Mcnamara - In Retrospect

A brief sketch of my life from birth, June 9, 1916, to the day I became President John F. Kennedys secretary of defense, January 20, 1961. I explain how I came to that post and the beliefs and values I brought to it.

The Kennedy administrations decisions relating to Vietnam from the time of a critical meeting with President Eisenhower the day before JFKs inauguration, through the political crisis that erupted in Saigon in the summer of 1963. The chapter outlines the assumptions behind the administrations decision to increase sharply U.S. involvement in Vietnam. It stresses the two contradictory premises that underlay that commitment: the fall of South Vietnam to Communist control would threaten the security of the West, but the U.S. military role would be limited to providing training and logistical support.

A pivotal period of U.S. involvement in Vietnam, punctuated by three important events: the overthrow and assassination of South Vietnams president Ngo Dinh Diem; President Kennedys decision on October 2 to begin the withdrawal of U.S. forces; and his assassination fifty days later.

The chapter opens with a statement of what I believe President Kennedy would have done in Vietnam had he lived. It then describes the subtle, incremental, but crucial slide toward deeper involvement in Vietnam during the first eight months of the Johnson Administration. After Diems death, we confronted an unraveling political situation in Saigon, along with growing demands for more U.S. military action.

The closest the United States came to a declaration of war, the Tonkin Gulf Congressional Resolution of August 1964 generated intense controversy and enduring questions: What happened? Why? What were the consequences? What should have been done differently? This chapter addresses those questions by describing what transpired in the Tonkin Gulf; why the Johnson administration acted as it did; why Congress quickly and overwhelmingly approved the resolution: and how LBJ and his successor, President Nixon, subsequently misused it.

As the Johnson administrations policy on Vietnam drifted during the 1964 presidential election, military and political conditions in South Vietnam rapidly worsened, heightening the dilemma between avoiding direct U.S. military involvement in the conflict and avoiding the loss of South Vietnam to communist control. Deep divisions developed within the American government, and the Pentagon itself, over what to do in the face of an increasingly difficult and dangerous problem. Events reached a critical juncture when we faced a choice among unpalatable alternatives at the beginning of 1965.