Basic Information
Name: Robert Strange McNamara
Nickname: Whiz Kid, The Architect of Vietnam
Born: June 9, 1916
Died: July 6, 2009
Nationality: USA
Hometown: San Francisco, CA
WORK & EDUCATION
Occupation: United States Secretary of Defense, President of the World Bank Group
Education: University of California, Berkeley, Harvard Business School
FAMILY & FRIENDS
Parents: Robert James McNamara, Clara Nell McNamara
Spouse: Margaret Craig, Diana Masieri Byfield
Children: Craig, Kathleen, Margaret
Friends: Lyndon B. Johnson, John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, Henry Ford, the all-but-two Congressmen who voted for the Tonkin Gulf Resolution
Foes: Ho Chi Minh, anti-war protestors, the Viet Cong, Vietnamese civilians, the two Congressmen who did not vote for the Tonkin Gulf Resolution
Analysis
Fizzing Whiz Kid
This guy could definitely star in a Tom Clancy novel.
Mr. McNamara was at the center of some major Cold War conflicts, most notably the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Vietnam War. He was the guy calling the shots concerning America's defense in the 1960s, and we're pretty sure there were a ton of classified military secrets locked away in his head. (Some of those secrets would come out later…)
McNamara was the expert on defense for Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, and the dude was smart. So smart, in fact, that he was called a "Whiz Kid." The term came from Henry Ford (yes, that Henry Ford) who recruited smarties to rebuild the Ford company after World War II. McNamara kept this nickname as he was recruited into the White House.
Being the "Whiz Kid" on America's defense, McNamara was the main man behind the Tonkin Gulf Resolution. He was the first to know about the alleged attacks on American ships near Vietnam, and he was constantly relaying information to President Johnson. McNamara was the guy who briefed Congress after the ships were attacked, and helped write the Tonkin Gulf Resolution that would lead to full-scale engagement in Vietnam.
But here's the plot twist: McNamara later found out that the second attack in the Gulf of Tonkin never happened, and that the first attack may not have involved any shots from Vietnam. What did he do with this information? He kept it under wraps. (Source)
A couple decades later, the information became declassified and McNamara was thrown back into the spotlight (even though the war was way, way over). McNamara was accused of covering up information, and of engineering the whole Vietnam conflict in general. He seemed to greatly regret the whole fiasco, as he wrote "the fundamental issue of Tonkin Gulf involved not deception but, rather, misuse of power bestowed by the resolution." (Source)
McNamara seemed to know at the time that Vietnam was a bad idea (just like President Johnson), but he went along with it anyway, and helped issue the President unlimited power. In his 1995 memoir (source above) he said that the war was "wrong, terribly wrong."
McNamara floated in and out of politics in the later years of his life, and he died in 2009. Interviews and documentaries toward the end of his life proved that Vietnam haunted him since the '70s. It's tough to imagine that such a terrible conflict couldn't.