Today, August 4th, was a momentous day, and yet so many perfectly ordinary things happened

in it.

This is Lady Bird Johnson, recording her daily White House diary entry.

You know, great decisions are being shaped, some completely beyond the control of any of us,

some that have to be decided by the man closest to me.

That, of course, would be her husband Lyndon, the nation's 36th president.

This was Tuesday, the day when Lyndon always has the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of State,

and Mac George Bundy, for lunch. They stayed a very long time.

This sounds a little ominous.

Robert McNamara at Defense, Dean Rusk at State, and Mack Bundy, the National Security Advisor,

are not given to lingering over lunch.

As Mac George Bundy passed me in the hall, it was looking extraordinarily grave. It left me thinking we might have a small war on our hands.

But I had no time, really, to ponder, as serious it might be.

In fact, it will turn out to be very serious indeed, the beginning of one of the most consequential days of the Vietnam War.

Swift and sure has been U.S. retaliation for communist PT boat attacks on the high seas. Warplanes from two carriers, the Ticonderoga, and the constellation of Enz.

Fifty years on, history buffs still argue about what exactly happened or didn't in the Gulf of Tonkin.

What's not in dispute is the aftermath. A resolution from the Senate passed by a vote of 98 to 2, authorizing

Lyndon Johnson to use whatever force he thought he needed against North Vietnam.

How he pulled that off and what he did with the resolution once he had it

is the question we'll be looking at in this episode,

the second of six in a series from Public Radio International called LBJ's War.

Secretary McNamara calling line old.

...