Robert McNamara

Robert McNamara, born in 1916, American business executive and United States secretary of defense from 1961 to 1968. Robert Strange McNamara was born in San Francisco. He graduated from the University of California at Berkeley in 1937 and from Harvard University Graduate School of Business in 1939. McNamara taught at Harvard from 1940 until 1943, when he received a captain's commission in the U.S. Army Air Corps. He was released from active duty as a lieutenant colonel in 1946. That same year McNamara joined the Ford Motor Company as part of a team of statistical control experts. At Ford his rapid rise culminated in his appointment as president of the company in 1960.

McNamara was secretary of defense under two presidents, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, serving from 1961 until 1968. He initially supported U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War (1959-1975) and encouraged escalation in 1964. He later sought to open peace negotiations. He resigned as secretary of defense to become president of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, known as the World Bank, and remained until his retirement in 1981. In 1995 McNamara published a memoir, In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam, in which he wrote that U.S. military involvement in the war was “terribly wrong.” He attributed the failure of the war to eleven major causes, including poor organization, lack of understanding of the enemy and its culture, and a decision made in the President's office to withhold information from the Congress of the United States and the American public. He blamed both himself and other government officials, including President Johnson, for not engaging in more detailed debate that might have illuminated the problems surrounding the war. The book generated controversy, with many people questioning why McNamara waited three decades to speak out against the war. His other writings include The Essence of Security: Reflections in Office (1968) and Out of the Cold: New Thinking for American Foreign and Defense Policy in the 21st Century (1989). An Academy Award-winning documentary, The Fog of War, released in 2003, features McNamara's reflections on the Vietnam War.