On August 2, and 4, 1964, the US Navy reported a series of attacks on the USS Maddox destroyer in international waters in the Gulf of Tonkin east of North Vietnam by North Vietnamese torpedo boats. On August 7, 1964, President Lyndon Johnson got authorization from Congress to “take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack” against US forces in Southeast Asia, leading to the deployment of combat troops, and a brutal bombing campaign in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia using three times more ordnance than was dropped during all of WWII.

In 2003, former Johnson administration secretary of state Robert McNamara admitted that the attack on the Maddox never took place. In 2005, declassified files revealed that the National Security Agency deliberately distorted intelligence on the incident to justify intervention.