Vietnam War Bibliography:

Congressional Committee Documentation: Tonkin Gulf

Promoting The Maintenance of International Peace and Security in Southeast Asia. 11 pp. House Foreign Affairs Committee report, August 6, 1964, recommending passage of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution. The text is available online at Hathi Trust.
88th Congress, 2d session, House Report no. 1708
CU serial set vol. 12619-3

Promoting The Maintenance of International Peace and Security in Southeast Asia. 9 pp. Senate Foreign Relations Committee report, August 6, 1964, recommending passage of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution. The text is available online at Hathi Trust.
88th Congress, 2d session, Senate Report no. 1329
CU serial set vol. 12616-4

Southeast Asia Resolution. iii, 36 pp. Joint Hearing before the Committee on Foreign Relations and the Committee on Armed Services, United States Senate, August 6, 1964, on the Tonkin Gulf Incidents. The text is available online at Hathi Trust. Secretary of Defense McNamara gives a very inaccurate version of the incidents. (This is an edited transcript, with sensitive material deleted, released in 1966; the omitted passages can be found in the next item.)
Y 4.F 76/2:As 4/3

Executive Sessions of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Together with Joint Sessions with the Senate Armed Services Committee, vol. XVI, (1964). GPO, 1988. x, 385 pp. The text is available online at Hathi Trust. Pages 291-99 of this volume contain the passages omitted for reasons of secrecy from the previous item. The volume also contains Ambassador Maxwell Taylor's appearances to discuss the situation in South Vietnam. Interesting point in Taylor's testimony of September 10: Wayne Morse, asking suspicious questions about recent raids against the coast of North Vietnam (pp. 329-31), was not suspicious enough; it did not occur to Morse to doubt that the raids were controlled by the government of South Vietnam.
Y 4.F 76/2:Ex 3/2/v.16

U.S. Commitments to Foreign Powers. Hearings before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, August 2, 16, 21, 23, September 19, 1967. Quite a bit about the Tonkin Gulf Resolution. iv, 321, vi pp.
Y 4.F 76/2:F 76/23

The Gulf of Tonkin, the 1964 Incidents. Hearing before the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, February 20, 1968. The original item is the transcript of the 1968 hearing, at which some of the senators asked McNamara some pointed questions about the misleading account he had given them four years earlier. The transcript published in 1968 was astonishingly close to being complete; there was far less censorship than was normal for a transcript dealing with such sensitive issues (see the Executive Sessions volume listed immediately below for the missing material). It has been placed on-line in the Virtual Vietnam Archive of the Vietnam Project at Texas Tech University, in three sections: front matter and pp. 1-46, pp. 47-96, pp. 97-110.  
Part 2 (v, 14 pp.) is associated correspondence and documentation.
Y 4.F 76/2:T 61 and Y4.F 76/2:T 61, part 2

Executive Sessions of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (Historical Series), Volume XX: Ninetieth Congress, Second Session, 1968. S. Prt. 111-23. 2010. vii, 1167 pp. This volume contains passages that were censored out of the transcript published in 1968 of the committee's February 20, 1968 hearing on Tonkin Gulf (see above), and also transcripts of other committee meetings at which Tonkin Gulf was discussed, for which no transcripts, even sanitized, had been published in 1968.
Y 4.F76/2:Ex 3/2/v.20

Termination of Middle East and Southeast Asia Resolutions. Report of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, May 1, 1970, recommending repeal of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution. 36 pp. The text has been placed on-line in the Virtual Vietnam Archive of the Vietnam Project at Texas Tech University.
S.Rpt. 91-834

Termination of Southeast Asia Resolution. Report of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, May 15, 1970, recommending passage of Senate Concurrent Resolution 64, repealing the Tonkin Gulf Resolution. 24 pp. The text has been placed on-line in the Virtual Vietnam Archive of the Vietnam Project at Texas Tech University. [The resolution repealing the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, H.R. 15628, was accepted by both houses of Congress December 31, 1970, and became law as PL 91-672 on January 12, 1971.]
S.Rpt. 91-872

Nomination of Adm. Thomas H. Moorer to be Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff. Hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee, June 4, 5, 1970. ii + 37 pp. Includes discussion of Tonkin Gulf; Moorer strongly defended the reality of the August 4 incident.
Y 4.Ar 5/3:M 78

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Private sector publications on Tonkin Gulf

Copyright © 1996, 1997, 1999, 2003, 2005, 2010, Edwin E. Moise. This document may be reproduced only by permission. Revised July 15, 2010.