The NSA deliberately skewed intelligence to fabricate a second attack in the Gulf of Tonkin, launching the Vietnam War

On August 4, 1964, the United States Navy reported that North Vietnamese torpedo boats had attacked the USS Maddox in the Gulf of Tonkin. Two days later, President Lyndon Johnson told Congress and the American public that a second attack had occurred. Congress swiftly passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, effectively handing Johnson a blank check for military escalation in Vietnam.

What followed was sustained bombing campaigns and the deployment of ground troops that would kill over 58,000 Americans and millions of Vietnamese over the next decade. The war would tear apart the nation, spark massive protests, and fundamentally shift American politics for generations. Yet the attack that justified all of this—the second attack on August 4—almost certainly never happened.

At the time, the official story seemed airtight. The NSA, Navy commanders, and the President all confirmed the attack. Skeptical journalists and politicians were dismissed as naive or unpatriotic. The few analysts who privately questioned the evidence were overruled. For decades, the American public accepted the narrative because there was no reason to doubt it. The government had spoken.

Doubts began surfacing in the 1970s and 1980s, as declassified documents suggested the second attack might not have occurred. Journalists and historians questioned the radar data and radio intercepts that supposedly proved the attack. But the official position remained largely unchanged: the attack probably happened, though details were murky.

In 2005, that changed. The NSA released newly that revealed the full scope of what had happened in August 1964. The second attack never occurred. More damning was the documentary evidence of how the intelligence community had handled the facts. NSA analysts had deliberately presented only information supporting the attack narrative to President Johnson, while suppressing or contextualizing evidence that contradicted it. One internal memo noted that analysts had "made SIGINT fit the claim" rather than letting the evidence speak for itself.