Airplane and i arrived here. A number of circumstances. I spent 34 years in the military. Was not remember a day i not working and it was because of this kind of equipment and the people i worked with who made it such a rewarding experience for me. So my thrill right now is to be thatto present an airplane i can share with others and let them see what this airplane did and all the people who put it together, designed it, made it available, is a story we ought to be proud of. Locald out where cspans content vehicles are going next. You are watching American History tv, all weekend, every weekend on cspan3. With live coverage of the u. S. House on cspan and the senate on cspan two, here on cspan three, we complement that coverage by showing you the most relevant congressional hearings. On weekends, cspan3 is the home to American History tv, programs that tell our nations story, including six unique series, the civil wars 150th anniversary, visiting battlefields and key events, merrick and artifacts, discovering what artifacts reveal about american have americas past. History bookshelf, the presidency, looking at the policies and legacies of our nations commanders in chief and what some College Professors delving into americas past. And our new series featuring archival government and educational films from the 1930s through the 1970s. Cspan3, created by the cable tv industry and funded by your local cable or satellite provider. Watch us in hd, like us on facebook, and follow us on twitter. Ago, on august 10, 1954, 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. Im 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. Its 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 mid1980s 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 just as a repository but as an institutional memory and a followup 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. 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 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 1960s, 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 could do damage and their headquarters. We in United States had taken over from the french as the main sponsor for the anticommunist forces that were basically gathered in south vietnam. After the french got beat by the communists at 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 frances 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 1950s 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. A lot of 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. The previous leader in a coup. That seemed 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, under 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 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. 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 we went eyeball to eyeball with a ruskies and they blinked. We made it so tough for them by standing tough, they back 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 sovietbacked channel. 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 guantanamo. If we had invaded, guantanamo would be a synonym for hiroshima. There were 100 some tactical 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 back down. 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 johnsons phone calls as hes 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 boats from 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 aware that 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 youre stuck with, that you have to defend. You have to spin out more lies to keep it alive. As your case statement for why we are there. My fellow americans, as president and commanderinchief, 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 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 commanders 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 the Navy Historical collection at photographs. An eyesight confirmation at 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. Im 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, were going to shoot back. Secretary mcnamara, 90. 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. Ive 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 torpedo capability and two swat top boats which we do not credit with the capability. Although they may have it. Washington and Lyndon Johnsons 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 when the shipion captain sends in that 1 00 message. That the mayor has advised the president , we are under attack. Lets 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 b52s. Those commies had better watch out. We are coming after them. What are these messages saying there is no attack . Right at that moment a composite intercept rolls in. It is a summary of those North Vietnamese communications between 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 topsecret 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. Spirits 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 are 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. That sounds like a huge attack took place. Two comrades 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 o