Cold War 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.
Bay of Pigs The CIA sponsored invasion of Cuba took place three months after McNamara took office as Defense Secretary. Prior to the invasion McNamara had not attended at least one critical meeting; after the invasion failed he expressed regret over his performance and committed himself to greater managerial oversight of military operations: Following the failed invasion, McNamara would become involved in an oversight advisory role in
Operation Mongoose, which was intended to cause the overthrow of the Castro regime via covert action, including assassinations. Mongoose operations would become one cause of the Soviet introduction of missiles to Cuba, which triggered the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Cuban Missile Crisis and McNamara in October 1962 The Cuban Missile Crisis was a nuclear standoff between the United States and the Soviet Union and lasted for 13 days in October 1962. 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 United States government officials, such as Robert McNamara, advising Kennedy on the crisis. Kennedy instructed ExComm to immediately come up with a response to the Soviet threat unanimously without him present. The Joint Chiefs of Staff favored launching air strikes against the Soviet missile sites in Cuba, an opinion that McNamara initially agreed with. He later advised Kennedy against the chiefs, warning that air strikes would almost certainly be metaphorically
crossing the Rubicon. On Tuesday 16 October, ExComm had their first meeting. The majority of officials favored an air attack on Cuba in hopes to destroy the missile sites, although the vote was not unanimous which brought them to other alternatives. By the end of the week, ExComm came up with four different alternative strategies to present to the president: a
blockade, an
air strike, an
invasion, or some combination of these. These actions are known as OPLAN 312, OPLAN 314 and OPLAN 316. A
quarantine was a way to prevent the Soviets from bringing any military equipment in or out of Cuba; the word 'quarantine' had been recommended by Admiral
George Anderson because a blockade is considered an act of war. During the final review of both alternatives on Sunday 21 October, upon Kennedy's request, McNamara presented the argument against the attack and for the quarantine. On Wednesday 24 October at 10:00 am EDT, the quarantine line around Cuba went into effect. McNamara's relations with the hawkish Joint Chiefs of Staff had been strained during the crisis, and his relations with Admiral Anderson and General Curtis LeMay were especially testy. Both Anderson and LeMay had favored invading Cuba, welcoming the prospects of a war with the Soviet Union, under the grounds that a war with them was already inevitable, and whose attitudes towards Kennedy and McNamara had verged on insubordination. Anderson had at a one-point ordered McNamara out of the Naval Operations Room, saying that as a civilian he was unqualified to be making decisions about naval matters, leading McNamara to say that he was the Defense Secretary and Anderson was unqualified to be ordering him to do anything. Anderson had a different recollection of the 24 October incident, and would later accuse McNamara of
micromanagement: Although American defense planning focused on using
nuclear weapons, Kennedy and McNamara clearly saw that the use of strategic weapons could be suicidal. Following the crisis aftermath, McNamara stated, "There is no such thing as strategy, only crisis management." After the crisis, McNamara recommended to Kennedy that Admiral Anderson and General LeMay be sacked. However, Kennedy was afraid of a Congressional backlash if he sacked two of the chiefs at once. Moreover, Kennedy did not wish for his disagreements with the Joint Chiefs to become public and felt that sacking two of the chiefs at once would lead to speculation in the media about such a disagreement. Kennedy told McNamara: "All right, you can fire one. Which one will it be?" Without hesitation, McNamara answered "Anderson". Despite this reputed agreement Anderson would remain as CNO for almost a year, until August 1963, after he was nominated to be the new
American ambassador to Portugal. Anderson would later claim that McNamara attempted to stop the appointment.
Vietnam War Background The
Truman and
Eisenhower administrations had committed the U.S. to support the French and native anti-Communist forces in Vietnam in resisting efforts by the Communists in the North to unify the country. Aid was initially limited to financial support, military advice and covert intelligence gathering, but expanded after 1954 when the French withdrew. The U.S.
Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) Vietnam was established on 1 November 1955. CIA advisor
Rufus Phillips would later maintain that the Viet Minh had largely been defeated in the South by 1956 via
civic action programs, but the U.S. bureaucracies subsequently squandered the victory with inappropriate policies and advice. In December 1956, the North Vietnamese government authorized
Viet Cong forces in South Vietnam to begin a low-level insurgency. The
Pentagon Papers later stated: “All evidence points to fall 1959 as the period in which the Viet Cong made their transition from a clandestine political movement to a more overt military operation...[b]y autumn 1959, however, the VC were in a position to field units of battalion size against regular army formations.” During President John F. Kennedy's term, from 1961 to 1963, American troops in South Vietnam increased from 900 to 16,000 advisers. Kennedy established the
Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV) on 8 February 1962, sending Americans to train the
Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN). McNamara was closely aligned with Dean Rusk, the Secretary of State, with both favoring greater American support for South Vietnam. The
Gulf of Tonkin incidents in August 1964, which involved two purported attacks on U.S. Navy destroyers by North Vietnamese naval vessels, led to an
escalation of U.S. involvement in Vietnam.
Laos Initially, the main concern of the new Kennedy administration was Laos, not South Vietnam. In February 1961, McNamara spoke in favor of intervention in Laos, saying that six
AT-6 planes owned by the CIA could be fitted to carry 200-pound bombs in support of General
Phoumi Nosavan's forces. Rusk shot down that proposal, saying his World War II experiences in Burma had taught him that bombing was ineffective in the jungles and six planes were not enough. In the spring of 1961 Kennedy seriously considered intervening in Laos where the Communist Pathet Lao, supported by North Vietnam, were winning the civil war. At one point, the Joint Chiefs of Staff advised sending 60,000 U.S. troops into Laos. However, Laos appeared to be an undeveloped, landlocked country with barely any modern roads and only two modern airfields which were both small by Western standards and would have caused logistical problems. Furthermore, memories of the Korean War were still fresh, and it was generally accepted if the United States sent in troops into Laos, it was almost certain to provoke Chinese intervention and lead to another confrontation with the country. The
Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) was split with its European members such as
France and
Britain in opposition to the intervention and its Asian members such as
Thailand and the
Philippines in support. McNamara noted to Kennedy it was quite possible that the two airfields in Laos could be seized by the Communist forces, which would cut off any U.S. forces in Laos and turn the intervention into a debacle. At a meeting on 29 April 1961, when questioned by the Attorney General, Robert F. Kennedy, McNamara stated that "we should take a stand in Thailand and South Vietnam", pointedly omitting Laos from the nations in Southeast Asia to risk a war over. McNamara soon changed his mind about Laos. On 1 May 1961, he advised Kennedy to send in ground troops into Laos, saying "we must be prepared to win", and advising using nuclear weapons if China should intervene. On 2 May, McNamara, using more strong language, told Kennedy that the United States should definitely intervene in Laos, even though he was very certain that it would lead to Chinese intervention, concluding that "at some point, we may have to initiate the use of nuclear weapons to prevent the defeat of our forces". Kennedy, who was distrustful of the hawkish advice given by the Joint Chiefs of Staff after the failure of the
Bay of Pigs invasion, instead decided to seek a diplomatic solution to the Laos crisis at a peace conference in Geneva in 1961–62 that ultimately led to an agreement to make Laos officially neutral in the Cold War. The problems posed by the possibility of a war with China and the logistical problems of supporting a large units of troops in Laos led McNamara ultimately to favor an alternative strategy of stationing a small number of U.S. Army Special Forces in Laos to work with American allies such as the Hmong hill tribes. On 29 September 1961, the Joint Chiefs of Staff estimated to McNamara that if Chinese forces entered Laos, then SEATO forces would need at least 15 divisions consisting of some 278, 000 men to stop them. At the same time, the Joint Chiefs also estimated that the two airfields in Laos were capable of landing some 1,000 troops a day each, which would give the advantage to the Chinese. Such dire assessments led Kennedy to ignore McNamara and the Joint Chiefs, and to favor a diplomatic solution to the Laos crisis. Though McNamara had supported plans to intervene in Laos in 1961, by 1962 he had changed his mind. During a discussion with General
Lyman Lemnitzer, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, McNamara had asked them what the United States would do with a hypothetical North Vietnamese intervention in the event of an American intervention into Laos, but none of them could provide an answer. The inability of the Joint Chiefs to answer McNamara's questions about what the United States should do if North Vietnam should stage a major offensive down the Mekong river valley from Laos into Cambodia and finally South Vietnam persuaded McNamara that the Joint Chiefs had no vision of the issues and were merely advocating intervention in Laos to avoid looking weak.
Downing of Charles Klusmann over Laos Operation Barrel Roll was a covert interdiction and close air support campaign conducted in Laos by the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy between 5 March 1964 and 29 March 1973. On 6 June 1964 (5 June in Hawaii) Navy reconnaissance pilot Lieutenant
Charles Klusmann was shot down over the Laotian
Plain of Jars. McNamara ordered that no rescue attempt be made. Admiral
Harry D. Felt called McNamara from Honolulu and told him he had no authority to issue such an order, that only the Commander-in-Chief could, and he repeatedly "asked" McNamara to put Lyndon Johnson on the line despite the 1:00 AM Washington time and McNamara's reluctance to do so. Johnson quickly came on-line and countermanded McNamara's order, but the delay resulted in the capture of Klusmann. Klusmann escaped three months later despite torture and starvation and was rescued, becoming one of only two Americans captured in Laos and held by the Pathet Lao to be returned.
First Vietnam proposals Air Force Brigadier General
Edward Lansdale had been the architect of the defeat of the Philippine
Hukbalahap rebellion in 1950–1954 and the Viet Minh defeats in South Vietnam in 1954–1956, in both cases employing
civic action programs alongside low-level military security actions. In early 1961 he became the Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Special Operations, and he briefed McNamara on the nature of the war in Vietnam. He showed McNamara examples of primitive homemade Viet Cong weaponry, and explained that the war was more a political war than military. He said “It doesn’t take weapons and uniforms and lots of food to win. It takes ideas and ideals.” After 10 minutes McNamara abruptly ended the briefing with the words "Is that all?" In October 1961, when General
Maxwell Taylor and
State Department Counselor Walt Whitman Rostow advised sending 8,000 American combat troops to South Vietnam, McNamara rejected that recommendation as inadequate, stating that 8,000 troops would "probably not tip the scales decisively", instead recommending to Kennedy that he send six divisions to South Vietnam. Kennedy rejected that advice. Army Chief of Staff General
George Decker in April 1962 advised McNamara that “we cannot win a conventional war in Southeast Asia”; for this Decker was forced to retire halfway through his four-year term on 30 September 1962. He was replaced with Earle Wheeler, who as a former mathematics professor at West Point shared much of McNamara's views on analysis.
1962 fact finding mission 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". Led by General
Paul D. Harkins, the officers of MACV altered a map that showed too much of South Vietnam under Viet Cong control, and massaged the statistics to make the VC appear weaker than they were. 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. MAAG commander Lieutenant General Lionel C. McGarr returned to the U.S. in July 1962. McNamara refused to consult with him about his experiences in Vietnam. By this time McGarr opposed any U.S. escalation of force. MAAG would be absorbed into MACV in May 1964. In late 1962, McNamara ordered planners to assume the withdraw of American advisers from South Vietnam in 1964 as, according to Pentagon calculations, the war should be won by then. At the time, McNamara told Kennedy: "There is a new feeling of confidence that victory is possible".
Battle of Ap Bac On 2 January 1963, McNamara's rosy projections and assumptions based upon what his computers had told him about Vietnam were shattered by the Battle of Ap Bac when three VC companies were encircled by the ARVN's
7th Division in the village of Ap Bac. Despite being outnumbered by a ratio of 10–1 and being heavily outgunned, the VC defeated the 7th Division in the ensuing battle and escaped into the jungle, shooting down five U.S. aircraft in the process. Colonel
John Paul Vann, the American adviser attached to the 7th Division summed up the battle in a report in his usual earthy language as: "A miserable fucking performance, just like what it always is". Vann, a colorful figure whose outspokenly blunt criticism of how the war was being fought made him a favorite of the media, was much disliked by McNamara, who did not appreciate the criticism as he continued to insist that the war was being won. Vann's reports criticizing Diệm's regime as corrupt and incompetent were most unwelcome to McNamara who contended that the reforms advocated by Vann were unnecessary. In March 1963, Vann resigned from the Army.
The Buddhist crisis After the Battle of Ap Bac, a debate began in the Kennedy cabinet about the viability of the Diệm regime, which was reinforced by the
Buddhist crisis, which began in May 1963 as a campaign of
civil resistance following a series of repressive acts by the South Vietnamese government. When talk of supporting a coup against Diệm was first raised by Kennedy at a National Security Council meeting in August 1963, McNamara spoke in favor of retaining Diệm. On 31 August 1963, Paul Kattenburg, a newly returned diplomat from Saigon suggested at a meeting attend by Rusk, McNamara and Vice President Johnson that the United States should end support for Diệm and leave South Vietnam to its fate. McNamara was stoutly opposed to Kattenburg's suggestion, saying "we have been winning the war".
First 1963 fact-finding mission The Kennedy administration was unable to gain a consensus about what to do. In early September 1963 McNamara recommended Marine Major General
Victor Krulak be sent on a four-day fact-finding mission; State Department official
Joseph Mendenhall was also assigned to the trip. Upon returning their divergent reports (Krulak stated the war was being won, Mendenhall strongly disagreed) led President Kennedy to ask them "You two did visit the same country, didn't you?" USAID official Rufus Phillips walked away from this and subsequent meetings thinking that only President Kennedy seemed to show any interest in learning about Vietnam, and that all the other principals including McNamara were motivated only by pride and bureaucratic loyalty. McNamara would change Phillips' report of 60
Strategic Hamlets overrun to 60% and then claim it was untrue. Kennedy two weeks later sent McNamara and General Taylor on a ten-day fact-finding mission to South Vietnam. At a meeting in the
Gia Long Palace, President Diệm showed McNamara various graphs and charts that purported to be proof that the war was being won. This performance convinced McNamara the war was as good as won. Kennedy wanted a negative assessment of Diệm to justify supporting a coup, but McNamara and Taylor instead wrote about the "great progress" achieved by Diệm and confidently predicted that the "bulk" of the American advisers would leave in 1965 as by that point they predicted that the VC insurgency would be crushed. McNamara predicted that if Diệm continued his policies, that by 1965 the insurgency would be "little more than organized banditry". Major General Lansdale had been Diệm's original American mentor. According to
Daniel Ellsberg, he was ordered in late September or early October 1963 to McNamara's office. The two went to McNamara's limo and drove to the White House and met with President Kennedy. Kennedy wanted to send him to Vietnam due to his ability to reason with Diệm, but he wanted to know if Lansdale would support removing Diệm from office if it became necessary. Lansdale said no, that Diệm was his friend (Lansdale also believed that replacing Diệm would lead to disaster). Kennedy seemed to understand and didn't show any disappointment, but in the limo McNamara was furious: “You don’t talk to the president of the United States that way. When he asks you to do something, you don’t tell him you won’t do it.” Lansdale was ordered to retire from the Air Force by the end of October. During Lansdale's retirement reception McNamara walked through the room and never looked at Lansdale. With the CIA and the ambassador
Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. urging support for a coup while the Pentagon was opposed, Kennedy vacillated but ultimately gave the power of decision to Lodge. Lodge, who detested Diệm, gave his approval to the generals plotting against him. McNamara continued to oppose the coup; as late as a 25 October meeting with Kennedy he spoke against Lodge's use of
Lucien Conein to liaise with the ARVN generals. Conein was a Franco-American military and CIA officer with extensive experience in Vietnam, but McNamara dismissed them with “We’re dealing through a press-minded ambassador and an unstable Frenchman – five times divorced…This is what we have to stop.”
Coups and second 1963 fact-finding mission , 2 November 1963 On 1 November 1963, the coup was launched. After the
presidential palace was overrun in the fighting, Diệm was captured trying to flee Saigon and executed on 2 November 1963. The new government in Saigon was headed by General
Dương Văn Minh. On 22 November 1963,
Kennedy was assassinated and succeeded by
Lyndon Johnson. In December 1963, Johnson sent McNamara on another "fact-finding mission" to South Vietnam to assess Minh's performance. On 19 December 1963, McNamara reported the situation was "very disturbing" as the "current trends, unless reversed in the next two or three months, will lead to neutralization at best or more likely to a Communist-controlled state". He also admitted that the computer models and statistics to which he had attached great importance were "grossly in error" and that government control of rural areas had "in fact been deteriorating...to a far greater extent than we realized" since July. The next day McNamara met with Generals Minh,
Trần Văn Đôn, and
Lê Văn Kim and arrogantly interrogated them; Kim, a veteran of the successful 1954-1954 civic action campaigns, later would say they "bit their tongues in rage". Regarding Minh's regime McNamara wrote at present "there is no organized government in South Vietnam". Though McNamara admitted that the new regime was "indecisive and drifting", he advised Johnson to undertake "more forceful moves if the situation does not show early signs of improvement". On 30 January 1964, Minh was overthrown in a coup d'état by General
Nguyễn Khánh but the change in leadership did not affect the war.
Lyman Kirkpatrick of the CIA reported in February 1964 after visiting Saigon that he was "shocked by the number of our people and of the military, even those whose job is always to say we are winning, who feel the tide is against us". In a battle that same month which underscored problems in the ARVN, a VC battalion in the
Mekong Delta escaped from a larger force of South Vietnamese troops which had been rated as some of the very best in the ARVN by the American advisers who had trained them.
First 1964 fact-finding mission On 8 March 1964, McNamara visited South Vietnam to report to President Johnson about how well the new regime of Khánh was handling the war. Upon landing in Saigon, McNamara told the press: "We shall stay for as long it takes to ...win the battle against the Communist insurgents". During his visit, McNamara spoke memorized phrases in mangled Vietnamese (McNamara kept forgetting that Vietnamese is a tonal language) in speeches praising Khánh as South Vietnam's "best possible leader". McNamara always ended his speeches by shouting out what he thought was a phrase meaning "Long live a free Vietnam!", but as he used the wrong tones, instead he said "Vietnam, go to sleep!" McNamara pressed Khánh to put South Vietnam on a war footing by conscripting all able-bodied young men into the military, which he promised he would do. However, Khánh did not keep his promise as wealthy and middle class South Vietnamese families objected to having their sons conscripted. As a result, the burden of conscription fell onto the sons of poor families, provoking much resentment. At Johnson's insistence McNamara was photographed holding up Khánh's arm like a prizefighter, an image that was widely seen by Vietnamese of all political backgrounds as proving Khánh was an illegitimate American puppet. After returning to Washington on 13 March, McNamara reported to Johnson that the situation had "unquestionably been growing worse": since his last visit in December 1963 with 40% of the countryside now under "Vietcong control or predominant influence", most of the South Vietnamese people were displaying "apathy and indifference", the desertion rate in the ARVN was "high and increasing" while the VC were "recruiting energetically". The "greatest weakness" accordingly to McNamara was the "uncertain viability" of Khánh's government, which could have been overthrown at any moment as the ARVN was ridden with factionalism. To save South Vietnam, McNamara recommended that the United States make it "emphatically clear" its willingness to support Khánh to the hilt. Other recommendations, which were accepted in a National Security Council "action memorandum", called for the United States to pay for an increase in the ARVN, provide the
Republic of Vietnam Air Force with more planes and helicopters, and for the United States to pay for more civil servants to administer rural South Vietnam. More importantly, the "action memorandum" redefined the Vietnam War as not only important for Asia, but for the entire world as the document asserted the global credibility of the United States was now at stake as it was claimed America's allies would lose faith in American promises if the South Vietnamese government were overthrown. The "action memorandum" argued that to "lose" South Vietnam would fatally weaken American global leadership, making the war a "test case" of American willingness to continue as a global power.
Sidelining of the Joint Chiefs of Staff McNamara had begun recommending "
graduated pressure" strategies in the spring of 1964. He did not want the
Joint Chiefs of Staff to make any recommendations on Vietnam that conflicted with his, so he used interservice rivalries to prevent them from developing a consensus. In March 1964 he said “Divide and conquer is a pretty good rule in this situation. And to be quite frank, I’ve tried to do that in the last couple of weeks and it’s coming along pretty well...” He also worked with General Maxwell Taylor, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, to prevent their views from reaching the president.
H.R. McMaster would write: A war game called SIGMA 1–64 was conducted during 6–9 April 1964 by junior officers. They concluded that a bombing campaign would not stop and most likely would accelerate North Vietnamese infiltration into the South. McNamara rejected this conclusion on the grounds it was not adequately quantified. A second game in 8–17 September 1964, SIGMA 11–64, would come to the same conclusion and also be ignored. The Chiefs came to see McNamara's infrequent meetings with them, meetings in which no problems were discussed, as "cosmetic" to prevent criticism that he never met with them.
Second 1964 fact-finding mission Ambassador Lodge in early May 1964 began to push for a widening of military action. President Johnson wanted to avoid any such increase prior to the 1964 elections and the passage of his
Great Society legislation, so he sent McNamara back to Saigon to contain such recommendations. McNamara told MACV officers to base their requests on quantitative data so he could properly consider them. MACV commander General Paul D. Harkins returned to the U.S. on June 20, 1964. McNamara refused to consult with him about his experiences in Vietnam. He was succeeded by his deputy commander, General
William Westmoreland.
U.S. aid implications Although South Vietnam by 1964 was receiving a sum of American economic and military aid that ran to $2 million per day, the South Vietnamese state was falling apart. Corruption reached such a point that most South Vietnamese civil servants and soldiers were not being paid while the projects for "rural pacification" that the United States had paid for had collapsed as the money had instead been stolen. The advice that McNamara and other American officials gave to the South Vietnamese to make reforms to crack down on corruption and make the government more effective was always ignored as by this point the South Vietnamese government knew very well that the Americans, having repeatedly promised in public that they would never permit the "loss" of South Vietnam, were now prisoners of their own rhetoric. The threats to withhold aid were bluffs, which the South Vietnamese exposed by simply ignoring the American advice, leading to a situation whereby
Stanley Karnow, the Vietnam correspondent for
Time noted:"...America lacked leverage...For the South Vietnamese knew that the United States could not abandon them without damaging its own prestige. So despite their reliance on American aid, now more than a half-billion dollars a year, they could safely defy American dictates. In short, their weakness was their strength". One South Vietnamese minister told Karnow at the time: "Our big advantage over the Americans is that they want to win the war more than we do".
Congress In April 1964, Senator
Wayne Morse called the war "McNamara's War". In response, McNamara told the press that he was honored, saying "I think it is a very important war, and I am pleased to be identified with it and do whatever I can to win it". In May 1964, Senator
Richard Russell advised Johnson against relying too much on McNamara, saying "McNamara is the smartest fella any of us know. But he's got too much-he's opinionated as hell-and he's made up his mind". Russell told Johnson that he should find an expert, preferably a World War II general who was "not scared to death of McNamara" to go to South Vietnam to say that the war was unwinnable and that the United States should pull out, but Johnson rejected the advice. To compensate for the weaknesses of the South Vietnamese state, by late winter of 1964, senior officials in the Johnson administration such as McNamara's deputy,
William Bundy, the assistant secretary of defense, were advocating American intervention in the war. Such intervention presented a constitutional problem: to intervene on the scale envisioned would mean waging war, and only Congress had the legal power to declare war. The solution was floated for Congress to pass a resolution granting Johnson the power to wage war in Vietnam in spite of his opposition to mooted plans to declare war on North Vietnam.
Gulf of Tonkin incident By 1964, the U.S. Navy sent destroyers into the
Gulf of Tonkin to gather intelligence and to support
raids by South Vietnamese commandos on North Vietnam. On 2 August 1964, one destroyer, the was involved in a naval skirmish with three North Vietnamese
Vietnam People's Navy torpedo boats. On 4 August 1964, the
Maddox and another destroyer, the , initially reported they were attacked by the North Vietnamese torpedo boats in international waters on a stormy night, but shortly afterward reported there was probably no attack. Captain
John J. Herrick of the
Maddox reported that the "torpedo boats" were almost certainly just radar "blips" caused by the "freak weather effects" of the storm and the reports of an attack on his ship were due to an "overeager" sonar operator who mistook the motors of the ship for the rush of torpedoes. Johnson promptly seized upon the reports of an attack on a Navy warship in international waters to ask Congress to pass a resolution giving him the authority to wage war in Vietnam. McNamara, via Admiral
U. S. Grant Sharp Jr. of the Pacific fleet, put strong pressure on Herrick to say that his ship had been attacked by torpedo boats, despite Herrick's reservations. 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. 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. McNamara was also instrumental in presenting the event to Congress and the public as justification for escalation of the war against the communists. Decades later after the fact in 1995,
McNamara met with former North Vietnam Defense Minister , who told his American counterpart that the August 4 attack never happened, a conclusion McNamara eventually came to accept. Congress approved the resolution on 10 August 1964, with only Senators
Wayne Morse (
D-
OR), and
Ernest Gruening (D-
AK), voting against, Concurrent with his efforts to pass the resolution, President Johnson had ordered
Operation Pierce Arrow, retaliatory air strikes on North Vietnamese naval bases. The
Gulf of Tonkin Resolution authorized the president "to take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the U.S. and to prevent further aggression" but the larger issue turned out to be the sweeping powers granted by the resolution. It gave Johnson virtually unfettered authority to expand retaliation for a relatively minor naval incident into a major land war involving 500,000 American soldiers. "The fundamental issue of Tonkin Gulf involved not deception but, rather, misuse of power bestowed by the resolution," McNamara wrote later. Though Johnson now had the authority to wage war, he proved reluctant to use it, for example by rejecting the advice of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to bomb North Vietnam after a VC
attack on Bien Hoa Air Base killed five Americans and destroyed 5
B-57 bombers.
Escalation McNamara insisted that applications of U.S. military power be designed to influence the thinking of the North Vietnamese leadership. Lieutenant General
Andrew Goodpaster told him in the fall of 1964, “Sir, you are trying to program the enemy and that is one thing we must never try to do. We can’t do his thinking for him.” Goodpaster's warning fell on deaf ears. On 1 December 1964 McNamara again recommended a graduated response program, by urging Johnson to launch Operation Barrel Roll, a bombing offensive against North Vietnamese supply lines along the
Ho Chi Minh trail in the southern part of Laos; this was approved by the president. On Christmas Eve 1964, the VC
bombed the Brinks Hotel in Saigon, killing two Americans. Despite McNamara's recommendations to bomb North Vietnam, Johnson still hesitated. In 1965, in response to increased military activity in South Vietnam by VC insurgents and North Vietnamese regular forces, the U.S. began bombing North Vietnam, deployed large military forces and entered into combat in South Vietnam. McNamara's plan, supported by requests from top U.S. military commanders in Vietnam, led to the commitment of 485,000 troops by the end of 1967 and almost 535,000 by 30 June 1968. In January 1965, McNamara together with the National Security Adviser
McGeorge Bundy co-wrote a memo to President Johnson stating, "both of us are now pretty well convinced that our present policy can lead only to disastrous defeat" as it was hopeless to expect the unstable and corrupt South Vietnamese government to defeat the VC who were steadily "gaining in the countryside". Bundy and McNamara wrote "the time for has come for hard choices" as the United States now had the alternatives of either negotiating with North Vietnam to "salvage what little can be preserved" or to resort to intervention to "force a change". Both Bundy and McNamara stated that they favored the latter, arguing that the commitment of U.S. troops to fight in South Vietnam and a strategic bombing campaign against North Vietnam were now required. McNamara's hawkish stance on Vietnam was well known in Washington and many in the press often referred to the war as "McNamara's war" as he was the one in the cabinet always pressing for greater American involvement. In February 1965, the VC
attacked the American airfield at Pleiku, killing 8 Americans and destroying 10 aircraft. After hearing of the attack, Johnson assembled his national security team together with the Speaker of the House of Representatives,
John W. McCormack, and the Senate Majority Leader,
Mike Mansfield, to announce "I've had enough of this". Only Mansfield and the Vice President,
Hubert Humphrey, objected to Johnson's plans to bomb North Vietnam. Aircraft from the carrier, , launched
Operation Flaming Dart bombing the North Vietnamese army base at
Đồng Hới later that day. McNamara was forced to tell Johnson that the Flaming Dart raids had done little damage owing to the heavy clouds, which caused the pilots to miss when dropping their bombs, and more raids would be needed. On 11 February, Johnson ordered more bombing raids, and on 2 March approved
Operation Rolling Thunder, a strategic bombing offensive against North Vietnam that was originally planned to last eight weeks, but instead went on for three years. After the bombing raids started, General Westmoreland cabled Johnson to say that
Da Nang Air Base was vulnerable as he had no faith in the ability of the South Vietnamese to protect it, leading him to ask for American troops to be deployed instead. On 8 March 1965, two battalions from the
United States Marine Corps landed at
Da Nang, making the beginning of the ground war for the United States. On 20 April, McNamara urged Johnson to send 40,000 troops to Vietnam, advice that was accepted.
1965 fact-finding mission By June 1965, Westmoreland reported that South Vietnam was faced with a "collapse", which would require 280,000 troops to stop and reverse the momentum. McNamara's advice in July 1965 to Johnson was to commit 180,000 more troops to South Vietnam in addition to a stepped up aerial offensive to destroy North Vietnam's economy was called by McGeorge Bundy "rash to the point of folly". Bundy stated that for Johnson to agree to McNamara's advice "was a slippery slope toward total U.S. responsibility and corresponding fecklessness on the Vietnamese side". Bundy argued that it was the responsibility of the South Vietnamese government to stop the VC and that if the Americans continued to do all the fighting, then the United States would lack the necessary leverage to pressure Saigon into making reforms, turning "...the conflict into a white man's war, with the United States in the shoes of the French". To resolve the debate, McNamara visited South Vietnam later in July on yet another "fact-finding mission" for Johnson, though before he departed John McNaughton had already drafted the report that McNamara would send to the president on his return. McNaughton's deputy,
Adam Yarmolinsky, later described McNamara's trip as “theater” designed to justify decisions already made. He met the new South Vietnamese Premier, Air Marshal
Nguyễn Cao Kỳ, who had just overthrown Khánh. Kỳ wore a flamboyant uniform which he had designed himself of a white jacket, black pants, red socks and black shoes which led McNamara to dub him as looking "like a saxophone player in a second-rate nightclub". McNamara was not impressed with Kỳ, reporting to Johnson that he saw little evidence that he was capable of winning the war, and the United States would have to send more troops to South Vietnam. Upon his return to the United States, McNamara told the press that the U.S. forces in Vietnam were inflicting "increasingly heavy losses" on the VC, but in private told Johnson that the situation was "worse than a year ago".
Norman Morrison suicide On 2 November 1965, Quaker antiwar activist Norman Morrison died after
self-immolation with kerosene under McNamara's window at the Pentagon. All McNamara saw from his office was the smoke rising from the parking lot, but he was sufficiently troubled by the incident that he refused to discuss it with his family, all the more so because his wife Margey was opposed to the war and sympathized with Morrison's feelings, if not his suicide. McNamara later said in the 2003 documentary
The Fog of War, "[Morrison] came to the Pentagon, doused himself with gasoline. Burned himself to death below my office ... his wife issued a very moving statement – 'human beings must stop killing other human beings' – and that's a belief that I shared, I shared it then, I believe it even more strongly today". McNamara then posited, "How much evil must we do in order to do good? We have certain ideals, certain responsibilities. Recognize that at times you will have to engage in evil, but minimize it."
Costs Though McNamara warned the president in July 1965 that the war would cost an extra $10 billion in defense spending over the next year, Johnson at a press conference said his administration would be spending only an extra $300–400 million until January 1966. McNamara warned that the increased spending would spark inflation and raise the deficit, advising Johnson to ask Congress to increase taxes to forestall those eventualities. Johnson responded by saying that Congress would not vote for higher taxes, leading McNamara to argue that the president should at least try, saying "I would rather fight for what's right and fail than not try". Johnson snapped: "Goddammit, Bob, that's what's wrong with you-you aren't a politician".
Body counts On 7 November 1965, McNamara sent Johnson a memo saying that the "substantial loss of American lives" in Vietnam was worth the sacrifice in order to contain China, which McNamara called the world's most dangerous nation. McNamara wrote that the deployment of troops to South Vietnam would "make sense only if they are in support of a long-term United States policy to contain China", writing that the process of "containing" China would require "American attention, money and, from time to time unfortunately lives". The casualty lists mounted as the number of troops and the intensity of fighting escalated. McNamara put in place a statistics-based strategy for victory in Vietnam. He concluded that there was a limited number of VC fighters in South Vietnam and that a
war of attrition would be sufficient to destroy them. He applied metrics (body counts) to determine how close to success his plan was. Faced with a guerrilla war, the question of holding territory was irrelevant as the VC never operated for extended periods in areas where the Americans were strong and if the Americans occupied an area in force, the VC simply moved to other areas where the American presence was weaker. Westmoreland had decided, with the support of McNamara, to defend all of South Vietnam, believing that he could win via a strategy of attrition as he would simply inflict enough losses to end the enemy's ability to wage war. McNamara devised the "body count" measurement to determine how well the Americans were doing, reasoning if the Americans were inflicting heavy losses as measured by the "body count", it must be a sign that they were winning. General
William Peers (the leader of the investigation into the
Mỹ Lai massacre, which occurred 2 weeks after McNamara left office) wrote critically of the "body count" strategy, stating: "...with improper leadership, 'body count' could create competition between units, particularly if these statistics were compared like baseball standings and there were no stringent requirements as to how and by whom the counts were to be made". The obsession with "body counts" led to much exaggeration of the losses inflicted on the enemy as the officers with the highest "body counts" were promoted while also fueling a grisly competition between units to achieve the highest "body counts" that led to innocent civilians being killed to inflate their daily "body counts". It is generally accepted by historians that the vast daily losses that U.S. officers claimed to have inflicted on the VC were fabricated as many officers desperate for a promotion reported "body counts" well above what they were actually achieving.
Army opposition to counterinsurgency in Vietnam The U.S. Army sabotaged the efforts of Kennedy and McNamara to develop a more counterinsurgency role by simply declaring that the Army's basic unit, the division, was flexible enough to engage against guerrillas while also promising that the traditional fondness for using maximum firepower would not present a problem as firepower use would be "discriminating". In Vietnam, this led to divisions, whose size limited them and their supply trains to the road, using massive amounts of firepower against guerrillas who were often "nimble" enough to evade all of the firepower brought to bear. Instead, the standard tactics of bringing massive firepower to bear in the form of napalm and artillery strikes against the guerrillas often killed civilians, fueling support for the VC. The Special Forces did fight in Vietnam, but only as an adjutant to the traditional infantry and armored divisions, which did most of the fighting. In a 1966 memo, McNamara admitted that the sort of counterinsurgency war envisioned by Kennedy with the Special Forces leading the fight had not occurred and wrote that the responsibility for this "undoubtedly lies with bad management" on the part of the Army.
Disenchantment 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. Although he was a prime architect of the Vietnam War and repeatedly overruled the JCS on strategic matters, McNamara gradually became skeptical about whether the war could be won by deploying more troops to South Vietnam and intensifying the bombing of North Vietnam,
a claim he published in a book years later. He also stated later that his support of the war was given out of loyalty to administration policy. He traveled to South Vietnam many times to study the situation firsthand and became increasingly reluctant to approve the large force increments requested by the military commanders. As a Christmas gesture, Johnson ordered a bombing pause over North Vietnam and went off to his ranch in Texas for the holidays. McNamara went with his family for skiing in Colorado, but upon hearing that the president was open to extending the bombing pause for a few more days, he left his family at the sky lodge in the Rockies to fly to the Johnson ranch on 27 December 1965. McNamara knew that Johnson tended to listen to the advice of Rusk who saw extending the bombing pause as weakness and wanted a meeting with Johnson without Rusk present. McNamara argued to the president in a three hour long meeting that the North Vietnamese would not open peace talks unless the bombing were stopped first, as they kept saying repeatedly, and persuaded Johnson to extend the bombing pause into January. At a New Year's Eve party attended by Washington's elite to welcome 1966, McNamara expressed doubts about America's ability to win the war. A week later at a dinner party attended by the economist
John Kenneth Galbraith and Johnson's speechwriter
Dick Goodwin, McNamara stated that victory was unobtainable, and the best that could be achieved was an "honorable withdrawal" that might save South Vietnam as a state. , President Johnson, and South Vietnamese PM
Nguyễn Cao Kỳ in Honolulu in February 1966 In February 1966, during the
Honolulu conference, McNamara during an "off-the-record" chat with a group of journalists spoke about the war in very jaded terms, stating frankly that Operation Rolling Thunder was a failure. McNamara stated that North Vietnam was a backward Third World country that did not have the same advanced industrial infrastructure of First World nations, making the bombing offensive useless. McNamara concluded: "No amount of bombing can end the war". Karnow, one of the journalists present during the "off-the-record" conversation, described McNamara's personality as having changed, noting the Defense Secretary, who was normally so arrogant and self-assured, convinced he could "scientifically" solve any problem, as being subdued and clearly less self-confident. On 18 May 1966, McNamara gave a speech in Montreal before the
American Society of Newspaper Editors entitled
Security in the Contemporary World, in which he criticized many aspects of U.S. defense policy. He later said “I gave the Montreal speech because I could not survive in office without giving it, could not survive with my own conscience, and it gave me another ten months, but the price I paid for it is so high in the Congress and the White House, people who have assumed I was a peacenik all along, that if I had to do it over again, I would not give that speech.”
Reserve mobilization proposal McNamara also advised the president that by early 1966 he would have to send 100,000 more troops to South Vietnam in order to win the war, and he would need to mobilize the
Reserves and state National Guards as well. Johnson accepted the first recommendation while rejecting the latter, disregarding Bundy's warnings that sending more troops would paradoxically mean holding less leverage over South Vietnam. To mobilize the Reserves and National Guards would mean having to call up hundreds of thousands of men from civilian life, which would inevitably disrupt the economy and put it on a war footing. Johnson rejected the scenario as it would impose too many sacrifices on ordinary Americans while threatening his chances for reelection. Because the Reserves were never called up, the Army had to send much of its manpower to Vietnam, leaving the U.S. divisions in Western Europe in a "skeletal" condition. To make up for the shortfall, the Army had to rely upon
the draft, which caused much domestic opposition, especially as the draft system offered generous exemptions for those attending university and college and lead to the burden of the fighting to fall disproportionately upon men from poorer families. Because of the refusal to call up the Reserves, McNamara had to increase the draft call in July 1965 from 17,000 per month to 35,000 per month. As most of the 18 and 19-year-old draftees had a high school diploma or less, this also led to a decline in the Army's intellectual standards, with many officers complaining that most of the draftees were not intelligent enough to be trained for technical duties or promoted up the ranks. Throughout the war, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General
Earle Wheeler, pressed very strongly for the reserves and national guards to be called out, saying the war was steadily ruining the U.S. Army.
McNamara Line After long study, in September 1966 McNamara ordered the construction of a
barrier line to detect the infiltration of North Vietnamese forces into southern Laos, South Vietnam, and Cambodia that would help direct air strikes. Physically, the McNamara Line ran across South Vietnam to the Laotian border along the
Vietnamese Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). The Vietnam barrier and its Laotian extension also used innovative air-dropped sensors under Operation Igloo White. Igloo White cost between $1 and $1.7 billion to design and build, and an additional billion dollars per year to operate over the five-year life of the operation; controversy has surrounded accounts of its effectiveness.
1966 fact-finding mission 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 VC, 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. Worst of all, McNamara complained that the South Vietnamese were still not carrying their full share of the load, as they expected the Americans to do all the fighting for them, stating: "This important war must be fought and won by the Vietnamese themselves. We have known this from the beginning. But the discouraging truth is that, as was the case in 1961 and 1963 and 1965, we have not found the formula, the catalyst, for training and inspiring them into effective action".
Project 100,000 In October 1966, he launched Project 100,000, the lowering of military Armed Forces Qualification Test standards, which allowed 354,000 additional men to be recruited, despite criticism that they were not suited to working in high-stress or dangerous environments. According to Hamilton Gregory, author of the book ''McNamara's Folly: The Use of Low-IQ Troops in the Vietnam War'', inductees of the project died at three times the rate of other Americans serving in Vietnam and following their service had lower incomes and higher rates of divorce than their non-veteran counterparts.
Antiwar confrontation In November 1966, McNamara visited Harvard University to see
Henry Kissinger; his car was surrounded by anti-war protesters who forced the automobile to stop. The students refused to let the car move until McNamara debated their leader, Michael Ansara, the president of the Harvard chapter of
Students for a Democratic Society. McNamara agreed to the debate, and standing on the hood of his car answered the charge from a student in the crowd that the United States was waging aggression by saying the war started in 1954, not 1957, which he knew "because the
International Control Commission wrote a report that said so. You haven't read it, and if you have, you obviously didn't understand it". When the student answered that he had read the International Control Commission's report and it did not say that, McNamara responded he had been a far better university student than his opponent, saying "I was tougher than you then and I'm tougher today! I was more courteous then, and I hope I'm more courteous today!". As McNamara continued to insult the crowd and the mood grew uglier, he fled into
Quincy House, from which he escaped via underground tunnels to see Kissinger. The confrontation with the students had shaken him, and it took half an hour before he was ready to address Kissinger's class.
Failures Because the effects of Operation Rolling Thunder were more easily measured than with the ground war, McNamara was especially troubled by the revelation that the bombing offensive had not caused the collapse of North Vietnam's economy as predicted. In June 1967, American bombers hit North Vietnam's hydroelectric plants and reduced North Vietnam capacity to generate electricity by 85%, according to McNamara's calculations. At the same time, he also calculated that the annual amount of electricity generated in North Vietnam was equal only to a fifth of the electricity generated every year at the
Potomac Electric Power Company's plant in
Alexandria, Virginia, making the destruction of North Vietnamese power plants meaningless to the outcome of the war as the amount of electricity generated was so small. He also calculated in 1967 that over the last two years, American bombers had inflicted damage on North Vietnam equal to about $300 million while at the same time, Rolling Thunder had cost the U.S. Air Force about 700 aircraft shot down over North Vietnam whose total purchase value was about $900 million, making the bombing campaign uneconomical. McNamara's doubts were encouraged by his civilian aides such as
Leslie H. Gelb and
John McNaughton, who complained that their wives and teenage children were chiding them as "war criminals" when they came home from work. McNamara's own teenage son,
Robert Craig McNamara, was opposed to the war and denounced his father when he came from work every day. McNamara was shocked to discover that the American flag was hanging upside down in his son's bedroom as the younger McNamara told him that he was ashamed of America because of him. McNaughton told McNamara that after having talked to some of the young people that "a feeling is widely and strongly held...that 'the Establishment' is out of its mind" and the dominant opinion was "that we are trying to impose some U.S. image on distant peoples we cannot understand and that we carrying the thing to absurd lengths." In a memo of 19 May 1967 to the president, McNamara stated the military side of the war was going well with the Americans killing thousands of the enemy every month, but the political side was not, as South Vietnam remained as dysfunctional as ever. He wrote: "Corruption is widespread. Real government control is confined to enclaves. There is rot in the fabric". McNamara wrote that the idea that the American forces would temporarily stabilize the situation so the South Vietnamese could take over the war themselves was flawed as the dysfunctional South Vietnamese state would never be able to win the war, thus meaning the Americans would have to stay in Vietnam for decades to come. He advised Johnson not to accept Westmoreland's call for an additional 200,000 soldiers as that would mean calling up the Reserves, which in turn would require a wartime economy. The economic sacrifices that ending the peacetime economy would entail would make it almost politically impossible to negotiate peace, and in effect would mean placing the hawks in charge, which was why those of a hawkish inclination kept pressing for the Reserves to be called up. The economic sacrifices could only be justified to the American people by saying the war would be brought to a victorious conclusion. McNamara rejected the advice of the hawks, warning that steps such as bombing North Vietnam's dikes and locks to flood the farmland with the aim of causing a famine; mining the coast of North Vietnam to sink Soviet ships bringing in arms; invading Laos and Cambodia; and finally in the last resort using nuclear weapons if the other measures failed were likely to alienate world opinion and increase domestic opposition. McNamara wrote: "The picture of the world's greatest superpower killing or seriously injuring 1,000 noncombatants a week, while trying to pound a tiny backward nation into submission on an issue whose merits are hotly disputed, is not a pretty one". Finally, McNamara dismissed the Domino Theory as irrelevant since General
Suharto had seized power in Indonesia in 1965 and proceeded to wipe out the Indonesian Communist Party, the third-largest in the world,
killing hundreds of thousands of Indonesian Communists. He argued that with Suharto in power in Indonesia, "the trend in Asia was now running in America's favor, which reduced the importance of South Vietnam". To the Americans, Indonesia was the most important of all the "dominoes" in Southeast Asia, and McNamara argued that even if the South Vietnamese "domino" were to fall, the Indonesian "domino" would still stand.
Nuclear weapons use proposal On 21 January 1968, nine days before the
Tet Offensive broke out, General William Westmoreland proposed planning for tactical nuclear weapons use in Vietnam; Air Force chief of staff General John McConnell concurred. McNamara sent a secret memorandum to Lyndon Johnson on 19 February 1968 – ten days before he left office – which discounted the nuclear option. McNamara wrote: "because of terrain and other conditions peculiar to our operations in South Vietnam, it is inconceivable that the use of nuclear weapons would be recommended there against either Viet Cong or North Vietnamese forces". In the same memo McNamara mentioned that he personally contacted scientists
George Killian,
George Kistiakowsky and
I.I. Rabi to assure them nuclear weapons use was not considered; the three had telegraphed former President Eisenhower to elicit his support against such use.
Pentagon Papers origins McNamara commissioned the Vietnam Study Task Force on 17 June 1967. He was inspired by the
confrontation at Harvard the previous November as he had discovered that the students he had been debating knew more about Vietnam's history than he did. The task was assigned to Leslie Gelb and six officials whom McNamara instructed to examine just how and why the United States became involved in Vietnam, by answering his list of 100 questions starting with American relations with the Viet Minh in World War II. McNamara expected them to be done by September 1967; they finished by January 1969. Though Gelb was a hawk who had written pro-war speeches for the Republican Senator
Jacob Javits, he and his team, which grew to 36 members by 1969, became disillusioned as they wrote the history; at one point when discussing what were the lessons of Vietnam, future general
Paul F. Gorman, one of the historians, went up to the blackboard to write simply, "Don't." The team counted Gelb, Gorman, Melvin Gurtov, Hans Heymann, Richard Moorstein,
Daniel Ellsberg,
Richard Holbrooke,
John Galvin,
Paul Warnke and
Morton Halperin among its members. 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. Gelb recalled that he presented the Papers to McNamara early that year, but McNamara did not read them then, and Gelb did not know as late as 2018 if McNamara ever did. Intended as the official record of U.S. military involvement in Indochina, the final report ran to 7,000 pages and was classified as "Top Secret – Sensitive." The report was ultimately leaked in 1971 to
The New York Times by Daniel Ellsberg, a former aide to McNamara's Assistant Secretary of Defense, John McNaughton. The leaked study became known as the
Pentagon Papers, revealing that McNamara and others had been aware that the Vietnam offensive was futile. Subsequent efforts by the
Nixon administration to prevent such leaks led indirectly to the
Watergate scandal. In an interview, McNamara said that the
Domino Theory was the main reason for entering the Vietnam War. He also stated, "Kennedy hadn't said before he died whether, faced with the loss of Vietnam, he would [completely] withdraw; but I believe today that had he faced that choice, he would have withdrawn." ==Equality of opportunity==