>> about 50 years ago on august 10, 1964, president lyndon johnson signed the gulf of tonkin resolution which in lieu of a declaration of war gave him broad powers to wage war in southeast asia. that resolution was passed by congress in response to an august 2 attack and an alleged august 4 incident involving bme torpedo boats -- vietnamese torpedo boats. we visited the national archive at george washington university to learn more. >> i'm tom blanton, the director of the national security archive. we are on the top floor of the main library at george washington university which is where we live. we are in a room full of boxes of declassified documents. it's really an artifact because most of the documents we get today are digital. born digital and made digital. people that use our collections

are using them online. the courses we teach at george washington, for most of these kids, if it is not online, it does not exist. so part of our whole mission has been to get these primary sources, loosed from the government through the freedom of information act, and then get them into in digital formats, organize them, curate them, index them. so students and journalists can find them. citizens can find them. we get calls from congress. they have questions, too. >> how are you funded and where did you come from? >> we really were started by a whole group of journalists and historians back in the mid-1980's who, each of whom had used the freedom of information act to get documents declassified from the government. i think the piles were stacking up in the kitchens. and to save their families i think they created the national

security archive. not juast a repository but as an institutional memory and a follow-up because we not only inherited boxes and boxes of documents from these pioneering journalist and historians, but we also inherited their pending freedom of information requests. for the really sensitive documents where inside the government there is a debate about, well, is this really secret or subjectively secret or can this be released? it can take years to get a declassification requests to the system. it can take, in the case of the gulf of tonkin intercepts and intelligence, this has been an iterative story for 50 years to get the documents loose. bits and pieces. not the whole truth. we're told to the public right at the time by the president of the united states. what is an intercept?

an intercept is when a u.s. satellite ship station, ground station was really powerful -- with powerful antenna, microphone pickup and electronic communication, radio communication, telephone can indication or wire tap or somebodies message. and during this period of the 1960's, north vietnam was one of our top targets for all our signals intelligence gathering. so in the gulf of tonkin context, the key intercepts, the key conversations we were trying to listen to were those between the north vietnamese boats who co damage on ouruld do -- who could do damage and their headquarters.

we in united states had taken over from the french as the main sponsor for the anti-communist forces that were basically gathered in south vietnam. after the french got beat by the a at 10 been true -- a dien bein phu, we probably made a big mistake after world war ii by not recognizing the nationalist aspirations of countries like vietnam, and instead backing up the former colonial powers like france. europe was way more important to us than vietnam. france, we needed as part of our nato in rebuilding europe against stalin and the communist threat. we came in on france's side while france was trying to keep in charge of vietnam. the japanese had taken over.

they do have the vietnamese. they are fighting a 50 year war. versus the colonial french. then japanese. then the french came back with our support. as the the french came out, we came in. between 1953 and 1964 we have not really escalated our presence in vietnam. we had supported the southerners who had split their country and refuse to participate in any elections. i think largely because they knew by the late 1950's they would have lost. ho chi minh had borne the greatest weight in beating the french, and fighting the japanese. they have the nationalist cause. they probably would have won a free election. at the same time, they were communists. free elections are utilitarian. they are not part of the communist toolbox. so there are a lot of vitamins

about this. are these folks in the south our -- arguments about this. are these folks in the south our friends and allies? we played a key role rugby for president kennedy was assassinated in 1963 -- we played a key role right before president kennedy was assassinated in 1963 by approving their replacement. in a coup. that seems to be a turning point. american policymakers, including ones close to kennedy, had gotten sick and tired of diem. we were hearing he was going to cut a deal with hanoi. we had a lot of rhetoric about the south is the freedom and the north is the tyranny. diem was not fighting against the north very vigorously or as vigorously as we thought. we had a lot of counterinsurgency specialists. graham greene wrote a great book

called "the quiet american." about our hubris in thinking we could do it right. and so here we had these generals in charge from late 1963 to 1964. we round up our air support and advisers. we were up to, ponder kennedy we were up to 10,000 or so advisers. we had not escalated the war by bringing in major ground troops yet. and we have not escalated the war by doing systematic bombing campaigns against the north. that would happen a year later in 1965. but in the summer of 1954, you -- 1964 you had president johnson running for reelection against the very conservative figure, senator barry goldwater. you had the u.s. navy and the cia running all of these covert,

op plan 34 tests, pressures against the north. to figure out what their defenses were. it was an intelligence gathering. also to ratchet up the pressure. part of the american mindset at that time was this notion of game theory that you calibrate pressure and then your opponent will ultimately respond to the pressure and by escalating like that over time, you could ultimately force hanoi to make a deal or back down. this was a fundamental misconception by the americans because game theory does not work on people who are defending their homeland, because just another imperialist aggressor. against just another imperialist tech aggressor. to think the johnson administration in the summer of 1964 was learning some of the wrong lessons from the cuban

missile crisis of 1962. the public myth of the cuban missile crisis was -- we went eyeball to eyeball with the ruskies and they blinked. we made it so tough for them by standing tough, they back down. -- they backed down. this popular misconception -- we now know from documents, especially from the soviet side was wrong. we actually, to his credit, kennedy got scared about the -- that things were slipping out of control. khrushchev did, too. before the missile crisis, kennedy was trying to assassinate castro. khrushchev decided he could sneak in a bunch of missiles disguised as palm trees. it was reckless. then they got into the crisis and saw the possibility of

nuclear exchange in armageddon. you read some of their letters and messages back and forth, and you read bobby kennedy meetings with the soviet-backed channel. -- the soviet ambassador. you get the strong sense of that the top guys in the kremlin in the white house, they got it that things are slipping out of control. at the ground level, there were nuclear weapons. we now know things that kennedy did not know. it was a cruise missile aimed at guantánamo. if we had invaded, guantanamo would be a synonym for hiroshima. that kennedy and khrushchev made a secret deal was not the public perception. the public perception was that testosterone won. they back down. -- they backed down and we stood tough. the same thing was being applied to hanoi. what is fascinating now that we can look through the historian''

work, the inside historians' work, at the national security agency who pursued the story, had access. went and did the basic fundamental work that intelligence analysts should have done at the time, which was to put all of the intercepts in one pile. and go through them and see what did they say? where did they contradict each other? and especially where did they contradict this highly selective chronology of have become the internal secret official story? then that historian wrote a highly classified article, because it is full of intercepted signals intelligence that showed the capabilities of u.s. government to listen to the north vietnamese as they are ordering their boats around off the coast. we can look through the historians' work, the inside

historians' work. the text of the intercepts of the north vietnamese conversations. then listened to president johnson's phone calls as he's talking with secretary of defense mcnamara. and begin to understand two realities that were not known to the public at the time. one, that the north vietnamese attacks on the second of august, 1964, were provoked by us. they were not the unprovoked aggression that was presented to the american public, as the basis for our bombing back. in fact, we were running all of the secret patrols, the de soto patrols. top secret to test coastal defenses, to figure out how the north vietnamese radar worked. to see how they would respond and intercept their communications in their naval

headquarters in their torpedo boats. as part of an ongoing pressure on the north vietnamese. so their attacks on our boats the second of august were presented as unprovoked aggression, when actually we have provoked them. this was one of the big secrets. the president knew it. the defense secretary new it. we have got them on tape talking about it. plan 34. mcnamara says this has something to do with the attack. [video clip] >> we should explain this op plan 34a. these covert operations. there is no question that has bearing. friday night we had four tp board from been among -- vietnam attack two island and we expended 1000 rounds a bombing mission against them like we probably shut off the radar

station. the following 24 hours after that, the destroyer led them to connect them. >> they are where we provoked it. it was our secret probes on the coastline that set off the north vietnamese attacks. they are just defending the coastline against our aggression. so we did not say that publicly. again, repeating from the same mistakes of the cuban missile crisis. what you say publicly become something you're stuck with, that you have to defend. you have to spin out more lies to keep it alive. >> my fellow americans, as president and commander-in-chief, it is my duty to the american people to

report that renewed hostility against united states ships and the high seas in the gulf of tonkin have today required me to order the military forces of the united states to take action in reply. the initial attack on the destroyer maddox on august 2 was repeated today by a number of hostile vessels attacking two u.s. destroyers with torpedoes. the destroyers and supporting aircraft acted at once on the orders i gave after the initial act of aggression. we believe at least two of the attacking boats were sunk. >> at the moment of the fourth of august, we had this false morning from -- false warning, summarizing from an intercept, everybody is on edge.

the destroyers start reporting sonar torpedo attacks. takes them a couple of hours to figure out maybe that is our own wakes. we are moving the destroyers like this which is what you do to have evasive action if you are under attack from a torpedo boat. but these destroyers are really fast boats with big engines. they are built for speed in the open ocean. so they make maneuvers. they set off all kinds of wakes. the wakes are picked up by sonar. oh my god, torpedoes in the water! then you have commander saying, we are under attack. it takes two hours for commander harrick to finally figure out. on the second of august, we

actually saw some of the torpedo boats. we took pictures. some of these pictures in t historical collections. they had photographshe navy -- here nobody had a nice a confirmation that all. when they change the personnel and the sonar screens, the next sonar guy does not see anything. what am i reporting? between 11:00 washington time when the commander reports torpedo attacks until after 1:00 when the commander says, wait a second, i am thinking that did not happen. i'm thinking that was sonar error. the airplanes are not seeing anything. maybe this is blind fishes. already, in that two hour window, washington had made a decision to go bomb, to shoot back.

anybody shoots at us, we're going to shoot back. >> secretary mcnamara, 9-0. >> mr. president, we had word by telephone from admiral sharp that the destroyer is under torpedo attack. >> i think i might get dean rusk here and we will go over these actions. i've got -- what are these torpedoes coming from? >> we do not know. from these unidentified craft i mentioned to you a moment ago. we thought the craft might include one pt boat which has torpedoed capability and two swat top boats which we do not credit with the capability. >> washington and lyndon johnson's view and mcnamara view wanted to shoot. they wanted to be tough. they are in an election season.

they have to be seen to be tough. false reports gave them an excuse to do something they wanted to do. i give mcnamera credit because he actually paid attention when the ship cap consents in that 1:00 message. that the mayor has advised the president, we are under attack. let's gear up for bombing. we are going to shoot back. mcnamara gets the report. the ship commander says, do not think so. mcnamara goes ballistic. he is a pretty powerful, forceful follow, robert mcnamara. among other things, he calls up the admiral in charge of pacific command and says, what is this? you do not understand that we are already in motion. we have had a meeting. the president has signed off. we are ready to fly those

b-52's. those commies had better watch out. what is these messages -- what are these messages saying there is no attack? right at that moment a composite intercept roles in. it is a summary of those north vietnamese communications between one of -- 1 to 5 august. which indicates that they did plan a preplanned attack. then they gist the communications. just summarize without giving the source of where they picked it up. they summarized. this top-secret code word document is what the national security agency provided top policymakers like mcnamara to continue to defend the position that the second attack did take place.

it was aggressive. and they basically had left out of the chronology all of the messages that did not support that story. we shot down to enemy planes and the battle area and one other plane was damaged. "we sacrificed two ships. spirt's very high. we are starting on the hunt." that is one version. another version is that "one of the torpedo boats reports to headquarters. we shot at two enemy airplanes. not we shot down. at least one was damaged. one other plane was damaged. the summary which the top policymakers used, we sacrificed two ships. we sacrificed two comrades but all our brave." so when you go back to the original, you see the word comrades. when you go to the summaries,

you see the word boats. two comrades becomes two boats. two comrade are peoples who were wounded on the second of august not shot. there was no attack on the fourth of august. going back and looking at these originals, which is what the national security agency should have done at the time, but did not. instead, they prepared a chronology that would show irrefutably what the president had said on national television. and the story we now know is two different intercept detachments in the philippines pick up some of the same messages but one of them, the marine corps interpreters, reads the messages as a warning of an imminent attack.

but it was not a translation of the north vietnamese message. it is their interpretation of the separate message that was about refueling the boats that had attacked on the second of august. so you had this error. but understandable in the sense of you got guys sitting there in translating from the vietnamese, listening in on north vietnamese conversations and on the edge of their seats because there had been an attack on the second. and their mission is to get those communications ahead of time, give warning, protect american sailors lives. you can see where that, well better, warn if there is a hint of it. same communications are being intercepted by another unit. but that unit translates as refueling of those boats, that are being replenished. that is the word they used.

because it is not a warning of an attack, that translation goes out at a lower frequency than the warning of an attack. one's at the critic level and the other at the priority level. the critical one comes through the system in washington and on the destroyer's hours and hours ahead of the other one, even though it is a translation of the same intercept. you can see what that does. that puts the people on the destroyer signage. -- on edge. mcnamara did the checklist by -- reasons why now we are sure second attack to face. it came from that one false message. two more were from the false torpedo sightings. so this cobbled together message confirms something that they want to believe because they had already made a decision to hit back. >> the u.s. sorties were launched as a warning to the common is that unprovoked attacks will bring prompt response.

>> why would just an attack on the second not be enough for the resolution or the escalation? >> because the attack on the second would not be enough for a blank check resolution to pursue war for couple reasons. one is president mcnamara and some members of congress like senator dirksen the minority leader, according to those phone calls that were being published, knew that we were running our own covert operations against the north vietnamese. so they were responding to us. so you could not percent the second of august as unprovoked aggression. but in public statements, after the second of august, on the second and third, the president and mcnamara and others had said if they attack us again, we are going to whack them. if they attack us again, we're going to shoot back. if they shoot at us again, i cannot be seen to be weak.

we are going to whack them. they prepared contingency plans, including b-52 bombers. >> yes? >> secretary mcnamara on 9-0. >> mr. president, i set up those meetings with the senate and house leaders. i thought of that was agreeable, i would say to them that some months ago you asked us to be prepared for any eventuality in the south east asia area and as a result of that we have prepared and just completed very detailed target analyses of the targets of north vietnam am. in 10 minutes i'm going over with the chiefs the final work on this. we have pictures, number six ortiz, bomb loadings, everything's prepared -- numbers of sorties. i would describe this to the leaders simply indicating that -- your desire that we be fully prepared for what ever may develop here furthermore, we developed movement studies of any contingency forces required, air squadrons, etc.

>> you go put this to paper. your enemy reads about it, the enemy thinks we are already taking off. obviously you got us in a war. i've got to be candid with you. >> i was going to start my remarks by that. >> as soon as those reports come in, even though within two hours they are being disproved by the commander of the destroyer being attacked, in those two hours you have made -- you are committed publicly. hit them back. >> the people are calling me. i talked to a new york banker. i talked to lubbock, texas. they think we responded wonderfully. that is good. i want to be damn sure we are firm. that is what all the country wants because goldwater is raising hell about how is going to blow them off the moon. if we -- we sure ought to always leave the impression.

if you shoot at us, you're going to get hit. >> swift and sure has been u.s. retaliation for pt boat attacks. this is the medics, one of the two destroyers attacked -- this is the maddox. war planes from two carriers avenged the unwarranted assault with 64 sorties. 25 boats, more than half the fleet, were destroyed. north vietnam oil reserves destroyed. 10% went up in flames after a direct hit. >> during the second of august attacks, there was a time of electronic intelligence and signals intelligence in between the boats directing them all the way through the period of the attack and withdrawal and damage to the ships.

two the fourth of august, at the moment you have the destroyers reporting torpedoes in the water, there is no electronic signal. there is no communications being picked up. coordinating these attacks. it's -- i think the historian for the national security agency said it is like a sherlock holmes story, the dog that did not bark. when the dog on the inside does not bark, it means it is an inside job. if there is no electronic intelligence, are the boats talking to each other? there's probably not an attack. to me, maybe the most telling of all the, we now have thousands of pages of primary sources. we have the internal sources. we have the tape recordings. we have photographs. we have the state department intelligence. we have joint chiefs of staff. will the intelligence that leads out of the batch is the white house

senior staff meeting. the day after. this is on the fifth of august, 1964. we really only have these notes because the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, maxwell taylor, has been a top kennedy aide. being sent over to the pentagon to bring the joint chiefs in line. they have been uppity as kennedy during the missile crisis. curtis lamay compares kennedy to chamberlain, appeasing hitler. this is amazing insubordination. max taylor had gone to the pentagon but he kept this. and he sent his staff over to the senior staff meeting to make sure that he, max taylor, knew what they were doing. these notes were taken by an air force major named billy smith. he went on to be a four-star general. he is sitting in that staff meeting the morning after.

so the night before, he had that series of intercepts, torpedoes, the decision to bomb. the bombers have gone off guam. north vietnam taking a huge pummeling. they come in early morning staff meeting. mcgeorge bundy, national security advisor is presiding. then he says, we actually have less, there was a lot more uncertainty. we have less information this morning and we had last night. bundy says, on the first attack, the evidence would be pretty good. on the second one, the amount of evidence we have today is less than we had yesterday. "this resulted primarily from correlating its and pieces of information eliminating double counting and mistaken signals." so you got less information today and you already bomb them. so sitting in on his first staff

meeting is an nbc news reporter who just moved over from nbc to the white house staff. edward r murrow had moved over to run voice of america. this was normal in those days. douglas cater is sitting in his first staff meeting and raises a question about the congressional resolution. the gulf of tonkin resolution to give the president authority to do whatever he wanted to fight back against the vietnamese. it became the ultimate underlying legal authority for the entire vietnam war escalation. only two u.s. senators voted against it. one from alaska and one from oregon he says, i'm wondering. but the logic is really troublesome. if this attack on forces, you are going to do -- freedom of all of southeast asia. you have got less information

today than you did yesterday? mcgeorge bundy says, in reply, jokingly told him, "perhaps the matter should not be thought through too far." for his own part, bundy, he welcomed the recent defense as justification for a resolution the administration had wanted for some time. they had drafted a resolution back in june to give the president authority to do whatever she wanted in southeast asia as commander-in-chief. he wanted a blank check. he had been sitting there because in part we had the upper hand. the north vietnamese were on the defense. we were probing them. plan 34. it was this aggression. except provoked by us. but the events, the events or

justification for something we wanted to do for some time. this is the quintessential cherry picking of intelligence to reinforce prearranged conclusions. it is a chilling discussion because you have got them admitting they are less certain but this gives them leverage. the parallel with other disasters -- iraq weapons of mass destruction. the yellow cake. the aluminum tubes. that does not pan out? all right. we have wanted to do this anyway. it's a big -- it illustrates a perpetual temptation from policymakers, and partly it is human nature. everybody comes to subjects with their prejudices.

then you are picking up the information that reinforces what you already think. this was the beginning of escalation. those bombing raids from the fourth of august. the beginning of the escalation. the big escalation would not happen till the following february,1965. mcgeorge bundy happens to be in vietnam when the viet cong attack at an outpost. takes it personally. they are targeting me. they weren't. they do not even know he was there. took them three months to organize the attack. it was on a prearranged casual but bundy takes it as a reason. they are attacking. this is aggression by the north, targeting me. we are going to escalate. ♪ [video clip] >> this is the airbase that was

ripped by vietnamese communist guerillas. meanwhile, president johnson's special assistant mcgeorge bundy arrives at the scene of a vietcong raid. was in vietnam on a mission for the president when the attacks took place. he holds a conference with the lieutenant general before returning to washington. while he conferred with officials, the national security council was meeting in washington. i twas th-- it was these meetings that dropped the swift decision to strike back at the viet cong to defend the cause of freedom in southeast asia. >> that leads them into this incredible escalation of force is. you back and listen to the

mcnamara and johnson tapes on the second and third and fourth of august. and you see that sort of automatic response in place. somebody is going to shoot at us. we are going to shoot back. not we're going to figure out what it is they are reacting to. what is it they want? put ourselves in their shoes? figure out what is a way out of this? no. they shoot. we are going to shoot back. you just get into the s dynamic. -- the escalate tory dynamic. it goes through 1975 when the last americans get pulled off the embassy. >> mr. bundy arrives in washington the next day and immediately goes into conference with the president and the security council. he tells reporters that he found political and religious factions in vietnam united in their belief that the viet cong is their common enemy. >> i think it is fair to say that the americans in vietnam are in very good heart and are prepared to continue even against this kind of danger, this kind of sneak attack. >> i think for american citizens

the lesson is what ronald reagan used to say to gorbachev about arms control, "trust by verify. -- but verify." for policymakers, the lesson is do not trust your gut. look for dissent and debate. this is one of the questions that the insider historian asks. why with the national security agency, supposed to present unbiased intelligence, why would we? he has three conclusions. one is the pressure of the moment. two ways precursor messages that shows attack for coming. three, you know what the top policymakers want to hear. four, you saw the president on tv announcing the bombing attack. now you're going to be the one to say, whoops.

nope. wrong. may be should not have done that. no, you are not going to be that intelligence analysts. any other reason in part is that once the top policymakers take thos steps, then they really only want to listen to the folks who reinforce the decisions they are ready made, the course of action they had been intended to take for a while. and the people who are dissenting from it, are bringing inconvenient facts to the table, either get pushed away from the table. the most famous story -- hubert humphrey gets elected vice president in november, 1964. sworn in in january 1965. in february, writes a memo to the president about how our policy in vietnam is just wrong

and we should not be doing what we're doing and we should figure out how it to get out. we know a lot about that memo. it has been declassified. we have the memoirs of humphrey and johnson and humphreys staff people who drafted it. johnson cut them off. refuse to let him come to vietnam policy sessions. humphreys had not leaked anything or dissented publicly. he had not tried to build an internal coalition against the president. he had written a critical dissenting memo that did not agree with what the president was doing. so the president decided, you are disloyal. the vice president. you are disloyal. you're not coming to the meetings. it was the year obsequiousness. if that is how it is received at the highest level, what happens to an intercept analyst?

oops. i guess the final lessons of gulf of tonkin. here we had the ability to listen in on north vietnamese conversations. yet we did not seem to have an understanding of what it was that they were fighting for, how long they would fight, and what that meant for what we ought to do. we were listening, but we were not hearing. [video clip] >> finally, i have today met with the leaders of both parties and the congress of the united states. and i have informed them that i shall immediately request the congress to pass a resolution making it clear that our government. is united in its determination to take all necessary measures

in support of freedom and a defense of peace in southeast asia. i have been given assurance by both leaders that this will be introduced and passed with overwhelming support. and just a few minutes ago, i was able to reach senator goldwater. and i am glad to say that he has expressed his support of the statement that i am making to you tonight. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] while congress is on break, c-span features a wide range of political views and topics.

this week a debate on america's greatness and veterans health care and the centers from disease control. we visit the atlanta press club for the future of news and we take a history you're looking at the civil war. c-span primetime monday-friday at 8 p.m. eastern and let us know what you think about the programs you're watching by calling us or you can e-mail us. join the c-span conversation and like us on facebook and follow us on twitter. president richard nixon resigned from office 40 years ago today on august 9, 1974 >> join american history tv today beginning at 10:30 a.m. eastern as we take you back to 1974 with our debts with archival footage of his last days in office and we will open the phones for your comments and questions about president nixon and watergate. you're watching american history tv all weekend, every weekend on c-span3.

by this time of the war, a lot of soldiers had been away from their homes for about 3-4 years. they were getting letters home saying that the farm is falling andieces, i will get -- their are people take supplies from us, when are you going to come home ? there were a lot of desertions but it was not because and not going to battle, their heartstrings were being pulled by their families needing them back on. what lee had imposed was a fairly strict set of orders that deserters would be sometimes shot and definitely that the punishment -- there were several occurrences of this happening. morale was so low about this s miserables came

out in book form and several sold -- saw it on a show -- on a bookshelf and said that's us ,lee's miserables. >> coming up, arthur christian mcburney talks about his book, "kidnapping the enemy." it chronicles the capture of two high ranking officers during the revolutionary war. british dragoons kidnapped major general charles lee, then second-in-command of the continental army. they were confident the war would soon be over. but the americans decided to respond with a special operation of their own. this event from the national archives is a little under one hour. >> our topic is the special operations to capture general charles lee and richard prescott by christian mcburney.