This is a digitized version of an article from The Times’s print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. In December 1963, Johnson sent McNamara on another "fact-finding mission" to South Vietnam to assess General Minh's performance. [92] McNamara concluded: "No amount of bombing can end the war". [citation needed], However, many analysts believe that even though the TFX project itself was a failure, McNamara was ahead of his time as the trend in fighter design has continued toward consolidation — the F-16 Falcon and F/A-18 Hornet emerged as multi-role fighters, and most modern designs combine many of the roles the TFX would have had. [71] Khánh did not keep his promise as wealthy and middle class South Vietnamese families objected to having their sons conscripted, and as a result the burden of conscription called by Khánh's national service law fell only on sons of poor families, provoking much resentment. [78] Captain John J. Herrick of the Maddox reported that the "torpedo boats" were almost certainly just radar "blips" caused by the "freak weather effects" of the storm and the reports of an attack on his ship were due to an "overeager" radar operator who mistook the motors of the ship for the rush of torpedoes. In August 1940 he returned to Harvard to teach accounting in the business school and became the highest paid and youngest assistant professor at that time. son of Mr. and Mrs. Norman Pastor of Florham Park, N.J. Justice of the Peace John Alley performed the ceremony on the South Beach cliffs. McNamara declined to press charges. [34], McNamara's staff stressed systems analysis as an aid in decision making on weapon development and many other budget issues. [71] To declare war on North Vietnam would lead to irresistible political pressure at home to invade North Vietnam. [91] McNamara's hawkish stance on Vietnam was well known in Washington and many in the press often referred to the war as "McNamara's war" as he was the one in the cabinet always pressing for greater American involvement. In the Errol Morris documentary, McNamara reports that both he and his wife were stricken with polio shortly after the end of World War II. [128] By April 1969, The Report of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Vietnam Task Force as the Pentagon Papers were officially titled, was finished, but widely ignored within the government. [74] The advice that McNamara and other American officials gave to the South Vietnamese to make reforms to crack down on corruption and make the government more effective was always ignored as by this point the South Vietnamese government knew very well that the Americans, having repeatedly promised in public that they would never permit the "loss" of South Vietnam, were now prisoners of their own rhetoric. [19], According to Special Counsel Ted Sorensen, Kennedy regarded McNamara as the "star of his team, calling upon him for advice on a wide range of issues beyond national security, including business and economic matters. [124], In a memo of 19 May 1967, McNamara stated the military side of the war was going well with the Americans killing thousands of the enemy every month, but the political side was not as South Vietnam remained as dysfunctional as ever as he wrote: "Corruption is widespread. The Navy version was drastically overweight and difficult to land, and eventually canceled after a Grumman study showed it was incapable of matching the abilities of the newly revealed Soviet MiG-23 and MiG-25 aircraft. It gave Johnson virtually unfettered authority to expand retaliation for a relatively minor naval incident into a major land war involving 500,000 American soldiers. [31] Both Admiral Anderson and General LeMay had favored invading Cuba, welcomed the prospect of a war with Soviet Union under the grounds that a war with the Soviet Union was inevitable, and whose attitudes towards Kennedy and McNamara had verged on insubordination. The second daughter is Margaret Elizabeth Pastor. On November 9, 1960, McNamara became the first president of Ford Motor Company from outside the Ford family. [91] Both Bundy and McNamara stated that they favored the latter, arguing that the commitment of U.S troops to fight in South Vietnam and a strategic bombing campaign against North Vietnam were now required. [60] With the CIA and the ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. urging support for a coup while the Pentagon was opposed, Kennedy vacillated and finally being unable to make up his mind, gave the power of decision to Lodge. [69] The "greatest weakness" accordingly to McNamara was the "uncertain viability" of Khánh's government, which might be overthrown at any moment as the ARVN was ridden with factionalism and intrigue. Planning, Programming and Budgeting System, Annual Meeting of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank Group, The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, A Simple Desultory Philippic (or How I Was Robert McNamara'd into Submission), List of California Institute of Technology trustees, List of Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients, List of United States political appointments that crossed party lines, In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam, "Robert S. McNamara - John F. Kennedy / Lyndon Johnson Administration", "Robert S. McNamara dies at 93; architect of the Vietnam War", "Robert S. McNamara, Architect of a Futile War, Dies at 93", Vietnam-era U.S. Secretary of Defence Robert McNamara dead: report, Former US defense secretary McNamara dies, "In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam (interview)", "Robert McNamara (California at Berkeley 1937) Passes Ad Astra", "Robert S. McNamara > Historical Office > Article View", "The Quest for Commonality: A Comparison of the TFX and JSF Programs", "Robert S. McNamara and the Real Tonkin Gulf Deception", This day in history-Tonkin Gulf resolution is passed, "The Secretary of the Army's Senior Review Panel on Sexual Harassment", "Robert S. McNamara, Architect of a Futile War, Dies at 93 - Obituary (Obit) - NYTimes.com", "How did we forget about mutually assured destruction? In 1968, he resigned as Secretary of Defense to become President of the World Bank. sfn error: no target: CITEREFLanguth2000 (, sfn error: no target: CITEREFShafer1988 (, MacKenzie, Angus, Secrets: The particular structure of this personal account is accomplished with the characteristics of an intimate dialog. Conversely, his actions in mandating a premature across-the-board adoption of the untested M16 rifle proved catastrophic when the weapons began to fail in combat, though later congressional investigations revealed the causes of these failures as negligence and borderline sabotage on behalf of the Army ordnance corps' officers. Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems; we are continuing to work to improve these archived versions. He left active duty in 1946 with the rank of lieutenant colonel and with a Legion of Merit. In the Errol Morris documentary, McNamara reports that both he and his wife were stricken with polio shortly after the end of World War II. [125] McNamara wrote: "The picture of the world's greatest superpower killing or seriously injuring 1,000 noncombatants a week, while trying to pound a tiny backward nation into submission on an issue whose merits are hotly disputed, is not a pretty one". McNamara married Margaret Craig, his teenage sweetheart, on August 13, 1940. Other factors were the increasing intensity of the anti-war movement in the U.S., the approaching presidential campaign in which Johnson was expected to seek re-election, and McNamara's support—over the objections of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, of construction along the 17th parallel separating South and North Vietnam of a line of fortifications running from the coast of Vietnam into Laos. McNamara took other steps to increase U.S. deterrence posture and military capabilities. [16] McNamara told Kennedy that he didn't know anything about government, to which Kennedy replied: "We can learn our jobs together. After retiring, he served as a trustee of several organizations, including the California Institute of Technology and the Brookings Institution. Shapley concluded her book with these words: "For better and worse McNamara shaped much in today's world – and imprisoned himself. [80] On 5 August 1964, McNamara appeared before Congress to present proof of what he claimed was an attack on the Navy's warships in international waters of the Gulf of Tonkin and stated it was imperative that Congress pass the resolution as quickly as possible. Then the forces leveled off at around 2,700,000 until the Vietnam military buildup began in 1965, reaching a peak of nearly 3,550,000 by mid-1968, just after McNamara left office. [162] For a moment, McNamara feared he would be fired from the World Bank. [77] On 4 August 1964, the Maddox and another destroyer, the USS Turner Joy, initially claimed to have been attacked by the North Vietnamese torpedo boats in international waters on a stormy night, but shortly afterward reported there was probably no attack. As World Bank President, he declared at the 1968 Annual Meeting of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank Group that countries permitting birth control practices would get preferential access to resources. Daughter Kathleen McNamara Spears is a forester with the World Bank. The bride, an alumna of Stanford University, received a master's degree in … [5][6][7] His father's family was Irish and, in about 1850, following the Great Irish Famine, had emigrated to the U.S., first to Massachusetts and later to California. U.S. arms, he maintained, must constantly be under civilian command and control, and the nation's defense posture had to be "designed to reduce the danger of irrational or unpremeditated general war." In September 2004, McNamara wed Diana Masieri Byfield, an Italian-born widow who had lived in the United States for more than 40 years. In 1993, Washington journalist Deborah Shapley published a 615-page biography of Robert McNamara titled Promise and Power: The Life and Times of Robert McNamara. ", "Pages from World Bank History - Bank Pays Tribute to Robert McNamara", "Control of onchocerciasis—the next generation", "The Book That Incited a Worldwide Fear of Overpopulation", "Neo-Malthusianism and Coercive Population Control in China and India: Overpopulation Concerns Often Result in Coercion", "Visited by a Host of Administrations Past, Bush Hears Some Chastening Words", "2001 Award of Distinction Recipients — College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences", Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program, "Obituaries; Gladys R. Tartiere, Philanthropist, Dies", "Ex-Defense secretary Robert McNamara dies at 93", "Robert S. McNamara, Former Defense Secretary, Dies at 93", Robert McNamara on the JFK and LBJ White House Tapes, Federal Bureau of Investigation Records: The Vault - Robert McNamara, Biography of Robert Strange McNamara (website), Historical Office US Department of Defense, Annotated bibliography for Robert McNamara from the Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues, Oral History Interviews with Robert McNamara, from the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library, Conversations with History: Robert S. McNamara, from the University of California Television (UCTV), International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes, Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, 1947–1948 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine, North Yemen-South Yemen Border conflict of 1972, Struggle against political abuse of psychiatry in the Soviet Union, Sovereignty of Puerto Rico during the Cold War, Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War, List of Eastern Bloc agents in the United States, American espionage in the Soviet Union and Russian Federation, Joint Intelligence Operations Center Europe Analytic Center, Joint Functional Component Command for Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance, Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System, Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, Arrest and assassination of Ngo Dinh Diem, United States Council for Automotive Research, Norman's Triumph: the Transcendent Language of Self-Immolation, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Robert_McNamara&oldid=987097213, American military personnel of World War II.

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