TONKIN - DUBIOUS PREMISE FOR A WAR

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000605740019-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 6
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 3, 2012
• Sequence Number: 19
• Publication Date: April 29, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/03: CIA-RDP90-00965R000605740019-3
,? I L APPEARED LOS ANGLLES TIMES
O PAGE 9_ z9 April 1965'
Cables, Accounts Declassified
Tonkin Dubious
Premise for a War
By ROBERT SCHEER, Times Staff Writer
Twenty years ago, on the black-
est of nights in the Gulf of Tonkin,
when the moon died and dense fog,
angry seas, electrical storms and
luminescent ocean microorganisms
conspired to play tricks with a
sailor's mind, America went to war.
A murky incident-a purported
attack on U.S. vessels by North
Vietnam-led President Lyndon B.
Johnson to order the - bombing of
North Vietnam, to obtain a con-
gressional resolution approving the
Americanization of the war in
Southeast Asia and eventually to
station half a million U.S. troops in
Vietnam.
However, a reconstruction of
those events, based on once-secret
government cables and formerly
classified eyewitness accounts,'-in'-?,
dicates that the attack never oc-
curred.
The confusion began the night of
Aug. 4, 1964, high on the bridge of
the Maddox, an aging destroyer
outfitted as a spy ship. Unable to
see objects a few feet into the
blustery dark, dependent on elec-
tronic information gleaned from
radar, sonar and intercepted enemy
communications, Capt. John J.
Herrick-a 44-year-old veteran of
.two wars-concluded that the
mysterious dots on his radar screen
were North Vietnamese PT boats
bent on attacking his two-ship.'
flotilla.
Herrick, commodore of the 7th
Fleet's Destroyer Division 192, ra-
dioed an emergency call to Pacific
.naval headquarters in Honolulu
that would soon be read to the
President, who was eating break-
fast in the White House 12 time
zones away. Johnson was furious.
Two, days before, the Maddox
had fired first on three North
Vietnamese PT boats that had
closed to within 10 miles of the
Maddox in what Herrick believed
was an imminent attack. Now,
there had apparently been a second
incident, and for the next 14 hours,
the President's men would plan a
retaliatory air strike.
Johnson-in the midst of an
election campaign-insisted that
Unknown to Herrick, one such
attack had begun the night of July
30, immediately before he began
sailing along the North Vietnamese
coast. The North Vietnamese PT
boats that closed on the Maddox on
Aug. 2 were probably retaliating
for that assault.
Then-Secretary of State Dean
Rusk conceded as much in a classi-
fied cable to Gen. Maxwell D.
Taylor, U.S. ambassador to Viet-
nam, the following night. The
decisive action be taken soon "Maddox incident is directly relat-
enough for him to announce it on ed to (North.Vietnam's) efforts to
television that night, even as his resist these activities," Rusk said.
staff frantically tried to determine Request Denied
whether an attack had indeed oc-
curred. On Aug. 3, the day after that first
In order to meet that deadline, ~ Gulf of Tonkin episode, Herrick
Johnson would overrule the. com- requested that his patrol be ended
mander in chief of the Pacific Fleet because he thought the mission
and announce the bombing of made the Maddox vulnerable. He
North Vietnam before some of the was turned down by Adm. Ulysses
U.S.. pilots had even arrived over Grant Sharp Jr., commander in
their targets. chief of U.S. forces in the Pacific,
who felt this might call into ques-
Not So Clear. in Gulf tion U.S. "resolve to assert our
In the daylight of Washington it legitimate rights in these interna-
was all very clear and simple=but tional waters."
not so clear back in the darkened Sharp recently said that he had
gulf. obtained permission from the Joint
From its inception, the purrnnse
of Herrick's mission=which had
Chiefs. of Staff to strengthen Her-
rick's patrol by placing a second
been conceived in the White House- destroyer, the Turner Joy, under
and directed by the President's his command.
national security adviser-was Radio monitoring-which was
largely secret, even to him. It had the purpose of Herrick's mission-
begun a week earlier, when the was conducted by a communica-
Maddox was re-equipped as an, tions box that had been placed
intelligence-gathering ship and between the Maddox's smoke-
sent to obtain information on a- stacks. Intelligence experts stood
noi's radar and communications, as watch inside the box, intercepting
well as to make a show of force
close to the ? North Vietnamese
coast.
Simultaneously, South Vietnam-
ese navy personnel, trained by the
United States and using U.S.-sup-
plied boats, had begun: conducting
secret raids on targets in North
Vietnam. _.._, ~~._.~.._ _ :.....:.........
and translating North Vietnamese
communications. Occasionally, the
officer in charge of monitoring
these. communications would pop
out with messages about what he
thought the North Vietnamese
were doing.
On the night of Aug. 3, another
U.S.-directed South Vietnamese
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/03: CIA-RDP90-00965R000605740019-3
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/03: CIA-RDP90-00965R000605740019-3 tZ .
according to communications mon-
itored by the Maddox, the North
Vietnamese confused that mission
with Herrick's patrol.
Early on the evening of Aug. 4, ,
the intelligence officer reported to
Herrick that the radio communica-
tions indicated an imminent attack
on the Maddox and her sister ship.
Warning to Washington
Herrick passed the warning on to
Washington. It was 9 a.m. Eastern
Daylight Time, when the message
was handed to Secretary of De-
fense Robert S. McNamara.
Twelve minutes later, McNam-
ara called the President, who had
been with Democratic congression -
al leaders.
"They have?" Johnson thun-
dered when he heard about the
supposed attack, according to
then-House Majority Leader Carl
Albert, who had stayed on after the
congressional breakfast. "Now; I'll
tell you what I want," Johnson said
to McNamara. "I not only want
those patrol boats that' attacked the
Maddox destroyed, I want every-
thing at that harbor destroyed; I
want the whole works destroyed. I
want to give them a real dose."
At this point, however, Herrick
had not said that his ships were
under attack, only that his radio
intercepts pointed to the likelihood
of an attack.
Political Repercussions
Immediately after breakfast,
-Johnson-who was preoccupied
with his campaign against Republi-
can presidential nominee Barry
Goldwater-took a walk ,with ad-
viser Kenneth O'Donnell-.
"The President was wondering
aloud as to the political repercus-
sions and questioned me rather
closely as to my political reaction to
his making a military retaliation,"
O'Donnell recalled four years later
in a letter to Sen. J. William
Fulbright (D-Ark. ), then chairman
of the Foreign Relations Commit-
tee.
"The attack upon Lyndon John-
son" O'Donnell wrote, "was going
to come from the right and the
hawks, and he must not allow them
to accuse him of vacillating or
being an indecisive leader. The
emergence of the (Gulf of Tonkin)
resolution itself was nothing but
political coloration for a decision
already taken."
After the gulf incident and the
U.S. retaliation, a Harris Poll
showed that public opinion on the
U.S. role in Vietnam had reversed.
Before the incident, 58% of those
polled had a negative view of the
Johnson Administration's handling
of Vietnam policy; afterward, 72%
approved.
`Capable of Quick Response'
While denying that Johnson
wanted to expand the war, national
security adviser McGeorge Bundy
said recently that the President
was concerned about his image as a
leader. Johnson wanted "to be seen
to be capable of an adequately
quick response, no doubt about
that," Bundy recalled.
While Johnson's reaction may
have been quick enough that
morning, it was based on reports
from the gulf that became more
uncertain as the day went on. .
On the Maddox, the man in the
communications box whose reports
of an impending attack started the
incident was known to some as "the
hairball man"-after the character
in Mark Twain's "Huckleberry
Finn" who looked into a hairball
and foresaw thefuture.
"Every time the hairball man
came out of that van, I got wor-
ried," said Dr. Samuel E. Halpern,
who was the ship's physician and is
now a professor of radiology at UC
San Diego. "He'd go running onto
the bridge, and then the order came
over the intercom and said that
these PT boats were approaching
us and that they were going to try
to torpedo us. And so we weren't
going to wait, we were going to fire
and we did, of course...."
Halpern added that after the
battle, "some of the chiefs were
really upset about the hairball man
and the box. . . . And one of them
said, 'We ought to throw the
God-damned box overboard.'"
Testimony 4 Years Later
Later, investigations within the
executive branch and Congress
would cast doubts on whether the
radio intercepts. of an impending
attack even applied to the action
around Herrick's ships. In testimo-
ny four years later before the
Senate Foreign Relations Commit-
tee, McNamara revealed that the
communications intercepted that
morning of Aug: 4 consisted simply
of North Vietnamese orders to
"make ready`: for. military opera-
tions" sent to two boats that were
incapable of carrying torpedoes.
That night, though. with the
radio man's intercepts in hand,
Herrick and his officers began to
interpret oddly moving. radar dots
and sonar noises as torpedo attacks
from enemy vessels they could not
see. The Maddox increased speed to
its maximum 30 knots and followed
a zigzag course.
At 9:52 p.m., Herrick reported
that both his ships were under
torpedo attack. Between 22 and 30
torpedoes were counted during the
next two hours, during which the
destroyers thrashed about in
high-speed evasive action while
frenetically firing their cannon at
targets that simply were not visi-
ble.
The report of so many torpedoes
aroused suspicion among the Mad-
dox's officers because the North
Vietnamese navy was thought to
have only 24 torpedoes on all its PT
boats. Ultimately, the Americans
began to suspect that whatever
their instruments said, no attack
was in progress.
As Halpern recalled: "Immedi-
ately after the attack, the officers
came streaming into the wardroom
and it was hysterical. . . just hys-
terical laughter. Everybody was
laughing like mad, and then sud-
denly, I realized I was laughing too,
the same way. And it was this
tremendous release from pres-
sure."
Fighter pilots from two nearby
carriers that were providing cover
for the destroyers swooped down
dangerously close to the breaking
waves to drop flares and fire volley
after volley where the radar dots
said the targets would be. Howev-
er, they also could not confirm the
presence of enemy boats or torpe-
does.
`A Decent Interval'
Retired Vice Adm. James B.
Stockdale, a pilot who flew above
the Maddox and Turner Joy,
searching out their attackers, re-
cently broke a silence his superiors
had asked him to observe because,
he said, "I thought 20 years was a
decent interval." Stockdale now
says categorically that the attack
never occurred.
In his book, "In Love and War,"
written with his wife Sybil, Stock
dale recalls returning to his ship
and consulting with the other pi-
lots. None had seen anything. He
quotes one pilot as saying, "No boat
wakes, no ricochets off boats, no
boat gunfire, no torpedo wakes-
nothing but black sea and Ameri-
can firepower."
("pf-tilttf~
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/03: CIA-RDP90-00965R000605740019-3
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/03: CIA-RDP9O-00965ROO0605740019-3J
At the end of the "battle," no
destroyers had been hit and no
torpedoes exploded. Back in Wash-
ington, however, the gears were
moving inexorably and without the
complications of doubt.
About 10 a.m. on Aug: 4,
McGeorge Bundy's brother, Wil-
liam, assistant secretary of state for
East Asian and Pacific affairs, who
was vacationing on Martha's Vine-
yard, got an urgent call from Rusk
asking him to return to Washing-
ton forthwith.
"So, I got down to Washington at
3:30 in the afternoon," William
Bundy recalled, "and I went to the
office and learned that (Under
Secretary of State) George Ball
and Abe (Abram) Chayes (who
had recently resigned as the State
Department's chief legal adviser)
were drafting a congressional reso-
lution.
"I was told the basic story that
there . . . apparently had been a
second attack and that the Presi-
dent was determined to retaliate
and . . . to seek a congressional
resolution."
No Doubt Expressed
Bundy said that he never heard
anyone in the State Department
that day, from the secretary of
state on down, express the slightest
doubt about the facts of the attack.
"My understanding was that the
President was looking to McNam-
ara, and he in turn was looking to
Admiral Sharp and other intelli-
gence people for what he, in the
end, fudged to be solid evidence
that it had taken place."
In the gulf, the evidence was
collapsing. Several hours after the.
so-called attack, Herrick climbed.
to the bridge of the Maddox, his
stomach tight with apprehension
that a bizarre error may have
occurred. As Herrick reached the
top of the ladder, his worst fears
were confirmed. He was met there
by his second-in-command, Cmdr.
Herbert L. Ogier, skipper. of the
Maddox, who informed Herrick
that the reports of the attack were
wrong.
The destroyer had been going
unusually fast and zigzagging, and
some, if not all, of the sonar
sightings had simply been the
ship's electronic signals bouncing
off its own rudder rather than
enemy torpedoes, Ogier told Her-
rick. Then, Herrick and his top
officers huddled and agreed on the
source of the error and the necessi-
ty of informing Washington.
'Suggest Complete Evaluation'
Herrick cabled word of his dis-
covery: "Review of action makes
many reported contacts and torpe-
does fired appear doubtful. Freak
weather effects on radar and
over-eager sonar men may have
accounted for many reports.. No
actual visual sightings by Maddox.
Suggest complete evaluation be-
fore any further action taken."
Herrick's decision to reverse
himself was not an easy one. "You
know, we've led them on now for
three or four hours and all of a
sudden we're changing our tune,"
he recalled in.a recent interview,
"and you wonder how they're
going to react to that. . . . There's
a sort of gung-ho spirit in any of
the services, and not many people
like to admit they're wrong or have
been wrong, but the stakes were
too great in this case. I couldn't
stonewall this thing then and pre-
tend-you know, yeah, damn it, it
really happened, I just can't take
that chance."
He did hesitate about sending
that cable.
"I talked it over with Ogier and
Jackson (Lt. Cmdr. Dempster M.
Jackson, executive officer of the
Maddox) . and my staff, and of
course, Thad to make the decision.
But pretty much all agreed that-
you. know-God, this could be
serious if it goes all the way, and of
course it did."
Herrick's report went up the
chain of command to McNamara,
but back in Washington a gung-ho
.spirit every bit as strong as the one
Herrick had fought to overcome
was driving events.
Goldwater, Kennedy Factors
"There were two factors at
work," recalled Bill Moyers, the
longtime presidential aide who was
then working on Johnson's reelec-
tion campaign.
"The threat from the right of a
Barry Goldwater and the threat
within his own party from the
hawks, from the Cold War wing of
the Democratic Party-which a lot
of people have forgotten was still
very pronounced in the early '60s
and chiefly had been carried into
Democratic policy by the Kennedy
wing of the party. Johnson would
look at the Kennedy people around
him, like Robert McNamara and
McGeorge Bundy and Dean Rusk,
and he would later muse out loud as
to what they would think if he had
taken a position which in their
mind would have seemed softer."
McGeorge Bundy insisted in an
interview, however, that it was
Johnson himself who took the
initiative: "This, I remember quite
specifically. He called me up and
said we're going to go for a resolu-
tion and I said something skeptical
(because) of a general feeling that
if you want a durable congressional
resolution you don't go for it on the
basis of some snap event and a
surge of feeling around the snap
event. And he makes it clear to me
that the matter's decided and he's
not calling for my advice-he's
calling for my staff action in carry-
ing out a decision, which I then do."
That telephone call between
Bundy and the President toQk.nlace
in the morning. There was still no
reason to doubt that an attack had
occurred when, at 1 p.m., the
President had lunch at the White
House with McNamara, Rusk,
Bundy, CIA Director John A.
McCone and then-Deputy Secre-
tary of Defense Cyrus R. Vance.
Johnson was insistent that the
North Vietnamese be punished.
The record shows that Herrick's
cable expressing doubt about the
attack. arrived in Washington at
1:30 p.m., but there is no indication
that the men at lunch were in-
formed of its content. McNamara
received the cable sometime after
lunch and then called Adm. Sharp
in Honolulu.
The conversation between Sharp
and McNamara, which was not
declassified until 1982 under the
Freedom of Information Act and
which was omitted from previous
Defense Department compilations
of telephone conversations per-
taining to the Gulf of Tonkin
incidents, reveals the developing
uncertainty that afternoon.
McNamara asked Sharp, "There
isn't any possibility there was no
attack, is there?" Sharp replied,
"Yes, I would say there is a slight
possibility." McNamara then said,
"We obviously don't want to do it
(attack North Vietnam) -until we
are damned sure what happened,"
and asked Sharp, "How do we
reconcile all this?"
Ehen the admiral suggested that
the order to retaliate be postponed
"until we have a definite indication
that this happened," McNamara
instructed him to leave the "exe-
cute" order in force.
McNamara informed Johnson
and McGeorge. Bundy about the
doubts, but Bundy said he depend-
ed on McNamara's evaluation of
the data. .
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/03: CIA-RDP9O-00965ROO0605740019-3
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/03: CIA-RDP90-00965R000605740019-3 C~.
Realities of Process
"Look at the realities of how
these decisions are made," said
Ball, who participated in key meet-
ings that day. "They sit around a
Cabinet table with the President.
The head of the CIA briefs You on
what the events are, or maybe the
secretary of defense briefs you on
what the events are. You don't look
at the cables, you don't look at the
underlying documents. If he tells
you that the evidence is that there
was an attack, then that is the basis
for the discussion, that's the under-
lying assumption and you discuss
on that basis.
"If you're secretary of state or if
you were in my position as a deputy
secretary, you don't insist on look-
ing at the intelligence yourself in a
situation like that because, pre-
sumably, it's been vetted with the
experts who are much better able
to interpret it than you are."
At 4:34 p.m., Washington time,
Herrick, in response to Sharp's
said, "I certainly don't believe I
would have rushed into action" and
introduced the Gulf of Tonkin Res-
olution for the Johnson Adminis-
tration. "I think I did a great
disservice to the Senate. . . . The
least I can do . . . is to alert .. .
future Senates that these matters
are not to be dealt with in this
casual manner." .
There was to be failure on both
counts. Planes were sent to bomb
North Vietnam before definitive
word was reached from the ships
about the torpedo attack-and a
number of those planes arrived at
their destination after Johnson had
informed the world of the raid.
To this day, Sharp remains bitter
that the President's refusal t d 1
o
insistence for clarification, cabled,
"Details of action present a confus-
ing picture although certain that
original ambush (on Aug. 4) was
bona fide." .
Herrick said there were also
some sailors on the Turner Joy who
reported seeing lights on the ocean
as well as torpedo wakes. Some
experts, including Herrick and
Sharp, now discount those sight-
ings as a common visual effect
created by luminescent ocean mi-
croorganisms.
In his cable, Herrick was re=
pondmg to what he had been told
about intercepted North Vietnam-
ese communications rather than to
what he saw. As he recalled re-,
Gently: "Who am I to doubt stuff
that's coming to me on official
messages from the intelligence
people in the services, you know?
And I think Tatt's what McNamara
used. I think that's how he made his
decision.".. -
All Doubt Removed
Four- years later,. McNamara
would tell the. Senate Foreign Re-
lations Committee that the second
Herrick cable removed all doubt
that an attack had occurred.
However,. Fulbright, who had
not known of either cable until the
1968 Foreign Relations Committee
hearings, said that he and the rest
of Congress were misled in 1964. If
he had known of the telegrams, he
eay
At the time of the Fulbright his televised address alerted the
hearings, McNamara cited then- North Vietnamese and endangered
classified government cables to the lives of American pilots.
counter the committee's suspicions "That's a very bad thing to do,"
that no attack had occurred. Yet, said Sharp, who lives in retirement
recently declassified documents in San Diego, in a recent interview.
show that throughout the evening He said he argued the point with
of Aug. 4, the defense secretary had McNamara, who "decided to do it
his own doubts but was under
anyway."
mounting pressure t
k
o ma
e sure
the matter was resolved in time to
get the President on the evening
news.
In a now-declassified phone con-
versation with Sharp at 8:39 p.m.,
Washington time, McNamara said:
"Part of the problem here is just
hanging on to this news, you see.
The President has to make a state-
ment to the people, and I am
holding him back from making it,
but we're 40 minutes past the time I
told him we would launch."
`Wouldn't Recommend It'
At 9:09 p.m., Sharp told McNam-
ara that the planes could not finish
arriving at their targets before
midnight, Washington time: "How
serious do you think would be a
presidential statement about the
time of launch?" McNamara asked.
Sharp -replied: "I don't think it
would be good, sir, frankly, because
"Just doing things like that for
political reasons, without consider-
ing the lives of. our pilots and the
lives of our soldiers, you know,"
Sharp said. "The wrong thing to do,
God damn it, just as dumb as hell."
The problem, Sharp said, was
"you alerted the North Vietnamese
that an attack was going to take
place. So naturally, when they're
alerted, they're better able to strike
at you, and the pilots lose as a result
of that. A surprise is extremely
important in military operations."
Sharp added with some bitter-
ness, "The President had to get on
evening TV....
In the'attack, two planes were
shot down. One pilot was killed and
the other captured.
Sharp still believes that there
was a North Vietnamese attack on
the tw
d
o
estroyers Aug. 4. Vehe-
it will alert them. No doubt about
it . will
Wouldn't No doubt it." mently tapping a coffee table in his
In the next hour, Sharp had to living room, he said U.S. retaliation
was necessary to "send a message,
inform the defense secretary ,that especially when you're dealing
the air launch had to be delayed with a bunch of God-damned Com-
further for technical reasons. But munists because they're ruthless
McNamara replied, "The President bastards."
wants to go on the air at 11:15 p.m., On the night of the gulf incident,
that is the problem." though, the record shows that
The pressure to make.a televised Sharp was concerned up until the
announcement before the nati
on end about whether a PT boat
went to sleep went on to distort two attack had actually been made by
interconnected and critical pro- the North Vietnamese. A couple of
cesses. One was-the still-annoying
-
=lyre Lne planes were
detail of determining whether an
. launched, McNamara had a top aide
attack had, in fact, occurred. After P contact contact Sharp-at his Honolulu
Herrick's. cable, Sharp continued headquarters to check once again.
frantically to send messages out to Sharp messaged Capt. Herrick ask-
the ships demanding clarification ing him to confirm that his ships
on the attacks. The military's other had been attacked.
concern was that all the planes sent
to attack North Vietnam must hit
their targets before a presidential
announcement robbed them of the
element of surprise.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/03: CIA-RDP90-00965R000605740019-3
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/03: CIA-RDP90-00965R000605740019-3 57.
No Hits, No Positive ID
Herrick's reply was received in
Washington at one minute before
11 p.m., 16 minutes after the first
U.S. planes had taken off to attack
North Vietnam:
"Maddox scored no known hits
and never positively identified a
boat as -such.. . Weather was
overcast with limited visibili-
ty. . . . Air support not successful
in locating targets. . . . There
were no stars or moon resulting in
almost total darkness throughout
action. . . . No known damage or
personnel casualties to either
ship. . . . Turner Joy claims sink-
ing one boat and damaging anoth-
er. . . . The first boat to close
Maddox probably fired torpedo at
Maddox which was heard but not
seen. All subsequent Maddox tor-
pedo reports were doubtful in that
it is supposed that sonar man was
hearing ship's own propeller beat."
Recently, Herrick told The
Times that he confirmed the one
torpedo firing because he assumed
that the Maddox was moving at a
slower speed and the sonar equip-
ment only picked up rudder noises
as torpedoes when the. ship was
moving at more than 25 knots. But
when shown for the first time that
his notes and the ship's log indicat-
ed that the Maddox had been
traveling at 30 knots when the first
alleged attack occurred, Herrick
conceded that in all probability, no
torpedo had been fired.
At 11:37 p.m., while Sharp was
still searching out evidence to
confirm an attack, 38 minutes after
Herrick's last cable listing the
missing signs of a battle, Johnson
went on television and denounced
the North Vietnamese for their
unprovoked attack.
"Renewed hostile actions against
.United States ships on the high
seas have today required me to
order the military forces of the
.United States to take action in
reply," Johnson said.
He continued that he would ask
Congress for a resolution that au-
thorized him "to take all necessary
measures to repel any armed attack
against the forces of the United
States and to prevent further ag-
gression."
Legal Justification
What had begun as a murky
skirmish against mysterious dots
and slashes on a radar screen
became the Gulf of Tonkin Resolu-
tion, a finely honed legal justifica-
tion for America's participation in
what would become its most divi-
sive foreign war. The U.S. presence
in Vietnam, limited at the time of
the gulf incident to 21,000 so-called
military advisers, eventually
.reached 543,000 combat and sup-
port troops.
Despite Johnson's rhetorical cer-
tainty that night, doubts about the
attack would continue to pour in.
The skipper of the Turner Joy,
Capt. Robert C. Barnhart, an-
swered Sharp's last request for
information on witnesses with the
plaintive query: "Who are witness-
es, what is witness reliability? Most
important that present evidence
substantiating type and number of
forces be gathered and disseminat-
ed."
But it was too late for gathering
evidence, for that message was
received at 1:15 a.m., Washington
time-almost two hours after the
President had spoken to the nation.
By then, it was daylight out in
the gulf, where a startled. Herrick
stood on the bridge of the Maddox
watching planes fly overhead. At
first he thought they might be
Chinese. Then he realized they
were U.S. planes on their way to
bomb North Vietnam, and he re-
calls feeling despair and muttering
"good grief" or harsher words to
that effect.
Then-Capt. Stockdale led that
air attack. In his book, he recalls
that he had read Herrick's cable
before going to sleep, thankful that
"at least there's a commodore up
there in the gulf who has the guts
to blow the whistle on a screw-up,
and take the heat to set the record
straight. As I lay down, and turned
out the bed lamp, musing on the
absurdity of the goings-on up
in the gulf, I would never have
guessed that commodores in charge
on the scene of action are some-
times not allowed to blow the
whistle on a. screw-up or set re-
cords straight themselves."
At 4:45 a.m., Saigon time, Stock-
dale had been rudely awakened by
a junior officer, and told: "We' just
got a message from Washington
telling us to prepare to launch
strikes against the beach. . . . The
(skipper) wants you to start get-
ting ready to lead the big one,
sir. . . . Your target is Washing-
ton's priority No. 1."
Stockdale asked the young offi-
cer: "What's the idea of the
strikes?" He was told, "Reprisals,
sir." "Reprisal for what?" Stock-
dale asked. "For last night's attack
on the destroyers, sir," came the
answer.
Stockdale writes, "I. felt like I
had been doused with ice water.
How do I get in touch with the
President? He's going off
half-cocked."
Stockdale went on that raid and
others-until he was shot down
and held prisoner for 71A years.
Promotion Preempted
The Herricks now live in retire-
ment in Santa Fe, N.M., in a modest
home, with the "Captain Herrick"
shingle proudly displayed over the
front door.
A likeable, no-nonsense type,
Herrick was on his way to promo-
tion to rear admiral's rank. He
never made it. His dream died that
night in the Gulf of Tonkin. He
won't quite come out and say it, but
his wife-whom he dated as a
midshipman at Annapolis and who
waited at one Navy base after
another while rearing three chil-
dren during three wars-will.
The President got his television
appearance and won reelection.
Goldwater suffered a crushing de-
feat that November, and in a
recently published 1980 interview
told the Congressional Research
Service that he thought the whole
Tonkin Gulf incident was political
ly motivated.
"I'll be -perfectly honest with
you," Goldwater said, "I think it
was a complete phony. I think
Johnson plain lied to the Congress
and got the resolution."
Johnson. aides like McGeorge
Bundy say such accusations are.
false, but there are indications that
even the President had his doubts.
As Ball recalled in a .recent, inter-
view, the President complained to
him about "those God-damned
slap-happy admirals shooting . at
flying fish."
Qwknued
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/03: CIA-RDP90-00965R000605740019-3
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/03: CIA-RDP90-00965R000605740019-3 I
Ball added that Johnson "wasn't
convinced at all after the thing .. .
but they had been waiting for a
provocation for a hell of a long
time. . . . I don't think he was
sure, I think he had grave doubts
that this attack had occurred .. .
but from the point of view of the
President and those who were
around him who were eager for a
stronger American line to be taken,
this served the purpose."
Congress Stunned
Indeed it did. Three days after
Johnson's televised speech, Con-
gress, stunned by what it had been
told was an unprovoked attack on
American ships peacefully sailing
the high seas, passed the Gulf of
Tonkin resolution. Johnson would.
carry a copy of it in his coat pocket
until the day he left office.
As Moyers, now a CBS News
reporter and commentator, re-
called recently; "Any time that
anyone would raise the question of
the grounding for his actions in
Vietnam, he would pull that out
and say, 'Look, I have the over-
whelming support of Congress.'
For the remainder of his presi-
dency, Johnson would claim that
the resolution legally authorized
him to send a total of 3.7 million
American servicemen to Indochina.
By the time the war ended, 11
years later, 58,022 of them died.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/03: CIA-RDP90-00965R000605740019-3