strategically to share his values. it was also the golden age of photographer in america and that is why this subject is of interest to us at the smithsonian american art museum and hopefully you. here at the museum we focus on telling the stories of the american experience. from folk art to photographer as well as painting and sculpture and skracrafts and media arts. our exhibition, john f. kennedy's life and times which you can view on the second floor in the graphic arts gallery is a premier event among many organized by the kennedy presidential library in this centennial year. i am stephanie stebich, the director of the american smithsonian art museum. saam is what we call ourselves for short. we have assembled a group of historians and scholars debating the kennedy administration and its legacy. many of you likely remember the kennedy administration and the arc of history. we also have several members of congress in the room with us and i want to pause for a moment and acknowledge them and thanks them along with their staff for their work in doing the people's business. please join me in recognizing congressman jim banks representing indiana's third district, congressman david salini and also a member of the congressional art caucus and congressman hoyer representing maryland's fifth district. we've asked -- [ applause ] we've asked representative hoyer to introduce our moderator this evening, steven rothstein who is the head of the kennedy library foundation. in closing i want to note that tonight's program is being live streamed and also recorded by cspan. so kindly turn off your digital devices so that we may all enjoy the program tonight. thank you and i appreciate your being here tonight with us. [ applause ] >> thank you very much, stephanie, for the work that dow. steven, i was told to introduce you. they didn't say graciously introduce you. [ laughter ] >> but i will try to be that. david, one of our elected leaders on the democratic side of the aisle who represents rhode island, former mayor of providence, david, thank you for all you do. [ applause ] >> let the word go forth from this time and this place to friend and foe alike that the torch has been passed to new generation of americans born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed and to which we are committed today at home and around the world. [ applause ] >> reporter: i am a part of the inspired generation who listened to those words, who listened to john kennedy and whose life was changed. we are here to celebrate the life and legacy of a man who promoted political courage not only by writing about it but by living it. a life of our 35th president was in many ways to reappropriate the title of robert frost poem a gift out right. he was to my generation and to many generations a gift outright. for he gave of himself at every turn from his bravery in the south pacific to his steadfastness during the cuban missile crisis. for those of us who remember him, and his presidency, it was a time of promise, renewal, progress. for those who do not, his legacy has nonetheless shaped our national understanding of what public service means. in my office at the capitol as you will not be surprised sits a bust of john f. kennedy. it is a miniature of the bust that is in the kennedy center. it was given to me by my mother in 1973. i was then a member of the maryland state senate. she gave it to me for my birthday. because she knew what an extraordinary impact john kennedy made on my life. not only the values for which he stood but the courage for which he stood for them. and for me personally it's a reminder of drove me to enter public service as a young man. john kennedy came to the campus of the university of maryland the spring of 1959 and he spoke as i'm sure he spoke to hundreds of thousands of young people. a lot of young people in this audience. and he spoke about what we could do to make a difference and further what we ought to do to make a difference. to in short ask not what our country could do for us, but what we could do for our country. when president kennedy went to amherst college in october, 1963, to eulogize robert frost he observed that a nation reveals itself not only by the men it produces but also by the men it honors. and i'm sure we all would add by the women we honor. so as we honor the centennial of the birth of john fitzgerald kennedy, let us reveal in our tributes the vision of america that he espoused, a positive vision, a hopeful vision, a vision of partnership and mutual responsibility, an american secure in its sense of purpose. an american bolstered by the moral coverage of its people. an america competent enough in itself during the cold war to say to our adversaries, and i quote, let both sides join in a new endeavor. not a new balance of power, but a new world of law where the strong are just and the weak secure and the peace preserved. this evening we engage in our ongoing work of honoring president kennedy in his legacy and the man i'm about to introduce graciously has been charged with leading the institution whose mission it is the preservation of that legacy. steven roth ste-- roth design. when he arrived he brought a wealth of experience leading academic, private sector and government institutions. like others inspired by president kennedy's call to give back to their communities and their country, steven has pursued public service in many different forms. at the start of his career he partnered with president kennedy's nephew, joseph p. kennedy ii with whom i served in the president of the united states to found citizens energy corporation. the first ever nonprofit energy company helping low income families afford heating and oil, gas and electricity. steve, why didn't he let you get in the ads? as a massachusetts state official in the late 1980s, steven oversaw programs serving the mentally ill. john kennedy had something to say about disabled children. he said that although these children may be the victims of fate, they shall not be the victims of our neglect. steven, thank you for your work with the mentally ill of which patrick kennedy, of course, has been such a great leader. he launched a private sector firm focused on promoting and expanding green energy technologies. for a decade he served as president of the perkins school for the blind expanding its programs to 30 countries in the number served in person and online from 40,000 no nearly a million. he did god's work. thanks in large part to his leadership, perkins is now the largest trainer of teachers and parents of the blind. between his departure from perkins and his arrival at the kennedy library foundation last year, steven led citizen schools, a national nonprofit helping middle schools provide low income students with opportunities to learn in demand science, technology, engineering, and math skills. and certainly we would call it steam in this institution. because arts are so important. he continues to serve on the board of directors of the brady campaign. and the brady center for the prevention of gun violence working to promote safer communities and safer schools. president kennedy, steve and i have no doubt, would have been deeply proud that his memorial library is being led by a man whose life has been spent in service to those in need and to building a better america for all. ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming steven rothstein to the podium. [ applause ] >> let's hear it again for congressman hoyer for the leadership. [ applause ] >> our country is better off today, each and every day because of the work that you and your colleagues do on the hill and the challenging times. but knowing that you're there fighting the fight on big issues and small issues and helping to move us forward lets us sleep at night. thank you for your service each and every day. really, we really appreciate it. again, for our distinguished leader. thank you. [ applause ] >> and stephanie, thank you so much for everything except for having to follow mr. hoyer. i appreciate everything you and all the team here have done. if you haven't had a chance to see the photographs upstairs at some point, take a look. i've had a chance to see them before and they're just a remarkable collection of some fascinating views, some public and private views of john kennedy and his family and from an artistic perspective well worthwhile. so encourage you to do that. i'm going to cut down my remarks. i want to get to the speakers. when stephanie started off, she said there are distinguished, there are academics and scholars. there are two academics and scholars that are about to come up. you have to stick with me for a minute so i'm going to be quick to see can get to the distinguished guests. a few things to keep in mind. since today in the united states 80% of the people alive today were born after the kennedy administration. 80%. so one of the questions we're going to talk about in a little while is why is the centennial important and why is he still every year there are surveys done of popular presidents and he's always in the top three, four, five depending on perspectives. why is that? because he was only there for 1,036 days. obviously it was cut short. the other thing to keep in mind is pugh does an annual survey of trust in government. in 1962 when john kennedy was there he did as you know the first televised press conferences and over a three year period, less than three year period, he had 64 press conferences. 64 live televised press conferences. i'm not going to compare that to anybody else. i wouldn't do that. but he did it on average every 16 days and the first five press conferences were collectively watched by about 60 million americans. and they got to see someone making decisions and he even did one literally right after the bay of pigs. he didn't just do them when there was kind of good news. he believed in transparency in government. he believed in public service. it's the most notable and note worthy perspectives. and so when pugh did their survey in 1962, 75% of the people had trust in government. they didn't agree with everything, but they had trust in government. a year ago before the elections, that 75% had gone to 19%. so one of the questions for all of us in society is what do we do about that. so i'm going to introduce our two speakers. before they come up, we're going to show a 30 second video. but first, again, there are -- both have very long and very distinguished backgrounds. i'm going to summarize both of them. ted widmer taught at brown university. was also the founding director of the cv star center for the study of the american experience a at washington university. before that he was a speech writer and adviser to bill clinton working on many fronts including the plans of the clinton library. he also has been the editor and author of nearly a dozen books and in 2012 worked with carolyn kennedy of listening in. president kennedy recorded over 200 hours so he did have a recording system and they're all transparent. they're all available. but ted went through and prepared a book, really a marvelous piece. if you haven't had a chance to get that yet, i encourage you to get that listening in. fred logevall, the second person i'm going to introduce is currently the lawrence bell profe professor of international affairs at harvard. if you know harvard, to have a joint -- get be one appointment is amazing. having a joint appointment is nothing less than remarkable. his most recent book of many, "embers of war, the fall of an empire and the making of america's vietnam" won a p pulitzer prize. if you haven't read it, i encourage you to do it. his essays have appeared in many newspapers and journals. he's currently writing a biography on john kennedy. i've read a lot but i'm really excited. i can't wait for him to finish this because i know i'm going to learn a lot from that become. before they come up, there's a 30 second video that we've been playing as part of the centennial that i think we can watch now and then we'll kick off the program. >> never before has man had such capacity to control his own environment, to end thirst and hunger, to conquer poverty and disease, to banish ill lit ras see and massive human mystery. we have the power to make this the best generation of mankind in the history of the world. >> come on up. [ applause ] so we're here as part of the centennial activities and we've done with partners like the smithsonian, kennedy center over 100 events all over the country. why is celebrating the centennial important? >> well, i think part of the answer it seems to me is that commemorations are important, this is my own view, are as important for the civic health of a nation. one of the reasons we do this not just with john f. kennedy but other political leaders, it helps bind us together. i also think in this particular case it's an extraordinary story. president kennedy had a marvelous sense of humor. i suspect that if he were with us today, if he had lived to be 100, he will make some remark about having overstayed his welcome. but we recognize this extraordinary day 100 years ago that he was born in brooklyn in 1917. because of some of the things congressman hoyer said and you that referenced, that we saw in the film, i think he inspired us. he inspired americans. he reminds americans it seems to me of an age when it was possible to believe. this is powerful to me especially as a recent citizen of this country. reminds americans of an age when it was possible to believe that politics could speak to our highest moral yearnings. could be harnessed to our highest aspirations. and that's important. that's certainly one of the reasons why i think we celebrate him. >> i agree with everything fred just said. anniversaries are very important. history is a kind of civic blgl. we're living in a political time but we do have one history and anniversaries give us a chance to remember that. this one is a little bit disorienting because it's very hard to imagine john f. kennedy at 100 years old. he always looks young. he looks unbelievably charismatic in the new campaign with the sunglasses. there's kind of a presence to john f. kennedy that's i think unusual. when congressman hoyer read the lines from the opening sentences from the inaugural, the guest sitting behind me said thank you. there was a kind of immediacy to the words. >> absolutely. he was also a student of history himself, both his study in school, preparing for the profiles in courage that saw history as so important. if we don't learn from history, we are going to repeat some of them. it is important. >> i think that historical sensibility of kennedys, in my research for this back, that dimension which i knew something about when i started the book, but it's so powerful. it comes out even when he is a sickly young guy. in those days there were no cell phones or ipads or anything else. he had one thing he could do to occupy his time and it was to read. i think very early as you say that historical sensibility was manifest and i think it's there right through to the end. >> we remember him as just about the most natural politician any of us have ever seen. he was quite shy and he -- there was a line in one of the tapes i listened to for that book where he's talking about himself and he said this is really hard. i would rather read a book on an airplane than have to talk to the person sitting next to me. that wasn't arrogance. i think it was genuine shyness. he was smaller physically than his older brother. his older brother was the one who was supposed to go into politics. but there was a reserve that i think came from his reading that made him even more attractive as if he was holding something back and not giving you everything every second of the day which is sometimes how the incessant t torrent information feels to us. we can't escape it. and there was something very cerebral about him. he said exactly what he wanted you to hear and not more. that was very attractive. >> why do you think as i alluded to earlier he's in the polls, he is one of the most popular presidents? if you think about after washington and roosevelt and lincoln, he's sometimes number four or up there. why is that when he had so little time there? and clearly others, johnson got more legislation passed. why do you think that is? >> it's a great question. i mean, we can't ever escape the tragic end of the kennedy presidency. that haunts all of us as a nation. and i've been thinking today about what i wanted to say. i think we should avoid the false trap of thinking everything was utopian and perfect and our politics have disintegrated. obviously we have very serious problems in the early '60s and deep political hatreds in the way his presidency ended stemmed from that. but there was a lot achieved. most of us i think feel, most historians feel that the cuban missile crisis was the greatest crisis of the last 60 years and a crisis that if it had not been led -- if he had not led us as he did there's a strong chance the world as we know it would have ended. that's a special kind of achievement that overshadows most presidential achievements. it was high noon of american empire, american culture. there was a new kind of liberalism coming out. also a new kind of conservativism coming up. he represented the hopes and isoperations of a very important generation that was just coming on to the world stage and has not left the world stage. so for all those reasons, even if he was president for only a little over 1,000 days, they were intense days. he was an intense leader during that time. >> i think the only thing i would add to what ted has said is that as we were saying earlier, he inspired us. and i don't mean just americans. because in my little corner of the world, i'm from sweden, and i've often talked with not only my parents but with other relatives about -- and this is before i started this book project -- about john f. kennedy. at least part of the answer to your question, steve, is that it seems to me that it wasn't just americans who took something from what john f. kennedy represented and what he said in his speeches. it wasn't just the assassination, because some of this, and again i've spoken to people about this, was about what he did as president. so i suspect -- in other words, i'm suggesting if he had a global poll, not just one of americans, he would still figure very highly t. seems to me barack obama brought some of that not just in the united states but abroad. there are interesting similarities between the two of them. that's maybe one thing i would add. >> i agree there are very few presidential speeches that we reread. there really aren't many outside of lincoln, franklin roosevelt and john f. kennedy. that's a very small number. it isn't just because he was handsome and young. there is great substance in those speeches. there's great wit. there's great perception of life's irony. life's brevity. he talked about mortality. he uses the word mortality in the great american university speech given in this city in june, 1963. maybe his best speech ever. and so one fact that historians have learned more about in the last ten years, thanks to the kennedy library, is that he had a very difficult lifelong struggle with health. he had serious health problems. i think he knew that 100th birthday was out of the question. he would not have made it to his own 100th anniversary. he knew life was short and precious and that feeling is in those speeches and that's one of the reasons we reread them. >> there's a certain i think it connects to what you're saying. there's a certain authenticity that is kind of an illusive content. for me i think authenticity means taking things seriously and expanding empathy. i think that for many americans, and again why he remains popular, he made his share of mistakes. there were ups and downs in the administration. personally. but there was an authenticity there and i think this is maybe what ted is speaking to as well that i think again help explain those popularity figures. >> first i agree with you. when you think about mistakes in authenticity, one of the things i admire about him that's self-reflecting and willing to learn, if you just take the bay of pigs which clearly was an enormous challenge, between that and the cuban missile crisis, so much happened. in terms of five key things. we all see pictures of the situation room. he started that between those two. the hotline to russia. he started that. the navy seals, the green beret, the daily security briefings until this president everyone has had. that self-reflection of i, president kennedy wasn't getting good information. i didn't make the best decision. how can i do better and how can our system be better? that is such a refreshing element that i have, you know, great respect for to learn from those elements. >> i think we want presidents to change in office. we don't want them to just govern the way they campaigned. it's a very important part of the job to grow into the job. it's an impossible job t. basically is. he really grew very effectively. i think without the bay of pigs, he might not have survived. that terrible mistake, and it was an error, gave him the confidence, gave him the irritation at the causes of the mistake to rethink his system of governance as you mentioned. so mistakes are crucial to growth. he grew beautifully in his think being the cold war and the cuban missile cries allowed him to go further. he grew a lot on civil rights. he grew a lot just as a person who was open to the different ideas of a country that was extremely diverse and he was always listening and i think his second term would have been fascinating. >> what do each of you think are the top few accomplishments of those 1,000 days, picking a few? >> i think that his handling of the cold war broadly speaking was an accomplishment. it seems to me there are very interesting things that happened to the cold war in those, let's say the year following the krcun missile cries they think he has a great deal of responsibility for. kruchev helped . i'm finding in my research that started long before he became president which was that american power, american military power, geopolitical power was great. it was greater than any other nations including the soviet union but it was ultimately limited. he also had a sense, a deep conviction, that the prospect of nuclear war, the prospect of -- let me put it this way. the prospect of super power war in the nuclear age was an impossibility. and i think he acted with that in mind and i think that year basically his last year of life is very important in that regard. i guess i would also suggest that though he was late, lamentably late in coming to the civil rights issue in a serious way, a remarkable speech on june 11th, 1963, the day after the american university speech. i think i give him credit for making civil rights a moral issue. that was important in terms of what's going to happen later. and finally, i think that the space program and the commitment to the space program would be another example it seems to me of a success in his administration even if the fruits of that effort wouldn't be seen until later. so those would be three. >> i agree exactly with those three but i would add also that he projected a sense of self-confidence, that people in very different walks of life picked up on. james meredith was inspired high his inaugural address to go do that courageous thing. david mckul althoucullough was o start writing history. i think we can trace a lot of great governance in the '60s and in the '70s -- i wrote an essay. there's a book we are celebrating that came out by public figures about his significance. i wrote an essay arguing that the immigration act that changed our country forever in 1965 can be linked to him and to his strong interest in imgrachlgmig. it was a lifelong interest. we will never be the same country and we will never go back in time no do i think we would want to a country that was more uniform in color and more boring than the diverse society that we inhabit today. even with all of our problems, we live in a very exciting society. i think he made it much more exciting than it had been. >> i think you also have to include on this list the peace corp. i think what ted is speaking to is that an excitement about, infectious from the examples you've given in public service and what public service can mean. i worry that we've lost this. i think we have lost on some level our confidence in ourselves in a way as a society. it seems to me that as a success of this administration, john f. kennedy's administration was extolling public service and making people excited about it. >> i agree with everything you said. in making people excited. one of the ways, the space program, and you can talk more about this in a minute, but listening to some of the tapes you worked on, our country knew so little about the technology back then. to put it in perspective, the freedom seven capsule that went up has less than half of the computing power than a smartphone of anyone in the audience tonight. so when he says that we'll go to the rice university speech, that we're going to go to the moon, the reality is they weren't sure. i know if he hadn't we couldn't have made that. there have been so many advantages. from the start of gps to dozens of technology advantages. but how did he have the instinct to do that and then rally people at every level? >> well, he had a lot of confidence in himself, that's for sure. he was highly accomplished even before he thought he would be a politician. he had written his first book at a very young age. he followed achievement his entire -- he was interested in achievers. he was not afraid of ideas. i think that's one thing i honor about john f. kennedy is the confidence with which he walked across the stage of great thinking and great ideas. there was a pugh poll in the last couple days that showed how a big section of our country thinks it's now a bad thing to go to college, it's not a good thing. i don't want to get into partisanship at all. believe me. i live in washington. i don't want to go there. william f. buckly jr. was a great champion of ideas on the right. i think john f. kennedy was a great champion of ideas where he lives. sometimes on the left. sometimes in the middle. and the space program was an exciting idea and he got the whole country behind it. it was an exciting scientific idea. i wish we could think of something similar. i think we have something and it is the fight to save our planet which is not so different from the space effort because it was those early photographs of the earth as a fragile blue marble in a dark universe that began to help people think we need to look after this place. it would be great to see a bipartisan global effort with science and ideas along similar lines. >> in fact we recently interviewed caroline kennedy and her three kids and asked them about their grandfather. jack, the only grandson said if my grandfather were alive today i bet he would have taken this big idea concept and directed it. to the environment. today when -- whether it's a company or a country thinks of a really big idea, they call it a moon shot. he brought us literally the first moon shot. and there have been lots of great example including the public officials here who have continued that effort. i think we need to do more of that and set a goal that seems unreachable as a way to rally the country. >> yeah. i completely agree. i was not aware his grandson articulated that. but i agree completely and also with ted's observation on that. >> some of that, research spins off other research. so starting a moon shot is just always a good idea. i think a lot of the technology that lead to the worldwide web and the internet came out of that. not exclusively. other parts of the military, the government, but the whole earth catalog of later in the '60s included that massive photograph of earth. and that group of people were very instrumental in developing the california version of the internet in the late '60s. we don't claim that john f. kennedy gave us the internet, and he didn't. >> no. no. al gore. >> moon shots lead to a lot of other planets out there. >> sure. >> what do you think in terms of the peace corp? not whether it was successful, but how much was a risk was it at the time? izen -- eisenhower called it the kiddie corp. a lot were broken free from the colonial rule. there was a debate with the administration about how big to make it initially. what do you think in terms of his political capital where to spend time? what do you think about that, fred? >> i don't know what ted thinks about this. i don't know that it required a great deal of political capital on his part. it had a certain cold war component. in other words it was perceived by him and by others in the administration as a means of waging, if you will, the cold war. it wasn't all born out of idealistic motives, if you will. i think there was uncertainty in the administration about whether it would succeed and what kind of response you would get from americans. would young people from all over the country actually sign up for this thing? what would they find when they went out in the field? all of that was an unknown. but i think my sense from my research to this point is that he had a faith and advisers around him had a faith that this was an idea that they should pursue, they should do it right away. it's one of the things that basically was decided upon in those first 100 days. and broadly speaking at least, the results speak for themselves i think. >> i think fred makes a great point when he says that there were cold war elements even to the soft power of the peace corp. he was trying to win over the hearts and minds of the world to use a phrase from that time. and i think even we love the celebration of art and poetry. but there were cold war elements to all of that. they were a very attractive positions. but the peace corp was an extraordinary idea, nothing like it had ever come through u.s. foreign policy which was a world largely of men, middle aged men all from the same background wearing the same kind of suit, probably one like the suit i'm wearing in the middle of washington in the summer and he just made everything more exciting and he opened it up to young people. they were doing foreign policy. a lot of very interesting people came out of the peace corp. i just did an event at the library of congress. i was in your role. i was just the welcomer. but the head of netflix is a peace corp alum and incredibly -- elaine chow was involved in the peace corp earlier in her life. people from all different partisan backgrounds went into that and grew. i think there was an element of danger. it's not quite political danger exactly. i think there was actual danger to the young men and women who went to those countries. i think that we didn't exactly know that at the time. to send people out without any protection and we saw that in some ways in our foreign policy with the attacks on our embassies in the last decade or so. still there was a wonderful idealism which justified itself. >> it's interesting, congressman kennedy, the son of the former congressman, the current congressman who is in the peace corp in the dominican republic recently spoke at the library. he tells a story he arrives in the dominican republic. he gentleman comes up to him in span skpi spanish and says are you in the peace corp. he says how do you know that? and the gentleman said i want to thank you. 30 years ago a peace corp volunteer came to my village and brought water and for 30 years we've had water. and i never had a chance to thank him. so i want to thank you. so when you think about this the ripples, literally the hripples of hope. and there about a quarter of a million people who have been in the peace corp. there are so many who have had distinguished careers, public, private, impacted their lives, whether it's more they impacted the country or the village, i dont kno don't know. can we continue to galvanize that in today's environment with vista? there are so many great programs out there. >> one way we sometimes limit ourselves in the way we conduct foreign policy is we just think about our enemies, and or we think of the world in very simple categories. and there were a lot of people, and sometimes him, who thought it was the blue part of the world against the red part of the world. it was cold war. i think the peace corp. helped him. he was already on his way in many ways to see the world in its great complexity. he really thought a lot about latin america. he thought a lot about africa, which not too many have done. he had a lot of visits from the brand new presidents of democratic african countries just coming out of colonialism. i thought a lot about asia or the way it fit in or didn't always fit into the cold war. and in his way, he was a real voice for people who didn't have a strong voice on the world stage. people from small countries. we are a better country when we hear small voices. >> you're both speaking to something that i think is important. and i think ted may ahave referenced it earlier, soft power. my colleague and i basically coined that phrase. i think it has great power. great power. in that it explains a great deal it seems to me about why the united states and the west ultimately prevailed in the cold war. and the things we're talking about now seems to me are excellent examples of that soft power. not military power, not economic power. it is about american culture. it is american institutions, american ideals. it seems to me in various other ways john f. kennedy personified that. perhaps to a greater degree than we realized. again, i come back to my swedish relatives. way up in the northern part of the sweden in lap land. there is this belief that this was a very special leader who was american and we are going look up to the united states. on some level maybe even emulate the united states. >> his daughter just returned as you know from basser in japan, and she said literally every single day she met people, japanese folks, many who were born, you know, way after the administration, that said the same thing. so it is worldwide. there are so many other accomplishments. what are some of the things we mentioned? the bay of pigs. what are -- either that or anything else you want to address. i think it's important not that we idolize that. >> no, no. in fact -- and that's i think a challenge for me as i write this book. i think that cuba -- you know, the cuban missile crisis as is often said, a shining moment for john f. kennedy. i have just gone through the transcripts and i'm affirmed. in that view. it is an extraordinary moment of leadership. it is sort of cliche but we are all here today because of the sa is he gasty, of the wisdom that he showed. i want to suggest that john f. kennedy bears some responsibility for the cuban missile crisis happening in the first place. that even after the bay of pigs, he authorized -- he supported an effort by his government, by the american government, to destablize the cuban government, to ult -- with the ultimate aim of overthrowing that government. that we now know influenced the decision to put the missiles in cuba. so i think that the record there is mixed. vietnam, on which i have spent a good deal of time, i would say is again mixed. i mentioned earlier that it seems to me that on civil rights, the administration was very cautious for a good long while. so it's, be again, sort of split in a sense, or not a particularly -- i wouldn't necessarily give it particularly high marks for the administration. so there were challenges. so let's finally remember that 1961 was a very tense time. and i don't think john f. kennedy or anybody else in his administration knew precisely how that was going to turn out. >> that's a wonderful answer. i think we all want to hear from fred about vietnam, which is a tragedy that unfolds across about four presidential administrations. but, you know, some of it belongs inside the legacy of john f. kennedy, and that's, you know, a reckoning all historians have to come to terms with. you asked about challenges. i think -- i said earlier that we all feel today in 2017 that we live in a kind of fractured country. politics is really tough. whether you're a democrat or a republican. neither party is very united but the only thing they are united on is they really hate the other side. some of that goes back to that time. we mentioned watergate and vietnam as reasons americans lost faith in their government. i think the assassination was another reason that people's faith was just shattered in life itself. how could something that horrible have happened? i think in many ways we are trying to come to terms with our serial disappointment since that high watermark of his presidency. had he lived, it's a pretty tall order to say he would have solved all of the problems of the 1960s. because so many were coming. and they came at everyone. they came at lyndon johnson, they came at richard nixon, and politics really wasn't up to the challenge of handling all of the problems of the 1960s. but had he lived, i think we would have had a fighting chance. and we would have been a more united country in 1969, when he left office, than we actually were. and we've never quite gotten back to the idealism that we had during his presidency. so that's not his fault. but it's just a challenge that i link to his presidency that i think we all have to reckon with. >> sure. i think our world -- the combination of him and then the assassinations of reverend king and his brother bobby and many other leaders changed the way people think in different ways. let's go back to civil rights for a second. you were talking about it. and clearly, when he started, he was concerned about southern governors and the votes and that kind of thing. and then he changed. talk about, either one of you, or both of you, what you think triggered the change. because clearly by the end -- he did make civil rights a moral issue. and was very committed to it. what he and his brother as the attorney general did with leadership. ask then, you know, when johnson came in a month after, he said as a -- that the testament to john kennedy, let's pass the civil rights bill. and really -- from a moral issue. so what do you think made that evolution? >> a specific answer is the children who were getting pushed around, later killed but in the spring of 1963 in birmingham, alabama, there was a moral outrage over the fact that children were being realtor toured by an unfeeling southern society and a bad mayor and bad police commissioner in birmingham. but i think, again, it was growth. he was growing so fast. he had come and his enemies tried to paint him but he would come from a family of people who were outside of power in the 19th century, anglo-saxon boston, and a family with a lot of children in it. i think he just saw as his vision improved and his soul deepened he saw these were people he wanted to be on their side. i think his brother was very important helping him get there. i think martin luther king was very important. the quality of leadership he provided in the spring of 1963, he writes the great letter from birmingham jail which is up there as a great theological -- not just a political statement, a great theological statement. and i think it was intensely moving to anyone with a conscience. he had one. >> yeah. there is a new book on the king jfk relationship which has just come out. i think everything ted says is right. i think bobby's role in a sense pushing his brother to do this matters. so i think you're right to credit bobby with a role in this. it does speak to something that i'm trying to ponder. it seems to me that jfk had a capacity for empathic. for empathetic understanding. meaning he could put himself in the shoes of somebody else. i think it was very important in the resolution of the cuban missile crisis. i think on some level, as ted is suggesting, it also matters here. both of them i think had that capacity. i think that's part of it. >> i think that's a wonderful point. we don't often ask for empathy. we really ask for strength, charisma, the perfect sound bite. those are the things in the current political marketplace that win. but empathy is really valuable. i think deep down, we want that in our leaders. and i agree. he had it. >> excellent point. talk more about your experience listening to the tape and which ones you chose. what did it teach you about john kennedy that you didn't know before? >> well, it was an incredible experience as a historian. i had a pretty deep immersion in his speeches already, because i had been a clinton speech writer, and that was our playbook, you know? whenever i was sitting there trying to come up with something original to say and failing, that happened a lot -- especially in these hot summer days in washington. i was often in the old executive office building, which had imperfect air conditioning, and just throwing a pencil at the ceiling. and we all would just start reading jfk's speeches to get inspiration. martin luther king, too. and robert kennedy, too. but to hear him talking is a different world you go into. and they had just been released, the audiotapes, right before the book came out in 2012, and it was an incredible experience to listen to them. and, you know, they're playing out in real-time, the cuban missile crisis unfolds over two weeks in real-time. and almost all of it is caught in the tapes. so it's an incredible experience. and they shift around a lot during those two weeks. from -- it seems like it's about to happen that we're about to invade cuba, and then we don't. and then there are fears, russia might do something to us, and they don't. but there are also a lot of moments of humor and levity. hilarious, and sometimes on purpose and sometimes accidentally. one time i remember he caught a military operation -- a very innocent one, which they had built a $5,000 hospital suite annexed to a cape cod hospital in the expectation his wife would use it to give birth. and he was such a good politician that he went crazy, because he thought it would look like bad pr, that the kennedys were asking the military to build a special expensive wing. and he screamed at the officer responsible and threatened to send him to alaska. it was just -- hearing him really let loose with his anger. and at the very end of that call, he hangs up and you hear a little chuckle. and you know it was kind of play-acting. there was also an amazing autobiographical moment where a tape that was not one of his tapes, but a journalist named james cannon, conducted a long interview with him in january 1960, just as he is deciding to run. he's going to go for it. and it's a dinner party. it's cannon and ben bradley and his then wife toni bradley and jack kennedy and jackie kennedy. and it is the most raw, first draft of history you could ever imagine listening to. it's just why do i want this? i want it, because that's the seat of the action. i'm tired of being one of 100 senators and eisenhower controls everything. i want to control everything. and these are the ways i want our country to change. and you really hear in his voice, and basically in his solar plexus -- it's like coming out of him -- how much he wants america to change. and it's an incredible listening. >> you kind of feel like you're there, don't you? you hear the glasses clinking. >> yes. >> i have a favorite tape, i think, of the tapes. or one of my favorites. october 22nd, about a week into the cuban missile crisis. and steven and i did an event together not too long ago at the kennedy library. and this is a conversation between president kennedy and former president eisenhower. and what you get in this tape, as well, on the 22nd, is this sense of humor, even he had this time of intense pressure. you get a sense of his deference to seniority, so he's deferential to senator eisenhower. and then he finishes by saying, "hold on tight, general." and then there is this calm -- this is something that the tapes -- to think about it now -- not sure i've thought about this before. but there is a -- there is a calmness in these tapes. that i think you want to have in a leader. and it certainly comes through in the missile crisis. that suggests, if i may use the hemingway line, a kind of grace under pressure. and if i think of the tapes in totality -- and, again, they make mistakes. we can talk about vietnam. but that calmness, that grace, comes through on the tapes. >> absolutely. >> yeah. >> that's great. so let's talk -- i want to encourage everyone in the audience -- there is going to be a chance for everyone in the audience to ask questions in a few minutes. so think about them, and we'll talk about that. but let's talk about vietnam. both based on, you know, his role and in the impossible question that a historian gets asked, if he had lived, what would have happened? >> the mother of all counterfactual. >> exactly. >> so i think -- and i've grappled with this a lot. there is a paradox here. it's the most controversial part of his legacy, i would suggest. because of the timing of his death, which is november of '63, shortly after the south vietnamese leaders have been thrown in a coup that kennedy sanctioned, gave the green light for. and it's not long before the key decisions that lyndon johnson will have to make. and i submit, a surviving john f. kennedy would have had to make. i think he would have had to make those decisions roughly at the same time that johnson did. but there's a paradox, because kennedy, even when he goes through indochina in 1951, as a congressman, he's about to challenge henry cabot for a senate seat in massachusetts, he wants to brush up on his foreign policy credentials. so he and bobby and patricia, their sister, have a long, extended tour of asia, and they spend time in indochina. and even there, we know this from the diary that he kept -- astonishing piece of work -- and speeches he gave in boston when he returned home, he already then in 1951 grasped not only that the french were likely to lose, but that any western power that tried to take on this vietnamese revolution is likely to lose as well. and i don't think that that skepticism ever goes away. so when he takes off for dallas on that last trip, i think he was still skeptical about any kind of military solution in vietnam. and yet -- here's the paradox -- on his watch, in those 1,000 days, you have a marked increase in the american involvement. i think partly for domestic political reasons, he felt vulnerable, as all democrats did in that era to charge us of softness on communism. in part a natural politicians inclination, maybe human nature, to punt, to put off difficult decisions. let's just escalate a little bit more and see if we can perhaps turn things around. there is some of that, as well. so there is this paradox. in terms of the what-if, i'm suggesting in an essay that i've written for the book that accompanies the ken burns -- and i recommend, by the way, the ken burns series that's coming out in september. but there's a book that accompanies this, and i have an essay in it on this question of what he would have done. and i conclude in that essay that though we can never know, i think that the best answer is that a surviving john f. kennedy does not americanize the war in the way that lyndon johnson did. i think he opts ultimately for a kind of fig leaf political settlement. he always drew the line at ground troops. and i don't think that would have changed. and that, of course, was key to johnson's escalation, was the ground troops. >> fascinating. so i have more questions, but let's see for the audience -- there are microphones on either side. if you have questions, please go to them. i would encourage you to make sure it's a question, meaning it should end with a question mark, rather than a statement. and we'll start. and, again, i may jump in and ask some more questions. but let's start over here. [ inaudible question ] >> just speak up a little. >> okay. so don't you think making kennedy's presidency was more pragmatic and adaptive? he was sort of a supply side economist? he cut taxes, he did escalate the u.s. involvement in vietnam? and it was lyndon johnson that was more of the transformational president with the civil rights act and the great society. >> i think that's a fair question. there is a larger legislative achievement under lyndon johnson. he's president for a longer time. he's the master arm-twister. he's very good at it. and he also has the great political advantage of he can talk a lot about the martyrdom of john f. kennedy. and i think that was a very effective political tool for lyndon johnson. john f. kennedy is working in a more difficult political world. and he's got southern senators who are democrats, but they're not very liberal. he's got a pretty mixed house and senate, and it was going to be tough to get huge legislation through, although he proposed civil rights, and a lot of what johnson got through, as i said, was based on what kennedy had said he wanted to get through. so i think the premise of your question is true. basic achievement in congress is larger under johnson, but i think the achievement and inspiration is probably larger under kennedy. and i think it's fair to consider them partners in a way. it was the kennedy/johnson team that ran in 1960. and in my essays in this book, i really did say immigration, which is one of -- we often talk about the civil rights act of 1964 and the voting rights act of 1965 as the hallmark lbj achievement. but the immigration act of 1965 is huge. and changed our country forever in really positive ways. and i tried to argue that that was not just linked to jfk's memory. that jfk had been working on immigration from the time he ran for congress in 1946. >> yeah, and i would just say that in foreign policy, it seems to me that the transformational figure of the two of them is john f. kennedy. and as i suggested earlier, even before he becomes president, if you go back and look at the speeches of the campaign, and then the speeches even early in this presidency -- for example, a speech in seattle in november of 1961. there are seeds there -- more than seeds. there are arguments about a fundamentally changed super power relationship. that i think were in a way cut short by the assassination. and johnson's problem in part was that he was not at all transformational on foreign policy. he was a cold warrir. even though we also know that lyndon johnson had his own doubts and said, what the hell does vietnam matter to me? so, you know, they're both complex in this regard. but it seems to me on the foreign policy side, since you used the word "transformational," i would say it applies more to jfk. >> i think it's a fascinating question of measure effectiveness. as both of you said, if you measure effectiveness by legislation, lyndon johnson, head and shoulders. he had a long list of very impressive things. if you go a little further, richard nixon got a lot of great legislation through. he probably isn't -- you know, people don't remember that as much. >> right. >> so it is the combination of the inspiration and the spirit. one of the other areas i would ask both of you and then we will get to the next question in the audience is, one of the things -- and i particularly want to cover this because of where we are -- john kennedy was known for his commitment to the arts. he and his wife both -- what they did in the white house and his belief in how it wasn't nice to have. it was part of society. and if you look at many of his speeches and talked about that, you know, from symbolic things like having robert frost at the inauguration to what they did in the white house and other things, are there other presidents that you think have had the same level of commitment to the arts? in recent time? >> i'll let ted ponder that one, and i'll help him by giving -- by fleshing out your question, or suggesting that you're on to something very important, which is that john f. kennedy believed and said that something to the effect that unfettered access to the arts is a hallmark of a free society. or it's absolutely imperative to a free society. i think that matters. i don't know that he himself personally had deep interest in art or in music. jackie once said his -- the only song he likes is hail to the chief. he understood the importance. and i think that matters. i don't know. are there other presidents that we would -- >> i think again lbj, we don't think of him as the guy giving the speech with robert frost sitting there, but the neh came into existence and the nea i think links to the memory of johnson. it was achieved in 1965. it is a very important institution. we certainly had a lot of arts events previous to the 1960s. there was hardly a few paintings and embassies, and that was about it. there were great writers of history. including woodrow wilson and theodor roosevelt. we began this with anniversaries. i got an e-mail saying we are celebrating the 250th anniversary of his birth this year. it will probably not lead to a lot of celebrations in washington. >> i'm going to one later tonight. >> he helped to conceive of the smithsonian institution and he wanted there to be a national observatory. george washington wanted there to be a national university. so in different ways, other presidents have sketched it out. >> great. >> and it's also worth saying, i guess, maybe we already did, but that jackie is hugely important on this particular issue. >> yes. >> absolutely. she deserves enormous credit. the arts overall. also for the restoration of the white house. >> yes. >> so much more. yes, sir. >> yes. thank you. you present the sequential aspects of kennedy and lbj. how much influence did lbj have on kennedy while kennedy was alive? >> i think very little. >> okay. >> i think those were three of the worst years of lyndon johnson's life. [ laughter ] and robert cairo says as much in his masterful series of biographers of johnson. their relationship was really complicated, even by washington standards. and i've been reading "the road to camelot," a very good new book by curtis wilke and tom oliphate. it begins in 1956 the patriarch, urging lyndon johnson to start running for president. he promises i will finance your campaign on the condition that you accept my son as your vice presidential nominee. the twists and turns, including with robert kennedy, are incredible in that relationship. >> well, and the same book, and others have done this too. but then the drama of the selection of lyndon johnson. >> right. >> is, you know, worthy of a big book by itself. but at that convention in 1960, and the disagreements between jack and robert about, you know, how to do it, what do we actually want lyndon to say, what do we expect him to say? it's extraordinary. i suppose one could argue, and robert kennedy said this in later years. that the selection of johnson was, in fact, crucial. that the success in the south was dependent upon having lbj on the ticket. others have suggested that if you have samington on the ticket, you could pick up some other states that they didn't get. and so maybe johnson wasn't crucial. but in terms of the relationship in office, very fraught, as you say. >> fascinating. yes, sir. >> we began with all of john f. kennedy's words. and arguably, one of the reasons he is in our hearts is that he did speak these phenomenal words, which are very, very memorable. and one of the contrasts, certainly, with barack obama, is it's very hard to remember lots and lots of phrases from barack obama. so i ask you, how much of the great legacy of kennedy and the positive glow is really ted sorenson and the other speech writers who were behind those masterful words? >> it's a really good question. sorenson is crucial. there's no question about it. you know, the -- think about this image. 1957. he's already running for president. it's not announced, but the politicos know. and what it is, i think he gave 140 speeches all over the country in 1957. and very often, it's two people flying into some small place, speaking before an audience of 12, and it's john f. kennedy, ted sorenson. and so sorenson is there, and, again, oliphant brings this out powerfully. the only thing i would add, is -- and this is something i'll talk about in my biography, is that john f. kennedy has a bigger hand in these speeches than i anticipated when i started my research. which is to say, you can see his distinctive scribbles on many of these speeches. it's also the case, and i think the library -- the library brings this out. that he quite often departed from his text. for fairly long stretches. and they're still -- you know, he still speaks in full paragraphs. but those are john f. kennedy's own words. so i think it's more of a partnership than maybe i anticipated when i started because i thought this was sorenson, to some extent dick goodwin. schlessinger has a role in some speeches but i think kennedy was more involved. >> i got to do a couple events with ted sorenson when he was alive at the jfk library, and it was such an honor, because he was a kind of hero. and we all thought we might emerge as the next ted southernson. i even have the right first name. and it didn't happen. and it hasn't happened for anyone since then. i mean, there was something really special about that friendship. i do think it's important for a speech writer to give the principle the credit. i mean, you know their language. ted sorenson had trouble with that concept, but he basically had a life of unstinting loyalty to john f. kennedy and wrote very important books about him. i always valued personally there were ways he didn't really fit in. he's this sort of odd liberal unitarian from nebraska. in a group of tough irish americans from boston. kenny o'donnell , larry o'brien. and he loved those guys. and you don't hear their names as often. and they were really important to him. but i think ted sorenson created a nice balance in that mix of the idealist. i think he was probably driving very hard for that civil rights speech. he needed a different element, and that's what made it successful. >> it's interesting in that they didn't socialize as much. i think it was a very close working relationship. like you suggest, of a type we haven't seen very often. but, you know, it didn't really go -- maybe because, as you you said, they're very different people. >> i think ted sorenson went home at night. >> ted sorenson deserves enormous, mo enormous enormous credit. i encourage you if you go to boston in the library on the wall, there are speeches with his marks on them. including, for example, the last major speech he gave in massachusetts was at amherst college, and curtis mentioned earlier in october of 1963, when he dedicated the robert frost library there. there were some that were very notable. you may have heard in berlin, the berliner speech. but while ted sorenson had written a speech, john kennedy arrives in berlin, and was so moved by the crowd, and so -- and in a positive way, and so moved by the wall, and that he actually threw out the speech. so the only thing he had written down for that speech was the phrase. everything else was extemporaneous. so ted sorenson deserves a lot of credit. but john kennedy was brilliant in figuring out the connections. >> a great spontaneous moment of humor. >> yes. >> yes. humor was one of his many many elements he was great at. >> first i want to thank you for this lecture. it has been wonderful. my son was in the peace corp. and then the dominican republic. i know as a latina how much president kennedy was loved in the kennedy -- in the latino community. i recently saw dolores huerta with the screening of her movie. and she talks about what an impact kennedy -- president kennedy and robert kennedy had with the latinos. because there were pictures, you know, and homes. and entering the boycott. so i just wondered if there is any research or -- did you come across how the impact of latinos had with president kennedy? >> i haven't done any on that topic. although i'm glad you mentioned dolores huerta. i think for her the real friendship was with her brother, with robert kennedy, who worked a lot with mexican migrant workers in 1968 and cesar chavez and dolores huerta. and you really got to know them in a very profound way that went beyond just politics. there was a theological mention, going to mass together. and robert kennedy identified a lot with sort of the liberal part of the catholic social justice movement. so there was something really important in that. it's announced at the beginning of the kennedy administration. i think it's a great topic for more research. i think the biggest headache is in latin america, too. so it's a pretty rich thing to go into. >> and we could have more scholarship on this. yeah, i agree completely. thank you. >> great. thank you for the question. yes, sir. >> so president kennedy was not perfect in many shapes and forms. but specifically, i would like to ask about his health. and including other -- maybe flaws or imperfections he had. do you think that that helped or hindered him as a leader? and maybe you could say a few words about how other leaders of our time can use those kind of experiences to help them lead our country. >> that's a very good question. i think the health issue is an important one. his brother said that -- you know, my brother, meaning president kennedy, you know, has been in pain almost every day of his life. i think that is going to shape anybody, and it certainly shaped him. gave him arguably a certain fatalism. a sense, as i think we were discussing earlier, that he wasn't going to live all that long. i need to treasure each day, as we say, and live each day, as he said, more than once, as though it's going to be your last. the only thing i would say is it may be possible to exaggerate. its effect on him as a poli politician and as a political candidate. it strikes me in 1946 when he runs for congress and is not feeling well, he's come back from the war, some of his ailments haven't been properly diagnosed yet, but he still has them. he still gets up at the crack of dawn in the 11th district in massachusetts, goes up those tri triple deckers. up and down, up and down, day after day after day. when he runs for the senate, he is all over the state of massachusetts. in fact, a secret of his in all of his campaigns is he starts earlier and works harder. so somehow, even with these ailments, and maybe somehow they're even connected, but he is intensely driven to overcome them. but there's a lot more to your question. >> that was news. it began to come out about around the year 2000. >> and bob dahlak deals with this in his book. >> right. it's always surprising to learn of a major new fact about someone you think you know historically. and it was especially surprising because he just seems so vigorous, to use a word he loved. vigor. and he's always moving, looking good, not wearing a hat. there's that famous photo of him in his swimming trunks. no president had ever done that. photographed on a beach in california. and he is behind the physical fitness test, which i sat at a recent event with fred. my decision to become a historian stemmed from the fact i could only do one pullup. [ laughter ] actually, my parents met in 1960s, college kids here in washington. they met, and so i -- very direct impact on my life. a couple specific things. we don't know, but there's very plausible argument that he ran in 1960 -- everyone knew he was too young. he irritated everyone in his own party, as well as on the other side. and i think he felt like he had to do it in 1960, because he might not have any other chance. he might get too sick. then i remember reading the book and there's this incredible realization near the end. most of us have seen these it film and there's a terrible moment where he's unable to duck. and it's because he was wearing a very rigid back brace because his back pain was so intense. you just know that as soon as you see the film with that knowledge that he's wearing a back brace he actually can't even duck because this brace is is so strong on him. so i think beginning of his presidency may have come from his health matters and the end of it also did. >> we have time for one final question. miss? >> my great uncle, i don't know if you recognize the name, but he was part of kennedy enterprises and wrote all the checks for kennedy. in 1960. i was wondering if you can talk about that campaign and what that was like running as b irish catholic in 1960 and talk about a lot about the campaign in west virginia and that was 98% protestant and how that would end the catholic question. >> he determined and his aides determined that he had to enter the primaries, or at least a good number of them. of course, today we take this for granted. but it was a very different proposition in 1960. that was connected, in part, to his youth, as ted suggested. it was also suggested a function of his catholicism. it's really fascinating. again, i think we keep plugging oliphant and wilke. i think it's a terrific book, they're quite good on this. that speak to the importance of organization, to the importance of finance, i do think sometimes my sense is that he was the favorite, however, on the democratic party side. sometimes we make a mistake in saying how did this guy sail into that convention in los angeles and win this thing. i think if you go back and look at the news coverage, he was because of his campaigning in '57, '58 and '59, the odds were with him more than with any of the others. lbj dithered, he took too long. samington wasn't going to be the one. humphrey. but there's no question that west virginia was incredibly dramatic. >> anything? >> his irishness was a wonderful part of the story. in many ways he was the least likely irish american politician anyone -- there was an irish-american politician. everyone knew what they were like. it was a guy who was sort of older with a reddish face and was like waving his arms all over the place and came out of urban ward politics from a big city. he was from a big city, but he was very different. in some ways, al smith was that kind of a politician, but in some ways this irish-american was the preppiest politician we have ever seen. it's one of the many ways in which he challenged all of our known categories. in some ways, very european. he spent significant time in europe and in asia. he was living in london as london was going to war in the late '30s. >> he was right there. >> so he challenges almost all of our assumptions. being irish was incredibly important and the opposition to that was real and hard for him to overcome, but he did it with his power of his language and a great speech in houston. i think each of these victories strengthened him and opened up who he was to more growth. so it was just one of the many things inside him that was deep then and still seems deep. >> i think that's just very quickly that what ted mentioned is really important. that desire he had to look to the wider world, which is, again, something we see in him even as a younger man. and it's going to be i think maybe a theme in my biography, is really important. this international sensibility that he develops and he maintains, obviously, as president. because what he cares most about is foreign policy. the other thing i would just say is it's interesting to speculate whether the catholic issue help him or hurt him. the fact he was catholic in 1960 cost him more votes than it gained him. historians disagree about this. it's probably in the end maybe a wash. helped him in some states and hurt him in others. but maybe comes out even. >> so john kennedy, we all know so much about him. tonight we have just scratched the surface and spent so much more time. i want you to first thank the smithsonian for hosting this and really appreciate it. [ applause ] and join me to thank ted and fred for all they have done. and there are so many other books. there you can look at. i also encourage you to look a great book written in 1958. it's written -- it's called "a nation of immigrants" by a then young senator named john kennedy. and its 60th anniversary will be next year and his words of immigration then as was talked about in the 1965 legislation are just as relevant, maybe even more so today. thank you all for being here. [ applause ] and coming up later today, the house rules committee will meet to consider a rule-governing debate of legislation that would extend section 702 of the foreign intelligence surveillance act, which authorizes the intelligence community to target the internet and phone communications of non-u.s. persons located outside the u.s. live coverage begins at 4:00 p.m. eastern on c-span3. you can also watch online at c-span.org or listen with the free c-span radio app. this weekend on american history tv on c-span3, saturday at 8:00 p.m. eastern, on lectures and history, american university professor aaron bell talks about privacy laws and federal surveillance of civil rights leaders. >> here's the head of the co intel operations, william sullivan, shortly after the march on washington in martin luther king jr.'s famous "i have a dream" speech, we must mark king now if not before as the most dangerous negro from the standpoint of communism, the negro and national security. >> former members of congress and vietnam war veterans reflect on lessons learned and ignored during the war. >> we learned the limits of military power during the vietnam war. we learned that as a society, as a culture, that you can't kill an idea with a bullet. >> american history tv. this weekend, only on c-span3. since july of 2017, the national archives has released thousands of documents related to the john f. kennedy assassination. many of these documents had been with hella withheld by the cia and fbi for alleged national security reasons. the document releases are mandated by the president john f. kennedy assassination records collection act of 1982, and will continue into 2018, though some of the documents contain ct