Vietnam War Bibliography:

State Department and AID Publications

Department of State Bulletin. This weekly bulletin contains public statements by the Secretary of State and other U.S. government figures, and other documents and policy statements. It is available online through HeinOnline.org if you are browsing through an institution that has paid the subscription fee.

Foreign Relations of the United States. Massive collections of documents, indexed, supposed to be published by the State Department about thirty years after the events.
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David C. Geyer and Douglas E. Selvage, eds., Soviet-American Relations: The Detente Years, 1969-1972. Washington, D.C.: Office of the Historian, U.S. Department of State / GPO, 2007. 1075 pp. Foreword by Henry A. Kissinger. A collection combining American and Soviet documents.

U.S. Department of State Electronic Reading Room: Declassified/Released Document Collections. The Department of State has made available online several very large collections of documents that were not originally open to the public. The ones relevant to the Vietnam War include:

Press Conferences and other public speeches of the secretaries of state. Texts of a number of these have been placed on-line in the Virtual Vietnam Archive of the Vietnam Project at Texas Tech University.

I. Milton Sacks, Political Alignments of Vietnamese Nationalists. Washington, D.C.: Office of Intelligence Research, U.S. Department of State, 1949. vii, 176 pp. A history of Vietnamese political groups, using a rather broad definition of "nationalism." The text has been placed on-line in the Virtual Vietnam Archive of the Vietnam Project at Texas Tech University, in four parts: pp. i-vii, 1-41 (p. 42 missing);   pp. 43-92;   pp. 93-138, and charts; and pp. 139-176 (footnotes, index of names, chronology, bibliography).

Viet Minh Receiving Increased Shipments of Arms from Red China. 1950.
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Indochina: The War in Southeast Asia. Office of Public Affairs, Department of State, October 1951. 11 pp. Far Eastern Series, no. 50. The text has been placed on-line in the Virtual Vietnam Archive of the Vietnam Project at Texas Tech University.

Benjamin Bock and Cora H. Feld, with the assistance of Helene L. De Long, United States Policy and Diplomacy Regarding Vietnam, July 1954-September 1956. Research Project No. 756. Historical Studies Division, Historical Office, Bureau of Public Affairs, Department of State, June 1971. vii, 226 pp. A detailed and heavily documented account, declassified in 1997. The text (missing a few pages) has been placed at a State Department web site, in two parts: Front matter and pp. 1-110 and pp. 112-226.

A Threat to the Peace: North Vietnam's Effort to Conquer South Viet-Nam (released December 8, 1961; often called the first Vietnam White Paper, occasionally the Jorden Report). Department of State Publication 7308. Part I: vi, 53 pp. Part II--The Appendices. iii, 102 pp.
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The text has been placed on-line in the Virtual Vietnam Archive of the Vietnam Project at Texas Tech University, in five parts: Part I: Front matter and pp. 1-23, pp. 24-53.   Part II--The Appendices: Front matter and pp. 1-32, pp. 33-68, pp. 69-102.

Viet-Nam: The Struggle for Freedom. Department of State Publication 7724, Far Eastern Series 127. August 1964. 31 pp. plus considerable unpaginated front matter. Questions and answers about the situation and U.S. policy; interesting for the not particularly veiled threat that there might be additional attacks on North Vietnam, beyond the ones that had just occurred August 5, 1964 (Question #28, p. 25). The text has been placed on-line in the Virtual Vietnam Archive of the Vietnam Project at Texas Tech University.

Aggression from the North: The Record of North Viet-Nam's Campaign to Conquer South Vietnam (generally known as the second Vietnam White Paper). Department of State publication 7839, issued 26 or 27 February 1965, later reprinted as House Document no. 136, 89th Congress, 1st Session. It has been suggested that the centerpiece of the evidence for this white paper (the capture on February 16, 1965 of an infiltration vessel delivering munitions to PLAF forces in South Vietnam) had been faked by the CIA, but these suspicions are unfounded; the capture was genuine.
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The text has been placed on-line in the Virtual Vietnam Archive of the Vietnam Project at Texas Tech University, in two parts: Main Text and Appendices.

Working Paper on the North Vietnamese Role in the War in South Vietnam. Mimeographed, 1968. The main text includes useful tables of things like infiltration from North Vietnam and origins of Communist weapons in South Vietnam by years. The text has been placed on-line in the Virtual Vietnam Archive of the Vietnam Project at Texas Tech University. A preliminary draft has also been placed on-line in two parts: Front matter and pp. I-1 to II-19 and pp. III-1 to F-10. A longer preliminary draft has been placed on-line in four parts: Front matter and part I;   part II and pp. 1-19 of part III;   pp. 20-35 of part III; footnotes; illustrated catalog of Soviet and Chinese weapons types used by Communist forces in Vietnam; documentary attachment;   last two pages of documentary attachment. Much of the importance of this working paper is in the large collection of documents, most of them interrogation reports and English translations of captured Communist documents, attached as an Annex. Part or all of this Annex also has been placed online, in parts: Front matter and some (not all) of the items with numbers 1 to 27 ;   Item 19 (Items 19 and 204 appear to be variant copies of essentially the same document, reporting some pretty aggressive decisions made at a COSVN meeting March 18, 1956. I am not sure this document is authentic.)   Items 28 to 31 (Item 30 is a U.S. Department of State intelligence brief, July 11, 1957, dealing with the status of the Geneva Accords);   Item 34 (letter of March 28, 1960, from the Nam Bo Regional Committee);   Items 35 to 38;   Items 41 to 47;   Items 48 to 51;   Items 52 to 53;   Items 55 to 68;   Items 70 to 83;   Items 84 to 86;   Items 87 to 88;   Items 89 to 94;   Items 95 to 101 (item 98, a report of the interrogation of a private from the 7th Battalion, 18B Regiment, PAVN 325th Division, captured March 1966 in Pleiku Province, is interesting for his summary of bomb damage to land targets in the Pierce Arrow airstrikes of August 5, 1964, indicating more extensive bombing than shows in U.S. records);   Items 102 to 104;   Item 200, a 1954 policy document;   Item 201;   Item 202;   Item 204 (Items 19 and 204 appear to be variant copies of essentially the same document, reporting some pretty aggressive decisions made at a COSVN meeting March 18, 1956. I am not sure this document is authentic.).   Item 205;   Item 206;   Item 207;   Item 208;   Item 209;   Item 210: intelligence summary, "The Nambo (South Vietnam) Regional Committee");   Item 212;   Item 301, the "CRIMP Document", a history of the early stages of the insurgency in South Vietnam, probably written around 1963, captured during Operation CRIMP in 1966;   Item 302, a letter believed to have been written by Le Duan in March 1966;   Item 303, a talk by General Nguyen Van Vinh at the Fourth Congress of COSVN in April 1966.

Surplus Property: Disposal of Excess Military Property in Viet-Nam, Agreement between the United States and Viet-Nam, effected by exchange of notes signed Saigon Nov. 9, 1968.  ii, 5 pp.
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Who's Who in North Vietnam. Washington, D.C.: Office of External Research, U.S. Department of State, 1972. xxiv, 324 p. (Not a lot of words per page, so the amount of information is not as great as the page count would lead one to expect.) The Center for Research Libraries, in Chicago, has this, call number E-4137 (paper) and MF-1892 (negative microfilm).

Viet-nam Information Notes is a series of pamphlets issued by the Office of Media Services, Bureau of Public Affairs, Department of State; these pamphlets were frequently re-issued in revised versions. The series is a subset of a broader series including pamphlets on other parts of Asia. SuDoc numbers are based on the position of an item in the broader series, and on how many times it has been revised. Thus the first example listed below is the fifth revision of the pamphlet that was #1 in Viet-nam Information Notes but #155 in the broader series:

The Agency for International Development (AID)

Agency for International Development Economic Assistance to Vietnam: Fact Sheet. Washington: Agency for International Development Information Staff, May 1966. 9 pp. The text has been placed on-line in the Virtual Vietnam Archive of the Vietnam Project at Texas Tech University.

John D. Donoghue, My Thuan: A Mekong Delta Village in South Vietnam. Saigon: Michigan State University Vietnam Advisory Group, May 1961 (mimeographed). Reprinted (slightly modified) Washington: Agency for International Development, 1963. vi, 65 pp. My Thuan village of Binh Minh district, Vinh Long, was chosen to be studied (visited in April and June, 1960) because it was accessible by road, and was one of the few villages in the district still secure enough to be visited safely. It was an overwhelmingly Hoa Hao area, but most administrators were Catholic and didn't trust the Hoa Hao. The text has been placed on-line in the Virtual Vietnam Archive of the Vietnam Project at Texas Tech University, in two parts: front matter and pp. 1-43, and pp. 45-65.

Robert W. Komer, The Other War in Vietnam: A Progress Report. Washington: Agency for International Development, 1966. 54 pp. The text has been placed on-line in the Virtual Vietnam Archive of the Vietnam Project at Texas Tech University.

John D. Montgomery, ed., Cases in Vietnamese Administration. Washington: Agency for International Development, (1962?). xvi, 216 pp. An AID reprint of material written in 1959, in connection with a seminar at the National Institute of Administration in Saigon. The text has been placed on-line in the Virtual Vietnam Archive of the Vietnam Project at Texas Tech University, in five parts: pp. i-xvi, 1-39;   pp. 40-91;   pp. 92-146;   pp. 147-198; and pp. 199-216.

Public Administration Bulletin, later Public Administration Bulletin Vietnam. Saigon: Office of Public Administration [from December 1968 onward, the Public Administration Division], Agency for International Development. This usually appeared monthly. The texts of many issues have been placed on-line in the Virtual Vietnam Archive of the Vietnam Project at Texas Tech University. For example:

Robert H. Stroup, Rural Income and Expenditure Sample Survey of Vietnam, Initial Report, July 1967 (AID/fe-257). 396 pp.
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Truong Ngoc Giau and Lloyd W. Woodruff, The Delta Village of My Thuan: Some Administrative and Financial Aspects. Washington: Agency for International Development, 1963. vi, 94 pp. Originally written under the auspices of the Michigan State University Vietnam Advisory Group. My Thuan village of Binh Minh district, Vinh Long (see also under Donohue, above, for another study of this village). The text has been placed on-line in the Virtual Vietnam Archive of the Vietnam Project at Texas Tech University, in two parts: front matter and pp. 1-44, and pp. 45-94.

United States Economic Assistance to South Viet Nam, 1954-1975: An Overview. Washington: Agency for International Development, October 14, 1975. A lot of useful data; not just expenditures, but organizational charts, numbers of personnel employed, etc. The full text has been placed on-line in the Virtual Vietnam Archive of the Vietnam Project at Texas Tech University: part one and part two.

United States Operations Mission to Vietnam, Cumulative Activity Report (on Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam) through June 30, 1954. (Saigon?): (1954?). 76 pp. The text has been placed on-line in the Virtual Vietnam Archive of the Vietnam Project at Texas Tech University, in seven parts: Front matter and pp. 1-10   pp. 11-23   pp. 24-35   pp. 36-46   pp. 47-57   pp. 58-70   pp. 71-76, and maps showing province boundries in South Vietnam, Cambodia, and Tonkin as of 1954.

Vietnam Meets Its Challenge: USOM Annual Report for Fiscal Year 1961. November 20, 1961. 79 pp. The text has been placed on-line in the Virtual Vietnam Archive of the Vietnam Project at Texas Tech University, in three parts: Front matter and pp. 1-31   pp. 32-60   pp. 61-79 ("Public Safety" is pp. 61-63).

United States Operations Mission, Operational Report, 1963-1964. (Saigon?): Agency for International Development, (1964?). 94 pp. Foreword by James S. Killen. The text has been placed on-line in the Virtual Vietnam Archive of the Vietnam Project at Texas Tech University, in four parts: Front matter and pp. 1-19   pp. 20-45,   pp. 46-72,   pp. 73-94,  

Vietnam Economic Data. Washington: Agency for International Development, September 1972. 24 pp. A lot of data for so few pages, in statistical tables. The text has been placed on-line in the Virtual Vietnam Archive of the Vietnam Project at Texas Tech University.

Lloyd W. Woodruff, Local Administration in Viet-Nam: Its Future Development. Saigon: Michigan State University Advisory Group [and] National Institute of Administration, Republic of Viet-Nam, June 1961. Report No. 3, Local Administration Series. v, 416 pp. Much more of this deals with present and past conditions than the title would suggest. Includes some documents, essays by persons other than Woodruff, and comparisons with other Third World countries. The full text has been placed on-line in the Virtual Vietnam Archive of the Vietnam Project at Texas Tech University, in multiple parts, from front matter and pp. 1-45 to pp. 395-416. To access the parts between the first and last, substitute b, c, d, e, f, g, or h for the a near the end of the URL for the first part.

Lloyd W. Woodruff, assisted by Nguyen Ngoc Yen, Local Administration in Vietnam: The Number of Local Units. Washington: Agency for International Development, 1963. viii, 45 pp. Describes the administrative structure as of October 1959. The text has been placed on-line in the Virtual Vietnam Archive of the Vietnam Project at Texas Tech University.

 

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Copyright © 1996, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, Edwin E. Moise. This document may be reproduced only by permission. Revised September 23, 2008.