July 29-August 4, 2004

cover story

Doomed To RepeatForty years ago, political deceptions plunged the U.S. into war. A Navy pilot from New Hope, whose photographs helped escalate conflict in Vietnam, wants you to know the same thing happened in Iraq.

by David S. Barry

Although they have never met, Bob Kay and Daniel Ellsberg share an experience that spans five decades, eight presidencies and three wars. Both men worked on covert military programs in the early 1960s: Kay as a Navy reconnaissance pilot, and Ellsberg as an ex-Marine officer working at the Pentagon. And both were on duty Aug. 4, 1964, the day America turned the corner into the Vietnam War through an event known as the Gulf of Tonkin incident.

The "incident,'' which would leave a mark in world history, was the report of an unprovoked attack by North Vietnamese torpedo boats on two U.S. Navy destroyers on routine patrol in international waters off the nation's coast.

As one of two reconnaissance pilots stationed off the Vietnamese coast who were sent up to photograph the aftermath of the reported attack, Kay is one of the most expert living witnesses to the incident. And to Kay's trained eye, there was no attack 40 years ago this week.

The photographs that his high-speed aerial cameras shot showed nothing but inky black water. It is now widely accepted as fact that the Aug. 4 "attack'' never occurred — provoked or otherwise. Yet the White House took direct action, as if there was no doubt or question about the incident, to gain authorization to go to war against North Vietnam.

duty Bound: Kay, posing with his service medals, says he couldn't remain silent about the similarities between his Tonkin Gulf experience and the WMD mess.

IMAGES OF WAR: Under enemy fire, Kay flew over the Tonkin Gulf in the days leading up to the USS Maddox "incident."

That day, Kay and Ellsberg were on the opposite poles of a communications thread stretching 13,000 miles from the Gulf of Tonkin. As a Navy flight officer with no inclination to doubt the integrity of

President Lyndon B. Johnson, Kay was profoundly bothered at witnessing the misrepresentation of intelligence data to make a case for war.

Ellsberg's feelings about what he saw as outright lying by the administration were so strong that in 1969 he delivered a secret 7,000 page history of the Vietnam War, now known as the Pentagon Papers, to Congress.

In October 2002, Kay and Ellsberg had the feeling of seeing history repeat itself as they watched what looked like same type of executive deception, practiced by another Texas president — George W. Bush — to massage classified intelligence data to make a case for another war. This time, Iraq was in the crosshairs.

As the credibility of the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld argument for the Iraq war unravels, piece by piece, item by item, both Kay and Ellsberg say they felt the need to talk about it publicly.

Now living in Berkeley, Calif., Ellsberg, 73, recently published a book called Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers. He travels the country speaking out against Bush's Iraq war policy. He calls America's acceptance of the White House's case for war a tragic mistake — all the more unfortunate for being a repeat of Vietnam.

Kay, 65, a retired airline captain living in New Hope, Bucks County, does not consider himself a writer, but he kept a diary of his 1964 summer tour with Carrier Wing Five of the U.S. Seventh Fleet in the South China Sea.

On hearing what Johnson had said on TV the night of Aug. 4, Kay knew that the real story was not reaching the American public and, in fact, had not made it as far as Congress. But Kay was 24, a Maryland minister's son who married his college sweetheart and joined the Navy to serve his country. Nothing in his training or upbringing prepared him to deal with the unwelcome surmise that the president had lied to Congress and deliberately misled the American people into war.

So, Kay served his tour and continued to fly the highly classified missions on which he photographed prospective bombing sites in Laos, a small nation on the western border of both North and South Vietnam. He did not know that his missions were part of an overall escalation plan scripted in Washington by an administration that falsely declared itself determined to avoid all-out war.

Kay says he was also unaware that Johnson's silent partner — the huge Texas construction firm Brown & Root — stood to make hundreds of millions on military installations in Vietnam. But he learned of it later, and in 2003 he read news stories about the presence and the profit participation of the same Texas construction company — a Halliburton subsidiary now called Kellogg Brown & Root — in line to reap billions from Cheney and Bush's war in Iraq.

That's when Kay agreed to a reporter's request to publish his naval diary, which reveals a firsthand account of the secrets and confusion behind one of the most important and controversial events in modern history. He also talks about his experience as a participant in the leadoff of the Vietnam War, and how that experience speaks to what's going on in America today.

Kay, 63, is a soft-spoken, earnest man with the easy self-confidence of the airline captain that he once was. He's also enjoying the retired life by pursuing a new love: music. Traveling from town to town in a motor home, he plays banjo and dobro on the East Coast bluegrass festival circuit.

Still, when he talks, it's with a quiet but convincing attention to the kind of details that might go into a flight report. Today, he talks openly about his covert intelligence missions and about what the White House did with the photos he brought back. He says he believes that what Johnson did to get the U.S. involved in war in Vietnam was wrong because it was based on a lie. He sees the misrepresentation of the intelligence his missions produced as a betrayal of the naval officer's code of honor and says he was driven to act now because it saddened and angered him to see what he is sure was a repeat of that by the Bush-Cheney administration.

Mon., June 8, Subic Bay, Philippines My first day of diary keeping for many years. I'm wondering how long it will last this time. This morning I found on the wardroom bulletin board a public release to the effect that Charles Klussman of VFP-63 was shot down over Laos. He was reportedly seen parachuting to the ground. This is the second reconnaissance jet shot down that I know of. I'm wondering if Nancy [Kay's wife] has heard of the incident.

In June 1964, America was not yet officially at war in Vietnam. The 18,000 troops there were authorized to serve in advisory and support capacity but not to fight. However, the rules did not forbid reconnaissance flights over battle zones in neighboring Laos, where the U.S. was involved in a covert war, supporting Prince Souvanna Phouma against the communist Pathet Lao. The downed Navy pilot Kay refers to was on one of those reconnaissance operations, known as Yankee Team missions, which were secret flights over Laos in RF-8 Crusader fighters such as the one Kay flew. Instead of guns and missiles, the swept-wing, supersonic RF-8 had high-speed cameras that could photograph Pathet Lao positions on the ground at 900 mph. The pictures went directly to Washington to the Office of the Special Assistant for Counterinsurgency and Special Activities for the selection of bombing targets for the Royal Laotian Air Force.

Sun., June 14, at sea, Manila Tonight I am very tired but very happy. Tired because I flew two hops. Happy because I received eight long-awaited letters from my dear wife. On my first day hop I flew two low-level high-speed road recons — the type of flying necessary under heavy gunfire as in Laos or Vietnam. The second hop was at night. I'm still nervous about night landings, I guess because I made four bolters [aborted landing attempts]. I think the meatball [a powerful guide light for incoming

pilots] was a little too bright. We flew a total of eight hops on two airplanes today. Pretty outstanding, I'd say.

Kay says he knew his aerial photos enabled airstrikes in the secret war in Laos, but was unaware of the maneuvering in Washington by Johnson's national security advisers. Five years later, the Pentagon Papers would show the Johnson administration engaged in a determined campaign to win congressional approval for future military strikes against North Vietnam.

Documents in The Pentagon Papers show a March 16, 1964, report by Defense Secretary Robert McNamara that advised preparations and groundwork for bombing North Vietnam. McNamara's recommendations were approved by Johnson and the National Security Council as National Security Action Memorandum (NSAM 288).

That April, the Joint Chiefs of Staff — heads of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines — drew up a contingency plan called Operation Plan 37-64, which specified military attacks, including a list of 94 approved bombing targets.

By May 23, a draft presidential memo laid out a 30-day countdown of escalating covert attacks on North Vietnam leading up to a congressional resolution approving military action against North Vietnam, to be followed by open bombing.

Kay did not know that the resolution granting permission to the president to make war had already been written, rewritten and approved the White House — awaiting an occasion for its presentation to Congress.

Fri., July 3, U.S. Naval Air Facility, Atsugi, Japan Got all my gear together including the packing up of some secret charts for delivery to the ship. I caught the C-130 (Marine) hop to [Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni]. At Iwakuni I checked my secret material with my three Marine roommates who just happened to be working for the CIT — Counter Insurgency Team. (I hope!!)

A major element of the covert war for public opinion in Washington was Johnson's presidential campaign advisers positioning him as "The Peace Candidate,'' against U.S. Sen. Barry Goldwater, an Arizona Republican who advocated the immediate bombing of North Vietnam and did not rule out using nuclear weapons.

Ellsberg, with his top-secret security clearance, was able to read the script for what was behind Johnson's "Peace Candidate" posturing.

The covert action secret plan, when taken out of the abstract language of State Department and Defense Department, reads like the plot of a political intrigue and espionage thriller. The covert action under way included the Marine CITs Kay mentions in his diary, as well as the Yankee Team missions, the De Soto Patrols and Operation Plan 34A.

The DeSoto Patrols were U.S. Navy missions that took the destroyers close enough to shore to stir up North Vietnamese coastal defenses so the on-board communications wizards could map the radar-defense network. Op Plan 34A involved night raids on North Vietnamese coastal installations by high-speed attack vessels called "Nasty" boats.

Presented to Congress as a South Vietnamese Navy operation, Op Plan 34A raids were, in fact, directed from Washington and the U.S. military command in Saigon.

Fri., July 10, Buckner Bay, Okinawa, Japan Early this morning we were anchored in [Buckner Bay] to finish repair of the port cat. [Port catapult: massive steam-propelled catapults that hurled fighters up to takeoff speed.] Suddenly the ship announced we were under way. I was called up and told by [squadron commander Don Hegrat] that we were on our way to relieve the Connie [aircraft carrier USS Constellation] off the coast of Vietnam. I don't recall my first thoughts, but a little later I found myself trying very hard to conceal my excitement. But the more I think about it and learn of the situation, the more futile all of this seems. I still don't know why we care about God that forsaken [sic] jungle.

Though Kay did not know about Op Plan 34A, he did know about the DeSoto Patrols by Navy destroyers equipped with special electronic spy gear enclosed in containers called "comvans" that were welded to the deck. That day, Seventh Fleet Adm. Ulysses S. Sharp proposed a DeSoto Patrol at the same time Kay and Hegrat were flying Yankee Team missions over Laos.

Sat., July 11, South China Sea Have been very busy studying the area of Laos and Vietnam and the aspects of flying in that area. Had several secret and top secret briefs — one by a marine who flew two missions over the Plain de Jares [sic]. On his first, his wingman was shot down. There is a great deal of excitement aboard among the pilots especially "photos.'' Getting very hot down here.

"Hot'' referred to missions likely to draw antiaircraft fire or ground-to-air missiles. The unarmed RF-8 Crusaders that Kay and Hegrat flew were escorted over Laos by armed F-8 Crusaders authorized to fire back if fired upon. Yankee Team missions over Laos posed a high likelihood of drawing fire, giving Navy Crusader pilots a chance to hit Pathet Lao targets that were technically off-limits.

Wed., July 15, at sea, Vietnam Two of the three scheduled missions launched into Laos this morning. Both were relatively successful. Don did not take his northern target into the Plain because of reported bad weather. Joe Muka on his hop was jumped by two F-100s. He said they really scared him. I went on an evening "junk -x'' — counting junks operating off the coast of Vietnam.

"Counting junks" was also part of the administration's cover for Op Plan 34A. It was a program done in the open by South Vietnamese naval vessels, one that did not violate restrictions on

aggressive military acts against North Vietnam. When Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee quizzed McNamara and Secretary of State Dean Rusk about suspected harassment of North Vietnam, both men referred to this relatively innocuous program as if it were the main surveillance program going.

Sun., July 26, at sea, Vietnam

Attended Protestant service this morning. No flying today. Ship was under holiday routine — "Yard Arm Sunday.'' [Shipmate] Dave and I spent a couple of hours on the flight deck sunbathing. We spent some time discussing the futility of U.S. policy in the orient. I don't think the U.S. will ever be successful in any of these countries. Not even Japan or the Philippines.

The Democratic National Committee was planning the 1964 Atlantic City convention to crown Johnson as a civil-rights champion and the Democratic alternative to war-hawk Goldwater. Johnson's acceptance speech echoed his earlier statement about Vietnam: "We seek no wider war.'' But the war was about to widen. In seven months, Johnson would start bombing North Vietnam and then begin the huge commitment of troops to combat.

Fri., July 31, at sea, Vietnam

The missions went today. Ron got good coverage of his targets but the marine pilot had some cloud coverage and got lost — took pictures all over creation. All at medium altitude over the plains. Still no ground fire. I figure they must be afraid of all those fighters. I briefed for my mission that goes tomorrow. Have four fighter escorts. Could possibly go low level. Target Phon Knaut Hill [sic] in the Plain. Plan to get up at 4:30 AM. Received my new pen today from Nancy. How I love that girl.

That night Nasty boats struck the offshore North Vietnamese islands Hon Me and Hon Ngu with machine guns and recoilless rifles. The next day, the USS Maddox began a new DeSoto Patrol, and Kay and Hegrat flew Yankee Team missions to map new bombing targets near the western border of North Vietnam.

By this point, the North Vietnamese had been suitably provoked and was about to retaliate. The Gulf of Tonkin drama had reached a stage comparable to that of September 2002, when the Bush administration had assembled the pieces of incriminating evidence: Iraq's reported attempt to buy radioactive yellow cake in Niger; the Iraqi purchase of specialized aluminum tubes said to be intended for development of nuclear weapons, and testimony by Iraqi defectors about the advanced state of the Iraq nuclear-

weapons program.

Sun., Aug. 2, at sea, Vietnam

IMAGES OF WAR: Kay's plane soars over Okinawa, Japan.

My mission was postponed. Launched as a practice. We broke a start probe so Joe and I flew to [United States Naval Air Station Cubi Point] for another. The 1200-mile round trip was futile — no sub. On our way over we heard the Maddox call for fighter assistance from the Tico. Said they were being attacked by NV PT boats. The fighters arrived and [Lt. Cmdr.] Charlie Southwick shot up one real bad. Later it was learned that the Maddox had dodged 3 torpedoes and received 37 mm gunfire. She defended herself with 5" fire and with fighter cover. Flew a total of 5.7 hours. MADE CENTURION TODAY. 100 LANDINGS ABOARD TICO.

The North Vietnamese Navy retaliated with a daylight torpedo boat attack on the Maddox. Capt. James Herrick, commander of the Maddox, called the Ticonderoga for help, and two squadrons of F-8 Crusaders drove off the torpedo boats, badly damaging one and possibly sinking another. After the attack, Herrick headed away from the North Vietnamese coast to protect his ship. But President Johnson ordered Herrick back to coastal waters to continue the DeSoto Patrol. In what might appear today to have been a clear effort to raise the tension level, Johnson ordered another destroyer — the USS C. Turner Joy — to accompany the Maddox on another DeSoto patrol.

Mon., Aug. 3, at sea, Vietnam

Saw the CINPAC [U.S. Pacific Command] news release today about the attack on the Maddox. I wonder if historians will ever know the truth. It was colored a good deal and I've lost some faith in our free press system. The Maddox is being sent back into its original Desoto Patrol area between Hainan and N. Vietnam. The U.S. intends to maintain freedom of the seas and the three-mile offshore limit. The Yankee Team missions didn't go again today because of bad weather in the target area . Kay was disillusioned to see news stories slanted to declare the attack totally unprovoked, when he knew that he had been part of the provocation. He also knew that the Maddox's DeSoto Patrol was a deliberately provocative mission, notwithstanding the fact that the very presence of the Seventh Fleet Task Force just a few miles off the North Vietnamese coast — gunboats, submarines, sub chasers, destroyers and carriers — was a serious provocation in itself.

"Our destroyers had no business in those waters anyway," Kay says today of the massive Naval deployment at what was called Yankee Station. "It was to cause trouble. We needed an incident. Without it, we couldn't just go in and attack the North.''

As if to make sure, the White House approved more Nasty boat raids that night, with DeSoto Patrols resuming the following day — a day that would mark the beginning of a tragic chapter in world history; a tragedy that began on the basis of a confused stream of frantic messages from the USS Maddox.

Tue., Aug. 4, at sea, Vietnam

While watching the evening movie in the wardroom, Ron and I were suddenly called. It was learned the Maddox was again under attack by PT boats. Don had already launched with the fighters to get night photography. We were standby all night until needed. Don got no pictures. I went off the cat at 0445 AM. Weather was terrible. Thunder formations everywhere. After 45 minutes I got rendezvoused with the fighters. No action over Maddox. Earlier they reported

dodging 10 torpedoes. Later evaluation was less. They were too excited to really know. There is talk of launching a … strike to retaliate.

Kay's four words, "No action over Maddox," say a lot. Instead of the telltale aftermath of a sea battle, Kay saw nothing in the waters around the Maddox and the Turner Joy. His diary gives a sense of the confused radio traffic. From the initial report of a torpedo attack, the report went to "ten torpedoes fired,'' then up to "20 torpedoes fired." Then, the reports were scaled back, until Herrick declared that there might have been no attack at all.

The contradictory and confused cable messages provided the substance of the information that fed the war-making machinery in Washington and, within hours, led to Johnson's decision to launch retaliatory airstrikes off the USS Ticonderoga.

First, Johnson made a televised address to the nation.

Then, the White House submitted the bill to Congress — originally drafted in May, rewritten in June, then rewritten again to specifically apply to the Aug. 4 Tonkin Gulf incident — that would become the Tonkin Gulf Resolution.

To Kay, it defied logic. He and other 63 Bravo crewmates were watching the message traffic between the carrier and Washington that night.

"We had our own little room where the [photo-interpretation officer] would analyze the photos we brought back from each flight,'' Kay says. "And we could watch the message traffic back and forth between the Tico and Washington, and we spent the evening up there doing that. We saw the messages, and said, 'my gosh, one of our destroyers is being attacked.'

"Then we saw, my God, now they're launched five torpedoes — then we said, 'My God, there's a huge attack' … and then there was a hesitation in the message traffic. And then we saw the statement: We don't know how many torpedoes.'"

The most plausible explanation of the situation, and the one that has come to be generally believed, was that an inexperienced sonar operator on the Maddox mistook the sound of the ship's propeller for incoming torpedoes.

Kay says he and his squad mates — seeing the huge discrepancies in the reports in the cables — doubted that a torpedo attack had occurred and certainly not an attack on the scale that was reported. Later, hearing the solemnity with which it was related as a battle by Johnson, they would see it as a sorry fraud perpetrated on Congress and the American people.

Kay and Hegrat had been dispatched to fly over the alleged battle scene to photograph it for evidence.

Hegrat has instant, vivid recall of the mission that night. Contacted by phone in Southern California for this article, Hegrat talks about the visual appearance of the ocean on reconnaissance missions.

"In the water of the South China Sea, the heavy maneuvering that the two destroyers had been making, it brings up fluorescence. You can see the wake of a boat. And I personally did not see any fluorescence that could have been the wake of PT boats," he says. "I didn't see anything at all. Nothing but black water.''

The Chicago Aerial cameras fitted to the R-F8 Crusaders — the most advanced of their kind, they'd earlier provided President John F. Kennedy with images of Soviet missiles in Cuba — didn't see anything, either.

"Those cameras could see everything,'' Kay says, noting they could record amazing detail from high altitude. The only thing they could not do was record images of things that were not there — like the sea battle the night of Aug. 4, 1964. "There was nothing out there."

Wed., Aug. 5, at sea, Vietnam

When I returned from the Maddox I was called to an early morning secret briefing. The President had been notified of the second NVN PT boat attack and with the JCS [the Joint Chiefs of Staff] the decision had been made to knock out all PT boat harbors in NVN. The Tico was assigned two southern targets and the Conni was to cover several northern ones. We were authorized to hit the AAA sites as well as the PT boats or anything that fired at us. I was assigned post strike recce [reconnaissance] on Quan Khe and Don was to take a [petroleum] storage area near Vinh. The strikes were planned and ready to launch.

It was still Aug. 4 in Washington, Ellsberg's first full day at work in the Pentagon as assistant to John McNaughton, assistant secretary of defense for international security, who reported to Defense Secretary McNamara. Ellsberg, who handled "flash" cables from the Seventh Fleet in the Tonkin Gulf, says it was clear to him then — and is now — that Johnson's National Security Council advisers were in a rush to establish that an attack had occurred, and went ahead in haste when there was plenty of time to study the situation and figure out what had actually happened.

"The White House had 12 hours to examine and study the evidence of what had happened, or what might have happened, in the Tonkin Gulf," he says. "But instead of using the best evidence they could compile, they ignored all of the corrections to the first, obviously erroneous report. And they went ahead with a response based on an accounting of something that had not happened — on reports they knew to be highly equivocal.''

Like Kay, Ellsberg was slowly learning he was party to a major fraud and saw no alternative but continuing in the service of his commander in chief. In transcripts of taped telephone conversations at the Johnson Library in Austin, Texas, was a telephone exchange at 1:59 p.m. on Aug. 4, between Air Force Lt. Gen. David Burchinal and Adm. U.S. Grant "Oley'' Sharp, commander of the Navy's Pacific Fleet.

Burchinal, trying to confirm the attack for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, asked Sharp if he had confidence in the reports of the torpedo attack.

"Many of the reported contacts and torpedoes fired appear doubtful,'' Sharp responded, attributing the misleading reports to "freak weather effects on radar [and] overeager sonar men.''

"But you're pretty sure there was a torpedo attack?" Burchinal asked.

This was the critical question — for it was the issue that could make the U.S. commit to a foreign war. It called for a yes-or-no answer.

"No doubt about that, I think'' Sharp replied.

That was confirmation enough for the Johnson White House, to throw the switches that turned on a war. At 6:30 p.m., Johnson called key senators, including Goldwater, to tell them he was going on television to announce a retaliatory strike against North Vietnam. At 11:39 p.m. Eastern time, the president caught the tail end of the national TV news to announce that the Maddox and the Turner Joy had been attacked at sea by North Vietnamese torpedo boats.

Johnson told the nation that planes were already on their way to bomb North Vietnamese targets in retaliation. The next day, he addressed Congress.

"Last night, I announced to the American people that the North Vietnamese regime had conducted further deliberate attacks against U.S. naval vessels operating in international waters, and I had therefore directed air action against gunboats and supporting facilities used in these hostile operations," he said. "This air action has now been carried out with substantial damage to the boats and facilities. Two U.S. aircraft were lost in the action. … These latest actions of the North Vietnamese regime has given a new and grave turn to the already serious situation in Southeast Asia. … We must make it clear to all that the United States is united in its determination to bring about the end of communist subversion and aggression in the area."

Thu., Aug. 6, at sea, Vietnam

We stood down today waiting for the reaction. A few reports came in by wire. The NVN government said the second night attack which prompted our … strike never existed. I'm inclined to agree as no PT boats were sighted by aircraft. Then ten torpedoes gradually dwindled to one. The others were reflections (sonar) off the rudder. The burning boat sighted could have been a junk. I learned that LBJ announced our strike to the world just as I went down the cat rails. Thanks a lot, "Pres!'' Make sure they'll be waiting for us. We resume YT [Yankee Team] missions tomorrow.

During a June 10 meeting, McNamara had suggested to Johnson's Cabinet that the time to go for a congressional resolution granting Johnson war power was in the event of a "dramatic event in Southeast Asia.'' The "dramatic event'' had now occurred, and the draft of the proposed congressional resolution, ready and waiting, was sent to Congress. But it was not going to be an easy sell.

The Democratic Party opposed escalation of hostilities in Vietnam. Word of the covert operations had leaked, and several Democratic senators were already dubious of the White

House claim that the Tonkin Gulf incidents had been completely unprovoked. To sway skeptics, the White House sent McNamara and Rusk to testify in secret session before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, armed with arguments that made references to intelligence from the Tonkin Gulf and elsewhere in Southeast Asia.

U.S. Sens. Mike Mansfield and Wayne Morse, Democrats respectively from Montana and Oregon, grilled McNamara, Rusk and Gen. Earle Wheeler, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, about possible connections between the DeSoto Patrols, the Nasty boat raids and the North Vietnamese response. McNamara assured them the Nasty boats were entirely a South Vietnamese Naval operation, outside U.S. military control.

McNamara and Rusk then insisted there was no coordination between the DeSoto Patrols and the Op Plan 34A raids, saying they were conducted by different navies and directed by wholly different command structures. McNamara also said the captains of the Maddox and the Turner Joy did not know about Op Plan 34A.

Here are his exact words, from the declassified testimony that was omitted when the committee report was first published. It was later released, in index form, coded to the pages where the deletions occurred in the original:

· Secretary McNamara: "I would like to cover three points. First, our Navy played absolutely no part in, was not associated with, was not aware of any South Vietnamese actions, if there were any. … I want to make that very clear to you. The Maddox was operating in international waters, was carrying out a routine patrol of the type we carry out all over the world at all times. It was not informed of, was not aware, had no evidence of, and so far as I know today has no knowledge of any possible South Vietnamese actions in connection with the two islands that Senator Morse referred to. I think it is extremely important that you understand this."

· Morse then asks, "Didn't you, as Secretary of Defense, have knowledge that the attack on the island was going to be made?" To which, McNamara responds, "I did not have knowledge at the time of the attack on the island. Let me just make one point. There is no connection between this patrol and any action by South Vietnam."

Kay says he knew every Yankee Team mission was pre-approved in Washington, down to specific details. Ellsberg knew that the Op Plan 34A missions and the DeSoto Patrols were Defense Department operations, and today, he has no qualms about saying unequivocally, that McNamara lied to Congress.

"He used the phrase "unequivocal evidence' in talking about the incident, and that was clearly a lie," he says. "It was extremely equivocal.''

Beyond the issue of the credibility of the evidence was McNamara's professed ignorance of the Op Plan 34A, which the Pentagon Papers and numerous other sources clearly show to have been U.S. military operations under McNamara's command. GEARED UP: To this day,

Kay still keeps several mementos from his military service.

Fri., Aug. 7, at sea, Vietnam

Yankee Team missions were scheduled to go this morning but these were canceled as all aircraft were wanted to support the Maddox and also in the event of an attack. We actually had only limited air operations.

Though he would later believe he had been deceived and become Johnson's harshest critic, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman William Fulbright, a Democrat from Arkansas, accepted the personal assurance of his longtime friend LBJ that he would never consider the resolution as a blank check for escalation. Fulbright persuaded his Senate committee colleagues that the White House was on the level with the Tonkin Gulf Incident and wanted the resolution as a show of congressional support.

Fulbright's friendly arm-twisting worked. The bill was approved by both Foreign Relations committees and sent to the floor. On Aug. 7, the House of Representatives passed the resolution unanimously. In the Senate, there were two votes opposed (Morse and Alaska Sen. Ernest Gruening). Passage of HJ 1145 opened the door to war that would rage for nine years, killing 58,000 Americans and more than a million Vietnamese.

Sun., Aug. 9, at sea, Vietnam

Got up at 10 AM. Not much doing. Took pictures of the Maddox and Turner Joy when they came alongside to transfer men for the debrief aboard Tico. The South China Sea is "littered'' with American warships. I counted three carriers and nine destroyers all told.

Ticonderoga crew members received medals for service in the Gulf of Tonkin the first week of August, and within two weeks of the incident, Johnson's approval rating soared from 49 percent to 74 percent.

Thirty-nine years later, President George W. Bush would see his approval rating soar by virtue of the Iraq war — climbing from 53 percent on the eve of the war to 71 percent in April 2003, on the capture of Baghdad.

Johnson's approval rating, remaining high through the fall of 1964, drove his landslide victory over Goldwater in November. Then, with the election and the congressional resolution behind him, Johnson started the long-running bombing campaign that his Cabinet had been discussing and planning all spring. Called Rolling Thunder, it began in February 1965. Later that year, Johnson ordered massive troop callouts to Vietnam and by fall American troop deployment in Vietnam had risen from 23,000 in the beginning of the year to more than 150,000.

That year Brown & Root, a Texas construction company that had generously supported Johnson with campaign contributions since before World War II, went to work building American military bases in Vietnam. Brown & Root, now the Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root, would play an even larger supporting role in military campaigns favored by Vice President Dick Cheney, who served as defense secretary for President George H.W. Bush.

Halliburton and Kellogg Brown & Root had received major contracts for cleanup work in Kuwait after the first Gulf War. In 1995, Halliburton named Cheney chief executive officer.

After the 2000 election, Cheney resigned as CEO, got a $30 million retirement package and placed his extensive Halliburton stock and options in a blind trust. In 2003, Halliburton was rewarded with the award — without competitive bidding — of a multibillion dollar contract for building and operating bases in Iraq.

By 1968, Brown & Root was in the full flush of multi-million dollar contracting work in Vietnam. In that year the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, increasingly skeptical of their August 1964 testimony, recalled McNamara and Rusk to address discrepancies between their testimony and the record that had emerged afterward.

In 1969, Ellsberg delivered the 7,000-pages of the Pentagon Papers, a secret history of the Vietnam War, to Congress and in 1970, both houses of Congress repealed the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, effectively rescinding the authority granted to the president to wage the Vietnam War.

Two veterans of that Congress, Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia and Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, remain in the Senate today. Both voted for the Tonkin Gulf Resolution and consider it a shameful mistake. Byrd says it was the worst mistake he ever made.

"I will always remember the words of Sen. Wayne Morse, one of the two Senators who opposed the Tonkin Gulf Resolution,'' Byrd said to Congress in 2003 while asking his colleagues to vote against the resolution authorizing Bush to attack Iraq.

Byrd then quoted the late Morse in saying, "The resolution will pass and Senators who vote for it will live to regret it.''

"Many Senators did live to regret it,'' Byrd says. "I am one of them.''

Byrd made a specific reference to the action taken by President Kennedy in the Cuban missile crisis, which had been invoked in the Senate discussions of Iraq, as an example of the president acting unilaterally, as Bush proposed to do — and did — without enlisting international support.

"It's true that Kennedy acted unilaterally in the Cuban missile crisis,'' Byrd said. "It is also true that Kennedy presented compelling evidence that a threat actually existed. Unlike Bush, who claimed to have evidence of the "weapons of mass destruction,'' Kennedy actually presented evidence of the Cuban missile threat.

"I remember Kennedy going on national television and showing proof of the threat we faced. I remember him sending our U.N. ambassador, Adlai Stevenson, to the United Nations, to provide proof to the world that there was a threat to the national security of the United States.''

The proof was the selection of photographs showing the installation of the Soviet-supplied missiles — taken by R-F8 Crusaders of the Squadron VFP 62

"That was our fellow squadron that took those pictures,'' Kay says. "They got heavily decorated for it.''

Byrd's warning against passing the Iraq war resolution did little more good than Morse's words had in Aug. 1964, setting forth an eerie parallel between a rush to vote for a war resolution then, and now.

Kay still has his combat citations and decorations and still talks about his Navy flying days like a man talking of first love. But he says he harbors a sense of betrayal — having seen the lie his intelligence was put to by Johnson. Kay didn't feel that there was any course of action open to him as a naval ensign, even if he had felt driven to act on what he saw as intelligence fraud. But not anymore.

Upon seeing what he says he considers a similar lie in the pretext presented by Bush for invading Iraq, Kay says he feels sadness at seeing his country lied to by its leader and resigned by the feeling that the country hasn't learned and probably won't.

"Bush saying we've got to invade Iraq because of the weapons of mass destruction that haven't turned up, "' Kay says, "is just the same thing. It doesn't seem like we learn anything.''

Last November, Kay and his first wife (they were divorced in the 1980s) joined to celebrate their daughter's winning her wings as a Naval flight surgeon stationed on the carrier the USS Kitty Hawk. Kay still talks with a tone of respect for his Navy service.

He is reluctant to criticize directly the Navy and his former commander in chief. Ellsberg, who broke his ties to the military and the administration in Washington by releasing the Pentagon Papers, has no such compunctions.

"We've been lied into another war,'' Ellsberg says. "It's like, "Vietnam: The Sequel,' reproducing the best-loved parts."