Content area
Full text
Moise, Edwin E. Tonkin Gulf and the Escalation of the Vietnam War. Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1996. 324pp. $39.95
Edwin E. Moise, a historian at Clemson University, uses newly available information and personal interviews to reconstruct the events that transpired in the Gulf of Tonkin on 4 August 1964. He presents a careful and incredibly thorough account, which shows that no attack took place that night against USS Maddox and USS C. Turner Joy. He attempts to place events in the context of increasing tensions between the United States and North Vietnam, tensions that would escalate after August 1964. The events that transpired in the Tonkin Gulf in 1964 are controversial even today, so it is likely that this book will meet with some debate. It is, however, an excruciatingly detailed account and, in my view, quite persuasive.
The author begins by discussing of the covert operations being executed in Vietnam in the 1960s. These operations, under Operations Plan (OPLAN) 34A, were run by the...