Safe for Democracy by John Prados
Author:John Prados
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ivan R. Dee
Published: 2006-01-17T16:00:00+00:00
The 34-A operations led to the next major escalation of the U.S. war in Vietnam. On the last night of July 1964 occurred a raid by fast, heavily armed Swift boats, attacking North Vietnamese facilities on the islands of Hon Me and Hon Ngu in the Gulf of Tonkin. The Hon Me raid coincided with another U.S. intelligence activity, a “De Soto” patrol into the Gulf. De Soto patrols were U.S. Navy collection efforts for communications intercepts. Ships on these operations carried enhanced radio equipment. De Soto patrols had been pursued off the coasts of China, the Soviet Union, and North Korea. President Kennedy had approved a similar program for North Vietnam in 1962, when the first patrol was conducted. A second De Soto mission took place in 1963, and the destroyer Craig made an intercept cruise in the Gulf in March 1964. In any case, the destroyer Maddox was on a De Soto patrol when Swift boats passed her, the 34-A raiders returning to base. That evening the Maddox steamed past the recently shelled islands.
The North Vietnamese sent out torpedo boats which attacked the Maddox in international waters the next afternoon. They were driven off with one sunk and the others damaged. President Johnson then deliberately ordered the Maddox back into the Gulf of Tonkin, accompanied by another destroyer, the C. Turner Joy. Two nights later the two destroyers mistook instrument readings for another attack. President Johnson retaliated with carrier air strikes on North Vietnam. He then went to Congress for a resolution supporting his action, and on August 7, 1964, the legislature approved the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. President Johnson then relied on the resolution in place of a declaration of war.
McGeorge Bundy’s immediate problem became what to do with De Soto. As a reconnaissance project De Soto patrols were approved by the Special Group, which Bundy chaired. Because of LBJ’s extreme sensitivity to Vietnam developments, the president took up this question directly. Both De Soto and 34-A operations halted while Johnson considered policy. The Joint Chiefs argued for action, bombing North Vietnam and relaxing restrictions on American forces. Maxwell Taylor, ambassador to South Vietnam since July, favored waiting to see if the Vietnamese political situation stabilized. Like Kennedy before him, Johnson selected less than the maximum option: resume De Soto patrols and 34-A; reinforce Farm Gate with heavier jet bombers. Thus operations like De Soto and 34-A, which were provocative, were approved not on their merits but as alternatives to greater provocation.
Meanwhile on the ground the CIA recovered its earlier momentum. In search of some means to counter the National Liberation Front in the villages, several agency officers innovated armed bands of villagers who within months accounted for the killing of hundreds of guerrillas. De Silva’s deputy, Gordon Jorgensen, soon called the units People’s Action Teams. A variant of the same idea took root in the Mekong Delta, sparked by Stewart Methven, reassigned from Laos. The paramilitary specialist “Rip” Robertson presently materialized in Vietnam to work in these programs.
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