Operation 34A Operation 34A ( full name , Operational Plan 34A , also known as OPLAN 34Alpha ) was a highly - classified U . S . program of covert actions against the Democratic Republic of Vietnam ( DRV or North Vietnam ) , consisting of agent team insertions , aerial reconnaissance missions and naval sabotage operations . Though begun in 1961 by the Central Intelligence Agency , in 1964 the program was transferred to the Military Assistance Command , Vietnam Studies and Observations Group ( SOG ) during Operation " Parasol / Switchback " . The SOG was the cover name for a multi - service unconventional warfare task force under the direct guidance and control of the Pentagon . After a series of operations , in which Republic of Vietnam ( RVN or South Vietnam ) commando s were captured after insertion into North Vietnam , SOG shifted the emphasis of its activities to maritime operations . A small fleet of fast patrol boats was acquired for use in the landing of small action teams and the offshore bombardment of small DRV military facilities ( such as radar installations ) , with the pace of these operations doubling between June and July 1964 , following the intense engagement at Chan La . The Norwegian intelligence officer Alf Martens Meyer , recruited three Norwegian sailors to participate in these raids . The Norwegians ran SWIFT boats from Da Nang , with South Vietnamese commandos on board . The three Norwegians told their story in a TV documentary for Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation in December 2000 . Starting in mid - 1962 , the U . S . Navy began conducting electronic surveillance operations conducted by a division of ocean - going minesweepers ( MSO ) operating along the coast of North and South Vietnam . The minesweepers were equipped with portable vans containing highly sophisticated electronic surveillance equipment . The minesweepers fueled on occasion at a South Vietnamese fueling station located near the fishing port ( DaNang ) and took on evidence from CIA operatives which allegedly tended to prove that China and Russia were supplying the Viet Cong with weapons and other material . Occasionally , usually between midnight and 3 am , DRVN gunboats would approach the minesweepers at high speed and then peel off and return to a DRVN naval base operating on an island north of the 30th parallel . The gunboats made threatening maneuvers but never actually attacked the minesweepers . The maneuvers were reported to CINC Pac Fleet and the Pentagon in nightly Top Secret cryptograph messages . The minesweepers were essentially defenseless should an attack occur . In early 1963 , the minesweepers were relieved by a division of destroyers ( the DESOTO patrol s ) who appear to have carried out the same electronic surveillance operations conducted by the minesweepers . Although the two sets of operations were at least nominally independent of one another , the attacks carried out by the patrol boats provoked responses by the North Vietnamese military that were monitored by the American destroyers , thus providing very useful intelligence on DRV military capabilities . The situation swiftly escalated as the DRV deployed heavy gunboats and torpedo equipped frigates to observe the U . S . maneuvers . On the morning of 2 August 1964 , the morning after an attack by U . S . special forces on a North Vietnamese radio transmitter located on an offshore island – one of these destroyers , the USS " Maddox " , was reported to have come under attack by DRV naval patrol boats in the Gulf of Tonkin . This attack , and the ensuing naval actions , known as the Gulf of Tonkin Incident , were seized upon by President Lyndon Johnson to secure passage by the U . S . Congress of the Southeast Asia Resolution ( better known as the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution ) on 7 August 1964 , leading to a dramatic escalation of the Vietnam War . It has since been shown that the Gulf of Tonkin Incident was partly a fabrication , including testimony by participants , such as squadron commander James Stockdale , in the events themselves .