The Gulf of Tonkin Incident was the fraud that started the Viet Nam War

[Octafish]

58. Yup. Seeing how the USS Maddox was in North Vietnam's territorial waters...

...on OPLAN-34A skullduggery, er, I mean, "business," I can see how CIA and NSA wouldn't want to talk about it. A liberal president, OTOH, I thought would.

AUGUST 3, 1964: PRESIDENT JOHNSON DISCUSSES AN INCIDENT IN THE GULF OF TONKIN WITH DEFENSE SECRETARY ROBERT S. McNAMARA (IN TWO CONVERSATIONS)

On August 2, 1964, the American destroyer Maddox, on patrol off the coast of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, was attacked by several North Vietnamese torpedo boats. The attack happened hours after South Vietnamese raiders struck at two targets on the North Vietnamese coast as part of a U.S. program of graduated covert pressure against the North that was known as Operations Plan (OPLAN)-34A. This marked the beginning of a series of events that has come to be called the Tonkin Gulf incident.

The Maddox was actually on an intelligence mission off the northern coast, carrying with a van of extra communications and electronics gear along with a complement of specialists from the Naval Security Group, a naval complement to the National Security Agency. Their task was to intercept North Vietnamese communications. The ship was in international waters when attacked, but had been inside territorial waters claimed by North Vietnam when Hanoi's torpedo boats were sent to sea. Vietnamese authorities have disclosed that the response was ordered by local commanders without reference to Hanoi. The Maddox did not expect any attack-the mission commander had been briefed in Taiwan previously that there would be none - but she was also completely unaware of the provocation to North Vietnam that had occurred simultaneously in the form of the OPLAN-34A strikes. There was no real surprise, however. The North Vietnamese torpedo boats' communications were intercepted, as well as the orders sending them out, and the craft were detected as they approached the U.S. warship. In the ensuing battle two of the three boats were sunk and the third badly damaged, with no losses to the Maddox. The action in the Tonkin Gulf took place in the afternoon local time, which was before dawn in Washington, and by early morning in the capital there was a scramble to decide what to do about the situation.

This telephone call represents the first conversation between President Johnson and defense secretary Robert McNamara on the incident. Johnson had already had some conversations with political advisers, and it is noteworthy that his talk with McNamara centers on handling political aspects of the incident. It is also notable that McNamara in this conversation clearly favors explaining to Congress the link between the incident and the OPLAN-34A activities. McNamara would take the position in later public hearings that he was unaware of any such link and as a result would be the target of intense criticism. LBJ himself was well aware of the connection and had explained it to an adviser in a different conversation less than an hour earlier. The president here tells McNamara to limit discussion to key congressional figures, including Speaker of the House John McCormick, Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield, and Minority Leader Everett Dirksen. From this telephone call it appears that McNamara's later public comments were made under instruction from Lyndon Johnson.

SOURCE w/links, details and audio: http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB132/tapes.htm

As I am old, this question has bothered me a long time.