Lyndon Johnson and Robert McNamara Plan Airstrikes in Vietnam - HISTORY

In a recorded phone call on February 26, 1965, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and President Lyndon B. Johnson discuss possible airstrikes in Vietnam.

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In June 1965, shortly after a coup in South Vietnam led to the 10th change of government in the war torn country, an attack by the North Vietnamese destroyed three U.S. aircraft at Danang. During a recorded telephone conversation with Defense Secretary Robert McNamara on July 2, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson contemplates whether the war can be won.

On August 4, 1964, as events in the Tonkin Gulf unfold, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara apprised President Lyndon B. Johnson of the situation in a series of phone calls. In the third secretly recorded phone call of the day, McNamara reports that two U.S. destroyers deployed in the Gulf east of Vietnam are under attack. While McNamara did not know it at the time, the information he relayed was later determined to be false.

Speaking to his special assistant for national security, McGeorge Bundy, in a May 27, 1964, recorded telephone conversation, President Lyndon B. Johnson expresses his worry that the war in Vietnam is turning into another Korea.

Robert McNamara, the U.S. secretary of defense since 1961, testifies at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings in February 1966 on escalating U.S. military involvement in Vietnam.

In a recorded telephone conversation on November 3, 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson discusses that night's election results with Robert F. Kennedy, who has just won his Senate race in New York. Johnson speculates about the outcome of his presidential race and asks Kennedy to offer congratulations to his brother Edward for his Senate win in Massachusetts.

The secretary of Defense Robert McNamara appeared before the press to defend the bombing of the Major North Vietnamese cities of Hanoi and Haiphong. The bombings were supposed to deprive the military from essential supplies. The bombings showed the United States the resilience of the North Vietnamese, and that the war wasn't going to end as quickly as they hoped.

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