“Congress Misled On Tonkin Incidents”

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31621, 6 March 1968, Page 17

“Congress Misled On Tonkin Incidents”

(N.Z.P. A.-Reuter —Copyright)

WASHINGTON, March 4.

A secret study by the staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee concludes that the Johnson Administration misled Congress about the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incidents which led to the bombing of North Vietnam.

The study, which is based on a review of secret documents, including United States Navy messages and logs during the period, concludes that: The Maddox and Turner C. Joy wer ; not on routine patrol, as described to Congress in 1964, but were assigned to an electronic spying mission.

The Maddox was attacked by North Vietnam on the afternoon of August 2, but North Vietnam had every reason to believe that the United States destroyer was an enemy ship, possibly associated with a South Vietnamese bombardment expedition against two North Vietnamese islands.

After the August 4 incident, the United States decided to bomb North Vietnam, despite messages from the commander of the Maddox and Turner C. Joy task force that he had doubts whether an attack had taken place.

The study concludes: “The United States, on August 4, 1964, by virtue of launching an open and direct attack against North Vietnam, went to war with North Vietnam.

“These retaliatory raids were justified to Congress on the basis that the American ships engaged in routine patrol in international waters of the Gulf of Tonkin were the victims of a deliberate and unprovoked attack. “Congress was asked to approve the functional equivalent of a declaration of war without being given the full facts about what the American ships were doing in the Gulf of Tonkin and why they might have been attacked or harassed.”