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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Nov. 21, 1972)
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To most people this brings to mind the official beginning of the longest war in American history— the beginning of the Vietnam Era. To Wayne Morse it calls back memories of a midnight phone call and a one man fight in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Sitting in the comfortable living room of his farmhouse, the former Senator recalled the almost forgotten days eight years ago when President Johnson and Congress rushed into an armed conflict that still drags on today. I asked the man who had spent those hectic days as a member of the key Senate committee that held emergency hearings what the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution meant to him. By DAVE WOODSON Of the Emerald “I should simply point out that the American people were lied to about the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution,” the veteran legislator answered as he shifted in his chair to face me directly. He wanted to make sure I understood every word he was about to say. Morse is deeply disturbed by the war in Vietnam. You can see it in his face and you can hear the latent anger in his voice when he talks about it. “The United States was the aggressor in the Gulf of Tonkin,” he said firmly. “We committed acts of war in the Gulf of Tonkin—you never were told that.” He blames the Senate (and particularly the Foreign Relations Committee and its chairman, Sen. J. William Fulbright) for blindly passing the Johnson administration sponsored resolution. “We didn’t have the specific facts at the time,” Morse continued, “but the Senate had every fact I had and in the cloakrooms, the majority of that Senate agreed with me but they didn’t have the political courage to lead the people." He also blames the citizens of the United States. “The people of this country were hawkish in August, 1964. They’d been propagandized.” His memories of the events are vivid. It was the night of August 4, 1964 and his one man fight was about to begin. At 11:30 p.m. “a high military official” called Morse and said, “Senator, I understand you’re going to oppose the resolution in committee tomorrow.” Morse replied that he “most certainly” was going to. The midnight caller continued, “Well, you know I’m in uniform and there is not much I can say to you. However, it is appropriate for me to suggest that you ask the Secretary of Defense (at that time Robert S. McNamara) when he is on the stand tomorrow two questions. Ask him if he will produce the log of the Maddox for the inspection of the committee. Ask him to tell you what the mission of the Maddox was.” The former Senator explained that he had served on the Armed Services Committee for many years prior to moving over to the Foreign Relations Committee and that he had maintained “dose contact with certain advisors in the Pentagon building." Apparently the caller was one of these advisors. Morse said that he understood “Pentagon building lingo” and that the caller “had told me a book full.” He leaned forward and asked, “Do you know what he had told me?” It may have been a rhetorical question but I answered it and told him that I didn’t know. He answered it. What he had said to me, in ef fect. was they are going to lie to you tomorrow about where the Maddox was—and they did. They are going to lie to you tomorrow as to what her mission was — and they did.” Morse then continued to tell what happened the next day in the Foreign Relations Committee hearings. ‘‘The only witnesses that we had, the only wit nesses that Bill Fullbright . . .’’—the slightly-built 72-year-old former member of that committee raised his voice at this point, almost as if still in anger as the memory came back to him. He was intense, he was serious and he appeared eight years later to still be very upset—“... Bill Fulbright, then a hawk of hawks, permitted to come before that committee was the state department, the CIA, and the Pentagon witnesses, including the joint chiefs of staff.” When Morse asked the Secretary of Defense to produce the log of the Maddox, according to the former Senator, . . (McNamara) was a great actor and took the attitude that that was a fantastic question.” “I asked him what was fantastic about that question,” Morse continued. He clearly remembers the secretary’s reply. “Why he said. Senator Morse, in this emergency we haven’t had time to get the log of the Maddox here.” “1 don’t know of any emergency,” Morse said and then moved in for the kill. “You tell us that the Turner Joy and the Maddox are now far out at high seas. Let me tell you Mr. Secretary, I think that’s where they always should have been and 1 want you to know that my intuition and suspicion tells me that's not where the Maddox was. I think she was a decoy ship.” Morse knew that he was “on top of paydirt.” “When I made that shot in the dark, so to speak, you should have seen the heads come together all over that hearing room. State Department . . .CIA Pentagon Building.” His face lights up as he talks about this. It was a small victory but it was a victory and he knew it. So, he demanded the log again. The Secretary of Defense replied that there wasn't time to get the log but he offered to tell the committee what the log would show. Morse replied that he was a lawyer and the best evidence was the log itself and he wanted to see it. “What do you mean you don’t have time. If the Maddox is out to the high seas, matter of hours and you can have the log here. I didn’t sit here and vote millions of dollars to develop the fastest air force in the world not to get that log here.” Morse tells the last part with obvious enjoyment. He then moved on to the second question supplied by the midnight caller. He asked McNamara what the mission of the Maddox was. The Secretary of Defense replied that it was a routine patrol mission. “He lied to me through his teeth!” Morse ex claims. “I couldn’t prove it then but we know now.” “Suppose,” the former Senator continues, “he had told us that the Maddox had been in Vietnamese waters time and time again . . . “Suppose that he had told us that they had taken her to Taiwan weeks before the Gulf of Tonkin and fitted her out as a top spy ship of the United States Navy and she therefore lost all her protection under international law as a man of war ... “Suppose he had told us that—why that resolution never would have gotten out of committee,” Morse said firmly. ‘We trained the crews supplied the torpedos’ Morse then broadened the question and asked Secretary McNamara what role the United States military had played in the attack by South Viet namese patrol against the North Vietnamese mainland that led to the Gulf of Tonkin incident. The secretary answered that the United States military had had “no knowledge" of the operation. “Lied!" Morse said, his voice rising again. “Let me tell you what the facts are,” he con tinues. "We supplied the boats . . . “We trained the crews . . . “We supplied the torpedos . . . “We helped prepare the plans through the Navy for the bombardment . . . “And the Maddox stood in radio communication with Saigon and the commander of the Pacific fleet throughout the whole procedure. That was our in volvement in this act of war against North Vietnam. “Suppose they told us that, what would have happened to the resolution?” he asked rhetorically M9rse then realized that there wasn’t going to be any support in the committee for demanding the log, so he told the committee chairman that he had eleven witnesses he wanted to call to “refute” the earlier testimony. won, ne towered the boom on me, Morse recalls about Fulright’s actions. He remembers him as having said, “I want the Senator from Oregon to know that the only witnesses that will be called are in this room. We are going to get this resolution out of here by the end of the day or before tomorrow noon.” “Why call it a hearing Mr. Chairman,” Morse replied, “you mean you’re conducting a star chamber proceeding.” The former Senator leaned back in his chair and summed up his feelings regarding the Gulf of Tonkin resolution: “One of the most shocking deceits ever practiced by our government upon the American people (the anger is back here ... it is real . . . and his voice rises toward a crescendo) and as a result of the Gulf of Tonkin. 54,000 American boys died without the slightest justification and five times that number was wounded.”
