Recently declassified but heavily excised documents from the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library suggest that a Vietnam-war skirmish involving a nuclear-armed U.S. destroyer raised questions at the White House about the presence of nuclear weapons on U.S. warships in Vietnam military operations. That the documents are heavily excised more than forty years after the incident raises troubling questions: Why information in these documents is still classified? Could full declassification really cause any harm? What is the U.S. government afraid of?
Over a two-week period at the end of March 1967, the U.S. 3rd Marine Division, concerned about a North Vietnamese threat to an artillery base at Gio Linh, conducted an operation codenamed Beacon Hill I along the South Vietnamese coast below the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). This effort featured the amphibious landing of a Marine battalion and the participation of Navy destroyers on a “gun line” to furnish fire support. During the first two days the Marines, pinned down by North Vietnamese fire, found their adversary had many positions with connecting tunnels, and decided to stand back while naval guns and air strikes bombarded these positions for the next two days. On the early morning of 25 March, one of the supporting ships, the Ozbourn, completed her fire mission and began to leave. Suddenly North Vietnamese mortars hit her with several shells. Two damaged the Ozbourn’s ASROC [anti-submarine rocket] storage area, igniting rocket motors and forcing the crew to flood the magazine. ASROCs were nuclear-capable weapons so explosions in a magazine raised the possibility, at a minimum, of radioactive materials scattering about the ship. As it turned out, no radiation was released.[1] (more…)
