The U.S. government hid the fact that its ship was helping with secret military raids against North Vietnam.

President Lyndon B. Johnson told the public that the North Vietnamese attacks were unprovoked. But this was not the whole truth. The USS Maddox was actually on a secret mission. It was spying and gathering radio signals to help South Vietnamese commandos attack North Vietnamese targets. Because the public did not know about these raids, the American government could easily paint the incident as a completely unprovoked act of aggression.