Johnson first deployed American troops on Vietnamese soil in 1965, with an oft-forgotten clash called the Gulf of Tonkin Incident. During the presidencies of Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower ...

“At first, the North Vietnamese interrogators figured Doug Hegdahl for a spy who concocted a dubious tale of falling off a ship in the Tonkin Gulf,” Leepson writes. “But he soon convinced ...