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US govt skewed intelligence to enter Vietnam War
(AP)
Updated: 2005-12-02 09:20

"In truth, Hanoi's navy was engaged in nothing that night but the salvage of two of the boats damaged on 2 August," Hanyok wrote.

He said "the handful of SIGINT reports which suggested that an attack had occurred contained severe analytical errors, unexplained translation changes, and the conjunction of two unrelated messages into one translation. This latter product would become the Johnson administration's main proof of the Aug. 4 attack."

He said he did not find "manufactured evidence and collusion at all levels"; rather, it appeared intelligence-gatherers had made a series of mistakes and their superiors did not set the record straight.

Conflicting and confused reports from the scene have long cast doubt on whether the events unfolded as claimed.

Hanyok's analysis of previously top secret intelligence adds insight on North Vietnam's communications from that time, showing, he said, that the supposed attackers did not even know the location of the destroyers, the USS Maddox and C. Turner Joy, as the two ships patrolled off the North Vietnam coast.

Indeed, a shorter agency study done years earlier and also released Thursday indicated the ships did not know what, if anything, was coming at them as they zigzagged to evade what the crews feared were torpedoes, and as they fired on targets identified by radar.

This photo provided by the US Navy shows a North Vietnamese motor torpedo boat attacking the USS Maddox, Aug. 2, 1964 in the Gulf of Tonkin.
This photo provided by the US Navy shows a North Vietnamese motor torpedo boat attacking the USS Maddox, Aug. 2, 1964 in the Gulf of Tonkin. [AP]
That study concluded with a wry note, saying the destroyers resumed their patrols after a heavy round of U.S. airstrikes on North Vietnam ports, "and the rest is just painful history."

A detailed chronology assembled days after the episode for the Joint Chiefs of Staff by J.J. Merrick, commander of Destroyer Division 192, reflected the uncertainty of that night.

It said that sonar in many cases picked up sounds that were believed to be torpedoes but turned out to be "self noise" �� the beating of the ships' own propellers, or noise from patrol boats or supporting planes that were strafing the dark sea in cloudy skies, unable to see any prey.

In another instance, however, the report contended a "torpedo wake was seen by four people."

The Maddox had come under fire from North Vietnamese patrol boats Aug. 2, taking only superficial damage.


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