Tucker's Last Stand (23 page)

At 5:23 Washington time, Secretary McNamara received a telephone report from Admiral Sharp. He was certain that the attack had actually occurred, citing the radio intercept intelligence as circumstantial evidence of a conclusive character. He was told by McNamara to collect debris “to substantiate” the attack.

At 6
P.M
., August 4, 1964, President Johnson opened a National Security Council meeting to advise that he had ordered retaliatory bombings; that he had issued a press release announcing the second incident in the Gulf of Tonkin; and that at 6:15 he would meet with the congressional leaders to inform them that a strike had been ordered.

At 10:40
P.M.
the first planes left off the
Ticonderoga
and
Constellation
, bound on a bombing mission in North Vietnam. The first U.S. combat mission in Indochina.

Ten minutes after the bombers took off, McNamara called the President again. Captain Herrick had reported to Honolulu that the fighter aircraft had not located any targets; that the
Maddox
had scored no known hits, and had never positively identified any boat. He had noted that it was “probable” that a torpedo had been detected on the sonar. “The first boat to close on
Maddox
probably fired torpedo at
Maddox
which was heard but not seen. All subsequent
Maddox
torpedo reports are doubtful in that it is suspected that sonarman was hearing ship's own propeller beat.” President Johnson told McNamara that in his judgment there was no doubt that there had been an attack, and that in any event, as McNamara knew, the bombing mission was on its way.

At 1:15
P.M.
our planes dropped bombs on North Vietnam, smashing a patrol base and support facilities at Quang Khe.

The next day at noon, on Wednesday August 5, President Johnson sent to Congress a resolution requesting congressional advice and consent. It became known as the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution.

The Resolution would authorize him to “take all necessary measures” to repel attacks against U.S. forces and to “prevent further aggression” as well as to determine when “peace and security” in the area had been attained.

The Resolution went to the Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees of the Senate for joint hearing. At this hearing, Senator Wayne Morse announced that an informant had advised him that the
Maddox
was actively coordinating with South Vietnamese 34-A raids, and that that informant doubted whether the second attack had actually taken place at all! Senator Morse demanded to see the ship's logs.

On August 6, the combined committees heard Secretaries Rusk and McNamara for one hour and forty minutes. They denied charges by Senator Morse that the
Maddox
was an accomplice in the 34-A raids, and denied that the
Maddox
had violated North Vietnamese waters.

On August 7, Senator William Fulbright, acting as floor leader in favor of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, dissuaded Senator Gaylord Nelson from submitting an amendment that would require congressional approval before the dispatch of a land army to South Vietnam. Senator Fulbright said he did not contemplate such military action, though he agreed that the wording of the Resolution permitted the President to do what he wished.

At 1:15
P.M
., EDT, the Senate, culminating eight hours and forty minutes of debate stretching over three days, passed the Resolution by a vote of 88 to 2. The House, earlier in the day, had approved the Resolution by a vote of 416–0.

There was no communication between President Johnson and Abe Fortas during the next week. But Mr. and Mrs. Fortas were guests at a dinner in mid-August for Premier Bjarni Benediktsson of Iceland. As he shook the President's hand on the receiving line, Fortas commented, “Good action you took on the Gulf of Tonkin incident, Mr. President.”

“Ah thought you'd approve of that, Abe. Got to tell those people ther're some things they cain't get away with.”

“Yes, sir.”

22

August 8, 1964

Danang, South Vietnam

It was 2:10
A.M.
in Danang, seventy-two hours after the end of the second engagement. Blackford Oakes snapped off the short-wave radio on the bookshelf of his small round office. From the outside it looked somewhat like one half of a water silo, but with a tufted thatch roof. Inside was strictly G.I. utilitarian. A few chairs, a cot to sleep on if it got too late to trudge back to BOQ. A jangle of electronic machinery. A large safe, a desk, a typewriter, a card table at which Alphonse Juilland sat, and a refrigerator and hot plate.

Blackford looked up. “Well, Alphonse, we did it. The Senate has voted, and the House vote earlier today was unanimous. Nothing like democratic government, no sir. Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.
Evidemment
.” He yawned and then said, “We've been on duty all night, but nobody's going to call us at this hour, I'd guess. Go for a drink?”

Alphonse nodded, with his usual rather formal smile. Blackford knew he would nod. Alphonse Juilland almost always nodded, no matter what was proposed. But if a drink was proposed, he always nodded.

“Scotch?”

“
Vous avez vodka
?”

“Sure. With what?—Why am I asking you? You will say, ‘With not too much water.'” Blackford poured out the two drinks and took some ice cubes from the refrigerator.

“Do you mind if I speak frankly, Mr. Oakes?”

Once Blackford had asked Alphonse to call him by his first name. A second time, he had asked him with some emphasis to call him by his first name. Both times Alphonse Juilland had nodded appreciatively, subsequently referring to him as “Mr. Oakes.” Blackford would not ask him a third time. If it made Alphonse comfortable this way, Blackford figured he could live with it. “I guess I'd have to answer that question carefully, Alphonse. I'd mind, for instance, if you said that, frankly, you were a North Vietnamese agent.”

Again the same smile. “You like to joke, Mr. Oakes. But you know that I am not likely to be an agent of the same people who killed my father and my sister.… No, my question has to do with intelligence practices, about which I know very little. I think of myself as a well-read schoolteacher, but of intelligence I am ignorant.”

“What are you getting at, Alphonse?” Blackford wasn't impatient. In fact he didn't want to go to sleep. A little badinage with Alphonse, even serious badinage, might be a relaxing little workout after four hours of concentrated listening to the short-wave radio. But he did know that Alphonse had a Gallic disposition for circumlocution, so he thought he'd just help him along …

“Well, Mr. Oakes, you and I carried off this operation. Many people helped assemble the necessary artifices, and of course Mr. Montana was—critically instrumental in their design. But the assemblymen, the mechanics, they knew nothing, and know nothing, of the purpose of equipping the Stiletto in the way it was equipped. The impression, after all, was carefully cultivated that the speedboat was going off on some kind of mission with the 34-A's against a mainland target. That means, one: the gentleman, whoever it was, who gave you the orders to do what we did, two: Major Montana, three: you, and four: I—we are the only ones with direct knowledge of the use the boat was put to.”

“That's right. And we could have used a fifth.” Blackford took a swig of his scotch. “On a few of those passes Sunday we could have done with a third hand. Steering that thing, broadcasting your threatening radio dispatches—good thing you speak Vietnamese like a native—sowing those sound buoys, riding those wakes aren't something I'd want to do again even with your expert help. Thank God for our two dress rehearsals. And for the blackness of August second.”

“Yes, Mr. Oakes; there were two or three times when I too felt, well, a bit—overworked?”

“Yes, but not underpaid, I hope you will agree.”

Alphonse Juilland bowed his head, in acknowledgment of the very special purse he had received for duty indisputably hazardous. “No, my point is unrelated, Mr. Oakes, to the shortage of extra crew help on Sunday night, and certainly unrelated to the compensation. It has to do, as I began saying, with intelligence practices. The gentleman who gave you orders, whoever he is, is obviously high in government and is secure. Major Montana is a very considerable national asset, I take it, judging from his inventiveness with the instruments we needed to conduct our own mission. And although I do not know the details of his responsibilities at Nakhon Phanom, I deduce that his role is most important.”

Blackford said nothing, and now only diddled with his drink.

“As for you, the third of the four insiders, I can only assume that you too are of considerable value to the … Agency. And that you are completely trusted, or else this—delicate assignment would not have been given to you, am I correct?”

Blackford now knew where Alphonse Juilland was going, and decided on Operation Compression.

“Dear Alphonse, there is much that I do for my country that I would just as soon not do. For instance, our mission on Sunday night. Much of what I do, I do because I have committed myself to following instructions, and I do follow instructions except when or if—it has not happened to me in thirteen years—such instructions are morally intolerable, which last Sunday's exercise was not. Though it does serve to instruct us on what political ethicists might call ‘some of the limitations of democratic government.' But I would not ask you, or anyone else, to serve as a confederate in any enterprise which subsequently required your elimination. That's what you are coming to, isn't it?”

“Well,” Alphonse Juilland smiled, a little more broadly than usual, “yes, I was headed in the direction of asking you that question. Not knowing much about what I call intelligence practices, I permitted myself to wonder whether I was now not merely expendable, but … dangerous, so long as I was alive? I have to admit that—simply as a precaution—I
did
leave a letter with my cousin in France, who is a solicitor—”

Blackford banged his drink down. “Oh shit, Alphonse. Now let me tell you something. One: Get that letter back. Two: Burn it. Three: Pretend you didn't tell me about its existence. Because we're ready to ride out the whole thing with you as a confederate. But we're not willing to share presidential secrets with you and your cousin and a piece of paper. You could, after all, die of a heart attack tonight. And what then does your cousin do with that letter?”

“Ah, Mr. Oakes, please do not be upset. My cousin has been instructed to burn the letter on receipt of a telegram from me—”

“Saying what?”

Alphonse smiled again. This time he sipped heavily the vodka before answering. “You desire to know the exact code?”

“I desire to know it, and I desire
you
”—he looked at his watch—“to send the correct message as soon as the telegraph office opens. But in the event you do
not
last until six
A.M.
—I am speaking of an Act of God—I desire you”—Blackford extended a writing pad and pencil to Alphonse—“to write on that pad the name and address of your cousin and the coded message you are supposed to send him.”

Alphonse smiled, and bowed his head. “I feel in a bargaining mood, Mr. Oakes.”

Blackford looked up sharply, quizzically.

“I will do as you say,” said Alphonse, “provided you give me another drink of vodka.”

23

August 8, 1964

Hanoi, North Vietnam–Washington, D.C.

Le Duc Sy made a most earnest attempt to persuade the military court that Squadron Captain Thanh-Lang could not have known that Le Duc Sy had completely fabricated his conversations with Colonel Giap, that he never doubted that Hanoi had actually ordered the raid on the American destroyers.

“I lied to him. It is that simple, comrades. He had been taking orders from me for over four weeks and he simply assumed that anything I passed along to him was in effect an order from Hanoi.”

Had Captain Thanh-Lang used the verification procedures stipulated?

“No, comrade judges. It is true he did not do this. But these verification orders had to do with military initiatives by Captain Thanh-Lang's squadron, and he never took an initiative, he merely followed orders he thought originated with headquarters. It isn't that he was remiss in regard to a detail to which he was accustomed. Never before having received an order to go on the offensive in the Gulf, he just assumed that my having issued that order, given the authority vested in me on my arrival, was sufficient. And of course I told him in some detail about the order to me from Hanoi. He had no doubts.”

The court ordered Thanh-Lang demoted to the rank of private in the infantry, assigned to help to carry supplies south on the Trail, with permission to reapply to serve in the navy in twenty-four months.

At Hoa Lo prison in Hanoi, Bui Tin offered his friend Le Duc Sy a cigarette. Sy took one and joked that now he could avoid worry that smoking would hasten his death. He took from his pocket the letter Bui Tin had promised to accept from him, to be mailed through channels in Singapore to Lao Dai. Bui Tin put it in his briefcase and took out a bottle of brandy and two paper cups. As he poured he said:

“You should be clear on this point. It is that if I had been one of the judges, I'd have passed the same sentence. Your recklessness at school was punished by flogging. In the field it was punished by unnecessary exposure and perhaps even unnecessary deaths, though I do not conceal that what you did was, yes, reckless, but also very courageous. What you did on Sunday in the Gulf was courageous. But you jeopardized not only yourself but the diplomatic timetable of Ho Chi Minh, and on this the Independence Movement depends.”

“Did you hear me ask for mercy?”