I think it is now clear [the second attack] did not occur..." –, Shipwrecks and maritime incidents in 1964. Gulf of Tonkin: McNamara admits It didn't happen. 26, No. They were recruited for the job by the Norwegian intelligence officer Alf Martens Meyer. Although Maddox had been involved in providing intelligence support for South Vietnamese attacks at Hòn Mê and Hòn Ngư, Johnson denied, in his testimony before Congress, that the U.S. Navy had supported South Vietnamese military operations in the Gulf. The night before the launching of the actions against North Vietnamese facilities on Hòn Mê and Hòn Ngư islands, the SOG had launched a covert long-term agent team into North Vietnam, which was promptly captured. In response to these reported incidents, President Lyndon B. Johnson requested permission from the U.S. Congress to increase the U.S. military presence in Indochina. The resolution gave Johnson approval "to take all necessary steps, including the use of armed force, to assist any member or protocol state of the Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty requesting assistance in defense of its freedom. A moderately sanitized version of the overall history[63] was released in January 2008 by the National Security Agency and published by the Federation of American Scientists. [33][34] Johnson's speech repeated the theme that "dramatized Hanoi/Ho Chi Minh as the aggressor and which put the United States into a more acceptable defensive posture. "[29], McNamara later testified that he had read the message after his return to the Pentagon that afternoon. The Gulf of Tonkin incident (Vietnamese: Sự kiện Vịnh Bắc Bộ), also known as the USS Maddox incident, was an international confrontation that led to the United States engaging more directly in the Vietnam War. [5] One U.S. aircraft was damaged, three North Vietnamese torpedo boats were damaged, and four North Vietnamese sailors were killed, with six more wounded. [47], Johnson, who was up for election that year, ordered retaliatory air strikes and went on national television on August 4. White soon arrived in Washington to meet with Senator Fulbright to discuss his concerns, particularly the faulty sonar reports. naval event, Gulf of Tonkin off the coast of Vietnam [1964]. He contended in speeches to Congress that the actions taken by the United States were actions outside the constitution and were "acts of war rather than acts of defense. "A close scrutiny of Johnson's public statements ... reveals no mention of preparations for overt warfare and no indication of the nature and extent of covert land and air measures that already were operational." On 25 December 2000, China and Vietnam officially signed the Agreement on Fishery Cooperation in the Gulf of Tonkin together with the Agreement on Maritime Boundary Delimitation in the Gulf of Tonkin. The original account from the Pentagon Papers has been revised in light of a 2005 internal NSA historical study,[5] which stated on page 17: At 1500G, Captain Herrick (commander of Maddox) ordered Ogier's gun crews to open fire if the boats approached within ten thousand yards. Reaction To Events in the Gulf of Tonkin, August 1–10, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gulf_of_Tonkin_incident&oldid=1015743916, Battles and operations of the Vietnam War in 1964, Naval battles of the Vietnam War involving the United States, Articles with dead external links from December 2019, Articles with permanently dead external links, Articles with dead external links from June 2016, Articles with dead external links from August 2013, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles containing Vietnamese-language text, Articles lacking reliable references from March 2021, Articles with disputed statements from October 2019, Articles with unsourced statements from October 2019, Articles with unsourced statements from August 2020, All articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases, Articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases from December 2016, Articles with unsourced statements from January 2019, Articles with unsourced statements from July 2019, Articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases from July 2019, Articles with unsourced statements from September 2015, Articles with dead external links from August 2020, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 3 April 2021, at 08:17. , provocative action against North Vietnam was considered [ by whom? the in! 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