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FILE 066 · VOL XI · We Hired the Monsters
The Attack That Started the Vietnam War Never Happened
You can be sure of something because you are told to be. The ocean does not care which.
Based on: The Gulf of Tonkin Incident
Intake record
| Recovered from | Veterans hospital, Long Beach, California; patient belongings, unclaimed |
|---|---|
| Contents | A sonar watch notebook (1964), eleven pages of testimony recorded by a hospital chaplain (2004), a rubbing from a memorial wall |
| Finder | Hospital chaplain |
| Status | Released to the Archive by the chaplain after the patient's death |
Recovered file
My name is Dale Corrigan. In August 1964 I was a sonarman, third class, on a destroyer in the Gulf of Tonkin, off North Vietnam. I was twenty years old. I want to tell somebody what I heard, because I am not sure anyone has ever asked.
You know the history, probably. On August 2, North Vietnamese torpedo boats really did attack an American destroyer, the Maddox. That happened. [1] Two nights later, August 4, both destroyers reported they were under attack again. Torpedoes in the water. Hours of it, in the dark, in bad weather. President Johnson went on television that night. Three days later Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, unanimously in the House and eighty-eight to two in the Senate, giving him the power to wage war in Vietnam without declaring it. [2]
The second attack never happened.
That's not me saying it. In 2005 the NSA declassified a study by its own historian, Robert Hanyok. He concluded that no attack occurred on August 4, and that the signals intelligence given to the President had been skewed to fit the claim that it had. [1] He wrote it in 2001. They kept it classified another four years. Forty-one years after the night.
I could have saved them the trouble. I was on the headphones.
The old chief who trained me on sonar had a saying. He made us write it on the first page of our watch notebooks. Here. Look.
The rest of this file is sealed. The ending, the sources and the archivist's note unseal with the file.
Unseal File 066 ($2.99) · its volume · everything ($49.99)
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