Date: August 1964
Location: The Gulf of Tonkin
The Conspirators: US Navy, President Lyndon B. Johnson, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara
The Victims: The North Vietnamese
The United States’ entry into the Vietnam War was triggered by the second of four alleged attacks by North Vietnamese fast torpedo boats against US naval forces in the waters off North Vietnam, called the Gulf of Tonkin. The conspiracy theory is that this second attack was either fictional or was perpetrated by clandestine US forces as an excuse to draw the United States into the war. These theorists say that this attack was either fabricated or faked entirely for the purpose of giving Congress a reason to order entry into the conflict.
The second attack did not, in fact, happen, but this wasn’t clear at the time. US naval forces did open fire on targets that appeared sporadically on their radar screens, but nobody ever actually saw anything and no inbound fire was ever received.
In August of 1964 the American Navy and North Vietnam found themselves in an uneasy standoff. American ships were off the Vietnamese coast and tens of thousands of American troops were with the South Vietnamese as advisers. This was a proxy war between Communism and capitalism, between East and West. As the Soviets and Chinese were arming and funding North Vietnam to spread Communism throughout Southeast Asia, the Americans’ Truman Doctrine compelled them to contain its spread, and they were determined not to let South Vietnam fall to the North.
On August 2, 1964, the American destroyer USS Maddox was provocatively engaged in electronic surveillance just outside the boundary of international waters as recognized by the rest of the world, but inside the boundaries claimed by North Vietnam. The Maddox was approached by three North Vietnamese fast torpedo boats that had been stalking it for more than a day. The Maddox fired three warning shots across the bows of the torpedo boats, which prompted these boats to attack. The Maddox opened fire with its guns while the Vietnamese boats began launching torpedoes and firing their machine guns. Some distance away, the aircraft carrier USS Ticonderoga launched four planes, which joined in the attack. By the time it was all over, one of the torpedo boats had been sunk, two had been damaged, and four North Vietnamese sailors were dead and six wounded. The Maddox and one of the aircraft each suffered a single bullet strike with no casualties.
In the early hours of August 4 the seas were high and the weather rough. Radar, sonar, and radio signals received by the Maddox were interpreted as signaling another attack, and the gunners opened fire in the direction of radar targets that had been spotted. This continued for some four hours, even into the daylight, when it finally became clear that nobody had actually seen any enemy boats. The sonar signals that had been received, which sounded like the propellers of launched torpedoes, were actually the Maddox’s own engines. Having assessed the situation, Captain John J. Herrick of the Maddox cabled Washington:
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.
But despite Herrick’s review of the situation, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, who favored escalation against North Korea, continued to persuade President Johnson that this second attack had been a real one. As more cables from Herrick came in walking back the initial reports of an attack, Senator Wayne Morse (an opponent of the war) reported Herrick’s cables to the press and lobbied other congressmen to block any attempted escalation by Johnson.
But it was too late. President Johnson, influenced by McNamara, had made up his mind. He ordered air strikes against North Vietnamese targets, which were then launched from carriers in the area. He then drafted the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which was passed by Congress within the next two days after impassioned testimony from McNamara, who exaggerated the Vietnamese aggression and greatly downplayed the role of the Maddox. The resolution authorized the president to do whatever he deemed necessary to assist the South Vietnamese.
Of course, throughout the debate over the resolution, evidence suggesting that no such attack had taken place was brought up. But by then, it didn’t matter.
It is no secret that McNamara, and much of the rest of the US government, was eager for any excuse to bomb Ho Chi Minh’s Communist North Vietnam in the early 1960s. This was widely understood at the time, and has been ever since. The United States was already secretly engaged in operations against the North, having paid for unmarked Norwegian fast patrol boats and skippers crewed by South Vietnamese sailors. For about three years prior to the Gulf of Tonkin, these boats had been launching strikes against the North Vietnamese. And of course, there were already tens of thousands of American troops stationed in South Vietnam to support their defense against a potential invasion from the North.
The Maddox was stationed off the coast of Vietnam to intentionally provoke the North. This strategy included having the clandestine Norwegian boats make nighttime strikes against the North Vietnamese coast, not really to cause any damage, but simply to get the North Vietnamese to turn on their coastal radars. This accomplished two goals: first, it allowed the Maddox to see where those radars were located; and second, it showed the North Vietnamese that the Maddox was right there off their coast!
Because of the Cold War between the Communist Bloc and the West, many in the US government were determined to escalate the American presence in the Vietnam War, and were looking for any pretext to do so. People who were against this escalation, like Senator Morse, were keenly aware of this, and were actively on the lookout for anything that would get the United States into the war under false pretenses. The newspapers had been exhaustively covering this conflict of interests for years, and it was an absolutely well-known, public fact.
All the important facts about the incident were publicly known as they happened. Even as the Maddox was firing, and even as Captain Herrick was radioing to Washington that there was no attack taking place, and even as Senator Morse repeated this to Congress and to the press, Johnson was already drafting the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, and everyone knew it. There was never any moment when this fictional naval battle existed as a conspiracy theory. Instead it is evidence that real conspiracies do happen and are discovered all the time, and nothing more.