Watch The 60's

In 1968,Tom Brokaw will draw upon his personal experiences as a journalist whose own life is inextricably bound to the 60's. He'll travel to iconic destinations (the scenes of defining moments or events) not simply to retell history, but to engage in what he calls, "virtual reunions" - pairing together unlikely and provocative voices from both the past and present: A one-time student anti-war leader from the 60's might hash out Iraq with a present day student about to join the military...or the publisher of the first "Whole Earth Catalog" (a 'how-to' for the "future of humankind" published in '68) sits down with Tom and Stephen Jobs - who recently called the catalog the spiritual forerunner of the internet.

In October 1963, after rejecting his agents' advice that Martin Luther King has no links with Communists, FBI boss J. Edgar Hoover embarked on a massive surveillance operation against the black civil rights leader by the use of phone taps and hidden microphones. By the end of the year, the surveillance had yielded nothing to brand King a Communist, but a good deal to raise questions about his public morality. King's sexual indiscretions were well known among his colleagues, his contemporaries and his family. In this program his allies give their accounts of King's secret sexual life, and their reasons for turning a blind eye; while former FBI agents explain how Hoover went about trying to use this information as a means of neutralizing King's power. King's sexual relations with women were a source of guilt-ridden depression, yet he conducted serious affairs with mistresses throughout his marriage. His long nights of doubt, his gradual overcoming of uncertainty, and his eventual acceptance of martyrdom act as a dramatic counterpoint to Hoover's attempted character assassination.

Looks at the controversial life of the Argentinean revolutionary, who was a medical doctor, an aide to Fidel Castro in the Cuban Revolution, and active in leftist guerrilla movements in the Congo and Latin America. In 1967, while leading a guerrilla action in Bolivia, he was captured and executed.

Selma Alabama, March 7th 1965. A line of civil rights protestors crossed the Edmund Pettis Bridge on a march to the Alabama State Capitol in Montgomery. Blocking their path were Alabama State Troopers. The unprovoked brutality that followed, shocked a nation, moved a president and is the focus of "Crossing the Bridge." The film traces the events that led up to the confrontation that became known as "Bloody Sunday". It draws on the personal experiences of those involved, men such as John Lewis, CT Vivian, Albert Turner and James Orange. The program also reveals the White House reaction to the violence in Selma. For the first time, as a result of recently declassified recordings, its possible to hear President Lyndon Johnson as he tries to contain the violence and then use the public outcry to press for passage of a voting rights bill.

Lyndon Baines Johnson, the 36th President of the United States, was a man of great ambition, vision and contradictions. Born to Rebekah Baines and Sam Ealy Johnson in 1908, Lyndon was the eldest of five children, all raised in the Texas Hill Country, a hard and unforgiving land on which even cattle could not thrive. His mother was a well-educated and cultivated woman at odds with the life thrust upon her when she married Sam Ealy Johnson. Sam was an unsuccessful farmer who at times made enough money to keep his family comfortable, but sought refuge in a bottle during the less prosperous moments. His happiest moments were those spent as a member of the Texas House of Representitives, a place he often brought young Lyndon. Lyndon, always a bright but undisciplined child, attended a teachers college in San Marcos and taught Mexican-American boys mired in poverty, an experience that would shape his politics forever. After a few years teaching, Lyndon went to Washington as a local Texas Congressmen's secretary and thus began a career in politics that would evetually take him to the presidency. While there he met and married Claudia Alta "Lady Bird" Taylor and had two daughters, Lynda Bird and Luci Baines. He was soon elected to Congress, and then to the Senate in 1948 where he quickly rose through the ranks until he became the Senate Majority Leader, a position he re-shaped into one of the most powerful in Washington. In 1960, after a brief and frustrating Presidential bid, he accepted the nomination as Kennedy's running mate and spent the next three years in the shadow of the younger and more dynamic President. But Johnson's ambition would be realized in a way he never imagined when JFK was assassinated in Dallas on November 22, 1963.

Wars, national crises, social revolutions...the narratives of major turning points in history tend to be written by the generals, the leaders, the empire builders, or by historians who've chosen to write about them -- their voices, their experiences forever preserved for future generations. But leaders can only lead if they have minions following them, and wars are fought not by generals, but by foot soldiers. Yet theirs are voices, which tend to be lost -- their memories, impressions and perspectives passing with them into obscurity.

How does forensic science help resolve questions about the JFK assassination? With the help of a group of scientists and researchers with access to the evidence in the case, Investigating History looks at new information that examines which theories are believable, and which are not. Specifically, the experts looked at the acoustic evidence from the radio of one of the motorcycle policemen in the motorcade and the number of shots that were fired; at the reliability of autopsy X-rays of JFK's skull; at the investigation that concluded that Oswald was the lone assassin; at the new evidentiary support for the "magic bullet" theory; and more.

The Bay of Pigs fiasco marked the first foreign policy defeat for the new Kennedy administration and the first time a CIA covert operation had been exposed to public scrutiny. More than one hundred U.S. backed invaders died at the Bay of Pigs, more than one thousand were captured. Kennedy called the invasion "the worst experience of my life." Military and political analysts called it "the perfect failure." It was one of the most extraordinary debacles of the Cold War. What exactly went wrong on that day in April, 1961---the day America lost it's first and most humiliating battle against Communism?

In 1961, President Kennedy set a goal for the nation: beat the Russians to the Moon and do it within the decade. In '69, NASA met that goal--but no one defined what should happen next. As a growing number of political, social, and economic problems vie for the nation's attention and money, Congress, Presidents, and the public aren't certain if manned space flight is really worth the cost and risk. But for legendary flight director Gene Kranz and the men and women of Mission Control, there's no doubt. Despite waning public support and shrinking budgets, they still have a job to do with no room for error.

President John F. Kennedy's legacy is largely defined by the permanent scar his assassination left on America's psyche; creating a vivid memory that refuses to fade. By looking past our now-mythical recollections, JFK: A Life Revealed, presents the story of a remarkable man whose assassination was merely the final moment of his remarkable life. Using the 35th President's private records, phone logs, medical reports, and secret recordings of meetings with his White House staff, our story will expose Kennedy as a flawed giant who dominated his time though sheer determination.

From 1956 to 1977 this group compiled secret files on thousands of its citizens. It employed hundreds of private detectives and informers. It investigated, harassed and intimidated anyone who got in its way. It hampered investigations and tampered with juries and it was all funded by the taxpayers of the state of Mississippi. It was called the "Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission," an agency created by the Mississippi State legislature to preserve segregation and oppose school integration at any cost...even if it meant murder. Join us as we examine an organization whose lofty goals of state's rights nearly turned Mississippi into a police state.

Profile of the bearded Cuban dictator that follows his life from his rebel days in the Sierra Maestra Mountains to his decades-long confrontation with the U.S. Explores his role in the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Bay of Pigs, and the Mariel Boat Lift.

Hippies will be a vivid, mind-expanding exploration of one the most explosive, controversial and misunderstood periods in modern history. It will show how the roots of the movement go back to the communal experiments of the 19th century and to the aggressive non-conformity of the Beatniks, and how the Hippies were actually the inheritors of a great American tradition of spiritual exploration and rebellion against authority. We'll dig into every aspect of the movement - free love, the peace movement, drugs, Eastern religions, communes, Gestalt therapy, macrobiotics - and introduce the gurus whose words and actions inspired it - Marshall McCluhan, Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsberg, Jerry Rubin, Gloria Steinem, Dick Gregory and a host of others.

Answering the desperate calls for air strikes from soldiers in the jungle, U.S. fighters and bombers unleashed their fury on the enemy in Vietnam. From life and death dogfights against Russian built MiGs to the devastating carpet bombing by the B-52s.

The sixties were one groovy decade. "Modern Marvels: 60's Tech" will take you on a wild ride of the technological happenings that helped shape the decade. Television got a whole lot better. We'll see how color replaced black and white. We'll explore the advent of satellite broadcasting. And we'll look at the camera that beamed man's first steps on the moon. It was a decade of radical changes - the transistor radio became your personal listening device, computers became less intimidating, dialing your telephone now meant pressing buttons, and your watch became a piece of electronics. We'll see how all that happened. We'll take the Mustang, the ultimate 60's car, for a spin. For fun, we'll get inside slot car racing, the etch-a-sketch, the superball, and lava lamps. The decade gave us quite a technological rush-- with the introduction of concert sound, psychedelic light shows and the birth of the rock festival. So this time around, just turn on and tune in, no need to drop out.