[News report 1]

Speaker 1: Good evening. The Senate today voted overwhelmingly to repeal the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, the legislative act which President Johnson used to justify the step up of the war in Vietnam. Bruce Morton reports.

Bruce Morton: The vote was historic, confusing, and lopsided — 81-10. Confusing because pro- administration hardliners like [Senator] John Tower voted for repeal. Repeal’s leading advocate, [Senator] J. William Fulbright, voted against it. Fulbright voted no because he objected to the procedure, a bill from his committee swiped by Republican [Senator] Robert Dole and offered as an amendment to something else. “Stealing a man's bill,” Fulbright said, “is a little like stealing his cow.” Dole answered that this was National Dairy Month, and nobody would want to steal a cow then. Like everything else in this Indochina debate, senators disagree over what repeal meant.

Bob Dole: I think the symbolism was that there has been a great erosion, of course, in the Senate over the past six years with reference to support of the Vietnam War. Plus, there is a recognition, I think, particularly on the Republican side — and many on the Democrat side — that President Nixon is in a period of de-escalation. Not a period of escalation, and therefore, the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which was an instrument of escalation, is no longer necessary. It was referred to as the ‘Get In Resolution’ — we're now getting out.

William Fulbright: I think it removes any constitutional authority for the continuation of the war. It does not remove the president's authority and his legitimate, constitutional authority to protect the troops while they’re there and bring them home safe and soundly. It would certainly remove any authority, I think, to expand the war into China, into Thailand or elsewhere — or even back into Cambodia, assuming he gets out of there.

Morton: One of two men who voted ‘no’ back in August 1964, was then-Senator Ernest Gruening of Alaska. Today, he talked with Tony Sargent.

Ernest Gruening: And I hope that the obvious deduction from this action is that we should get out. And I hope that the Senate will follow this up by taking the only possible action it can take to validate its rejection, or its repeal, of the Tonkin Gulf Amendment — by refusing henceforth to vote against the military appropriations, which Senator [Wayne] Morse and I did consistently throughout the time we were in the Senate.

Morton: In August 1964, the U.S. had 18,000 men in Vietnam. After the resolution passed, that total soared to well over half a million. More than 400,000 are still there. Today's vote is another symbol of the Senate’s desire to see more men come home more quickly, and to share in the decisions that will make that happen. Bruce Morton, CBS News, Capitol Hill.

[News report 2]

Speaker 2: In 1964, before stepping up the war in Vietnam, President Johnson asked Congress for a resolution of support. It was called the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. It passed by an overwhelming vote of 502-2, but as the war became unpopular, doves in the Senate began to claim they had been hoodwinked into voting as they did. Nevertheless, the resolution was never repealed. Today, Lyndon Johnson is long since gone from the Capitol, and there is a new president in the White House who says he doesn't need the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, so this afternoon the Senate finally moved to take it off the books. Here is a report from ABC Capitol Hill correspondent Bob Clark.

Bob Clark: For Senator Fulbright and other longtime war critics, it was sort of like having the winning touchdown in the big game scored by an imposter in a borrowed uniform. Republican Senator Dole with the backing, if not the connivance of the White House, had tacked his surprise amendment to repeal the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution on to the Military Sales Bill. The Dole Amendment passed 81-10 with Fulbright voting ‘no,’ despite his long efforts to repeal the resolution he feels he was tricked into selling [to] the Senate back in 1964. Dole and Fulbright have differing views on what it all means.

Dole: Let me say very honestly, we are members of the minority — Republicans and Appalachians are tossed around as though, for some reason, those who support Nixon are for war, and the others are anti-war. Well this isn't true, and this is one way to demonstrate it. Plus, there's no doubt about it, that President Nixon hasn't relied on the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. I don't believe he's made any statement relying on that for authority for de-escalating the war in South Vietnam.

Fulbright: I think it undermines the integrity of the Senate. It will jeopardize its effectiveness if we depart from the usual rules and allow any member to take any other member’s motion or resolution and propose it. I said on the floor that a man who, like, such as [Senator George] McGovern and [Senator Mark] Hatfield who had put a lot of time and effort upon their resolution — and they've talked about it, it has become identified with their efforts — to steal that is not unlike stealing a man's cow or his pocketbook.

Clark: Some Republican senators are plotting another move to bring a quick vote on a McGovern-Hatfield Amendment to end the Vietnam War, but their strategy on this is to defeat the resolution before it gains wider support. Bob Clark, ABC News, Capitol Hill.

[News report 3]

Speaker 3: The Senate voted 81-10 today to repeal the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which President Lyndon Johnson used to enter the Vietnam War on a large scale. The resolution was passed late in 1964 after alleged enemy attacks on two American destroyers in the South China Sea. The resolution authorized the president to take all necessary steps to stop communist aggression in Southeast Asia.

Speaker 4: Senator Robert Dole, who is a Republican from Kansas, introduced the repealer as an amendment to the Military Sales Bill. He did it with White House blessing. The Nixon Administration says it no longer needs the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in its process of disengaging from South Vietnam. Dole and some other senators said that the Tonkin Resolution never meant anything anyway — that the president already had other constitutional authority, for instance, as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces to intervene in South Vietnam. But Senator J. William Fulbright disagreed. He said the repeal of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution removes any constitutional authority to continue the war, and he said he was concerned about what seemed to be a growing theory — very radical and unprecedented, he called it — that the president has almost unlimited war-making powers. Senator Jacob Javits said that the basic issue was the division of war-making powers between the president and Congress. He said that the Senate could not deal with that issue unless it first repealed the Tonkin Resolution, which he said blocked setting a timetable to end the war. Senator Fulbright was miffed that the Dole Amendment had been introduced while a repealer resolution, which was already passed by Fulbright’s committee, awaited Senate action. Dole admits he made the move to soften the hawkish image of the Republican Party, so Fulbright, who long supported repeal, voted against it today. The final vote was 81-10. The repeal amendment will eventually go to a Senate-House conference where House approval will be needed before it can be sent to the president.

[News report 4]

Charles Quinn: Despite all of the arguments over whether the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was really necessary, it did become, as Senator [John C.] Stennis said today, a major part of American foreign policy. Six years ago the Senate voted overwhelmingly to give its authority to expand the war in South Vietnam, and now, today, six years later, it voted almost overwhelmingly to take that authority away. Charles Quinn, NBC News at the Capitol.