The Chinese government explodes its first nuclear bomb in 1964.

Johnson escalates US involvement in South Vietnam’s war against the Communist nationalists backed by the North.

The American CIA collaborates with related intelligence agencies to fabricate a fraudulent attack by North Vietnam in the Tonkin Gulf.

LBJ’s adminstrtion uses the phony Tonkin Gulf Incident as a pretext for escalating what quickly becomes the Second Indochinese War.

The US, in 1964, inititates the CIA-run precursor to the Phoenix assassination program in South Vietnam, targeting for torture or death anyone with influence in the South’s parallel resistance government, including mayors, doctors, teachers and tax collectors, some of whom are dropped from helicopters after torture and interrogation.