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pleted, T-146 was ordered to Bay Chay, a point
near Haiphong harbor.!" Shortly afterwards, T­
142 informed Haiphong that the very busy T-146
was now to tow T-336 back, but since the latter
boat was short of fuel, the T-333, which was short
of oil but under tow from the Bach Dang, could
transfer one to five tons of its fuel to its sister vesse1.
112 At 1830Z on 4 August (0l30G on 5 August),
the navy monitoring site at San Miguel intercepted
T-142's report to Haiphong that T-146 had
completed its preparations for the two torpedo
boats by OlOOG 5 August (1800Z 4 August). 113 So,
in reality, none of the boats named in the original
attack Critic in fact participated in anything but
salvage efforts.
~Remember, Captain Herrick did not know
that the original Critic was really an interpretation,
and that there was no explicit reference to an
attack on his ships. He accepted the Critic's contents
as intercept of actual Vietnamese plans to
attack his ships when he informed the
Ticonderoga task group commander of his decision
to leave the area. He added his own twist to
the report to include specifically the unsupported
amplification mentioning the involvement of
North Vietnamese P-4 torpedo boats when only
one was mentioned as a potential participant in
the unidentified operations, and then only if it
could be refueled.l'"
(S//SO The possibility that, even if the interpretation
was incorrect, the Marine Critic was
justified in light of the events from two days earlier,
does not stand up when we consider that
another site, the navy intercept station at San
Miguel, Philippines, had translated the same
"operations order," but reported it in a much different
fashion. The navy translated the same
intercept and then reported it at a Priority precedence,
two levels below a Critic (or one level
above Routine). The navy analysts titled the
report "REPLENISHMENT OF DRV NAVAL
VESSEL." The San Miguel report translated the
critical sentence as: "T146 SUPPLY FUEL FOR
THE 333 IN ORDER TO GIVE ORDERS TO PUT
INTO OPERATION ((2 GR G)) \,VITH T146." 115
(S//S1) The difference (and correctness/
incorrectness) between the translations is not as
important as the fact that San Miguel reported
the "operation" as being nothing more than the
refueling of the damaged torpedo boats. This was
in line with an earlier intercept of a query from
Haiphong to T-142 asking ifT-333 had been refueled
yet. 116 Unfortunately, because the San Miguel
version was a lower precedence, it was released
much later. In fact, it came out at 1838Z (0038G),
some two hours after the destroyers had stopped
shooting.
(g//gI) The quandary created by the reports
about the salvage operations is this: If the original
suspect vessels, the two Swatow-class patrol
and two damaged P-4 torpedo boats, were not
participating in the anticipated "attack" against
the Desoto patrol, then who exactly was going to
attack No other messages had been intercepted
which suggested that any other DRV boats were
handed the mission of attacking the American
destroyers. In fact, there was no intercept at all
which hinted at an attack; nothing at all like what
had been intercepted on 2 August. So, if the original
culprits were involved in salvage operations,
then just what was going on in the Gulf of
Tonkin
(~//~I) For NSA and the rest of the SIGINT
participants, the second Phu Bai report should
have acted as a brake to any further reporting
about an attack. It directly contradicted the interpretation
- remember, it was an interpretation
only - contained in the initial Critic which
claimed an attack was being prepared. At this
point, all the SIGINT community could accurately
state was that there was no signals intelligence
reflecting a planned or ongoing attack against the
Desoto mission.
(TS//SI) Except this is not what happened.
The second Phu Bai report was not used to report
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