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VISTA: Not just a job, but an opportunity to help the
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Morse recalls
Tonkin Gulf
crisis
August 1964.
Gulf of Tonkin Resolution.
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.”