The Gulf of Tonkin resolution (August 1964) was a joint resolution by the United States Congress for the United States to begin the Vietnam War. For a decade the CIA had been sending in South Vietnamese teams on sabotage missions to the North. American ships such as the "Maddox" went on espionage missions in the North's coastal waters. U.S. President Johnson claimed that the North Vietnamese had made two attacks on the "Maddox" and the "Turner Joy" in the Gulf of Tonkin. On the 4th of August he asked for congressional support to return the attacks.