Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency (49 page)

Throughout
the day, the
Maddox
bobbed lazily about eight miles off the North
Vietnamese coast, just above the DMZ, an area of good signal hunting. Sitting
in front of racks of receivers in the cramped Sigint van, which had received a
new coat of gray paint a few days earlier to make it look like a normal part of
the ship, the intercept operators worked twelve hours on and twelve hours off.
One of the intercept positions was dedicated to short-range VHP communications,
picking up hand-held radios and the chatter between vessels off the coast. The
proficiency of the voice linguists was limited at best, but they had a tape
recorder attached to the monitoring equipment and could save the conversations
for later analysis.

Two other
positions were for intercepting high-frequency Morse code signals. Because of
the vagaries of radio wave propagation, some of the North Vietnamese
high-frequency signals could be better heard in the Philippines than right off
the coast. But because the ship was mobile, it could also pick up
high-frequency signals that might escape the fixed, land-based listening posts.
Unlike some DeSoto missions, the
Maddox
did not have a separate Elint
van; the two Elint operators worked instead on the ship's standard radar
receivers, alongside the crew. Also in the van was an on-line encrypted
teleprinter, which could print out highly classified messages from NSA
exclusively for the Sigint-cleared cryptologic team. This link bypassed the
ship's normal communications channels.

Unlike the
job of the
Oxford
and the other seagoing eavesdropping factories then
being launched by NSA, the DeSoto patrols were "direct support"
missions. Part of the job of the Sigint detachment was to collect intelligence
on naval activities along the coast for later reports. But another was to
provide area commanders with current, immediate intelligence support, including
warning intelligence. On the
Maddox,
those cleared to receive such
reports included the ship's captain, Commander Herbert Ogier, and also Captain
John Herrick, the commander of the Seventh Fleet's Destroyer Division 192.

The twin
missions of the
Maddox
were, in a sense, symbiotic. The vessel's primary
purpose was to act as a seagoing provocateur—to poke its sharp gray bow and
American flag as close to the belly of North Vietnam as possible, in effect
shoving its 5-inch cannons up the nose of the Communist navy. In turn, this
provocation would give the shore batteries an excuse to turn on as many coastal
defense radars, fire control systems, and communications channels as possible,
which could then be captured by the men in the steel box and at the radar
screens. The more provocation, the more signals. The ship even occasionally
turned off all its electronic equipment in an effort to force the shore
stations to turn on additional radar—and begin chattering more—in order to find
it.

The
mission was made more provocative by being timed to coincide with the commando
raids, thus creating the impression that the
Maddox
was directing those
missions and possibly even lobbing firepower in their support. The exercise was
dangerous at best, foolish at worst. In the absence of information to the
contrary, the Navy had assumed that North Vietnam, unlike most U.S. targets,
did not claim a twelve-mile limit. Thus the decision was made to sail far
closer to shore than on normal patrols in Communist Asia despite the fact that
the United States happened to be engaged in combat with North Vietnam. In fact,
North Vietnam also claimed at least a twelve-mile limit and viewed the
Maddox
as trespassing deep within its territorial waters.

On August
1, when the
Maddox
was about halfway up the North Vietnamese coast,
intercept operators in the van were busy eavesdropping on the shore stations
tracking the ship's progress. Upon hearing them report the
Maddox's
distance
and bearing they could "back-plot" the signal to the station's
location.

About 8:30
P.M. (local time) the ship approached the island of Hon Me; the island was now
within easy range of the
Maddox's
powerful cannons. Although no one on
board likely knew it, survivors on shore were still cleaning up from the grave
damage produced by the American-planned South Vietnamese commando boat raid
just two nights earlier. It may be that when those on Hon Me saw the U.S.
warship loom large on the horizon in the gray twilight, the alarm went out that
the shelling was going to begin again, this time with more powerful guns.

Hours
later in the Sigint van, the tenor of the messages suddenly changed. A
high-level North Vietnamese message was intercepted indicating that a decision
had been made to launch an attack later that night. Although no targets were
named, Captain Herrick was awakened immediately and informed of the situation.
The next message, however, mentioned an "enemy" vessel and gave the
Maddox's
location. The conclusion was that an order had gone out to attack the
Maddox.
By then it was about 2:45 A.M. Captain Herrick ordered all personnel to go
to general quarters, increased the ship's speed, and turned away from shore.

At about
11:30 A.M. the next day, August 2, crewmembers on the
Maddox
sighted
five North Vietnamese navy attack boats about ten miles north of Hon Me. They
had been sent from the port of Van Hoa, 145 miles to the north, to help defend
the island from further attacks and hunt for the enemy raiders. Nevertheless,
despite the danger, the
Maddox
continued its patrol, reaching the
northernmost point of its planned track at 12:15 P.M. At that point it turned
south, remaining about fifteen miles from shore. In the Sigint van, the
messages intercepted had again become routine—supply orders, pier changes,
personnel movements.

Suddenly
the mood in the box changed. An odd message had been intercepted, and as it was
being translated its seriousness became clear. It was an order to attack the
ship with torpedoes.

By then
three North Vietnamese torpedo boats had already pulled away from the island,
waves lathering their bows like shaving foam as they reached thirty knots.
Their goal was to trap the
Maddox
in a pincers move. They would pass the
Maddox
and then turn back, trapping the ship between them and the coast,
preventing its escape to the safety of the high seas. Told of the message,
Captain Herrick immediately turned southeast toward the open ocean. The
intercept had turned the tide. By the time the PT boats arrived the
Maddox
was
racing out to sea, leaving them in its wake as they fired at the destroyer's
stern.

On board
each swift sixty-six-foot aluminum-hulled PT boat were torpedoes packing a
deadly wallop, each fitted with warheads containing 550 pounds of TNT. The
three boats each launched one torpedo, but the fast-moving
Maddox
was
beyond reach.

After this
near miss, Captain Herrick suggested that the remainder of his Sigint mission
be called off. But the general perception in the Pentagon was that such action
would set a bad precedent, since in effect the United States would have been
chased away. Herrick was ordered to continue the patrol and another destroyer,
the USS
Turner Joy,
was provided as protection.

Shortly
after the attack on the
Maddox,
it was clear to officials in Washington
that the principal reason for the incident was the North Vietnamese belief that
the ship was directing the commando raids. "It seems likely that the North
Vietnamese and perhaps the Chi-Coms [Chinese Communists] have assumed that the
destroyer was part of this operation," Michael Forrestal, the State
Department's Vietnam expert, told Secretary of State Dean Rusk on August 3.
"It is also possible that Hanoi deliberately ordered the attack in
retaliation for the harassment of the islands."

Yet with
the
Maddox
still on its DeSoto Sigint patrol, it was decided to launch
more commando raids on the day following the attack, August 3, this despite
Secretary of Defense McNamara's firm belief that the operations were useless.
Departing from My Khe, the same location as the previous mission, the four-boat
raiding party sped seventy-five miles up the North Vietnamese coast to Cape
Vinh Son and Cua Ron. There they shelled a radar station and a security post,
the first South Vietnamese—U.S. attacks against a mainland target. In response,
a North Vietnamese patrol boat took off in hot pursuit for about forty minutes
before giving up. And once again, the government of North Vietnam connected the
raid with the still-present
Maddox.

Captain
Herrick was worried about how stirred up the North Vietnamese were over the
latest OPLAN 34A shelling. Early the next morning, August 4, he cabled his
superiors:

Evaluation
of info from various sources indicates that the DRV [North Vietnam] considers
patrol directly involved with 34-A operations and have already indicated readiness
to treat us in that category. 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.

Later, an
analyst at NSA received intercepts indicating that another attack on U.S.
destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin was imminent. One of the messages, sent from
North Vietnamese naval headquarters in Haiphong to a patrol boat, specified the
location of the destroyers. Another message included an order to prepare for
military operations, using the patrol boats and perhaps a torpedo boat if it
could be made ready in time. NSA immediately notified the Pentagon and a few
minutes later, at 7:15 P.M. (Vietnam time), informed Captain Herrick on the
Maddox.

An hour after NSA's warning, the
Maddox
sent out emergency
messages indicating that it had picked up radar signals from three unidentified
vessels closing fast. Fighters were launched from the
Ticonderoga
but
thick, low-hanging clouds on the moonless night obscured the sea and they
reported that they could see no activity. Nevertheless, over the next several
hours, the two ships issued more than twenty reports of automatic weapons fire,
torpedo attacks, and other hostile action. But in the end, no damage was
sustained, and serious questions arose as to whether any attack actually took
place. "Freak radar echoes," McNamara was told, were misinterpreted
by "young fellows" manning the sonar, who "are apt to say any
noise is a torpedo."

Nevertheless,
regardless of the doubts raised by talk of "radar ghosts" and
"nervousness," in testimony before Congress McNamara spoke of
"unequivocal proof" of the new attack. That "unequivocal
proof" consisted of the highly secret NSA intercept reports sent to the
Maddox
on August 4 as a warning. Based largely on McNamara's claims of certainty,
both houses of Congress passed the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, thus plunging the
United States officially into the open-ended quagmire known as the Vietnam War.

But it
later turned out that that "unequivocal proof" was the result of a
major blunder by NSA, and the "hard evidence" on which many people
based their votes for the war never really existed. Years later Louis Tordella
quietly admitted that the intercepts NSA used as the basis for its August 4
warning messages to the
Maddox
actually referred to the first attack, on
August 2. There never were any intercepts indicating an impending second attack
on August 4. The phony NSA warning led to McNamara's convincing testimony,
which then led to the congressional vote authorizing the Vietnam War.

"What
in effect happened," said Ray S. Cline, who was CIA's deputy director for
intelligence at the time, "is that somebody from the Pentagon, I suppose
it was McNamara, had taken over raw Sigint and [had] shown the President what
they thought was evidence of a second attack on a [U.S.] naval vessel. And it
was just what Johnson was looking for." Cline added, "Everybody was
demanding the Sigint; they wanted it quick, they didn't want anybody to take
any time to analyze it." Finally, he said, "I became very sure that
that attack [on August 4] did not take place."

A quarter
of a century earlier, confusion in Washington over Sigint warning messages
resulted in calm at Pearl Harbor when there should have been action. Now,
confusion over Sigint warning messages in Washington led to action in the Gulf
of Tonkin when there should have been calm. In both cases a long, difficult
pass was successfully intercepted, only for the players in Washington to fumble
a few feet from the goal line.

For nearly
four decades the question has been debated as to whether the Pentagon
deliberately provoked the Gulf of Tonkin incident in order to generate popular
and congressional support to launch its bloody war in Vietnam. In 1968, under
oath before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Robert McNamara vigorously
denied any such plot:

I must
address the suggestion that, in some way, the Government of the United States
induced the incident on August 4 with the intent of providing an excuse to take
the retaliatory action which we in fact took. . . .

I find it
inconceivable that anyone even remotely familiar with our society and system of
Government could suspect the existence of a conspiracy which would have
included almost, if not all, the entire chain of military command in the
Pacific, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Joint Chiefs, the
Secretary of Defense and his chief assistants, the Secretary of State, and the
President of the United States.