The “business end” of the Maddox’s secret intelligence mission arrived on July 24, when a massive shipyard crane lifted a ten-ton SIGINT COMVAN off the deck of the destroyer USS George K. MacKenzie, which had just returned to Keelung from an intelligence collection mission off the Soviet coastline, and placed it on the torpedo deck of the Maddox between the ship’s two smokestacks. The Maddox’s crew, who had watched with undisguised interest as the heavily guarded van was lowered onto their ship, were ordered not to enter the restricted area around the COMVAN or to ask any questions about what it was there for. Inside the air-conditioned gray van were three radio intercept positions and a communications position linking the van with NSA and local listening posts. Several intercept antennae were mounted on the roof of the van, while other antennae were hastily strung between the van and the Maddox’s smokestacks. Accompanying the COMVAN was a fifteen-man detachment of navy and marine intercept operators under the command of a twenty-eight-year-old Texan named Lieutenant Gerrell “Gary” Moore, a Chinese linguist whose regular billet was assistant operations officer at the U.S. Navy listening post in Taiwan at Shu Lin Kou Air Station, west of Taipei. Their job was to warn the Maddox of any danger to the ship and to collect SIGINT concerning North Vietnamesenaval activity of interest to theater of operations and national intelligence consumers.16
At eight in the morning on July 28, the Maddox departed from Keelung. For three days it steamed southward along the southern Chinese coast and around the Chinese island of Hainan in the Gulf of Tonkin. The embarked Naval Security Group personnel used the time to check their equipment and monitor Chinese radio traffic and radar emissions from the east coast of Hainan as the Maddox headed for “Yankee Station,” off the coast of North Vietnam.17
Unbeknownst to the men on the Maddox, shortly before midnight on the evening of July 30, four South Vietnamese “Nasty”-class patrol boats working for MACVSOG attacked North Vietnamese coastal defense positions on Hon Me and Hon Nieu Islands.18Although the damage inflicted by the patrol boats was slight, the North Vietnamese reacted violently to the attack, with SIGINT showing that the four patrol craft were pursued for a time by as many as four North Vietnamese Swatow-class patrol vessels. The captain of the North Vietnamese Swatow vessel T-142 later radioed that the boats had been unable to catch the South Vietnamese craft, had ceased the pursuit, and were returning to base. This encrypted message, sent in Morse code, was intercepted by the U.S. Navy listening post at San Miguel in the Philippines, decrypted, translated, and sent via teletype to NSA headquarters at Fort Meade.19
At seven twenty a.m. on Friday, July 31, only a few hours after the OPLAN 34A attack on Hon Me and Hon Nieu Islands had taken place, the Maddox refueled from the tanker USS Ashtabula east of the demilitarized zone (DMZ), then steamed northward along the North Vietnamese coast on its assigned patrol track. During the refueling, lookouts on the Maddox spotted the South Vietnamese patrol craft that had attacked Hon Me and Hon Nieu moving south at maximum speed toward their base at Da Nang.20
For the next two days, the Maddox sailed northward at a leisurely pace, spending most of July 31 off Hon Gio Island near the DMZ, then the morning of August 1 off the port of Vinh Son, before reaching its third orbit point (“Point Charlie”) off Hon Me Island just as the sun was setting, at seven p.m. As noted above, Hon Me had been attacked by South Vietnamese Nasty patrol boats two nights earlier. Up to this point, the two-day cruise along the North Vietnamese coast had been uneventful. But unbeknownst to the Maddox, North Vietnamese radar stations were closely following the ship’s movements.21
Shortly before midnight (eleven twenty-seven p.m.) on August 1, U.S. Navy radio intercept operators at San Miguel and Phu Bai, in South Vietnam, intercepted a North Vietnamese radio message. It took almost three hours to decrypt, then translate the message. When fully translated, it turned out to be a high-priority message from the North Vietnamese Southern Fleet headquarters at Ben Thuy to an entity designated only as “255,” stating that it had “decided to fight the enemy tonight.” The San Miguel analysts were pretty sure the “enemy” referred to was the Maddox.22A few minutes later, a second message was intercepted by the San Miguel listening post that confirmed it. Shortly after that, at one fifty-five a.m. on August 2, San Miguel intercepted a third message revealing that three Russian-made P-4 PT boats had been dispatched from nearby Thanh Hoa naval base to reinforce the three Swatow-class patrol boats already operating in the Hon Me–Hon Nieu area, where the Maddox was cruising.23
At two twenty-four a.m., San Miguel forwarded a summary of the translated “fight the enemy tonight” intercept to the COMVAN on the Maddox. A few minutes later, Lieutenant Moore, the commander of the COMVAN, woke Captains Herrick and Ogier in their staterooms and informed them of the new intelligence. The report unsettled Herrick, who concluded that the Maddox was about to be attacked. At two fifty-four a.m., Herrick sent a FLASH-precedence message to the commander of the U.S. Seventh Fleet in Japan stating, “Contemplate serious reaction my movements [vicinity] Pt. Charlie in near future. Received info indicating possible hostile action.” Without waiting for a reply from the Seventh Fleet, Herrick ordered general quarters sounded on the Maddox and shifted course to the east. While the crew took up battle stations, the destroyer sped away from the North Vietnamese coast and the threatened attack at flank speed.24
Despite the urgent request from the on-scene commander to cancel the remainder of the patrol because of “unacceptable risk,” Herrick was directed to resume the patrol by the commander of the Seventh Fleet. The Maddox reached “Point Delta,” off the port and naval base of Thanh Hoa, at nine forty-five a.m. and prepared for an eight-hour orbit just off Hon Me Island. But the cautious Herrick refused to allow the Maddox to come as close to the North Vietnamese coastline as he had the previous day, keeping his ship out of harm’s way as best he could.25
At two past ten a.m. as the Maddox sailed toward Hon Me Island, an urgent message titled “Possible Planned Attack by DRV Navy on Desoto Patrol” was sent from NSA to CINCPAC and the Seventh Fleet—but strangely enough, the COMVAN on the Maddox was not on the distribution list. The NSA message noted that an intercepted July 31 North Vietnamese message detailing the damage caused by the OPLAN 34A attack on Hon Me also “indicated DRV [North Vietnamese] intentions and preparations to repulse further such attacks.” As a result, NSA concluded that the North Vietnamese “reaction to Desoto patrol might be more severe than would otherwise be anticipated” because the North Vietnamese had connected the July 31 commando raid with the presence of the Maddox. The problem was that the Maddox did not know this.26
At eleven thirty a.m., an hour and a half after the NSA warning message was issued, three North Vietnamese P-4 PT boats (T-333, T-336, and T-339 from Division 3 of PT Squadron 135) were spotted by the Maddox’s lookouts arriving at Hon Me Island. A few minutes later, the Maddox spotted two Swatow patrol boats (T-142 and T-146) entering Hon Me cove. In response to the arrival of these vessels, at eleven thirty-eight the Maddox shifted course to the northeast and moved toward its next patrol orbit point, designated “Point Echo,” in order to put some distance between it and the five North Vietnamese boats. By two p.m., the Maddox was fifteen miles from the North Vietnamese coastline on course for Point Echo, moving northward at a leisurely ten knots.27
At two sixteen p.m., Lieutenant Moore raced to the bridge of the Maddox carry ing yet another single slip of paper. It was a CRITIC message just issued by the listening post at San Miguel, and it reported that two and a half hours earlier the North Vietnamesenavy headquarters had ordered the five warships at Hon Me Island to attack “the enemy and use torpedoes.”28Despite the fact that this was the second attack order that had been intercepted that day, Captains Herrick and Ogier concluded that an attack on the Maddox was indeed imminent, and at two twenty-three Ogier ordered the Maddox to shift course to the east and make best speed for the safety of the open waters at the mouth of the Gulf of Tonkin.29
The veracity of the informa
tion contained in the intercept was confirmed seven minutes later when the Maddox’s radar operators detected three North Vietnamese torpedo boats thirty miles to the southwest headed directly toward the Maddox at thirty knots. At the time, the Maddox was twenty-two miles off the coast of North Vietnam and moving at eleven knots to the east away from the coastline. When the torpedo boats came within twenty miles of the Maddox, at two thirty, p.m., Ogier ordered general quarters sounded and increased the ship’s speed to twenty-five knots, moving the destroyer’s course further to the southeast so as to present a smaller target to the torpedo boats directly behind him. At two forty p.m., Herrick sent a FLASH precedence message to the commander of the Seventh Fleet reporting, “I am being approached by high-speed craft with apparent intention of torpedo attack. Intend to open fire if necessary in self-defense.”30
By three p.m., the North Vietnamese PT boats were only five miles from the Maddox and continuing to close at their maximum attack speed of fifty knots. At five past three, as the PT boats moved into attack formation at a distance of 9,800 yards from the destroyer to begin their torpedo runs, the Maddox fired three warning shots from her five-inch guns across the bow of the lead PT boat. When the boats continued on their attack run, at seven past three the Maddox radioed that it was under attack and opened fire on the attackers with all its main batteries.31
Two of the PT boats launched their torpedoes from a distance of 2,700 yards, forcing the Maddox to take evasive action while continuing to fire on the attackers with its main batteries. Just as the third PT boat launched its torpedoes, it took a direct hit from one of the Maddox’s five-inch guns and was reduced to a fiery furnace. At about the same time, four U.S. Navy F-8E Crusader fighters from the aircraft carrier USS Ticonderoga arrived on the scene and attacked the PT boats, which were damaged and retiring from the battle. Under the cover of the air attack, the Maddox took the opportunity to withdraw from the scene and make for the mouth of the Gulf of Tonkin.
When the thirty-seven-minute battle was over, the Maddox had fired more than 250 five-inch and three-inch shells. One of the North Vietnamese PT boats was dead in the water and burning fiercely. The other two torpedo boats had withdrawn back to Hon Me after having suffered extensive damage. For its part, the Maddox had been hit by only a single machine gun bullet.
News of the North Vietnamese attack on the Maddox began rolling across the teletypes in the communications centers at the White House, the CIA, and the State and Defense Departments shortly after five a.m. Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) on Monday, August 2. President Lyndon Johnson was informed of the attack before he sat down to breakfast at nine. At a meeting with his national security advisers in the Oval Office at eleven thirty A.M., senior NSA officials briefed Johnson, Secretary of Defense McNamara, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), General Earle Wheeler, on the available SIGINT concerning the attack. CIA director McCone was notably but mystifyingly not invited to attend the meeting. A review of the evidence convinced those present that the attack had probably been ordered by overzealous North Vietnamesenaval commanders, leading Johnson not to opt for retaliation despite pressure from the South Vietnamese government and the American ambassador in Saigon to do so. Instead, Johnson decided on a more restrained response. Seeking to show strength and resolve, he ordered the Maddox to resume its patrol, this time reinforced by the destroyer USS C. Turner Joy, but both ships were instructed to stay at least eleven miles from the North Viet nam -ese coastline at all times. Continuous air cover for the patrol was to be sup-plied by the carrier Ticonderoga, stationed nearby in the Gulf of Tonkin, and the aircraft carrier USS Constellation was ordered from Hong Kong to reinforce the Ticonderoga. Johnson then called news reporters into the Oval Office and announced that the United States intended to continue the Desoto patrol, and that any repetition of the August 2 attack would have “dire consequences.” 32
Johnson’s national security officials had already come to the conclusion that the North Vietnamese had attacked the Maddox because, as SIGINT showed, Hanoi had connected the presence of the destroyer off the coast with the OPLAN 34A commando raids. With more raids scheduled for that night and the next three days, and despite suggestions from a few officials at the State Department that the raids be temporarily suspended to defuse the situation, Johnson and his key national security advisers concluded that the raids should continue because they were “beginning to rattle Hanoi and [the] Maddox incident [was] directly related to their effort to resist these activities.” Determined to show resolve, Johnson and his advisers ordered the Desoto patrol to continue and the tempo of the OPLAN 34A attacks to be intensified.33
At twelve fifteen p.m. EDT (eleven fifteen p.m. Gulf of Tonkin, or GOT, time), NSA headquarters issued orders to the headquarters of NSA Pacific in Hawaii and to all army, navy, and air force listening posts in the western Pacific, declaring a SIGINT Readiness Condition BRAVO, which was a heightened state of alert comparable to the DEFCON alert system utilized by the JCS. Under this elevated SIGINT Readiness Condition, which was designated Lantern, all NSA intercept stations in the Pacific were ordered to intensify their collection efforts against North Vietnamese communications in support of the ongoing Desoto patrol and were directed to report immediately by CRITIC-priority message any reflections appearing in COMINT of North Vietnamese or Chinese military reactions to the Desoto patrol.34
The events of August 2, 1964, showed NSA at its most impressive. The official NSA history of the affair reports, “The SIGINT community could be proud of its efforts during the day. The field sites and NSA had intercepted, pro -cessed, and reported North Vietnamesenaval communications in such a rapid and clear way that everyone in the Pacific command was aware of the approaching attack.”35But it was at the tactical level that NSA’s efforts mattered most. Dr. Edwin Moïse, a historian at Clemson University who has studied the Gulf of Tonkin incident for almost ten years, concluded that the interception of the North Vietnamese attack order gave the Maddox a crucial advantage over the North Vietnamese, since it allowed the destroyer’s captain to change course in time, forcing the Vietnamese PT boats to attack the destroyer from the rear. This minimized the target that the unfortunate North Vietnamese commander could hit and at the same time presented the PT boats with the full force of the destroyer’s weaponry.36
Interregnum: August 3, 1964
At six thirty a.m. local time on Monday, August 3, the Maddox, accompanied by the newly arrived destroyer C. Turner Joy, resumed its patrol in the Gulf of Tonkin, heading once again for Point Charlie off the island of Hon Me. Captain Herrick’s recommendation that the patrol be canceled because of the likelihood of a North Vietnamese attack was rejected by higher authorities, and he was ordered to resume the patrol. The cruisenorthward was uneventful except for the interception of Skinhead radar emissions at two twenty p.m. Ensign Frederick Frick, who was the watch officer in the Maddox’s combat information center, recalled, “We knew there was a bad guy [Swatow patrol boat] out there. And we knew there were three or four more of them.”37
Two hours later, a North Vietnamese Swatow patrol boat (T-142) began shadowing the two American destroyers, periodically reporting the positions of the Maddox and the Turner Joy to headquarters by radio, messages that were intercepted by NSA listening posts in South Vietnam and the Philippines. After completing his assigned patrol orbit off Hon Me, at four twenty-seven p.m. Herrick ordered the Maddox to retire to the mouth of the Gulf of Tonkin for the night before resuming its patrol along the coastline in the morning.38 That night, from ten fifty-two to two past eleven p.m., South Vietnamese PT boats belonging to MACVSOG bombarded North Vietnamese coastal installations, specifically a radar site at Vinh Son and a coastal defense installation at Mui Ron. These OPLAN 34A attacks were sure to elicit a military response from the North Vietnamese. On their return to Da Nang, the South Viet nam -ese boats were pursued for an hour by a North Vietnamese patrol boat.39
Early the next morning, COMINT began pic
king up the first North Vietnamese military reactions to the Vinh Son–Mui Ron raids that had taken place a few hours earlier. Radio intercepts collected by Marine Corps intercept operators at Phu Bai revealed that the North Vietnamesenavy headquarters in Haiphong had connected the presence of the two American destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin with the OPLAN 34A raids on Vinh Son and Mui Ron and that a response was anticipated.40
The Phantom Battle of August 4, 1964
After a long and sleepless night, at six a.m. on August 4 the Maddox and the Turner Joy resumed their patrol, making for the North Vietnamese coastline two hundred miles above the DMZ.
On the Maddox, Captain Herrick was decidedly unhappy about the position he had been placed in by his superiors, and he decided to take action to protect his command based on what had happened to the Maddox two days previously. Although unaware of the OPLAN 34A attacks that had taken place just a few hours earlier, Herrick was nevertheless concerned that the day’s patrol track called for him to once again orbit off Hon Me Island, where he knew a force of North Vietnamese PT boats was based that could easily attack the destroyers with little or no warning. At eight forty a.m., Herrick sent the following message to Seventh Fleet headquarters in Japan:
Evaluation of info from various sources indicates that the DRV considers patrol directly involved with 34A operations and have already indicated readiness to treat us in that category.
The Secret Sentry Page 12