NSA Release on the Gulf of Tonkin

[Jedburgh]

Skunks, Bogies, Silent Hounds and the Flying Fish: The Gulf of Tonkin Mystery 2-4 August 1964 (http://www.nsa.gov/vietnam/releases/relea00012.pdf)

[Lanton]

Wonder if they'll now release more papers on the USS Liberty incident.

[Limeyfellow]

It was suggested for a longtime that the offical history of events wasn't exactly right.

I too hope for more information released about the attack on the USS Liberty but I don't expect it. They are still insisting it was a big mistake and that there was no way they could tell it wasn't an Egyptian trawler after all by a US ship regardless of the accounts of the surviving crewmembers.

[Jedburgh]

Attack on a SIGINT Collector, the USS Liberty (http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB24/nsa10.pdf)

[n4292936]

For those interested
http://www.ussliberty.org/

The author of this site was one of the principal contributors to part of the book Body of Secrets which dealt with the subject.

[QRO?]

Skunks, Bogies, Silent Hounds and the Flying Fish: The Gulf of Tonkin Mystery 2-4 August 1964 (http://www.nsa.gov/vietnam/releases/relea00012.pdf)I don't see this report as a serious attempt at objective science but more as a biased historical revisionism.

Basically, the author has set the precondition that the second attack didn't occur and then sets out to "prove" it, instead of considering what the results of the new analysis actually mean to the whole picture. I do accept the conclusion that the SIGINT evidence of the attack was lacking and that it was somewhat deliberately engineered (not entirely fabricated, but pieced together from unrelated intercepts and misinterpretations) to support the theory of an attack taking place. However, I don't accept the much further reaching conclusion that the lack of SIGINT also proves that there was no attack. Absense of evidence (SIGINT) is not evidence of absense (of a battle).

When you balance the evidence for the official story, which is backed by first hand personal testimony of US Navy personnel and on the other hand lack of second hand information from the North Vietnamese, you would have to consider the first hand information more reliable and require a much larger conspiracy to fabricate.

Hanyok addresses the first hand information of the official story (http://www.history.navy.mil/docs/vietnam/tonkin-3.htm) by references to civilian authors who lean more to the conspiracy theory side (Edvin Moise, Joseph C. Goulden) and offers no real explanation for the radar, sonar and visual contacts (of which McNamara (http://www.history.navy.mil/docs/vietnam/tonkin-7.htm#state28feb) lists at least 18 people in two ships and two aircraft). "Ghost returns" for 3 different radars? Manouvering like FACs with no correlation to the destroyer movements? Mass hallucinations extending from two ships on the surface to aircraft flying overhead?

I don't think that's a credible scenario. If the US radars and sonars were that bad and most of their sailors and marines were on acid all the time, then why weren't there similar "ghost battles" happening all the time during the 60's, resulting in supposed encounters with other hostile "trigger happy" navies like USSR, North Korea, Cuba, etc?

The way I see it, there are only three real possibilities
1) The fight took place as decipted in the official history (but maybe the number of actual torpedoes fired and DRV boats sunk or damaged will never be known, because most of them were sunk during the war anyway by air attacks). The reason why there was no SIGINT was simply that the DRV PT boat force was observing radio silence or using frequencies not discovered yet by US listening posts. The DRV Navy might even have realised that their 2 August action failed because USS Maddox was warned by detection of their radio traffic.

The PT boats set up the ambush much earlier by positioning them to the expected TG 72.1 return route from the day patrol as observed during several earlier days and then just laid in wait until getting a contact from a radar equipped boat, fought the rest of the action by visual guidance from the illumination provided by the US ships and aircraft. It's also likely, that there was no tactical VHF intercepts recorded by Maddox because they didn't maintain listening during the night or at least during the battle like they did during 2 August, because it was their scheduled mission only during daytime (when they were within range of any interesting targets).

The PT boats could have come from other DRV naval bases and not be part of the 135th squadron for which the SIGINT stuff centers around. Hanyok tries to dismiss this by counting times it would have taken for the boats to arrive at the battle area, but this is based on a single "attack message" intercept, which OTOH is explained away as not actually being an attack order at all. Obviously other DRV boats could have been there had they received their orders earlier (as they must have been because no such orders were intercepted). The DRV Navy obviously didn't comprise of just the 135th squadron of P4's and a two Swatow boats. There were around 50 FAC total in 1964, any of them could have taken part. There is no analysis in Hanyoks material where the other 45 boats where (not counting the ones he has SIGINT about). If there is no US SIGINT about them, then obviously there is no point in claiming that none of them could have attacked Maddox and Turner Joy.

2) The second possibility is a massive conspiracy where the 20 or so key people (http://www.history.navy.mil/docs/vietnam/tonkin-1.htm#personalstate) who gave statements on scene, were all really under cover CIA operatives or otherwise bought to lie about the battle. Compared to that, little doctoring of the SIGINT which has all come to light these days is peanuts. Why haven't any of the Navy and USMC men who lied about fighting DRV boats come clean to this day?

3) The attacking boats were really CIA boats (Nastys or just civilian boats purchased covertly for that operation) and somehow a similar number of people (sceleton crews of 5 per 4 boats) were willing to take a chance of getting killed or captured in the operation. One would assume that the attack would have been much more feint in that case and not lasted for hours.

One more thing, from the political perspective the SIGINT might have seemed more important at the time than the first hand information, because it was important to be able to justify the reprisal domestically and internationally with as wide evidence as possible. Showing information from a "highly classified and unimpeachable source" about the enemy intentions (the order to "prepare for military operations") and that the attack was really an intentional aggression, might have seemed more relevant for PR purposes than going to equal lengths in verifying for internal purposes that there was an attack. If the Navy of my country told me that they were attacked, I wouldn't care what intelligence told me of the enemy opinion in that matter. If you don't trust your own forces to know the difference, then what do you need them for?

Also, even if for military purposes it would have been crystal clear that having an enemy ship following your ships in the open sea and approaching at high speed constitutes an attack, it might have been more difficult to explain that to the population at large if there had not been torpedoes fired, machinegun fire etc. to prove that in addition to the action taking place, the US usage of firepower was justified. These days nobody would protest if a warship fired on even a civilian craft approaching deliberately at high speed (after the USS Cole attack), but at that time there was much legal wrangling over the very idea of where warships have "right of sea" to pass (the 3 or 12 mile territorial sea limit disagreement with DRV). My point being, that it was pretty much given that there were DRV ships around Maddox and Turner Joy (as in the later 18 September incident with Morton and Edwards), but the evidence of their hostile intentions (firing torpedoes or coming too close) required further proof. In the 18 September incident it was determined that the first condition was satisfied but not the second.