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Feature article
By John Prados
Once again, the National Security Agency
has news for Vietnam veterans. On May 30, the NSA released
a second batch of documents on the August 1964 incident
that sparked the escalation of the Vietnam War. This release
contains some 130 documents. They run the gamut from commentaries
and command messages to oral histories and odds and ends
of the spot reporting of the NSA listening posts monitoring
North Vietnamese communications traffic at the time.
Although the NSA declassification action was barely mentioned
by the media, the new releases contain significant information
on the Gulf of Tonkin incident.
Among the fresh materials
in this collection, which can be found on the NSA’s
website www.nsa.gov are a lengthy history of the NSA and
the incident written in 1975 by Lieutenant Commander R.A.
MacKinnon and excerpts from two NSA texts that cover the
incident. Controversy over Robert Hanyok’s study
of the incident, which the NSA declassified last November,
is evident from the inclusion in this selection of materials
dealing with a commentary on that account by NSA Director
of Records Lewis Giles dated December 5, 2005.
Giles does
not dispute the conclusion that the second alleged attack,
that of August 4, 1964, never happened. But he insists
that the agency never misled President Lyndon Johnson and
that it consistently maintained communications intelligence
evidence was inconclusive. Giles pins the blame on Defense
Secretary Robert S. McNamara, citing the agency’s
review of 1968 testimony defending American actions at
the Gulf of Tonkin. McNamara systematically used overkill
language with COMINT.
The new document release also contains
significant data on contemporary and subsequent efforts
to investigate what happened at the Gulf of Tonkin. For
example, the U.S. Senate’s
Church Committee, which investigated every aspect of American
intelligence performance in 1975 (but made no real mention
of the Tonkin Gulf Incident), actually did attempt to ascertain
the facts. The NSA unsuccessfully attempted to divert Church
Committee staff into focusing on less important facets
of the agency’s work. The declassified documents
include the NSA’s memoranda exchanged with the committee.
On
the other hand, this collection also contains additional
data on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s
review of the communications intelligence evidence and
suggests that the NSA supported that review—although
in December 1967 the NSA director had opposed public disclosure
of any successes against Hanoi’s communications traffic.
The NSA also cooperated with a “friendly” CBS
television producer. The reporter assigned did not rate
that adjective in a March 1971 segment for the program
60 Minutes, which focused on the Gulf of Tonkin.
Among other noteworthy disclosures in this NSA document
release:
The after-action report of the Naval Security
Group detachment aboard the destroyer Maddox covering the
DeSoto Patrol. The report notes North Vietnamese communications
regarding salvaging the torpedo boat damaged in the August
2 action, which was misinterpreted elsewhere as indications
of an attack on the night of August 3/4.
A dispatch from NSA director General
Gordon Blake on August 2 that describes the damage to
the North Vietnamese torpedo boats and anticipates that
Hanoi will conduct a search-and-rescue operation to support
them. An interesting discrepancy between the DeSoto Patrol
report, which mentions possible North Vietnamese voice
radio traffic, and a 1967 NSA analysis that says “there
was no clear text voice traffic which could be associated
with the attacks.”
The
Far East Naval Command preliminary evaluation of the DeSoto
Patrol, which indicates its successes as identifying three
or four North Vietnamese coastal observation posts, taking
120 radar scope photos of points of interest along that
coast, and accumulating a set of water temperature readings
in the Gulf, along with technical data on radars and other
items. The evaluation notes that Maddox herself intercepted
no signals “that could possibly be associated
with DRV torpedo boat attack on 2 Aug.”
State Department
Bureau of Intelligence and Research that accurately described
the actions confirm the Maddox had prior warning of the
August 2 attack, and detail precautionary moves in the
wake of the incidents by the People’s Republic of
China, including sending a military command post to Hanoi.
The full text of transcripts
of telephone conversations between American Pacific Theater
commander Admiral U.S.G. Sharp and Washington officials,
including Secretary McNamara, previously available only
in excerpted form in a Pentagon study of command control
during the incident.
A dispatch from the Swift boat, PTF-77,
which shows that the Navy and CIA forces involved in Operations
Plan 34-A actively supported the second incursion (by Maddox
and C. Turner Joy together) by maintaining a patrol line
at sea that the destroyers encountered as they retired
down the Gulf. This evidence shows that the North Vietnamese
had some basis for fearing that DeSoto and 34-A forces
were cooperating.
Also of great interest in this collection
are a series of postmortems and other materials concerning
an alleged incident in September 1964 when another DeSoto
Patrol by the destroyers Edwards and Morton were allegedly
attacked in similar fashion.
For the first time, this NSA
release includes documents that show the planning and conduct
of the later DeSoto Patrol and NSA intercepts concerning
that incident, in which President Johnson refused to respond
as he had in August. The documents show a similar set of
intercepts surrounding the September events. State Department
intelligence in this case reasoned that Hanoi had used
naval vessels to shadow the U.S. warships but argued that
the nature of the encounter militated against any possible
North Vietnamese intention of attacking. The NSA concluded, “There
were no firm SIGINT reflections of hostile intent such
as were observed during the August patrol.”
The latest
set of declassified documents that the National Security
Agency has released adds fresh detail and context to our
knowledge of the Gulf of Tonkin incident.
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