Tonkin Gulf Incident: taped conversation between LBJ and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, Sept. 18, 1964:
“LBJ: Now, Bob. I found over the years that we see and we hear and we imagine a lot of things in the form of attacks and shots […] and people running at us, and I think it would … make us very vulnerable if we conclude that these people [the North Vietnamese] were attacking us and we were merely responding and it develops that that just wasn’t true at all. And I think we ought to check that very, very carefully. And I don’t know why in the hell, some time or other, they can’t be sure that they are being attacked. It looks like to me they would hear a shot or see a shot, or do something before they just get worked up and start pulling a LeMay on us. I think that if we have this kind of response and then it develops that we just started [it] with our own destroyers that people are going to conclude … that we’re just playing cops, trying to get a lot of attention, and trying to show how tough we are, I want to be tough where we … are justified in being tough … But I sure want more caution on the part of these admirals and these destroyer commanders … about whether they are being fired on or not. […] Take the best military man you have, though, and just tell him that i’ve been watching and listening to these stories for thirty years before the Armed Services Committee, and we are always sure we’ve been attacked. Then in a day or two, we are not so damned sure. And then in a day or two more, we’re sure it didn’t happen at all!”
(Michael Beschloss, Reaching for Glory. Lyndon Johnson’s White House Tapes 1964-1965 [New York 2001], p. 38-39)