The Secret Sentry

by Matthew M. Aid

  DRV are very sensitive about Hon Me. Believe this PT operating base and the cove there presently contains numerous patrol and PT craft which have been repositioned from northerly bases.

  Under these conditions 15 min. reaction time for operating air cover is unacceptable. Cover must be overhead and controlled by DD’s at all times.41

  Admiral Thomas Moorer, the commander of the Pacific Fleet in Hawaii, read Herrick’s message and fired off an angry cable of his own to CINCPAC, recommending the continuation of the Desoto patrol and arguing, “Termination of Desoto patrol after two days of patrol ops subsequent to Maddox incident . . . does not in my view adequately demonstrate United States resolve to assert our legitimate rights in these international waters.” What had started out as a simple intelligence collection mission had now become a matter of asserting freedom of navigation on the high seas, as well as not showing any sign of weakness in the face of North Vietnamese belligerence.42

  Herrick’s sense of apprehension was heightened when at nine thirty a.m. the radar operators on the Maddox and the Turner Joy picked up a radar contact of a “bogey” (unidentified surface craft) paralleling the course of the two American destroyers, but then the target disappeared as quickly as it had appeared. Herrick concluded that his task force of destroyers was being shadowed by at least one Swatow patrol boat.

  The destroyers reached Point Delta, off Thanh Hoa, at eleven forty-five. They then shifted course to the south and followed a course parallel to the North Vietnamese coastline down to a point opposite Hon Me, coming no closer than sixteen miles from the coast. On the cruise southward, the radar operators on the two ships picked up a few contacts, but otherwise the patrol was uneventful. After a tension-filled day with little intelligence to show for the effort, a relieved Herrick called off the patrol at four p.m. and ordered a change of course to the east and the middle of the Gulf of Tonkin, well away from the coastline, with the intention of resuming the patrol the following morning.43

  At six fifteen, a little more than two hours after Herrick had called it a day, the NSA listening post at Phu Bai sent to the COMVAN on the Maddox a CRITIC message stating, “Poss DRV naval operations planned against the Desoto patrol tonite 04 Aug[ust]. Amplifying data [ follows].” Twenty-five minutes later, Phu Bai sent a follow-up report, which stated, “Imminent plans of DRV naval action possibly against Desoto mission,” adding that intercept messages revealed that two hours earlier three North Vietnamese Swatow patrol boats had been ordered to “make ready for military operations the night of 4 August.”44

  Once again, Lieutenant Moore raced from the COMVAN to the bridge of the Maddox to hand-deliver the report to Captains Herrick and Ogier. Both men concluded that the intercept was an authentic order to attack the destroyers. At seven thirty p.m., Herrick ordered the two destroyers to increase speed from twelve to twenty knots in the hope of reaching the mouth of the Gulf of Tonkin before the pursuing North Vietnamese could catch up to them. Ten minutes later, Herrick radioed the captain of the aircraft carrier Ticonderoga, steaming nearby, that he had received “info indicating attack by PGM/P-4 imminent. My position 19-107N 107-003E [60 miles southeast of Hon Me]. Proceeding southeast at best speed.” He described the source of this information as simply “an intelligence source.”45

  Less than a minute after Herrick’s message to the Ticonderoga went out, the radar operators on the Maddox picked up an intermittent surface contact (or “skunk”) forty-two miles to the northeast, which was where both destroyers had anchored the previous evening. Fearing a trap, at seven forty-six p.m. Herrick ordered the Maddox and the Turner Joy to shift course away from the reported radar contacts. But Herrick was unable to shake his pursuers.46

  Four minutes after the Maddox and the Turner Joy changed course, at eight fifty a.m. EDT in Washington, Secretary McNamara and the chairman of the JCS, General Wheeler, were briefed on the contents of the Phu Bai CRITIC message. At nine twelve a.m., McNamara informed President Johnson of the indications coming from Fort Meade that the North Vietnamese intended to attack the Maddox and the Turner Joy. Wheeler telephoned Admiral Sharp at CINCPAC headquarters and told him to ensure that the captain of the Ticon-deroga, which was stationed off the coast fifteen minutes by air from the two destroyers, was apprised of the situation and to authorize the carrier commander to take “positive aggressive measures to seek and destroy attacking forces if the attack should occur.”47McNamara did not waste any time beginning to plan a retaliatory strike. At nine twenty-five a.m. EDT, only thirteen minutes after he had spoken to Johnson, McNamara called a meeting in his office attended by his deputy, Cyrus Vance, and representatives of the JCS to discuss possible retaliatory measures if the North Vietnamese should attack the Maddox and the Turner Joy.48

  In the Gulf of Tonkin, events moved with astonishing speed. At eight thirty-six p.m. (nine thirty-six a.m. EDT), Captain Herrick radioed that the radar operators on the Maddox and the Turner Joy were tracking two unidentified surface contacts and three unidentified aircraft. The unidentified aircraft disappeared from the radar screens, but the radar operators on the two destroyers reported that the surface contacts were coming ever closer at speeds of between thirty-five and forty knots. At nine thirty-nine p.m., the Turner Joy opened fire on a radar contact believed to have been a North Vietnamese PT boat that had closed to within seven thousand yards. She was joined almost immediately by the five-inch guns on the Maddox. During the three-and-a-half-hour “battle” that ensued, the Maddox and the Turner Joy fired more than 370 rounds from their three-inch and five-inch guns and dropped four or five depth charges, beating off an attack of what were believed to be six or more North Vietnamese PT boats and reportedly sinking two of the attackers—and amazingly without sustaining a single hit from enemy torpedoes or gunfire.49

  The Day of Reckoning: August 5, 1964

  The first FLASH-precedence messages about the naval engagement in the Gulf of Tonkin started coming across the teletypes at the National Military Command Center in the Pentagon at eleven a.m. EDT on August 4, less than twenty minutes into the engagement. The messages reported that the American destroyers were under attack and had evaded numerous enemy torpedoes.

  At six past eleven a.m. (six past ten a.m. GOT time), Secretary McNamara called President Johnson to tell him that a sea battle was then under way in the Gulf of Tonkin. Four minutes later, McNamara convened a meeting in his third-floor conference room in the E Ring of the Pentagon with the members of the JCS, Secretary of State Rusk, and National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy to discuss military retaliation against North Vietnam. At eleven thirty-five a.m., McNamara, Rusk, and Bundy left the Pentagon to attend a regularly scheduled NSC meeting at the White House, where they intended to recommend an immediate retaliatory air strike against North Vietnam, which had the blessing of the JCS. At twelve forty p.m., McNamara briefed Johnson and the NSC on the latest information available concerning what was occurring halfway around the world in the Gulf of Tonkin.

  Within an hour of the meeting’s breaking up, Admiral Sharp telephoned McNamara from Hawaii to personally recommend air strikes against the bases of the North Vietnamese torpedo boats. With this recommendation in hand, the JCS staff began selecting targets for the retaliatory air strike from a ninety-four-target list that had been secretly compiled earlier in 1964. At a one p.m. luncheon at the White House, Johnson, McNamara, Rusk, Bundy, and CIA director McCone unanimously agreed that retaliatory air strikes were required. 50

  At twelve twenty-seven a.m. on August 5 in the Gulf of Tonkin, Captain Herrick sent the following cautious message to Sharp: “Review of action makes many recorded 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 actions.” At twelve fifty-four, he sent a second message: “Joy also reports no actual visual sightings or wake of enemy . . . Entire action leaves many doubts except for apparent attempt at ambush a
t beginning.”51

  At one thirty-five p.m. EDT, August 4 (twelve thirty-five a.m. GOT time, August 5), the JCS informed McNamara that a list of targets had been compiled for air strikes, which could be executed if approved by the president. At a second NSC meeting that afternoon, Johnson ordered that the retaliatory air strikes be executed and said that he would seek to obtain as quickly as possible the support of the U.S. Senate for the strikes. As an NSA historical report notes, “Certainly none of the information coming out . . . either before or in the hours following the execution order was sufficiently persuasive to support such a momentous decision.” At three p.m., Secretary McNamara returned to the Pentagon to approve the target list for the air strikes, leaving the preparation of the execute order to the JCS. He told the JCS that Johnson wanted the air strikes to begin promptly at seven that evening (six a.m. GOT time, August 5) so as to coincide with a planned prime-time televised address by Johnson to the nation.52

  As the plans for the retaliatory air strike moved rapidly forward, Captains Herrick and Ogier on the Maddox were frantically trying to ascertain what exactly had occurred while battling exhaustion and fending off urgent demands for information from their superiors. When the two were told that during the engagement they had evaded a total of twenty-six torpedoes, they immediately knew that something was terribly wrong, since there were only twelve PT boats in the entire North Vietnamesenavy, each carry ing only two torpedo tubes that could not be reloaded at sea. What this meant was that even if every single North Vietnamese PT boat had been in the Tonkin Gulf that night (an impossibility to begin with), they could have fired only twenty-four torpedoes. Their suspicions were reinforced when they learned that all of the torpedoes had been heard by the Maddox’s inexperienced sonar operator, while the more experienced sonar operator on the nearby Turner Joy did not hear one torpedo in the water during the entire four-hour battle. Someone on the Maddox finally figured out that every torpedo warning issued by the ship’s sonarman had followed a sharp change in course by the Maddox. A test proved that the sonar operator on the Maddox had mistaken the change in cavitation noises made by the destroyer when it changed course for the noise made by a torpedo. 53

  At one forty-eight a.m. GOT time, August 5, Herrick sent another message to Admiral Sharp at CINCPAC, which stated,

  Certain that original ambush was bonafide. Details of action following present a confusing picture. Have interviewed witnesses who made positive visual sightings of cockpit lights or similar passing near Maddox. Several reported torpedoes were probably boats themselves which were observed to make several close passes on Maddox. Own ship screw noises on rudders may have accounted for some. At present cannot even estimate number of boats involved. Turner Joy reports 2 torpedoes passed near her.54

  Despite Herrick’s more upbeat and confident report, Sharp became worried about the strength of the evidence, or lack thereof, regarding the purported engagement. The three after-action reports that Sharp had received from Herrick were far from definitive and clearly indicated doubts about what had actually happened. When McNamara called Sharp at eight past four p.m. EDT (eight past three a.m. GOT time, August 5), Sharp was forced to tell him that the latest messages from Herrick indicated “a little doubt on just what exactly went on.” With the air strike preparations now nearing completion, this clearly was not what McNamara wanted to hear. He told Sharp that the air strike execution order would remain in force (the aircraft were expected to launch from their carriers in three hours), but ordered him to confirm that an attack had indeed taken place before the navy fighter-bombers were launched.55

  At four forty-seven p.m. EDT, McNamara met with the JCS “to marshal the evidence to overcome lack of a clear and convincing evidence showing that an attack on the destroyer had in fact occurred.” Based on the information then available to CINCPAC, Sharp concluded that an attack had taken place, an opinion that carried great weight with McNamara and the JCS. From Herrick’s reports, which were a mixed bag at best, McNamara and the JCS were able to extract some evidence to support their belief that the attack had occurred, including sightings of ship wakes by navy pilots; sonar reports of torpedoes being fired at the American destroyers; a report from the captain of the Turner Joy that his ship had been illuminated by what was believed to be a searchlight while taking automatic weapons fire; and the fact that one of the destroyers had observed cockpit lights on an unidentified ship. Finally, and most important, there were a number of SIGINT intercepts that appeared to buttress the case for an attack having occurred, the contents of which were apparently briefed to McNamara and the JCS, though hard copies of the intercepts were not provided to those attending the meeting.56

  Among the five evidentiary items then available indicating that an attack had taken place, the only two reliable pieces of information were SIGINT reports from NSA. One was an intercept of a statement that a North Vietnamese patrol boat had shot at U.S. aircraft. The other, received via teletype two hours earlier, at two thirty-three p.m., contained the text of a report by an unidentified North Vietnamese command authority who stated that his forces had “shot down two planes in the battle area” and that “we have sacrificed two ships and all the rest are okay.” At the end of the intercept was a report that “the enemy ship could also have been damaged.”57

  McNamara and the JCS knew from Herrick’s reports from the Gulf of Tonkin that there were numerous problems with the evidence cited above. Admiral James Stockdale, then a navy pilot who flew from the Ticonderoga that night, later disputed the navy’s official position that pilots had seen the wakes of enemy torpedo boats and gun flashes. A navy reconnaissance mission flown the morning after the supposed battle found no evidence of one, particularly oil slicks or debris that would have supported the claim that the destroyers had sunk one or more of the attacking North Vietnamese ships. The sonar evidence was highly dubious. Detailed examination of the reports of visual sightings turns up numerous inconsistencies that in aggregate render these reports less than reliable, especially since they were “firmed up” after the JCS demanded conclusive proof that an attack had taken place.58

  The Fruit of the Poisoned Tree

  This left the NSA intercepts as the sole remaining credible evidence to support McNamara and the navy’s contention that an attack had taken place. A declassified NSA history notes, “The reliance on SIGINT even went to the extent of overruling the commander on the scene. It was obvious to the president and his advisors that there really had been an attack— they had the North Vietnamese messages to prove it.”59

  But we now know that Johnson and McNamara got it badly wrong in their headlong rush to launch the retaliatory air strikes. The former head of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), Dr. Ray Cline, recalled that NSA fed the White House and the Defense Department raw intercepts, which were analyzed and evaluated by civilian officials and military commanders with little or no background in intelligence, much less SIGINT analysis. At no point were the SIGINT specialists at NSA called upon to provide the benefit of their deep knowledge of North Vietnamese communications, nor were CIA intelligence analysts called upon to provide an assessment of the intelligence concerning the alleged August 4 naval engagement. Cline later told an interviewer, “Everybody was demanding the SIGINT; they wanted it quick, they didn’t want anybody to take any time to analyze it.”60

  McNamara’s proceeding solely on the basis of his analysis of the available SIGINT may go down in history as one of the most serious mistakes made by a senior U.S. government official. He ended up seeing what he wanted to believe. Like a future secretary of defensenamed Donald Rumsfeld, the intellectually gifted McNamara made no secret of the fact that he thought he was a better intelligence analyst than the men and women at the CIA who had done it all their adult lives, a situation exacerbated by his intense distrust of intelligence professionals in general. In another interview, Cline said, “I of coursenever had a lot of faith in Bob McNamara’s judgment about intelligence. I think, l
ike many policy makers, he was too persuaded of his own ability to analyze things correctly and he didn’t feel that intelligence officers were very likely to tell him anything he didn’t already know. Now, this is a congenital disease among high-level policy makers.”61

  If McNamara and the JCS had taken the time to look long and hard at the intercepts on the afternoon of August 4, 1964, maybe history would be different, because there were some significant problems with the intercepts if they were to be taken as the most conclusive proof that an attack had occurred that night.

  For example, a halfway decent SIGINT analyst looking at the scanty evidence would have immediately noticed that there were no intercepts of North Vietnamese radio traffic or radar emissions, such as one would expect to find during the course of a heated naval battle, and such as had been intercepted by NSA during the first Gulf of Tonkin battle two days earlier. For the August 4 “Phantom Battle,” there were no comparable intercepts to be found anywhere.62 Former NSA officials indicated that the traffic analysis reports produced by B Group at NSA headquarters at Fort Meade after the battle showed only routine radio activity within the North Vietnamesenavy radio grid on the night of August 4. North Vietnamesenaval traffic showed a heightened state of alert along the coastline, almost certainly because of the continuing OPLAN 34A raids, but the NSA analysts could find no indications of any spike in radio traffic that would have been indicative of combat activity by North Vietnamesenaval units.63

  In the absence of any other reliable SIGINT information, the only piece of tangible evidence left was the report by the unidentified North Vietnamese command authority, which McNamara thought was an after-action report on the August 4 naval battle. The substance of the NSA translation is this: