Komer worked for the Central Intelligence Agency from 1947 to 1961. For part of that time, he was chief of the Estimates Staff in the Office of National Estimates. In 1961 he went to work in the White House, on the staff of the
National Security Council, which was led by
McGeorge Bundy. After Bundy's departure, Komer briefly succeeded Bundy as interim
National Security Advisor, before he was assigned to the Vietnam pacification campaign. While with the NSC, Komer and others negotiated with Israeli prime minister
Levi Eshkol a memorandum of understanding (MOU) about
Israeli nuclear capabilities. The March 10, 1965, MOU, variously interpreted since, said 'Israel would not be the first country to "introduce" nuclear weapons to the Middle East'. Komer arrived in
South Vietnam in May 1967 as the first head of the newly created
Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support program, the most controversial aspect of which was the
Phoenix program, which
William Colby later testified resulted in 20,587 deaths. CORDS was an agency with a staff of both civilians and military personnel, but it fell under the authority of the
Military Assistance Command, Vietnam. President Lyndon Johnson had sent Komer to South Vietnam to provide impetus to the nation-building efforts of the new organization. Komer was known for his brusque management style, which had endeared him to the president and earned him the nickname "Blowtorch Bob" from U.S. ambassador
Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. As head of CORDS, he commanded all pacification personnel in South Vietnam. However, the problems CORDS faced were intractable and the results of Komer's work ambiguous. In a revealing discussion with military historians, But he was not as successful in Turkey as he was in Vietnam, and he left a special mark in Turkish history: on January 6, 1969, at the beginning of his tenure as the US ambassador to Turkey, his car was set on fire in
Middle East Technical University by a group of students who then formed the core of the
Marxist-
Leninist movement in Turkey under the banner of
Dev-Genç. Komer was visiting the campus at the invitation of university president
Kemal Kurdas, who relied on American donors to finance the building of the modern campus. Komer joined the RAND Corporation in June 1970 as program manager for defense studies, which included RAND's ongoing work in South Vietnam. In July 1970 Komer returned to South Vietnam for a two week visit in which he toured 20 of the 44 provinces to assess the progress of pacification. On his return to the US he optimistically reported to various interested parties that the US and South Vietnam had beaten the Vietcong insurgency and controlled most of the population, but that the South Vietnamese government still needed to secure the support of the population to prevent the North Vietnamese from conducting a protracted struggle while waiting for the US to withdraw. Komer also later worked in the
Jimmy Carter administration as the
Under Secretary of Defense for Policy. In the 1980s, Komer became a vocal critic of "The Maritime Strategy", which was devised by
Secretary of the Navy John Lehman. Komer argued against spending the resources for
600 ships, part of a controversial plan to deter and contain the Soviet Union. ==Personal life==