The Gulf of Tonkin and the Second Attack

The engagement of August 2 was real. The destroyer Maddox exchanged fire with three North Vietnamese torpedo boats while operating close to the coast in support of OPLAN 34A, a program of covert South Vietnamese commando raids on the North that the American public did not know existed.

The engagement of August 4 was not real. In heavy weather and at night, the Maddox and the Turner Joy reported torpedo attacks based on radar and sonar returns. No enemy vessel was sighted, no wreckage was recovered, and no American ship was hit or damaged.

Captain John Herrick, commanding the destroyer group, cabled Washington within hours that freak weather effects on radar and overeager sonarmen accounted for many of the reports, that no actual visual sightings had been made, and that a complete evaluation should be undertaken before any further action was taken. Pilot James Stockdale, overhead throughout, later stated plainly that there were no boats there.

The National Security Agency’s internal history, written by Robert Hanyok and declassified in 2005, concludes that no attack occurred on August 4 and that the signals intelligence was not merely misinterpreted but deliberately skewed — that translations were mishandled and that only the intercepts supporting an attack were forwarded, while those contradicting it were withheld.

The text of the resolution had been prepared by the administration months before the August incident, during the spring of 1964, and held pending a suitable occasion. It was not composed in response to the Gulf of Tonkin; it was waiting for it.

It passed on August 7, 1964 — three days after the attack that did not occur — by 416 to 0 in the House and 88 to 2 in the Senate. Senators Wayne Morse and Ernest Gruening cast the only dissenting votes. Morse had been told by a Pentagon source that the Maddox was connected to the covert raids, and said so on the floor. He was not believed.

The resolution authorized the President to take all necessary measures to repel armed attack and prevent further aggression, without a declaration of war, without geographic limit, and without expiry. It became the legal basis for an eight-year commitment that reached over half a million American personnel.

Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara conceded in 1995 that the August 4 attack had not happened. By then fifty-eight thousand Americans and a number of Vietnamese in the millions were dead.