McNamara Versus McNamara

Did Lyndon Johnson lie to the American people about the Tonkin Gulf attack, as alleged by Daniel Ellsberg in his memoirs (and in countless other publications and forums)? LBJ claimed that in early August of 1964 the North Vietnamese attacked U.S. ships traveling in the Tonklin Gulf on two separate occasions, first firing upon the Mattox on August 2, then on the Turner Joy on August 4.

In his memoirs Ellsberg, his first full day on the job, recounted in detail the procession of messages that crossed his desk in the Pentagon after the alleged second attack took place:

The messages were vivid. [Captain John J.] Herrick must have been dictating them from the bridge in between giving orders, as his two ships swerved to avoid torpedoes picked up on the sonar of the Maddox, and fired in the darkness at targets shown on the radar of the Turner Joy:"Torpedoes missed. Another fired at us. Four torpedoes in water. And five torpedoes in water. . . . Have. . . successfully avoided at least six torpedoes."

But a couple of hours later the story changed.

[A]nother message from Herrick summarizing positive and negative evidence for an attack, concluded:"Entire action leaves many doubts except for apparent attempted ambush at beginning. Suggest thorough reconnaissance in daylight by aircraft." The reconnaissance in daylight, still three or four hours away in the Gulf, would search for oil slicks and wreckage from the boats supposedly hit, indications that an attack, not just a fight with radar ghosts, had actually taken place.

In Robert McNamara's own memoirs, In Retrospect published in 1995, McNamara wrote:

The key questions and my answers are these:

Attacks by North Vietnamese patrol boats against U.S. destroyers reportedly occurred on two separate occasions: August 2 and August 4, 1964. Did the attacks actually occur? Answer: The evidence of the first attack is indisputable. The second attack appears probable but not certain.

By 1996 McNamara had changed his mind. The paperback edition of the book, which appeared a year later, includes this correction:

Attacks by North Vietnamese patrol boats against U.S. destroyers reportedly occurred on two separate occasions - August 2 and August 4, 1964. Did the attacks actually occur? Answer: The evidence of the first attack is indisputable. In the first edition of this book I stated"The second attack appears probable but not certain." On November 9, 1995, as the second edition was going to press, I learned in a meeting in Hanoi with General Vo Nguyen Giap, North Vietnam's Defence Minister during the war, that the presumed attack on August 4 did not occur.

Thanks to Charlotte Alston, in a post on H-Diplo.