Robert McNamara
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Robert Strange McNamara (Template:IPAc-en; June 9, 1916 – July 6, 2009) was an American businessman and government official who served as the eighth United States secretary of defense from 1961 to 1968 under Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson at the height of the Cold War. He remains the longest-serving secretary of defense, having remained in office over seven years. He played a major role in promoting the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War.Template:Sfn McNamara was responsible for the institution of systems analysis in public policy, which developed into the discipline known today as policy analysis.<ref name="Historical Office Robert S. McNamara"/>Template:Sfn
McNamara graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, and Harvard Business School.<ref name=CNN-obit>Template:Cite news</ref> He served in the United States Army Air Forces during World War II. After World War II, Henry Ford II hired McNamara and a group of other Army Air Force veterans to work for the Ford Motor Company, reforming Ford with modern planning, organization, and management control systems. After briefly serving as Ford's president, McNamara accepted an appointment as secretary of defense in the Kennedy administration.
McNamara became a close adviser to Kennedy and advocated the use of a blockade during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Kennedy and McNamara instituted a Cold War defense strategy of flexible response, which anticipated the need for military responses short of massive retaliation. During the Kennedy administration, McNamara presided over a build-up of U.S. soldiers in South Vietnam. After the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident, the number of U.S. soldiers in Vietnam escalated dramatically. McNamara and other U.S. policymakers feared that the fall of South Vietnam to a Communist regime would lead to the fall of other governments in the region.
McNamara grew increasingly skeptical of the efficacy of committing U.S. troops to South Vietnam. In 1968, he resigned as secretary of defense to become president of the World Bank. He served as its president until 1981, shifting the focus of the World Bank from infrastructure and industrialization towards poverty reduction. After retiring, he served as a trustee of several organizations, including the California Institute of Technology and the Brookings Institution. In later writings and interviews, including his memoir, McNamara expressed regret for some of the decisions he made during the Vietnam War.Template:Sfn
Early life and career
Robert McNamara was born in San Francisco, California, the son of Clara Nell McNamara (née Strange) and Robert James McNamara. His father was sales manager of a wholesale shoe company,Template:Sfn whose 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.<ref name="bnotes">Template:Cite interview</ref>
McNamara graduated from Piedmont High School in Piedmont, California in 1933, where he was president of the Rigma Lions boys club<ref>1933 Piedmont High Clan-O-Log</ref> and earned the rank of Eagle Scout. According to McNamara, scouting helped him set his values and was where he first developed an interest in public service.<ref name="bnotes"/>
McNamara attended the University of California, Berkeley and graduated in 1937 with a B.A. in economics with minors in mathematics and philosophy. He was a member of the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> was elected to Phi Beta Kappa in his sophomore year, and earned a varsity letter in crew. McNamara was an ROTC Cadet in the Golden Bear Battalion at U.C. Berkeley.<ref name=BerkeleyROTC>Template:Cite web</ref> McNamara was also a member of the UC Berkeley's Order of the Golden Bear, a fellowship of students and leading faculty members formed to promote leadership within the student body.Template:Sfn
In 1937, McNamara took a summer job as a sailor on the SS President Hoover. He was aboard when the Chinese Air Force bombed the ship near Shanghai Harbor. He was not injured.Template:Sfn<ref group=Note>McNamara's account of his presence abroad the SS President Hoover during the air bombardment is found in the Additional Scenes on The Fog of War DVD.</ref>
McNamara then attended Harvard Business School, where he earned a M.B.A. in 1939. Immediately thereafter, McNamara worked for a year at Price Waterhouse, a San Francisco accounting firm. He returned to Harvard in August 1940 to teach accounting in the Business School and became the institution's highest-paid and youngest assistant professor at that time.Template:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfn
World War II
Leading into World War II, McNamara had two deferments from the draft — a family deferment due to having a minor child and an educational deferment, as he was teaching in an Officer Candidate School at Harvard.<ref name="bnotes"/><ref group=Note>During World War II, with the need for officers exceeding the capacity of the standard officer candidate training, Harvard hosted OCS programs to rapidly train new officers.</ref><ref name=Harvard-OCS>Template:Cite web</ref>
Following his involvement in a Harvard program to teach analytical approaches used in business to officers of the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF), McNamara relinquished his deferment and entered the USAAF as a captain in early 1943,<ref name="Historical Office Robert S. McNamara"/> serving most of World War II with its Office of Statistical Control.Template:Sfn One of his major responsibilities was the analysis of U.S. bombers' efficiency and effectiveness by establishing a statistical control unit under the command of Curtis LeMay, first in the Eighth Air Force in Europe and then the Twentieth Air Force in India, China, and the Mariana Islands.Template:Sfn McNamara was able to show that the nearly 20% abort rate of Eighth Air Force bombers was largely due to fear, which prompted LeMay to personally lead missions (to McNamara's admiration) and threaten courts martial. McNamara devised schedules for the XX Bomber Command B-29s doubling as transports for carrying fuel and cargo over the Hump, and his analysis of the jet stream on XXI Bomber Command operations influenced LeMay's decision to begin low-altitude firebombing raids against Japan. During the war McNamara developed a negative view of the majority of officers (LeMay was an exception) because they largely refused to cooperate with his analytical work.<ref group=Note>Even General Jimmy Doolittle, a well-known intellectual, refused to buy into McNamara's analytical approach to warfare.</ref>Template:Sfn He left active duty in 1946 with the rank of lieutenant colonel<ref name="Historical Office Robert S. McNamara"/> and with a Legion of Merit.<ref name=OxfordRef>Template:Cite web</ref>
Ford Motor Company
Template:See also In 1946, Tex Thornton, a colonel under whom McNamara had served, put together a group of former officers from the Office of Statistical Control to go into business together. Thornton had seen an article in Life magazine portraying the Ford Motor Company as being in dire need of reform. Henry Ford II, himself a World War II veteran from the Navy, hired the entire group of ten, including McNamara.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn
They helped the money-losing company reform its chaotic administration through modern planning, organization, and management control systems. Because of their youth, combined with asking many questions, Ford employees initially and disparagingly referred to them as the "Quiz Kids". The Quiz Kids rebranded themselves as the "Whiz Kids".Template:Sfn
Starting as manager of planning and financial analysis, McNamara advanced rapidly through a series of top-level management positions. McNamara had Ford adopt computers to construct models to find the most efficient, rational means of production, which led to much rationalization.Template:Sfn McNamara's style of "scientific management" with his use of spreadsheets featuring graphs showing trends in the auto industry were regarded as extremely innovative in the 1950s and were much copied by other executives in the following decades.Template:Sfn In his 1995 memoirs, McNamara wrote: "I had spent fifteen years as a manager [at Ford] identifying problems and forcing organizations—often against their will—to think deeply and realistically about alternative courses of action and their consequences".Template:Sfn He was a force behind the Ford Falcon sedan, introduced in the fall of 1959—a small, simple and inexpensive-to-produce counter to the large, expensive vehicles prominent in the late 1950s. McNamara placed a high emphasis on safety: the 1956 Lifeguard options package available on full-size Fords introduced the seat belt (a novelty at the time), padded visor, and dished steering wheel, which helped to prevent the driver from being impaled on the steering column during a collision.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn
In 1958, as VP of Operations, McNamara recommended discontinuing the unprofitable Lincoln line.<ref name=1961Lincoln>Template:Cite web</ref> After the Lincoln line's very large 1958, 1959, and 1960 models proved unpopular, McNamara pushed for smaller versions, such as the 1961 Lincoln Continental.<ref name=Lincoln1961>Template:Cite web</ref> This resulted in rising sales.<ref name=1961Lincoln/>
On November 9, 1960, McNamara became the first president of the Ford Motor Company from outside the Ford family since John S. Gray in 1906.<ref name="ford-chronology">Template:Cite web</ref>
Secretary of Defense
Template:Main After his election in 1960, President-elect John F. Kennedy offered McNamara the chance to be either Secretary of Defense or Secretary of the Treasury; McNamara came back a week later, accepting the post of Secretary of Defense. McNamara's salary as the CEO of Ford was $3 million per year while by contrast the position of the Defense Secretary paid only $25,000 per year.Template:Sfn
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."Template:Sfn McNamara became one of the few members of the Kennedy Administration to socialize with Kennedy,Template:Sfn and he became close to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy,<ref name=RFK-Remembered>Template:Cite web</ref> eventually serving as a pallbearer at the younger Kennedy's funeral in 1968.<ref name=RFK-ANC>Template:Cite web</ref>Template:Sfn
Aside from the Cuban Missile Crisis and the war in Indochina (Laos and Vietnam), other conflicts that involved the U.S. Defense Department under Robert McNamara included support for the Cuban Bay of Pigs Invasion, confrontations at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba, reconnaissance flights around the periphery of the Soviet Union and over China, the Congo Crisis, the Berlin Crisis of 1961, riots in the Panama Canal Zone, intervention in the Dominican Civil War, the anti-communist purge in Indonesia, the beginning of the Korean DMZ Conflict, and the USS Liberty incident. All but the Liberty incident were seen as part of the Cold War or potentially so.
When President Kennedy received confirmation of the placement of offensive Soviet missiles in Cuba, he immediately set up the 'Executive Committee', referred to as 'ExComm'. This committee included Robert McNamara, and was instructed by Kennedy to come up with a response to the Soviet threat unanimously without him present.
In May 1962, McNamara paid his first visit to South Vietnam, where he told the press "every quantitative measurement...shows that we are winning the war". McNamara's "quantitative" style based upon much number-crunching by computers about trends in Vietnam missed the human dimension. Aspects of the war such as popular views and attitudes in South Vietnam, and South Vietnamese president Ngô Đình Diệm's "divide and rule" strategy of having multiple government departments compete against one another as a way of staying in power were missed by McNamara's "quantitative" approach as there was no way that computers could calculate these aspects of the war.Template:Sfn
After the Gulf of Tonkin incident, 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 off the Gulf of Tonkin and stated it was imperative that Congress pass the resolution as quickly as possible.Template:Sfn Records from the Lyndon Johnson Library show McNamara may have misled Johnson on the purported attack on the Maddox by allegedly withholding recommendations from U.S. Pacific Commanders against executing airstrikes.Template:Sfn
In November 1965, McNamara, who had been a supporter of the war, first started to have doubts about the war, saying at a press conference that "it will be a long war", which completely contradicted his previous optimistic statements that the war would be brought to a close soon.Template:Sfn
In October 1966, McNamara returned from yet another visit to South Vietnam, full of confidence in public and doubt in private. McNamara told the media that "process has exceeded our expectations" while telling the president he saw "no reasonable way to bring the war to an end soon". Though McNamara reported to Johnson that American forces were inflicting heavy losses on the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong, he added that they could "more than replace" their losses and that "full security exists nowhere" in South Vietnam, even in areas supposedly "pacified" by the Americans.Template:Sfn
By 1967, McNamara was suffering visibly from the nervous strain as he went days without shaving and he suffered spasms where his jaw would quiver uncontrollably for hours.Template:Sfn McNamara would later deny that he was ever at risk of a breakdown.Template:Sfn
McNamara commissioned the Vietnam Study Task Force on 17 June 1967.Template:Sfn By January 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.<ref name="National Archives 2011">Template:Cite web</ref>Template:Sfn
McNamara left office on 29 February 1968; for his efforts, the President awarded him both the Medal of FreedomTemplate:Sfn and the Distinguished Service Medal.<ref name=HallofValor>Template:Cite web</ref>
World Bank president

Robert McNamara served as head of the World Bank from April 1968 to June 1981, when he turned 65.<ref name=WBtribute>Template:Cite web</ref> A safe was installed in McNamara's office at the World Bank to house his papers relating to his time as Defense Secretary, which was a normal courtesy extended to former Defense Secretaries who might face controversy over their actions and wish to defend themselves by quoting from the documentary record.Template:Sfn When the Pentagon Papers were finished in April 1969, and a copy of the Papers were brought into McNamara's office, he became angry and said: "I don't want to see it! Take it back!"Template:Sfn By 1969, McNamara wanted to forget the Vietnam war and did not want any reminders of his former job.Template:Sfn
Tenure
In his 13 years at the Bank, he introduced key changes, most notably, shifting the Bank's economic development policies toward targeted poverty reduction. Prior to his tenure at the World Bank, poverty did not receive substantial attention as part of international and national economic development; the focus of development had been on industrialization and infrastructure. Poverty also came to be redefined as a condition faced by people rather than countries. According to Martha Finnemore, the World Bank under McNamara's tenure "sold" states poverty reduction "through a mixture of persuasion and coercion."Template:Sfn McNamara negotiated, with the conflicting countries represented on the Board, a growth in funds to channel credits for development, in the form of health, food, and education projects. He also instituted new methods of evaluating the effectiveness of funded projects. One notable project started under McNamara's leadership was the effort to the creation of the Onchocerciasis Control Program to eradicate river blindness by an alliance of the World Bank, WHO, UNDP and FAO.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref name="WBtribute" />Template:Sfn
The World Bank currently has a scholarship program under his name.<ref name=WBscholarship>Template:Cite web</ref>
Controversies
Robert Kennedy endorsement
In March 1968, McNamara's friend Senator Robert Kennedy entered the Democratic primaries with aim of challenging Johnson. Kennedy asked McNamara to tape a statement praising his leadership during the Cuban Missile Crisis with the understanding that the statement was meant for a TV ad.Template:Sfn McNamara praised Kennedy's "shrewd diplomacy", saying he had "remained calm and cool, firm, but restrained, never nettled and never rattled". Though this was a violation of World Bank rules, McNamara felt guilty over refusing Kennedy's requests to resign and decline the World Bank presidency. He was attacked for the tape with the New York Times in an editorial lambasting him for his "poor judgement and poorer taste". For a moment, McNamara feared he would be fired from the World Bank.Template:Sfn
1973 Chilean coup
Template:Main In 1972, McNamara visited Santiago to meet President Salvador Allende to discuss the latter's policy of nationalization, especially of the copper mining companies.Template:Sfn McNamara's son, Craig McNamara was living in Chile at the time, but the two did not meet owing to the rift over the Vietnam war.Template:Sfn McNamara fils stated in 1984: "I think my father truly respected Allende-his compassion, his humility. But he disapproved of the nationalizations".Template:Sfn The meeting with Allende concluded with McNamara ending all World Bank loans to Chile.Template:Sfn On 11 September 1973, Allende was overthrown in a coup d'état led by General Augusto Pinochet. In 1974, McNamara visited Santiago to meet Pinochet and agreed to the World Bank resuming loans to Chile.Template:Sfn Craig McNamara, who was visiting the United States at the time of the coup and chose not to return to Chile was outraged by the decision to resume the loans, telling his father in a phone call: "You can't do this-you always say the World Bank is not a political institution, but financing Pinochet clearly would be".Template:Sfn McNamara pere flatly stated in reply: "It's too late. I've already made my decision".Template:Sfn McNamara fils felt that his father's claim that he had to cease loans to Chile because the Allende government's nationalization policy was an "economic" matter that fell within the purview of the World Bank, but human rights abuses under Pinochet were a "political" matter that was outside of the World Bank's purview was disingenuous and dishonest. Craig McNamara stated: "I was really upset by that. That was hard to mend".Template:Sfn
Church committee
In 1975 McNamara was called to give testimony before the United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities chaired by Senator Frank Church. Retired General Edward Lansdale and others had already given testimony regarding Operation Mongoose, a program created by President Kennedy to assassinate leading Cubans including Fidel Castro. McNamara blasted Lansdale's released testimony “for what I consider loose and irresponsible and at times contradictory testimony in the press...I am damn annoyed at the damage he has done to dead people [i.e., the Kennedys]” despite his knowledge that Lansdale's testimony was substantially true.<ref group=Note>Lansdale in his Church committee testimony had hedged the Kennedys' involvement by stating he never received a "direct order" from them to assist Operation Mongoose; McNamara used this hedge against Lansdale even though both men were trying to protect the Kennedys' reputations.</ref>Template:Sfn
Forced sterilization
Template:Further 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. During the 1975-1977 emergency in India, McNamara remarked "At long last, India is moving to effectively address its population problem," regarding the forced sterilization.Template:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfn Many deaths occurred as a result of both the male and the female sterilization programs, due to poor sanitation and quality standards in the Indian sterilization camps.Template:Sfn
Post-World Bank activities
From 1981 to 1984, McNamara served on the board of trustees at American University in Washington, D.C.<ref>American University website Template:Webarchive</ref>
He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1981.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
In 1982, McNamara joined several other former national security officials in urging that the United States pledge to not use nuclear weapons first in Europe in the event of hostilities; subsequently he proposed the elimination of nuclear weapons as an element of NATO's defense posture.Template:Citation needed
McNamara maintained his involvement in politics in his later years, delivering statements critical of the Bush administration's 2003 invasion of Iraq.Template:Sfn On 5 January 2006, McNamara and most living former Secretaries of Defense and Secretaries of State met briefly at the White House with President Bush to discuss the war.Template:Sfn
Memoir
Template:External media McNamara's memoir, In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam, published in 1995, presented an account and analysis of the Vietnam War from his point of view.Template:Sfn According to his lengthy New York Times obituary, "[h]e concluded well before leaving the Pentagon that the war was futile, but he did not share that insight with the public until late in life. In 1995, he took a stand against his own conduct of the war, confessing in a memoir that it was 'wrong, terribly wrong'." In return, he faced a "firestorm of scorn" at that time.Template:Sfn
1995 Vietnam visit
In November 1995, McNamara returned to Vietnam, this time visiting Hanoi.Template:Sfn Despite his role as one of the architects of Operation Rolling Thunder, McNamara met with a surprisingly warm reception, even from those who survived the bombing raids, and was often asked to autograph pirate editions of In Retrospect which had been illegally translated and published in Vietnam.Template:Sfn During his visit, McNamara met his opposite number during the war, General Võ Nguyên Giáp who served as North Vietnam's Defense Minister.Template:Sfn During his conversation, McNamara brought up the Gulf of Tonkin incident and asked Giáp what happened on 4 August 1964. "Absolutely nothing", Giáp replied. Giáp confirmed that the attack on 4 August 1964 had been imaginary while also confirming that the attack on 2 August happened.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
The American historian Charles Neu who was present at the McNamara-Giáp meeting observed the differences in the style of the two men with McNamara repeatedly interrupting Giáp to ask questions, usually related to something numerical, while Giáp gave a long leisurely monologue, quoting various Vietnamese cultural figures such as poets, that began with Vietnamese revolts against China during the years 111 BC–938 AD when Vietnam was a Chinese province. Neu wrote his impression was that McNamara was a figure who thought in the short term while Giáp thought in the long term.Template:Sfn
Assessments
Template:See also Perhaps the earliest assessment of Robert McNamara was David Halberstam's 1972 book The Best and the Brightest. Halberstam reported on McNamara's propensity to lie:
Halberstam also excoriated McNamara's disregard for valuable information that was not quantified; he reported on one incident in 1965 in Da Nang and concluded “...he did not serve himself nor the country well; he was, there is no kinder or gentler word for it, a fool.”Template:Sfn
Template:External media 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. Shapley concluded her book with these words: "For better and worse McNamara shaped much in today's world—and imprisoned himself. A little-known nineteenth century writer, F.W. Boreham, offers a summation: 'We make our decisions. And then our decisions turn around and make us.'"Template:Sfn
The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara is a 2003 Errol Morris documentary consisting mostly of interviews with Robert McNamara and archival footage.Template:Sfn It went on to win the Academy Award for Documentary Feature. The particular structure of this personal account is accomplished with the characteristics of an intimate dialogue. As McNamara explains, it is a process of examining the experiences of his long and controversial period as the United States Secretary of Defense, as well as other periods of his personal and public life.Template:Sfn
Personal life
McNamara married Margaret Craig, his teenage sweetheart, on 13 August 1940. She was an accomplished cook, and Robert's favorite dish was reputed to be her beef bourguignon.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Margaret McNamara, a former teacher, used her position as a Cabinet spouse to launch a reading program for young children, Reading Is Fundamental, which became the largest literacy program in the country. She died of cancer in 1981. Later that summer, her ashes were scattered by her family on a mountainside meadow at Buckskin Pass, near Snowmass Village, Colorado.
The couple had two daughters and a son. Their son, Robert Craig McNamara, who as a student objected to the Vietnam War, is a farmer in California.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
At Ford
When working at Ford Motor Company, McNamara resided in Ann Arbor, Michigan, rather than the usual auto executive domains of Grosse Pointe, Birmingham, and Bloomfield Hills. He and his wife sought to remain connected with a university town (the University of Michigan) after their hopes of returning to Harvard after the war were put on hold.
Alumnus of the Year
In 1961, he was named Alumnus of the Year by the University of California, Berkeley.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Attempted assault
On 29 September 1972, a passenger on the ferry to Martha's Vineyard recognized McNamara on board and attempted to throw him into the ocean. McNamara declined to press charges. The man remained anonymous but was interviewed years later by author Paul Hendrickson, who quoted the attacker as saying, "I just wanted to confront (McNamara) on Vietnam."Template:Sfn
Final years and death
After his wife's death, McNamara dated Katharine Graham, with whom he had been friends since the early 1960s.Template:Citation needed Graham died in 2001.
In September 2004, McNamara wed Diana Masieri Byfield, an Italian-born widow who had lived in the United States for more than 40 years. It was her second marriage. She was married to Ernest Byfield, a former OSS officer and Chicago hotel owner, thirty years her senior, whose first wife, Gladys Rosenthal Tartiere, leased her 400-acre (1.6 km2) Glen Ora estate in Middleburg, Virginia, to John F. Kennedy during his presidency.Template:Sfn<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
At the end of his life, McNamara was a life trustee on the Board of Trustees of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), a trustee of the Economists for Peace and Security, a trustee of the American University of Nigeria, and an honorary trustee for the Brookings Institution.
McNamara died at his home in Washington, D.C., at 5:30 am on 6 July 2009, at the age of 93.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn He is buried at the Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington County, Virginia, with the grave marker also commemorating his wives.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
McNamara's papers from his years as Secretary of Defense are housed in the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston, Massachusetts.
See also
- List of Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients
- List of United States political appointments that crossed party lines
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Bibliography
Articles
- "World Population Growth." The Journal of Social, Political, and Economic Studies, Summer 1977, pp. 115–118.
- "A New International Order and Its Implications for U.S. Foreign and Defense Policy." The PSR Quarterly, Vol. 3, No. 4, December 1993, pp. 178–182. Features Daniel Ellsberg's handwritten notes.
Books
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- One Hundred Countries, Two Billion People: The Dimensions of Development. New York: Praeger, 1973.
- The McNamara Years at the World Bank: Major Policy Addresses of Robert S. McNamara, 1968-1981. Forewords by Helmut Schmidt and Léopold Senghor. Baltimore, MD: Published for the World Bank by the Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981.
- Blundering Into Disaster: Surviving the First Century of the Nuclear Age. New York: Pantheon Books, 1986.
- Out of the Cold: New Thinking for American Foreign and Defense Policy in the 21st Century. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989.
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- Argument Without End: In Search of Answers to the Vietnam Tragedy. New York: Public Affairs Press, 1999.
- Wilson's Ghost: Reducing the Risk of Conflict, Killing, and Catastrophe in the 21st Century. New York: Public Affairs Press, 2001.
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Memoranda
Transcripts
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- Civil Defense Role in U.S. Strategic Defensive Forces Outlined for Congress by Secretary McNamara. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Defense, 1966.
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- The Challenges for Sub-Saharan Africa. Template:Webarchive Washington, D.C.: Sir John Crawford Memorial Lecture, 1985.
- The Changing Nature of Global Security and its Impact on South Asia. Washington, D.C.: Washington Council on Non-Proliferation, 1992.
Media
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Documentary films
References
Footnotes
Citations
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Further reading
- Basha i Novosejt, Aurélie. 'I made mistakes': Robert McNamara’s Vietnam war policy, 1960–1968 (Cambridge University Press, 2019) excerpt
- McCann, Leo "'Management is the gate' – but to where? Rethinking Robert McNamara's 'career lessons.'" Management and Organizational History, 11.2 (2016): 166–188.
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External links
Template:Commons Template:Wikiquote Template:Spoken Wikipedia
- Robert McNamara on the JFK and LBJ White House Tapes
- Federal Bureau of Investigation Records: The Vault – Robert McNamara
- AP Obituary in The Washington Post
- The Economist obituary
- Robert McNamara – Daily Telegraph obituary
- McNamara's Evil Lives On Template:Webarchive by Robert Scheer, The Nation, July 8, 2009
- Robert Strange McNamara at World Bank
- Historical Office US Department of Defense
- Interview about the Cuban Missile Crisis and Interview about nuclear strategy for the WGBH series War and Peace in the Nuclear Age.
- 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
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- Conversations with History: Robert S. McNamara, from the University of California Television (UCTV)
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