the U.S. National Security Agency to have occurred on August 4, 1964,
as another sea battle, but instead may have involved "Tonkin Ghosts"
(false radar images) and not actual NVN torpedo boat attacks.
The outcome of these two incidents was the passage
by Congress of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which granted
President Lyndon B. Johnson the authority to assist
any Southeast Asian country whose government was considered to be
jeopardized by "communist aggression". The resolution served as
Johnson's legal justification for deploying U.S. conventional forces and the
commencement of open warfare against North Vietnam.
In 2005, an internal National Security
Agency historical study was declassified; it concluded that the Maddox had
engaged the North Vietnamese Navy on August 2, but that there were no North
Vietnamese Naval vessels present during the incident of August 4. The report
stated regarding August 2:
At 1505G, Captain Herrick ordered Ogier's gun crews to open
fire if the boats approached within ten thousand yards. At about 1505G, theMaddox fired
three rounds to warn off the communist boats. This initial action was never
reported by the Johnson administration, which insisted that the Vietnamese boats
fired first.
and regarding August 4:
It is not simply that there is a different story as to what
happened; it is that no attack happened that night. [...] In truth,
Hanoi's navy was engaged in nothing that night but the salvage of two of the
boats damaged on August 2.
Background
Main articles: Vietnam War, Military Assistance
Command, Vietnam Studies and Observations Group, and Operation 34A
Although the United States attended the Geneva
Conference (1954), which was intended to end hostilities
between France and the Vietnamese at the end of the First
Indochina War, it refused to sign the Geneva Accords (1954). The Accords
mandated, among other measures, a temporary ceasefire line, intended to
separate Vietnamese and French forces, and elections to determine the future
political fate of the Vietnamese within two years. It also forbade the
political interference of other countries in the area, the creation of new
governments without the stipulated elections, and foreign military presence. By
1961, President Ngo Dinh Diem faced significant discontent amongst
some quarters of the southern population, including
some Buddhists who were opposed to the rule of
Diem'sCatholic supporters. After suppressing Vietminh political cadres who
were legally campaigning between 1955 and 1959 for the promised elections, Diem
faced a growing communist-led uprising that intensified by 1961, headed by
the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam (NLF or,
derogatively, Viet Cong).
The Gulf of Tonkin Incident occurred during the first year
of the Johnson administration. While Kennedy had originally supported the
policy of sending military advisers to Vietnam, he had begun to alter his
thinking due to what he perceived to be the ineptitude of
theSaigon government and its inability and unwillingness to make needed
reforms (which led to a US-supported coup which resulted in the death
of Diem). Shortly before his assassination in November 1963, Kennedy
had begun a limited recall of US forces. Johnson's views were likewise complex,
but he had supported military escalation in Vietnam as a means to challenge
what he perceived as the expansionist policies of the Soviet Union.
The Cold War policy of containment was to be applied to
prevent the fall of Southeast Asia to communism under the precepts of
the domino theory. After Kennedy's assassination, Johnson ordered in more
US forces to support the Saigon government, beginning a protracted United
States presence in Southeast Asia.
Chart showing the US Navy's explanation of the Gulf of
Tonkin incident
A highly classified program of covert
actions against North Vietnam known asOperation Plan 34-Alpha, in
conjunction with the DESOTO operations, had begun under
the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in 1961. In 1964 the program
was transferred to the US Defense Department and conducted by
the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam Studies and Observations
Group (SOG)
For the maritime portion of the covert operation, Tjeld-class fast
patrol boats had been purchased quietly from Norway and sent to South
Vietnam. Although the crews of the boats were South Vietnamese naval personnel,
approval for each mission conducted under the plan came directly from
Admiral U.S. Grant Sharp, Jr., CINCPAC in Honolulu, who
received his orders from the White House. After the coastal 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 US denied any involvement. Four years
later, US Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara admitted to
Congress that the US ships had in fact been cooperating in the South Vietnamese
attacks against North Vietnam. Maddox, although aware of the operations,
was not directly involved.
What was (and is) generally not considered by US politicians
at the time (and by later historians) were the other actions taken under
Operations Plan 34-Alpha just prior to the incident. The night before the
launching of the actions against North Vietnamese facilities onHòn
Mê and Hòn Ngư islands, the SOG had launched a covert long-term
agent team into North Vietnam, which was promptly captured. That night (for the
second evening in a row) two flights of CIA-sponsored Laotian fighter-bombers
(piloted by Thai mercenaries) attacked border outposts well within southwestern
North Vietnam. The Hanoi government (unlike the US government, which had to
give permission at the highest levels for the conduct of these missions)
probably assumed that they were all a coordinated effort to escalate military
actions against North Vietnam.
The incident
A North Vietnamese P-4 engaging USS Maddox.
Daniel Ellsberg, who was on duty in the
Pentagon the night of August 4 receiving messages from the ship, reported
that the ship was on a secret electronic warfare support measuresmission
(codenamed DESOTO) near Northern Vietnamese territorial waters. On July
31, 1964, USS Maddox (DD-731) had begun its intelligence
collection mission in the gulf. CaptainGeorge Stephen Morrison (father of
Doors singer Jim Morrison) was in command of local American forces from
his flagship USS Bon Homme Richard (CVA-31). The Maddox was
under orders not to approach closer than eight miles (13 km) from the
North's coast and four miles (6 km) from Hon Nieu island. When the SOG
commando raid was being carried out against Hon Nieu, the ship was 120 miles
(190 km) away from the attacked area.
First attack
On August 2 Maddox radioed it was under attack
from three North Vietnamese Navy P-4 torpedo boats 28 miles
(45 km) away from the North Vietnamese coast in international
waters. Maddox stated she had evaded a torpedo attack and opened fire
with its five-inch (127 mm) guns, forcing the torpedo boats away. Four
USN F-8 Crusader jets launched from the aircraft
carrier USS Ticonderoga (CVA-14) then attacked the retiring
P-4s, claiming one was sunk and one heavily damaged. Maddox, suffering very
minor damage from a single 14.5-millimeter machine gun bullet, retired to South
Vietnamese waters where she was joined by the destroyer USS Turner
Joy. The North Vietnamese claimed that Maddox was hit by one torpedo,
and one of the American aircraft had been shot down.
This account, however, has come into sharp dispute with an
internal NSA historical study which stated on page 17:
At 1500G, Captain Herrick (commander of the Maddox)
ordered Ogier's gun crews to open fire if the boats approached within ten
thousand yards. At about 1505G, the Maddox fired three rounds to warn
off the communist boats. This initial action was never reported by the Johnson
administration, which insisted that the Vietnamese boats fired first.
The Maddox when confronted, was approaching Hòn Mê
Island, three to four miles (6 km) inside the twelve-mile (19 km)
limit claimed by North Vietnam. This territorial limit was unrecognized by the
United States. After the skirmish, President Johnson ordered the Maddoxand Turner
Joy to stage daylight runs into North Vietnamese waters, testing the
twelve-mile (19 km) limit and North Vietnamese resolve. These runs into
North Vietnamese territorial waters coincided with South Vietnamese coastal
raids and were interpreted as coordinated operations by the North, which
officially acknowledged the engagements of 2 August 1964.
Others, such as Admiral Sharp, maintained that U.S. actions
did not provoke the August 2 action. He claimed that North Vietnamese radar had
tracked Maddox along the coast, and was thus aware that the destroyer
had not actually attacked North Vietnam and that Hanoi (or the local commander)
had ordered its craft to engage Maddox anyway. North Vietnamese
General Phùng Thế Tài later claimed that the Maddox had been
tracked since July 31 and that it had attacked fishing boats on August 2,
forcing North Vietnamese Navy to "fight back."
Sharp also noted that orders given to Maddox to
stay eight miles (13 km) off the North Vietnamese coast put the ship in
international waters, as North Vietnam claimed only a five-mile (8 km)
nautical limit as its territory (or off of its off-shore islands). In addition,
many nations had previously carried out similar missions all over the world,
and the USS John R. Craig (DD-885) had earlier conducted an
intelligence-gathering mission in similar circumstances without incident.
Second alleged attack
On August 4, another DESOTO patrol off the North Vietnamese
coast was launched by Maddox and the Turner Joy, in order to
"show the flag" after the first incident. This time their orders
indicated that the ships were close to no more [less] than 11 miles
(18 km) from the coast of North Vietnam.
During an evening and early morning of rough weather and
heavy seas, the destroyers received radar, sonar, and radio signals that they
believed signaled another attack by the North Vietnamese navy. For some two
hours the ships fired on radar targets and maneuvered vigorously amid
electronic and visual reports of enemies. Despite the Navy’s claim that two
attacking torpedo boats had been sunk, there was no wreckage, bodies of dead
North Vietnamese sailors, or other physical evidence present at the scene of
the alleged engagement.
At 1:27 am Washington time, Herrick sent a cable
in which he acknowledged the attack may not have happened and that there may
actually have been no Vietnamese craft in the area: "Review of action
makes many reported contacts and torpedoes fired appear doubtful. Freak weather
effects on radar and overeager sonarmen may have accounted for many reports. No
actual visual sightings by Maddox. Suggest complete evaluation before any
further action taken".
One hour later, Herrick sent another cable, stating,
"Entire action leaves many doubts except for apparent ambush at beginning.
Suggest thorough reconnaissance in daylight by aircraft." In response to
requests for confirmation, at around 1600 Washington time, Herrick cabled,
"Details of action present a confusing picture although certain that the
original ambush was bona fide."
At 1800 Washington time (0500 in the Gulf of Tonkin),
Herrick cabled yet again, this time stating, "the first boat to close
the Maddoxprobably launched a torpedo at the Maddox which was
heard but not seen. All subsequent Maddox torpedo reports are doubtful
in that it is suspected that sonarman was hearing the ship's own propeller
beat" [sic].
Within thirty minutes of the 4 August incident, President
Johnson had decided on retaliatory attacks. That same day he used the 'hot
line' to Moscow, and assured the Soviets he had no intent in opening a broader
war in Vietnam. Early on the 5 August Johnson publicly ordered retaliatory
measures stating, "The determination of all Americans to carry out our
full commitment to the people and to the government of South Vietnam will be
redoubled by this outrage." One hour and forty minutes after his speech,
US aircraft reached North Vietnamese targets. On the 5 August at 10:40am these
planes flying from US aircraft carriers, bombed four torpedo boat bases, and an
oil-storage facility in Vinh.
United States response
President Johnson's speech to the American people
Shortly before midnight on August 4, President Johnson made
a speech by radio in which he described an attack by North Vietnamese vessels
on two U.S. Navy warships, USS Maddox and USS Turner Joy and
requested authority to undertake a military response. Johnson's speech repeated
the theme that "dramatized Hanoi/Ho Chi Minh as the aggressor
and which put the U.S. into a more acceptable defensive posture." Johnson
also referred to the attacks as having taken place "on the high
seas," suggesting that they had occurred in international waters.
He emphasized commitment to both the American people, and
the South Vietnamese government. He also reminded Americans that there was no
desire for war. "A close scrutiny of Johnson's public statements...reveals
no mention of preparations for overt warfare and no indication of the nature
and extent of covert land and air measures that already were operational."
Johnson's statements were short to "minimize the U.S. role in the
conflict; a clear inconsistency existed between Johnson's actions and his
public discourse."
Reaction from Congress
While President Johnson’s final resolution was being
drafted, Senator Wayne Morse attempted to hold a fundraiser to raise
awareness about possible faulty records of the incident involving the USS Maddox.
Morse supposedly received a call from an informant who has remained anonymous
urging Morse to investigate official logbooks of the Maddox. These logs
were not available before President Johnson’s resolution was presented to
Congress.
After urging Congress that they should be wary of President
Johnson’s coming attempt to convince Congress of his resolution, Morse failed
to gain enough cooperation and support from his colleagues to mount any sort of
movement to stop it. Immediately after the resolution was read and presented to
Congress, Morse began to fight it. He contended in speeches to Congress that
the actions taken by the United States were actions outside of the constitution
and were “acts of war rather than acts of defense."
Morse’s efforts were not immediately met with support,
largely because he revealed no sources and was working with very limited
information. It was not until after the United States became more involved in
the war that his claim began to gain support throughout the United States
government. The controversial Morse was defeated when he ran for re-election in
1968.
Distortion of the event
Evidence was still being sought on the night of August 4
when Johnson gave his address to the American public on the incident. Messages
recorded that day indicate that neither President Johnson nor McNamara was
certain of an attack.
Various news sources, including Time, Life and Newsweek,
ran articles throughout August on the Tonkin Gulf incident.Time reported:
"Through the darkness, from the West and south…intruders boldly sped…at
least six of them… they opened fire on the destroyers with automatic weapons,
this time from as close as 2,000 yards."
Time stated that there was "no doubt in Sharp’s
mind that the U.S. would now have to answer this attack", and that there
was no debate or confusion within the administration regarding the incident.
The use of the set of incidents as a pretext for escalation
of U.S. involvement follows the issuance of public threats against North
Vietnam, as well as calls from American politicians in favor of escalating the
war.
On May 4, 1964, William Bundy called for the U.S.
to "drive the Communists out of South Vietnam", even if that meant
attacking both North Vietnam and Communist China. Even so, the Johnson
administration in the second half of 1964 focused on convincing the American
public that there was no chance of war between North Vietnam and the U.S.
North Vietnamese General Giap suggested that the
DESOTO patrol had been sent into the Gulf to provoke North Vietnam into giving
an excuse for escalation of the war. Various government officials and men
aboard the Maddox have suggested similar theories. American
politicians and strategists had been planning provocative actions against North
Vietnam for some time. George Ball told a British journalist after
the war that "at that time…many people…were looking for any excuse to
initiate bombing".
Provocative action against North Vietnam was considered
after the August, 1964 incidents John McNaughton suggested in
September 1964 that the U.S. prepare to take actions to provoke a North
Vietnamese military reaction, including plans to use DESOTO patrols North.
William Bundy’s paper dated September 8, 1964 suggested more DESOTO patrols as
well.
Consequences
Main article: Gulf of Tonkin Resolution
US Defense Secretary Robert McNamara failed to
inform US President Lyndon B. Johnson that the U.S. naval task group
commander in the Tonkin Gulf, Captain John J. Herrick, had changed his
mind about the alleged North Vietnamese torpedo attack on U.S. warships he had
reported earlier that day.
By early afternoon of 4 August, Washington time, Herrick had
reported to the Commander in Chief Pacific in Honolulu that "freak weather
effects" on the ship’s radar had made such an attack questionable. In
fact, Herrick was now saying, in a message sent at 1:27 pm Washington time,
that no North Vietnamese patrol boats had actually been sighted. Herrick now
proposed a "complete evaluation before any further action taken.
"McNamara later testified that he had read the message
after his return to the Pentagon that afternoon. But he did not immediately
call Johnson to tell him that the whole premise of his decision at lunch to
approve McNamara’s recommendation for retaliatory air strikes against North
Vietnam was now highly questionable. Had Johnson been accurately informed about
the Herrick message, he might have demanded fuller information before
proceeding with a broadening of the war. Johnson had fended off proposals from
McNamara and other advisers for a policy of bombing the North on four separate
occasions since becoming President.
President Johnson, who was up for election that year,
ordered retaliatory air strikes and went on national television on
August 4. Although Maddox had been involved in providing intelligence
support for South Vietnamese attacks at Hòn Mê and Hòn Ngư, Johnson denied, in
his testimony before Congress, that the U.S. Navy had supported South
Vietnamese military operations in the Gulf. He thus characterized the attack as
"unprovoked" since the ship had been in international waters.
As a result of his testimony, on August 7, Congress passed
a joint resolution (H.J. RES 1145), titled the Southeast Asia
Resolution, which granted President Johnson the authority to conduct military
operations in Southeast Asia without the benefit of a declaration of 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."
Later statements about the incident
In 1965, President Johnson commented privately: "For
all I know, our Navy was shooting at whales out there."
In 1981, Captain Herrick and journalist Robert
Scheer re-examined Herrick's ship's log and determined that the first
torpedo report from August 4, which Herrick had maintained had occurred—the
"apparent ambush"—was in fact unfounded.
Although information obtained well after the fact supported
Captain Herrick's statements about the inaccuracy of the later torpedo reports
as well as the 1981 Herrick/Scheer conclusion about the inaccuracy of the
first, indicating that there was no North Vietnamese attack that night, at the
time U.S. authorities and all of the Maddox crew stated that they
were convinced 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 during Operation
Pierce Arrow.
Squadron commander James Stockdale was one of the
U.S. pilots flying overhead during the second alleged attack. Stockdale wrote
in his 1984 book Love and War: "[I] had the best seat in the house to
watch that event, and our destroyers were just shooting at phantom
targets—there were no PT boats there... There was nothing there but black water
and American fire power." Stockdale at one point recounts seeing Turner
Joy pointing her guns at the Maddox.
Stockdale said his superiors ordered him to keep quiet about
this. After he was captured, this knowledge became a heavy burden. He later
said he was concerned that his captors would eventually force him to reveal
what he knew about the second incident.
In 1995, retired Vietnamese Defense Minister Vo Nguyen
Giap, meeting with former Secretary of Defense McNamara, denied that Vietnamese
gunboats had attacked American destroyers on August 4, while admitting to the
attack on August 2. A taped conversation of a meeting several weeks after
passage of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was released in 2001, revealing that
McNamara expressed doubts to President Johnson that the attack had even
occurred.
In the Fall of 1999, retired senior CIA engineering
executive S. Eugene Poteat wrote that he was asked in early August
1964 to determine if the radar operator's report showed a real torpedo boat
attack or an imagined one. He asked for further details on time, weather and
surface conditions. No further details were forthcoming. In the end he
concluded that there were no torpedo boats on the night in question, and that the White
House was interested only in confirmation of an attack, not that there was
no such attack.
In the 2003 documentary The Fog of War, the former
Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara admitted that the Aug 4 attack never
happened.
NSA report
In October, 2005 the New York Times reported
that Robert J. Hanyok, a historian for the U.S. National Security
Agency, had concluded that the NSA deliberately distorted the intelligence
reports that it had passed on to policy-makers regarding the August 4, 1964
incident. He concluded that the motive was not political but was probably to
cover up honest intelligence errors.
Hanyok's conclusions were initially published within the NSA
in the Winter 2000/Spring 2001 Edition of Cryptologic Quarterly, about five
years before they were revealed in the 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 (Operation
Iraqi Freedom) that commenced in 2003. Reviewing the NSA's archives, Mr. Hanyok
concluded that the NSA had initially misinterpreted North Vietnamese
intercepts, believing 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.
On November 30, 2005, the NSA released the first installment
of previously classified information regarding the Gulf of Tonkin incident,
including a moderately sanitized version of Mr. Hanyok's article. The Hanyok
article stated that intelligence information was presented to the Johnson
administration "in such a manner as to preclude responsible decision
makers in the Johnson administration from having the complete and objective
narrative of events." Instead, "only information that supported the
claim that the communists had attacked the two destroyers was given to Johnson
administration officials."
With regard to why this happened, Hanyok wrote:
As much as anything else, it was an awareness that President
Johnson would brook no uncertainty that could undermine his position. Faced
with this attitude, Ray Cline was quoted as saying "... we
knew it was bum dope that we were getting from Seventh Fleet, but we were
told only to give facts with no elaboration on the nature of the evidence.
Everyone knew how volatile LBJ was. He did not like to deal with
uncertainties."
Hanyok included his study of Tonkin Gulf as one chapter of
an overall history of the involvement of NSA, and American signals
intelligence (SIGINT), in the Indochina Wars. A
moderately sanitized version of the overall history was released in
January 2008 by the National Security Agency and published by
the Federation of American Scientists.
See also
Gulf of Tonkin Resolution
The Fog of War
Operation Pierce Arrow
0 komentar:
Posting Komentar