Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3 NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011
TOP SECRET - Sensitive
Reprisal Planning. In spite of these rather hesitant judgments, the graduated approach was adopted and a program of relatively mild military actions aimed at North Vietnam was set in motion beginning in December 1964. At the same time, detailed preparations were made to carry out bombing strikes against targets in North Vietnam in reprisal for any future attacks on U.S. forces. These preparations were made chiefly in connection with the occasional DESOTO Patrols that the US Navy conducted in the Gulf of Tonkin which had been fired upon or menaced by North Vietnamese torpedo boats on several previous occasions during 1964. In order to be prepared for an attack on any future patrol, a pre-packaged set of reprisal targets was worked up by CINCPAC on instructions from the JCS, and pre-assigned forces were maintained in a high state of readiness to strike these targets in accordance with a detailed strike plan that provided a range of retaliatory options.
In late January, a DESOTO Patrol was authorized to begin on Feb. 3 (later postponed to Feb. 7) and Operation Order FLAMING DART was issued by CINCPAC, providing for a number of alternative US air strike reprisal actions in the eventuality that the DESOTO Patrol were to be attacked or that any other provocation were to occur, such as a spectacular VC incident in South Vietnam. At the last moment, however, the Patrol was called off in deference to Soviet Premier Kosygin's imminent visit to Hanoi. U.S. officials hoped that the USSR might find it in its interest to act as an agent of moderation vis a vis Hanoi in the Vietnam conflict, and wished to avoid any act that might be interpreted as deliberately provocative. Nevertheless, it was precisely at the beginning of the Kosygin visit, during the early morning hours of February 7; the the VC launched their spectacular attack on US installations at Pleiku, thus triggering FLAMING DART I, the first of the new carefully programmed US/GVN reprisal strikes.
Imperceptible Transition. By contrast with the earlier Tonkin strikes of August, 1964 which had been presented as a one-time demonstration that North Vietnam could not flagrantly attack US
forces with impunity, the February 1965 raids were explicitly linked with the "larger pattern of aggression" by North Vietnam, and were a reprisal against North Vietnam for an offense committed by the VC in South Vietnam. When the VC staged another dramatic attack on Qui Nnon on Feb. 10, the combined US/GVN response, named FLAMING DART II, was not characterized as an event-associated reprisal but as a generalized response to "continued acts of aggression." The new terminology reflected a conscious U.S. decision to broaden the reprisal concept as gradually and imperceptibly as possible to accommodate a much wider policy of sustained, steadily intensifying air attacks against North Vietnam, at a rate and on a scale to be determined by the U.S. Although discussed publicly in very muted
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