Gulf of Tonkin incident
The Gulf of Tonkin incident (Vietnamese: Sự kiện Vịnh Bắc Bộ) was an international confrontation that led to the United States engaging more directly in the Vietnam War. It consisted of a confrontation on August 2, 1964, when United States forces were carrying out covert amphibious operations close to North Vietnamese territorial waters, which triggered a response from North Vietnamese forces. The United States government falsely claimed that a second incident occurred on August 4, 1964, between North Vietnamese and United States ships in the waters of the Gulf of Tonkin. Originally, US military claims blamed North Vietnam for the confrontation and the ostensible, but in fact imaginary, incident on August 4. Later investigation revealed that the second attack never happened. The official American claim is that it was based mostly on erroneously interpreted communications intercepts.[5][6][7] The National Security Agency, an agency of the US Defense Department, had deliberately skewed intelligence to create the impression that an attack had been carried out.[8][9][10]
Not to be confused with Tonkin Affair.
On August 2, 1964, the destroyer USS Maddox, while performing a signals intelligence patrol as part of DESOTO operations, was approached by three North Vietnamese Navy[11] torpedo boats of the 135th Torpedo Squadron.[1][5] Maddox fired warning shots and the North Vietnamese boats attacked with torpedoes and machine gun fire.[5] In the ensuing engagement, one U.S. aircraft (which had been launched from aircraft carrier USS Ticonderoga) was damaged, three North Vietnamese torpedo boats were damaged, and four North Vietnamese sailors were killed, with six more wounded. There were no U.S. casualties.[12] Maddox was "unscathed except for a single bullet hole from a [North] Vietnamese machine gun round".[5]
On August 3, 1964, destroyer USS Turner Joy joined Maddox and the two destroyers continued the DESOTO mission. On the evening of August 4, the ships opened fire on radar returns that had been preceded by communications intercepts, which US forces claimed meant an attack was imminent. The commander of the Maddox task force, Captain John Herrick, reported that the ships were being attacked by North Vietnamese boats when, in fact, there were no North Vietnamese boats in the area. While Herrick soon reported doubts regarding the task force's initial perceptions of the attack, the Johnson administration relied on the wrongly interpreted National Security Agency communications intercepts to conclude that the attack was real.[5]
While doubts regarding the perceived second attack have been expressed since 1964, it was not until years later that it was shown conclusively never to have happened. In the 2003 documentary The Fog of War, the former United States Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara admitted that the supposed August 4 attack, for which Washington authorized retaliation, never happened.[13] In 1995, McNamara met with former North Vietnamese Army[14] General Võ Nguyên Giáp to ask what happened on August 4, 1964. "Absolutely nothing", Giáp replied.[15] Giáp confirmed that the attack had been imaginary.[16] In 2005, an internal National Security Agency historical study was declassified; it concluded that Maddox had engaged the North Vietnamese Navy on August 2, but that the incident of August 4 was based on bad naval intelligence and misrepresentations of North Vietnamese communications.[5]
The outcome of the incident was the passage by U.S. Congress of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which granted U.S. 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 to South Vietnam and the commencement of open warfare against North Vietnam.