In August 1964, as Cold War tension continued to fuel Washington’s obsession with the aim of stopping communist expansion in Southeast Asia, a brief naval encounter off the coast of North Vietnam rapidly triggered full-scale U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War.

Within days, President Lyndon B. Johnson received very broad congressional support to wage war, and officials justified this decision with reports of two unprovoked attacks on American destroyers that were operating in the Gulf of Tonkin.

Years later, as declassified evidence exposed errors and deliberate gaps in the reports, it became increasingly clear to many historians that the incident had not occurred exactly as described and that American leaders had, in significant ways, manipulated facts to justify the decision to send more forces to war.