day on the c-span networks. holiday festivities start at 10:00 a.m. eastern on c-span with the lighting of the national christmas tree followed by the white house christmas decorations with first lady michelle obama. and the lighting of the capitol christmas tree. and just after 12:30 p.m., celebrity activists talk about their causes. then at 8:00, supreme court justice samuel alito and former florida governor jeb bush on the bill of rights, and the founding fathers. on c-span2, at 10:00 a.m. eastern, venture into the art of good writing with steve pinker. and at 12:30 see the feminist side of a superhero, as jill lepore searches the secret history of wonder woman. at 7:00 p.m., author pamela paul and others talk about their reading habits. and on american history tv on c-span3 at 8:00 a.m. eastern, the fall of the berlin wall with c-span footage of president george bush and bob dole. with speeches from presidents john kennedy and ronald reagan. at noon, fashion experts on first ladies' fashion choices, and how they represented the styles of the times in which they lived. and then at 10:00, former nbc

news anchor tom brokaw on his more than 50 years of reporting on world events. that's this christmas day on the c-span networks. for a complete schedule go to c-span.org. about 50 years ago on august 10th, 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 2nd attack, and an alleged august 4th incident in the golf of tonkin involving u.s. destroyers and vietnamese torpedo boats. american history visited the national security archive at george washington university to learn about numerous declassified documents that have shed more life on the gulf of tonkin incidents. >> i'm tom blanton, the director of the national security archive. we're here on the top floor of the main library at george washington university, which is where we live. and we're in a room full of boxes of declassified documents.

it's really an artifact because most of the declassified documents we get today are actually digital. a lot of them born digital, scanned or made digital, and certainly the people that use our collections are using them online. in fact, in the courses we teach here at george washington, for most of these kids, if it's not online, it doesn't exist. so part of our whole mission has been to get these primary sources, loose from the government through freedom of information act request, and declassification review, and then get them into digital formats, organize them, extreme them, curate them, index them, so then students can find them, journalists can find them. citizens can find them. and even 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-1980s, 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 their kitchens and their spouses said, get these papers out of the house. and to save their families i think they created the national security archive. not just as a repository, but as an institutional memory, and a follow-up, because we not only inherited boxes and boxes of documents from these pioneering journalists 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 is it just subjectively secret or can this be released? it can take years to get a declassification request through the system. it can take, in the case of the gulf of tonkin intercepts, intelligence intercepts, this

has been an iterative story for 50 years to get the documents loose. bits and pieces, not the whole truth were 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, with really powerful directional antennas, microphones, pick up an electronic communication, radio communication, a radio-telephone communication, or wiretap of somebody's message. and during this period of the 1960s, north vietnam was one of our top targets for all of our signals intelligence gathering. and 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, torpedo boats who could do some real damage on our boats offshore, and their headquarters, which was in

haiphong. we the united states had taken over from the french as the main sponsor for the anti-communist forces that were basically gathered in south vietnam. we had helped -- after the french got beat by the communists, really at dien bien phu, we could probably track it back further but we probably phu, we could probably track it back further but we probably made a mistake after world war ii by not recognizing the nationalist aspirations of countries like vietnam and backing up the former colonial power, france, in that case. there were some reasons we did that. europe was way more important to us than vietnam.

france we needed as part of our rebuilding and nato, rebuilding europe against stalin and the communist threat. that ultimately churchill called the iron curtain. we came in on france's side while france was trying to keep in charge of vietnam. the japanese had taken over. here you have the vietnamese. from their point of view, they're fighting a 50-year war versus colonial french. then the japanese came in and threw out the french. then the french came back with our support. then after the french got beat, they got thrown out, and we came in. between 1953 and 1964 we had not really dramatically escalated our presence in vietnam. we had supported the southerners who had split the country and refused to participate in any countrywide elections. i think largely because they knew at least by the late 1950s they would have lost.

ho chi minh, the communists had borne the greatest weight in beating the french and fighting back against the japanese and they pretty much had the nationalist cause wrapped around them. and so they probably would have won a free election. at the same time, they were communists. so free elections are purely utilitarian. they're not part of the communist toolbox. generally. so there are a lot of arguments about this. are these folks in the south really our friends and allies? we had played a real key role right before president kennedy was assassinated in november 1963 in approving the replacement of the previous leader, diem, the previous eight years by a bunch of generals in a coup. that was -- in retrospect seems to be a turning point. american policymakers, including ones close to kennedy, had gotten sick and tired of diem. we're hearing that he was

actually wanting 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 who were in charge from late '63 on into 1964. we had ramped up our support for the generals, some air support, some advisers. we were up to -- i think under kennedy we had been up to 10,000 or so advisers, and johnson was putting more in. but we had not escalated the war

by bringing in major ground troops yet. and we had 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 1964, you had president johnson running for re-election against a very conservative figure, senator barry goldwater. you had the u.s. navy and the cia running all of these covert, the op-plan 34 tests, pressures, against the north. to figure out what their defenses were. so it was an intelligence-gathering piece of it. but 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. i think this was a fundamental misconception by the americans because game theory doesn't work on people who are, in their own minds, defending their homeland against just another imperialist aggressor. i 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 in dean rusk's phrase, we went eyeball to eyeball with the ruskies and they blinked. meaning, we ratcheted up the pressure, we had military dominance in the area, we made it so tough for them by standing tough ourselves that ultimately they backed down. and this popular conception, we now know from the underlying documents, especially from the soviet side, was wrong. we actually -- to his credit, kennedy got scared about the strong likelihood that things were slipping out of control during the cuban missile crisis. khrushchev did, too. both of them had been reckless.

before the missile crisis, kennedy was running covert operations trying to assassinate castro. khrushchev thought he could sneak in a bunch of missiles disguised as palm trees and get away with it. it was reckless to a fare thee well. then they got into the crisis and saw the possibility of nuclear exchange and armageddon and the end of human civilization. you read some of their letters and messages back and forth, and you read bobby kennedy meetings with the soviet ambassador and you get the strong sense that the top guys in the kremlin and the white house, they got it. they got it that things were slipping out of control. that down at the ground level there were nuclear weapons all over the place. we now know things that kennedy didn't know, that there was a cruise missile aimed at guantanamo, if we had invaded, which all the generals wanted to do. guantanamo would be a synonym for hiroshima today. it would be a smoking, radiating

rubble. there were 100 some odd tactical nuclear weapons in cuba waiting for an invasion. that kennedy and khrushchev made a secret deal was not the public perception. the public perception was that testosterone won. we stood tough, they backed down. the same thing was being applied to hanoi. what's fascinating now that we can look through the historians' work, the inside historians' work, at the national security agency, then robert hanyak 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 that had become the internal, secret official story.

then that historian wrote a highly classified article, because it's full of intercepted signals intelligence that showed the capabilities of the u.s. government to listen to the north vietnamese as they're ordering their boats around in the -- down there off the coast of vietnam. we can look through the historians' work, the inside historians' work. the actual texts of the intercepts of the north vietnamese conversations. and then listen to president johnson's phone calls as he's talking with secretary of defense mcnamara. and begin to understand two huge realities that were not known to the public at the time. one, that the north vietnamese attacks on the 2nd of august, 1964, were actually provoked by us.

they weren't the unprovoked aggression that was presented to the american public as the basis for our bombing back. that, in fact, we were running all these secret patrols, the so-called desoto patrols, top secret, to test coastal defenses, to figure out how the north vietnamese radar worked. to see how they would respond. and to intercept their communications among their haiphong naval headquarters and their actual torpedo boats on the coast. as part of an ongoing pressure on the north vietnamese. and so their attacks on our boats on the 2nd of august were presented as unprovoked aggression, when actually we had provoked them. so this was one of the big secrets. the president knew it. the defense secretary knew it. we've got them on tape talking about it.

o-plan 34, mcnamara says. this certainly had something to do with that attack. president johnson knows about it. >> i think i should also, or we should also at that time, mr. president, explain this op plan 34-a, these covert operations. there's no question but what that had bearing on and friday night, as you probably know, we had four tp boats from vietnam, manned by vietnamese or other nationals, attack two islands. and we expended over 1,000 rounds of ammunition one kind or another against them. we probably shot up a radar station and a few other miscellaneous buildings. and following 24 hours after that with this destroyer in that same area undoubtedly led them to connect the two events. >> say that to dirksen. >> they're aware that we provoked it. it was our secret probes on the coastline is what set off the north vietnamese to come attack. from the north vietnamese point of view, they're just defending their coastline against our aggression. so -- we didn't say that publicly. again, repeating from the same

mistakes of the cuban missile crisis. because then what you say publicly then becomes something that you're stuck with, that you then have to defend, and you have to spin out more lies to keep it alive as your case statement for why we're there. >> my fellow americans, as president and commander in chief, it is my duty to the american people to report that renewed hostile actions against united states ships on 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 maddux on august 2nd 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 that moment of the 4th of august, you have this false warning from a -- summarizing from an intercept, not really giving an intercept. false warning, everybody's on edge. the destroyers start reporting sonar torpedo attack. takes them a couple of hours to figure out, well, maybe that's just our own wakes. we're moving the destroyers like this, which is what you do to have evasive action if you're under attack from a torpedo boat. but these destroyers are really fast boats with big propellers and big engines, and they're built for speed on the open ocean. so they make maneuvers like

that. they set off all kinds of wakes. and those wakes are then picked up by the other destroyers' sonar. then all of a sudden you got this reinforcement, oh, my god, torpedoes in the water. then you have commanders of two boats saying, we're under attack, we're under attack, we're under attack. and it takes about two hours for commander herrick to finally figure out, well, wait a second. on the 2nd of august, we actually saw some of the torpedo boats. we saw them. we took pictures of them zooming across the bow. some of these pictures in navy historical collections. they had photographs of the north vietnamese torpedo boats. but here nobody had an eyesight confirmation at all. when they change the personnel and the sonar screens, all of a sudden the next sonar guy doesn't see anything. wait a second, what am i getting reporting? so between 11:00 washington time when the commander reports torpedo attacks, and a little bit after 1:00, when the

commander says, wait a second, i'm -- i'm thinking that didn't really happen. i think it was just sonar error, and the airplanes overhead aren't seeing anything either. i don't -- maybe it was flying fishes. but already, in that two-hour window, washington had made a decision to go bomb, to go shoot back. anybody shoots at us, we're going to shoot back. >> secretary mcnamara, 9-0. >> mr. president, we just had word by telephone from admiral sharp that the destroyer is under torpedo attack. >> i think i might get dean rusk, and have him come over here and we'll go over these retaliatory actions. then by ought to -- >> i think i'll agree with that. >> i'll call the two of them. >> where are these torpedoes coming from? >> we don't know. presumably from these unidentified craft that i mentioned to you a moment ago. we thought that the unidentified

craft might include one pt boat which has torpedo capability. and swat-top boats which we don't credit with torpedo capability, although they may have it. >> washington and lyndon johnson's view and mcnamara's view could have wanted to shoot. they wanted to be tough. they are in an election season. they've got to be seen to be tough. so false reports gave them an excuse to do something they wanted to do. you see, some of the back and forth, and i give mcnamara some credit on this, because mcnamara actually paid attention when the ship captain herrick sends him the 1:00 message. mcnamara already advises the president we're under attack, let's gear up for a bombing, we're going to shoot back. we already decided to do that, we're going to do that. mcnamara gets the follow-up

where the ship commander says, don't think so. mcnamara goes ballistic. he is a pretty powerful, forceful fellow, robert mcnamara. among other things, he calls up the admiral in charge of pacific command and says, what is this? they don't think -- you don't understand that we're already in motion here. we've already had the meetings with the principals. president's already signed up. we're gearing up. we are ready to fly those b-52s. those hanoi commies better watch out, we're coming after them. what's up with these messages saying there's no attack? right at that moment that composite intercept rolls in. it is a summary of those north vietnamese naval communications during the period 1 to 5 august which demonstrate irrefutably that their naval boats did, in fact, engage in preplanned combat attack against our destroyers when the actual

attack, aggressive intent as early as the 1st of august. and then they just -- the communication just means just summarize without giving the exact source of where they picked it up. but they were just summarizing. this top-secret code word dinar document is what the national security agency then provided top policymakers like mcnamara to continue to defend the position that the second attack did take place, it was aggressive intent, and they basically left out of this chronology all the messages that did not support that story. we shot down two enemy planes in the battle area and one other plane was damaged. this is north vietnamese communication. "we sacrificed two ships. all the rest are okay. combat spirit very high. we're starting out on the hunt. that's one version of translation. another version of translation is that, one of the torpedo boats reports to headquarters. we shot at two enemy airplanes. not we shot down. and these one was damaged. over here it becomes one other plane was damaged. the summary which the top policymakers used, we sacrificed two ships.

all the rest are okay. in the original, we sacrificed two comrades but all are operative and recognize our obligation. so when you go back to the original, you see the word "comrades." when you go to the summaries, prepared after, you see the word "boats." two comrades becomes two boats. two boats sounds like a huge attack took place. two comrades, we now believe, are people who were wounded on the 2nd of august. not shot on the 4th of august. there was no attack on the 4th of august. so you can -- it's by going back and looking at these originals, which is what the national security agency should have done at the time, but didn't. 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 wasn't actually a translation of a north vietnamese message. it was their interpretation of a separate message that was about just refueling the boats that had attacked on the 2nd of august. so you have this error. but understandable in the sense of you've got guys sitting there with headphones on their head 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 2nd. 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's a hint of it.

same communications are also being intercepted by another unit. but that unit translates them as refueling of those boats that actually are being replenished i think is the word they use. but because it's 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, the other's at the priority level. is the critic one comes through the system in washington and on the destroyers hours and hours ahead of the other one, even though it's a translation of the same intercept. you can see what that does. then that puts the people on the destroyers on edge. mcnamara did a little checklist, five reasons why now we're sure a second attack took place. but two of them came from just that one false message. two more were from the false torpedo sightings and the like.

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 for one purpose. as a warning to the communists that unprovoked attacks will bring prompt response. >> why would just an attack on the 2nd not be enough for the resolution or the escalation? >> because the attack on the 2nd wouldn't be enough for a blank check resolution to pursue war for a couple reasons. one is president mcnamara and some members of congress like senator dirksen, the minority leader, according to those phone calls we've published, knew that we were running our own covert operations against the north vietnamese and so they were responding to us. so you couldn't present the 2nd of august as unprovoked aggression. but in public statements, after

the 2nd of august, on the 2nd and the 3rd, the president and mcnamara and others had said, if they attack us again, we're going to whack them. if they attack us again, we're going to shoot back. if they shoot at us again, i can't be seen to be weak, we're going to whack them. they prepared contingency plans, including b-52 bombers flying off guam over north vietnam. >> yes? >> secretary mcnamara on 9-0. >> yes? >> mr. president, i set up those meetings with the senate and house leaders. i thought if it was agreeable to you i would say to them that some months ago you asked us to be prepared for any eventuality in the southeast asia area, and as a result of that we have prepared and just completed very detailed target natural seals of the targets of north vietnam. as a matter of fact, in ten minutes i'm going over with the chiefs the final work on this. we have pictures, analogies, numbers of sorties, bomb loading, everything prepared for

all target systems of north vietnam. and i would describe this to the leaders, simply indicating your desire that we be fully prepared for whatever may develop. and furthermore, we've prepared detailed movement studies of any contingency forces required. air squadrons, et cetera. >> obviously now. >> you put this to paper -- >> i'm going to tell them that. >> -- and your enemy reads about it, then he thinks we're already taking off and obviously you've got us in a war. i've got to be candid with you. >> i was going to start my remarks by that. to be damn sure or try to be sure it doesn't get in the papers. >> as soon as those reports come in, even though within two hours they're being disproved by the commander of the destroyer supposedly being attacked.

but in those two hours you've already made your -- you've -- you're committed publicly. hit them back. >> the people are calling me. i talked to a new york banker. i just talked to a fellow in texas. they all feel the navy responded wonderfully and that's good. but they want to be damn shire i don't pull them out and run and they want to be damn sure we are firm. that is what all the country wants because goldwater is raising so much hell about how he's going to blow them off the moon. they say we ought to do anything that the national interest doesn't require but we sure ought to always leave the impression that if you shoot at us, you're going to get hit. >> swift and sure has been u.s. retaliation for communist pt boat attacks on the high seas. this is the "maddox," one of two destroyers attacked in the gulf of tonkin in north vietnam. warplanes from two carriers the ticonderoga and the constellation avenged the unwarranted red assault with 52 sorties to north vietnam bases. 25 boats, more than half the fleet, were destroyed and north vietnam oil reserves badly depleted. it is estimated 10% went up in flames after direct hits. >> 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 the withdrawal and the damage to the ships. during the 4th of august, at the very moment you have the destroyers reporting torpedos in the water, there's no electronic signaling. there's no communications being picked up. coordinating these attacks. it's -- i think the historian for the national security agency hanyak said it's like a sherlock holmes story, the dog that didn't bark. when the dog on the inside does not bark, it means it's an inside job. if there's no electronic intelligence, are the boats talking to each other? means there's probably not an attack. to me, maybe the most telling of all the -- we now have thousands of pages of the primary sources.

we've got the intercepts, we've got the internal histories, we've got the tape recordings of the president, we've got the photographs of the attack, we've got the state department intelligence histories, we've got the joint chiefs of staff histories. but to me the document that leaps out of the whole batch is the white house senior staff meeting. this is the day after. this is on the 5th of august, 1964. we really only have these notes because the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, maxwell taylor, had been a top kennedy aide. been kind of sent over to the pentagon to bring the joint chiefs into line. because they had been pretty uppity against kennedy during the missile crisis. i think at one point curtis lemay compares kennedy to chamberlain, appeasing hitler. this is amazing insubordination. max taylor had left the white house, gone to the pentagon, but he kept his white house passes.

and he sent his staff over to the senior staff meeting to make sure that he, max taylor, sitting over there, knew what they were doing and thinking. these notes were taken by an air force major named billy smith. he was a korean war veteran. went on to be a four-star general himself. he's sitting in that staff meeting the morning after. so the night before you had that series of the intercepts, the torpedos, the decision to bomb, then the bombers had 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, well, your, we actually have less -- there was a lot more uncertainty. we have less information this morning than we had last night. bundy says, according to these notes, 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 bits and pieces of information, eliminating double counting and mistaken signals. so you got less information today than you had yesterday and you already bombed 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 done that, moved over from cbs to run "voice of america," i think. so, you know, this was normal i guess in those days. this is douglas cater. douglas cater is sitting in his first staff meeting and raises a question about the congressional resolution. the gulf of tonkin resolution, the one that was going 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. cater says, but i'm wondering, hadn't thought it through completely, but the logic really troubles him somewhat. but if this attack on forces, you're going to do a resolution, freedom of all of southeast asia, and you have less information today than you did yesterday? so mcgeorge bundy says, i'm quoting here, bundy, in reply, jokingly told him, perhaps the matter should not be thought through too far. for his own part, bundy's, he welcomed the recent events as justification for a resolution the administration had wanted for some time. they had drafted a resolution like this back in june to give the president authority to do whatever he wanted in southeast asia. as commander in chief. that he wanted congress' blessing. a blank check. he'd been sitting there, because in part, we had the upper hand.

north vietnamese were a little bit on the defense. we were probing them with all these covert operations, op plan 34. but here was this aggression. except -- provoked by us. but the events, the recent events justification for something we wanted to do for some time. this is the quintessential cherry picking of intelligence to reinforce prearranged, prereached conclusions. and it's a chilling discussion. because you've got them admitting they're less certain. but this gives them leverage to go forward. so the parallels with other disasters in human history, the cherry picking intelligence about iraq weapons of mass destruction. oh, the yellow cake. oh, the aluminum tubes. oh, that doesn't pan out? oh, that's all right, we've been wanting to do this anyway so

let's go do it. it's a -- it illustrates i guess a perpetual temptation among policymakers. partly it's human nature. everybody comes to subjects with their biases and prejudices. the thing you're just picking up the information that reinforces what you already think. this was the beginning of escalation. those bombing raids from the 4th of august. the beginning of the escalation. the really big escalation wouldn't happen until the following february of '65, when mcgeorge bundy, who's joking here, but saying he wanted to do this anyway, happens to be in vietnam when the viet cong attack an outpost. happens to be at that outpost. takes it personally. says, oh, they're targeting me. they weren't. we now know from vietnamese sources they weren't. they didn't even know he was there. took them three months to organize this attack. to get the supplies down by the

north, all by foot, all that stuff. it was on a prearranged schedule but bundy takes it as a reason, ah, they're attack. this is like the tonkin, in aggression by the north. it's targeting me and we're going to escalate. >> this is plaku, 250 miles north of saigon. the air base that was ripped by vietnamese communist guerillas. eight americans died in the attack that brought swift retaliation by u.s. and south vietnamese forces. meanwhile president johnson's special assistant for security affairs mcgeorge bundy arrives at the scene of the vietcong raid. he was in vietnam when the attacks took place and holds a battle front conference with the lieutenant general before returning to washington. while he conferred with vietnamese officials the national security council was meeting in washington. it was these meetings that brought the swift decision to strike back at the vietcong. to re-mphasize our resolve to continue to defend the cause of freedom in southeast asia. >> and that leads them into this incredible escalation of forces.

you go back and you listen to the mcnamara and johnson tapes on the 2rd, 3rd and 4th of august, and you see that sort of automatic response in place. somebody's going to shoot at us? we're going to shoot back. not, we're going to try to figure out what it is that they're reacting to, what is it they want, what is it they're trying to do. put ourselves in their shoes, figure out what's a way out of this. no. they shoot, we're going to shoot back. and you just get into the escalatory dynamic. and goes through '65, goes all the way through 1975, when the last americans get pulled off the top of the embassy in helicopters. >> mr. bundy arrives back in washington the next day. and he 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 vietcong is their common enemy. >> i think it's 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, but verify. i think for policymakers the lesson is, don't necessarily trust your gut. look for dissent and debate. and this is one of the questions that the insider historian asked. why would my agency, the national security agency that's supposed to present unbiased intelligence to policymakers, why would we slant it? he has three or four conclusions. one is the pressure of the moment. two is precursor messages that showed attacks were 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 walk into the oval office and say, whoops. nope. wrong. maybe shouldn't have done that. no, you're not going to be that intelligence analyst. and the other reasons, in part, is that once the top policymakers take those steps, then they really only want to listen to the folks who reinforce the decisions they already made. the course of action they've been intending to take for awhile. 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 of the united states in november '64.

sworn in in january 1965. in february 1965, writes a long, personal, heartfelt, eyes only to the president memo, about how our policy in vietnam is just wrong and we should not be doing what we're doing and we should be figuring out a get-out plan. we know a lot about that memo. it's been declassified. we've got the memoirs of both -- of humphrey, of johnson, of humphrey's staffpeople who helped draft it. johnson ostracized him for a year. cut him off. refused to let him come to vietnam policy discussions. humphrey hadn't dissented publicly. he hadn't leaked anything. he hadn't tried to build an internal coalition against the president. but he'd written a critical dissenting memo that didn't agree with what the president

was doing. so the president decided, you're disloyal. the vice president. you're disloyal. you're not coming to the meetings anymore. it was a year of obsequiousness before humphrey got to come back to the table. well, if that's how dissent and inconvenient facts are being received at the very highest levels, what happens if you're a national security agency intercept analyst? says, oops. i guess the final lesson of the tonkin gulf, here we had the ability to listen in on north vietnamese conversations, and yet we did not seem to have an understanding of what it was 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. >> 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 in defense of peace in southeast asia. i have been given encouraging assurance by these leaders of both parties that such a resolution will be promptly introduced, freely and expeditiously debated, and passed with overwhelming support. and just a few minutes ago, i was able to reach senator goldwater, and i'm glad to say that he has expressed his support of the statement that i'm making to you tonight.

you've been watching c-span's american history tv. we want to hear from you. follow us on twitter @cspanhistory. connect facebook.com/cspanhistory where you can leave comments, too. and check out our upcoming programs at our website. c-span.org/history. >> and we would like to tell you about some of our other american history tv programs. join us every sunday at 8:00 p.m. to midnight eastern for a special look at the presidency. learn about presidents and first ladies, their policies and legacies and hear directly from our chief executives through historical archival speeches. again, programs on the presidency, every sunday at 8:00 p.m. and midnight eastern on american history tv on c-span 3. here's a look at some of the

programs you'll find christmas day on the c-span networks. holiday festivities start at 10:00 a.m. c-span eastern on c-span with a lighting of the national christmas tree, followed by the white house christmas decorations with first lady michelle obama and the lighting of the capitol christmas tree. and just after 12:30 p.m., celebrity activists talk about their causes. then at 8:00, supreme court justice samuel alito and former florida governor jeb bush on the bill of rights and founding fathers. on c-span 2 at 10:00, venture into the art of good writing with steve pinker and at 12:30, see the feminist side of a superhero, the secret history of a wonder woman. at 7:00 p.m., author pamela paul and others talk about their reading habits. and on american history tv on c span 3 rks and at 8:00 eastern, follow the berlin wall with george bush and bob dole. with speeches from presidents john kennedy and ronald reagan.

at noon, fashion experts on first ladies fashion choices and how they represent the styles of the times in which they lived. and then at 10:00, tom brokaw on his more than 50 years of reporting on world events. that's this christmas day on c-span networks. for the complete schedule go to c-span.org. >> each week american history tv's american artifacts takes you to museums and historic places. next, we take you inside the u.s. capitol to learn about the history of the house of representatives page program. the program began in the early 1800s and continued up to 2011 when due to technological and staff changes house leadership decided pages were no longer critical to the legislative process and the program was ended. >> i'm matt