The Incident
Daniel Ellsberg, who was on duty in the Pentagon the night of August 4 receiving messages from the ship, reported that the ship was on a secret electronic warfare support measures mission (codenamed DESOTO) near Northern Vietnamese territorial waters. On July 31, 1964, USS Maddox (DD-731) had begun its intelligence collection mission in the gulf. Captain George Stephen Morrison (father of Doors singer Jim Morrison) was in command of local American forces from his flagship USS Bon Homme Richard (CVA-31). The Maddox was under orders not to approach closer than eight miles (13 km) from the North's coast and four miles (6 km) from Hon Nieu island. When the SOG commando raid was being carried out against Hon Nieu, the ship was 120 miles (190 km) away from the attacked area.
Read more about this topic: Gulf Of Tonkin Incident
Famous quotes containing the word incident:
“Every incident connected with the breaking up of the rivers and ponds and the settling of the weather is particularly interesting to us who live in a climate of so great extremes. When the warmer days come, they who dwell near the river hear the ice crack at night with a startling whoop as loud as artillery, as if its icy fetters were rent from end to end, and within a few days see it rapidly going out. So the alligator comes out of the mud with quakings of the earth.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
““It is of the highest importance in the art of detection to be able to recognise out of a number of facts which are incidental and which are vital.... I would call your attention to the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.”
“The dog did nothing in the night-time.”
“That was the curious incident.””
—Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930)