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The Documentary: War, Lies and Audiotape

President Lyndon Johnson, Credit: Keystone/Getty Images

23/08/2014 GMT

War, Lies and Audiotape

BBC World Service - The Documentary, War, Lies and Audiotape

Did President Johnson take his country to war with Vietnam on a lie, or was he misled?

DD Guttenplan explores what happened in the Gulf of Tonkin in August 1964, an incident that led to war between the US and North Vietnam.

The war between the United States and Vietnam cost over 1 million Vietnamese and 58,000 American lives. It left one country physically devastated and the other socially splintered. It began, President Lyndon Johnson told the world, with an "unprovoked attack" on American ships on the night of August 4, 1964. 
 
What we know today is that the incident that was reported to have taken place in the South China Sea off the coast of Vietnam that night didn't ever happen. Yet three days later it was cited as the justification for the Gulf of Tonkin resolution: it authorised "the President, as Commander in Chief, to take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression." The Gulf of Tonkin was the crucial turning point: in 1960 there were 900 American troops in Vietnam; by the end of 1965 there were nearly 200,000. Did President Johnson take his country to war on a lie, or was he misled? 
 
Fifty years on, journalist and historian DD Guttenplan explores these dramatic events through archive recordings and new interviews with the key players, bringing all the evidence together for the first time. A fascinating archive of taped White House phone calls transports us back to that day: we'll listen in on President Johnson as he discusses the situation with Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and hear the situation unfold through conversations between key military personnel. 
 
Daniel Ellsberg remembers being in the Pentagon receiving reports of the incident on the day, and Jim Stockdale tells us his father's story: he was flying above the USS Maddox when the attack supposedly happened. We'll also hear from journalist Leslie Gelb and historians Frances Fitzgerald and Fred Logevall.

Picture: President Lyndon Johnson, Credit: Keystone/Getty Images

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