>> watch after words on cspan 2's book tv. >> he describes the creation of a counter intelligence program and how it was used to track and infiltrate domestic political organizations. his class, part of our weekend lectures in history series is about 45 minutes. >> welcome to class, everybody. we're going to talk about history of government surveillance and the central question i want to think about today is can intelligence agencies operate in a democratic society and be successful in protecting the government and it's citizens while also upholding the same citizen's rights. especially the right to descent. in other words, are liberty and security compatible? no doubt there is a need for

intelligence communities to operate. threats exist from foreign and domestic sources. they're real. they have been real throughout u.s. history. they can come from across the political spectrum but for over a century in addition to taking action against real threats to the lives of american citizens, bureaus and agencies within the united states government have surveilled those that have expressed what the kinstitute describes as strong political views that run counter to the prevailing government political paradigm. this challenges the notion often expressed by those that support a surveillance state of some sort that if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear. and i want to come back to that later on in our class discussion. maybe you're on the fence about it and maybe you firmly reject it. that's fine. we'll have an opportunity to discuss that later. but it necessitates that discussion and the same tools that can be used to protect

citizens can be turned against the same citizens for less notable and nepharious reasons. >> you'd go back probably about aisha century. he creates a special squad of investigators to work on behalf of the department of justice and becomes known as the bureau of investigation and then by the 1930s the federal bureau of investigation, the fbi. the fbi's own history, if you go on their website, they link the creation of the fbi to that movement. the progressive movement is sort of the belief that the federal government must intervene to foster justice in an industrial society. response to the labor unrest that we have talked about in previous classes and everything

that would inspire that terrible working conditions and so forth. so it inspires things like the fda to ensure that the food has labels and what you're eating is actually what you think you're heating. it will lead to things like child labor laws but it will also create this nationwide law enforcement body that's able to keep tabs on criminals throughout the country. and a rise in violent crime and corruption. and particularly the description describes it and the version of

espinage we talked about. in 1908, the fbi makes it's first efforts to infiltrate political organizations beginning with the socialist part of america. by the mid 1910s, they're investigating antienlistment groups. over the years the fbi will spy on a variety of organizations including the american civil liberties union. the american council of churches, the american jewish congress, the nationwide labor federation, the afl cio and the national association for the advancement of colored people. the ethical society of philadelphia, the new orleans women's center, american friends service committee which is a social justice organization. the women's peace movement lead by jane adams. pete seager, et cetera, et cetera. sometimes these people and organizations are investigated for decades. these are not violent revolutionary threats.

but rather those that oppose certain aspects of u.s. government policy and perhaps even the particular form of government that we have but they do so through specific means noted in the constitution. not so much the tour of the century when this is strictly policed. political spine will begin around 1908 and 1909 and we'll then stop about a decade. and will raise a lot of concerns about government surveillance. the seattle general strike shuts down that city. tens of thousands of workers go on strike across industries. in the spring a bomb plot is

broken up and then there's a wave of bombings in the summer. targeting prominent people. his house is down around right before you get to the main circle there where r hits massachusetts. i realized at some point that was his house and i have been driving by it for years. it's super weird. the bureau of investigation creates this thing to deal with this anarcism. the files are then used to round up several thousand radicals in a series of raids that occurred in at least 40 cities across the united states. some of the people are well-known prominent radicals. other people are arrested simply because they appeared foreign and were members of a labor

union and so forth. many of those arrested were held for months. no access to lawyers, no access to their families and 249 resident aliens were put on a boat and deported to russia. there is a tremendous political backlash against this, in particular because many of these people that were rounded up, again, they are not engaged in radical violent behavior. they may hold very radical views but nonetheless, they have not engaged in anything and some of them are immigrants from russia. immigrants from southern and eastern europe. the political backlash against this brings the spying to a temporary halt. this is made palatable to those in power and may have been inclined to support this at

first in part because of immigration quotas put in place. they restrict immigrants from southern and jenscentral europe. 1929 sees the end of a ten yearlong intelligence gathering program known by an organization known as the black chamber. this is made up of people from the state department and army intelligence, essentially for ten years u.s. telegraph companies provided the black chamber with incoming and outgoing cable traffic. this is shutdown by hoover's -- by president hoover's incoming secretary of state. he specifically opposes spying on the diplomatic allies.

saying very famously gentlemen don't read each others mail. there's also a supreme court case that deals with wiretapping. and weighing whether or not tapping into someone's phone conversation, you have to imagine this is very early on in this period, does that violate the 4th amendment. the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures should not be violated and by probable cause and particularly describing the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized. william howard taft, he speaks for the court's decision to basically rule against the notion that wiretapping violates the fourth amendment. the court approves this and it

will last for roughly 40 years. here's what he says. this is in favor of wiretaps claiming they don't violate the fourth amendment. congress will make them inadmissible in evidence by direct legislation. thus apart from the common law of evidence but the courts may not adopt such a policy by attributing an engaged and usual meaning to the fourth amendment. the reasonable view is that one who installs in his house a telephone instrument with connecting wires intends to project his voice to those outside and that the wires beyond his house and messages while passing over him are not within the protection of the fourth amendment.

they hold the 4th amendment to be violated as against a defendant unless there's been an official search and seizure of his person or such a seizure of his tangible effects or invasion of his house for the purpose of making a seizure. a standard that would forbid the evidence if obtained by other than nice ethical conduct by government officials would make society suffer and give criminals greater immunity than has been known here. so if you're using a telephone machine it is connected to wires that go outside of the house and speak to machine outside of your home and thus someone tapping into the wires and not going into your house and searching your belongings, that is outside of your home and thus does not fall under the 4th amendment. this is how the court rules in 1928 but i want to hit again on this last thing that he says. let me say it again. a standard that would forbid the

reception of evidence if obtained by government officials would make society suffer and give criminals greater immunity than has been known here. he set the standard for free speech and his descent that ultimately became the great ruling many decades down the road. and here's what he said. in some ways saying the ends justifies the means. decency, security and liberty alike demand that government officials shall be subjected to the same rules of conduct that are commands to the citizen. in a government of laws existence of the government will be imperilled if it fails to observe the law skrcrupulously. our government is the teacher

for good or for ill. it teaches by it's example. it invites every man to become a law unto himself. it invites anarchy. to declare that in the administration of the criminal law the ends justifies the means in order to secure the conviction of a private criminal would bring terrible retribution against this doctrine. this court should set it's face. political spying ends from 1920s to 1936 when franklin roosevelt requests it be resumed. what we'll see here is government surveillance. it doesn't target one particularly group. though historically it's not always nor is it simply one particular political party or

ideology. franklin roosevelt request it be initiated in 1936 and it will be lead by our man up here, j. edgar hoover, appointed head of the bureau of investigation, the age of 29, younger than i am. hover helped put together the list to round one a vast swath of people but he managed to state the political fall out of that. sort of the blade came down on the heads of a few people higher up than him and the bureau rebonded within that decade. hoover tried to emphasize the bureaus role as a crime fighting organization. he emphasizes this and knows how to work them in his favor. the bureaus reputation rebounds. fdr, concerned about soviet

spies and concerned about fascists. there's several groups that emerge after hitler's rise to power. immediately after hitler invades poland they're authorized to investigate espionage and treason and he adds to that list subversive activities. it's unclear how much franklin roosevelt, how much his attorney general and people up in the government knew about the extent of what hoover would do. there's no record of that particular meaning and what exactly what was said in it. and roosevelt has bigger fish to fry in some sense not knowing what's coming down the road. he has an economic depression that continues to grind along.

he'll ultimately have the war to deal with but that is a looming specter of a looming war in europe. hoover renews this. it's authorized outside the courts. he discourages the administration from going to congress to get legislative approval. he's sure he won't get it. congress had been very suspicious of the bureau of investigation being created in the fist plarst place. hoover warns they'll twist the truth so fdr proves political spying. the presumption of political spying without congressional approval. fdr supports the suggestion which has not come to pass to have every person in america fingerprinted. that was the newest technology at the moment. when the aclu complains about groups that don't want to go to work in europe, they're trying

to ensure that the united states does not want to become involved in anything about to happen over there. he sees nothing wrong with investigating groups that spread false information and engage in, quote, false teachings. his house had been bugged. more over, fdr has hoover looking to political opponents as well. in particular he has the fbi investigate several senators and several public figures. all of whom oppose any intervention in europe. hoover learns from this experience that he can curry favor and gain leverage by digging into any president's enemies. perceived enemies. for example he never blackmails the kennedy brothers but he does give robert kennedy, attorney general under his brother's presidency monthly updates of the people he knows, the

accusations against him and family members and on the one hand perhaps this is helpful personal knowledge that robert kennedy can use however he sees fit but it also ensures that the kennedys know that hoover knows everything. so the kennedys have the inclination to suddenly shutdown what he might be doing. they'll know in the back of their minds that hoover has tabs on what they have been doing. the spying also takes place in the context of emerging national security that we're familiar with today. the cold war begins shortly there after. the house on american activities committee which investigates respective submersives and designed to shut out anybody that might have descending political views. in 1956 the fbi goes on the

offensive with the creation of cpusa, right? a counter intelligence program specifically designed to target the communist party of the united states of america. it is specifically counter intelligence. they're not trying to dig up evidence but instead it's a counter intelligence operation to destroy a political enemy of the government. one, legal proceedings against communist party leaders had been very successful in sending a number of them to prison. laws are very favorable toward doing it in this period of time but it had also exposed fbi informants. they had to go before a judge and well placed informants were then revealed as part of the court hearings. and in 1956, 57, the court begins to roll back the legal measures to attack political dissents. they had given free reign to

round up anybody that is the member of a group that might overthrow the united states government. it was interrupted loosely and designed to put top leaders of the economist party in jail. top leaders that by the way are operating for a foreign party. it's top leaders are controlled from moscow. but this sort of roll back and legal power, this sort of threat of exposing more informants leases the creation of the counter intelligence program. it calls for action to negate the influence over the masses, ability to create controversy leading to confusion and disunity. penetration of specific channels in american life where public opinion is molded and espionage and sabotage potential. of those, the last two are illegal. espionage and sabotage. influence over the masses.

ability to create controversy. public opinion is molded. you may find the ideas of the communist party be reprehenceable. nonetheless those are not specifically illegal things. the objective here is to destroy the communist parties for political activities. it effectively destroys what remains of the communist party. there's 1,388 different actions conducted against the party. it's membership roughly around 80,000. at the end of the second world war drops to 80 and a large part of that is due to the legal measures used against the party. they also take a huge hit when in 1956 it comes to power and reveals that, in fact, all of the rumors about stalin's behavior are totally true. he was a monster that murdered

millions that conducted show trials of his political enemies and people he thought might be his political enemies. that has a huge effect of turning people away from the party. nonetheless, hoover's obsession keeps it going long past the point where it's relevant. there's substantial descent in the ranks of the fbi in the late 60s because hoover will not let this go even though the party is well past the point where it poses any sort of conceivable threat to the united states. tactics for attacking cpusa include leaking smear attacks to the media. planting evidence to suggest that party leaders will informants. plant evidence and hope that someone else comes along and sees it and believes their co-leader is an fbi informant. creating a fake communist organization in order to dispute. they create these fake

organizations to just foster that kind of descent. my personal favorite of these, operation hoodwink. send false documents to provoke a fight between the communist party and the sicilian mafia. the fbi is well aware with how they deal with threats. here's the suggestion they have for how to deal with this. let's see. requesting permission to prepare the following letter. anonymous letter xerox copies that will be mailed to the philadelphia pennsylvania area which here's the letter, dear union boss. i'm the loyal union man that wrote you around the end of january and i have more news for you. you'll remember that i told you then that i heard from my brother-in-law that the leaders of his party had been in moscow and among the instructions they

came back with was to try to get rid of the hoodlums and truck and dock unions in these country. my brother asked me how things were going and i said okay. he told me he knew there were a lot of gangsters in my union but things would be changing for the best shortly. and it came up against how about his party is going to clean up the gangster controlled unions in the united states. i told him he was all wet. but i didn't use those words. watch out. thanks for the free use of a copy machine. i can get the word around about this. here's an anonymous letter the fbi is going to send suggesting that the communist international will be targeting the sicilian mafia. this is a lie. here's what the fbi says internally. with the respect to the above letter it's a fact that three

leaders were in budapest hungary in february and march 1968 to attend an international meeting of communists and workers parties. two of the three leaders sense returned to the united states. however the information that in hungary it came up again about how his party is going to clean up gangsters has no basis in fact. a few typing errors will be inserted into this letter. should they approve this letter it will be typed on commercial stationary and updated and copies will be sent out. this is all a plot. the fbi knows what the sicilian mafia does. the effort to provoke them to retaliate violently against members of the cpusa. there's no evidence that this actually works by the way. it's not for lack of trying. also used to attack not

communist party political opponents. for example, members of the congregation were against them. they were prosecuted under the smith act. attempts to smear him to sink his political campaign. this is not surveillance and violent threats, this is something different. the fbi will also then target the civil rights movement for african american rights in the years leading up to a formal movement. they began investigating as early as 1941 and finds nothing. nonetheless, attempts to get them on to a list of subversive organizations in the 50s. martin luther king jr. in the southern christian leadership conference were investigated for communist party links.

here are the things that prompt that. he gave a speech at the highland folks school. the social justice leadership training school accused of being a communist training center. here's a billboard that floated around the south. martin luther king at communist training school. there he is. not a communist training school. spoiler. but this billboard accusation is rooted in an accurate history, supporting civil rights for african americans. now they did that for the party's interests and saw that as a great wedge issue. but this fear will be spread by many segregationists that the civil rights movement is a communist front being organi orchestrated to create social unrest in the united states. he sent a thank you letter to the councilman that had to be a member of them at that point.

a member of the socialist workers party offered to join as a clerk in the main office. i don't think he got the job. hoover quitely tells congressmen, senators and the kennedys that stanley levinson is a communist party member taking orders from moscow. he left the party in the 1950s. it's over five years old. if you are in intelligence you know it's probably not very useful. comes from two informants. the fbi attempted to recruit him to be a informant so how much of a threat could this person be? hoover insists for years that king was secretly a communist. here's the head of the operations. william sullivan, shortly after the march on washington and the

famous i have a dream speech, we must mark king now if we have not before as the most dangerous in the future of this nation from the standpoint of communist and the national security. robert kennedy approves wiretaps in king's home in the offices in the fall of 1963 after the march on washington. the fbi will also tap king's hotel rooms which kennedys maybe did not know about. unclear. in 1964 the fbi goes after king by feeding tips to the press about his alleged communist ties and encourages the irs to harass him and the sclc. shortly after he is named the nobel prize winner in october 1964 the fbi compiles a composite tape from king's hotel rooms of extramarital sexual encounters. the idea here is they send one

tape to make it sound as though king is having an extramarital affair with several women in his hotel room. it's just a composite of several different incidences in which this happened. they send this tape to king anonymously with a letter. i'll jump around a little bit. king, in view of your -- this is from the fbi. king, in view of your low grade abnormal personal behavior i will not dig anify your name an your last name comes to mind king henry of the act and immorale conduct lower than that of a beast. you are a complete fraud and great liability to all of us -- this is definitely dudes in the fbi. white people have enough frauds of their own but they don't have one at this time anywhere near your equal. you are no clergyman and you know it. you are a fraud and eevil vicios

one at that. you clearly don't believe in any personal moral principles. let's go down. et cetera, et cetera, it's all there on the record. your sexual orgies. you are on the record. you have been on the record. the american public, the church organizations that have been helping protestant catholic and jews will know you for what you have, an evil abnormal beast. you are doing. king there's only one thing left for you to do. you know what it is. you have 34 days in which to do. this exact number has been selected for a specific reason. it has practical significance. there's but one way out for you. you better take it before yourself is bear to the nation. the fbi encourages dr. martin luther king to kill himself because he's such a threat to the nation in their view. the fbi offers this tape -- king does not obviously kill himself. the fbi then offers to turn this

tape over to the press. the press turns him down and the fbi backs off in the face of investigation and electronic surveillance. the timing works out in his favor i suppose. lyndon johnson takes over for john f. kennedy. it should be formally outlawed. there's a couple of supreme court cases. both in 1964 and in these cases the supreme court changes it's tune. wiretaps have to follow the same procedures. there must be probable cause. the people initiating the wire trap have to specify the crime. specify the place to be searched. specify the conversations to be seized. in 1968 congress follows suit. set specific standards for obtaining wiretaps. this will not stop.

they'll target other confrontational political groups including the black panther party that it helps to destroy with informants, misinformation and violence. the fbi will also go after the new left and the kkk and successfully undermine both to some degree which we'll talk about in our reading discussion. then in 1975, watergate, revelations in the new york times prompt the creation of a special committee to investigate the intelligence community. someone managed to break into an fbi headquaters somewhere. grab a whole bunch of documents. and got back to -- realized they had all of this stuff. start leaking that to the press. this also comes out in an area where the pentagon papers had been released proving that the government has known all along

that the vietnam war is hopeless and has been lying to the public about that for years. there's been no major effort and intelligence reform despite rumors that the fbi had data banks of u.s. citizens and used members of congress for blackmail and the occasional screw up, like the bay of pigs invasion supported by the cia. there's oversight committees but they have clearly done nothing. here's what the church committee discovers. it's a laundry list of awful things. the fbi had files that over 1 million americans investigated 500,000 of them from 1960 to 74. people that were suspected of subversion, that produced zero court convictions. the national security agency investigated anything sent or received by americans overseas from 1947 to 75. the irs allowed tax information

to be used for political purposes. lyndon johnson ordered the cia to spy on antiwar protestors believing that the soviets or chinese had to be behind it because he could not wrap his mind around the idea that american students were on their own so deeply opposed to his policies. particularly with so much weight behind civil rights and the great society programs. it has to be the soviets, it has to be the chinese directing these students. this is a direct violation of the charter which prohibits domestic intelligence operations. the name of the operation, operation chaos, it's like they're not even trying to hide how nefarious this is. it's 300,000 names with indepth files and 700,000 people. no evidence found for any of them. not entirely related to our class but nonetheless worth noting, also reveals things like

the cia conducted drug experiments on citizens and infill rated religious and media and academics in the united states and efforts to assassinate foreign political leaders. this was a gun that was supposed to give someone a heart attack if you shot them with it so it looked like they hadn't been assassinated. this is especially shocking to congress because it's not spying. it's proactive counter intelligence. the historical lesson here, you want to draw one, antifascists built this momentum that lead to the house of american activities committee investigations. it's all part of the same spectrum. but it doesn't end with the public downfall and the roll back of some of the laws that allowed for the prosecution of party leaders.

instead it carries through to the civil law rights and antiwar movements of the 60s and the 70s. the ends justify the means in the government's view. an exchange regarding the collection of cable intelligence. were you concerned about it's legality. legality? whether it was legal? in what sense? whether that would have been a legal thing to do? yes. >> didn't enter into the discussion. >> trying to give him another chance. i was asking if you were concerned about whether that would be legal or proper. we didn't consider it at the time, no. the threats seem so aggregious that in the mind of these folks they'll just act to address the threat and deal with the legal consequences later, even though there turns out to be no evidence that in fact there was any plot by the soviets or the

chinese to inspire antiwar protests, civil rights movement, activities and so forth. >> i was curious, what year was that? >> that was '64. right after he received the nobel peace prize. >> thank you. >> yeah. the results of this, of the committee's investigations on the legal side of it, this is probably the most important legacies of a better degree of legislative checks on domestic and foreign intelligence agencies. it's not perfect by any stretch of the imagination but the senate select committee is permanent and the house creates it's own in 177. this is opposed by the white house and the intelligence community. some government conservatives at the time, especially the hardcore anticommunist ones argue this will cap the united states ability to protect

itself. all of those operations that were found. church committee counters that where they violated the law. there were legal routes through u.s. security objectives would have been met. in other words, the church argues security and liberty are compatible. in 1978 congress pazes the foreign intelligence surveillance act, which creates a special court to secretly review wiretapped access against foreign spies in the united states. there's also a ten-year term limit placed on the fbi director. hoover's director in 1974 until he dies in '71. no more 48-year czars.

the fbi spies on occupied wall street. the fbi spies on code pink. they spy on burning man. the terrorist attacks of september 2001 and surprising our huge impetus to reboot this kind of program, right, fear drives this. fear drives this feeling that you must act regardless of the legal propriety of it, deal with the consequences later. the nsa after september 11th begins collecting the metadata of every phone call made in the united states from major carriers, which is who did you call, how long did you call them, what time, what date. phone conversations, the actual transcripts so long as someone is outside the united states or involved in international terrorism as far as the fisa court is concerned. internet communications, now osstensably they're only allowed to do this so long as one person

is outside the united states. but inevitably of course domestic communications are collected, too, because you can't sort out -- there's no automatic way to sort out foreign and domestic internet traffic. it's all interconnected. and what do you do when apple servers are in ireland, for example? the nsa stuff was first reported in 2005, 2006. confirmed years later the revelation of the snowden documents. there was a review of the collection under president bush about the nsa's wiretapping. the department of justice decides it's legal. only the threatened then ezresignation of then the fbi director keeps him from doing so. you want to look at the sort of cultural legacy of this. the church committee comes at a time when people's suspicion of

the government is through the roof. americans will never trust the government again. right, this comes at the same time the pent pentgon papers and same time as watergate. and now it turns out the cia has been spying on american citizens and the fbi has been infiltrating and destroying political dissident groups including peace activists. within the african-american community, certainly, you can point to some things. the suspicion the fbi setup king to be assassinated in memphis. not that the fbi did it, but they knew an assassination attempt was coming and chose to do nothing. and the intention the cia distributed heroin within the blacktuant. the fbi did in fact infiltrate civil rights organizations and attempt to destroy them through nefarious and sometimes violent means, so of course the suspicion is there. and yet how uncomfortably

suspicious are we when we carry tracking devices everywhere we go that always knows where you are? soon this will be scanning your face. wooecht police to wear body cameras. the those cameras can be used to film our private residences. the company taser, taser is like kleenex, they're developing software so police body cameras will soon have facial recognition software. you'll scan your face here and police walking down the streets see you will know who you are. we use these. this tracks everywhere you've gone, every purchase you've made. you use a met rocard, that tracks everywhere you've gone in the city. fitness software tracks every step that crow took knows where those steps were. now, on the one hand, some of this is necessary. you want the police to be able to effectively police.

of course. this is loaded very much -- this lecture is loaded very much in a direction that is like no surveillance. but of course there is a necessity for it. violent actors very much exist in the world and crimes do take place. some of this is innocuous. i enjoy coupons from the grocery store based on the purchases i've made. it's a little weird they know what bagels i like or creamer i use, but nonetheless it's cheaper because someone been tracking all that stuff. yes, some of this is innocious, some of this is necessary and some of it is advantageous to law enforcement, it keeps us safe. that person who's alt the switch now may not be the person who's at the switch the next administration around or ten years down the road. i distinctly remember listening

to interview in 2007, 2008 when it was in the media and being kicked around. and this conservative legal scholar who was deeply opposed to what the nsa was doing made this point, if you support what the george bush administration is doing to keep us safe from the threat of terrorism. again, i don't know how old you guys were, but i instinctually remember how frightening that time was. i was a sophomore in college, so i definitely imagine that period. his argument is imagine, which would likely team the likely outcome, hillary clinton at the end of that switch. hillary clinton looked like she would be the presumptive nominee for the democratic party, and that was his argument. you might support this argument under george w. bush but imagine

hillary clinton having it. you might support, for example, the obama administration's use of drones to target terrorists around the world, suspected terrorists around the world. you might think obama has good judgment. this represents u.s. troops from using their lives, it's quick and easy. if you support the use of that, i imagine you may not have voted for the current president, but he has use of the same tool. and the next president that comes down the right, perhaps a more left leaning democratic candidate, who knows what will happen, that person will have their hand on the switch. this is the thing to think about, right, it's easy in the moment to get sucked into the fear and concerns we have. they're not always unfounded and not always unreasonable. but keep in mind the long-term effects, once the genie is out of the box, it's tough to get it

back in. no president is going to willingly surrender a large amount of power. government agencies don't do that either. do you succumb to the notion you have nothing to hide, nothing to fear, we'll talk about that in our next class discussion. thanks, everybody. you've been watching lectures in history, a week lee series saturday night at 8:00 and midnight eastern here on c-span 3. you can find lectures on c-span's video library and they're available as a podcast. if umess any of this week's american history tv programs you can find them any time online c-span.org. american history tv weekdays continues until labor day. next week we're focusing on the presidency. monday the relationship between washington and hamilton, the

marriage of bess and harry truman and gerald ford's political career, wednesday how presidents have dealt with the media and press coverage. and this weekend during our regularly scheduled american history tv programming a college class on post vietnam war refugees. features a class about southeast asian migration to the u.s. after the war. she looks at how laws and public opinion have changed over the past five decades and emphasizes the difference between immigrants and refugees. and that's on lectures in history saturday night at 8:00 and again midnight eastern time. on reel america, our series showing historical films, a u.s. war department film titled why we fight, the battle of britain 1943, a team of army corp

technicians show how the britains defeated the air force at a cost of vast destruction on the ground. saturday night at 10:00 and 4 eastern. live coverage of the democrat national committee summer meeting in chicago to decide on changes to it party's presidential nominating process, including the role of super delegates. watch live saturday at 10:00 a.m. eastern on c-span, c-span.org or listen with the free c-span radio app. kavanaugh has got to go. >> he's one of the most qualified nominees ever picked for the supreme court, and he's contributed a great deal to his community and the legal profession besides being an

outstanding judge on the d.c. circuit court of appeals. >> judge kavanaugh has a special obligation to make his views on this topic clear given the president's litmus test that he would only appoint judges who would overturn roe. on that obligation judge kavanaugh failed spectacularly. >> i look forward to watching judge kavanaugh's confirmation hearing, and after conducting a thorough review of his nomination i'm confident that judge kavanaugh will be an excellent addition to our nation's highest court. >> watch day one of the senate confirmation hearing for supreme court nominee brett kavanaugh. live tuesday september 4th on c-span 3. watch anytime on c-span.org or listen on the free c-span radio app. c-span, where history unfolds daily. in 1979 c-span was created as a

public service by america's cable television companies. and today we continue to bring you unfiltered coverage of congress, the white house, the supreme court and public policy events in washington, d.c. and around the country. c-span is brought to you by your cable or satellite provider. up next on lectures in history, university of california san diego professor louise alvarez teaches a class about what led to the 1943 los angeles zoot suits virus. and how youth who wore zoot suits came to symbolize a challenge to racial and gender identities. his class is about an hour, 20 minutes. all right, so let me just remind you where we are in our ongoing narrative of mexican-american history. last week