American business executive, world bank president and government official who served as the Secretary of Defense from 1961 to 1968 during the Bay of Pigs and the Vietnam War. McNamara served as a financial analyst, comptroller and the first ever non-family president of Ford Motor Company. After his success in the U.S. automobile industry, he presided over the U.S. Department of Defense under his good friend President John F. Kennedy. Under the Johnson administration, McNamara continued to send in more troops to the Vietnam conflict. His influence was so great that the Vietnam War was unofficially called “McNamara’s War.” As early as 1965, he concluded that the struggle would end in failure and U.S. policies concerning the conflict were “terribly wrong.” Ironically, in 1982 he was awarded the Einstein Peace Prize in recognition of an article he had co-written proposing that the U.S. adopt a no-first-use policy for nuclear weapons.
McNamara grew up in San Francisco and received his education at the local public schools in nearby Piedmont, CA. His father was an executive of a wholesale shoe company. In high school, McNamara excelled, always turning homework in promptly. He attended the University of California at Berkeley and graduated in 1937. In 1939, he received his graduate degree in business from Harvard. He taught at Harvard for the next three years. In 1943, during WW II, McNamara received a captain’s commission in the U.S. Army Air Corps. He worked on developing the Army’s logistical systems.
Joining Ford Motor Corporation In 1946, he rescued the ailing Ford Company with the new management techniques he had learned from Harvard Business School. His brilliance as a number-cruncher became legendary in the business world. Ambitious and self-confident, he went on with the aid of loyal mentors to capture the top position at Ford; however, only seven weeks after gaining the post of president at Ford in 1960, he gave up his six-figure salary to join JFK’s cabinet. Running the Pentagon, he systematized the armed services as he had Ford in the private industry sector. When Johnson became president, he stayed on and became his trusted advisor. His talents and skills were in the modern, scientific management techniques. Senator Barry Goldwater referred to McNamara as an “IBM machine on legs.”
While his success was in managing numbers, his downfall was in handling people and institutions. In March 1965, under the Johnson administration, the first American ground troops, 3,500 Marines entered Vietnam. Despite the protests of Joint Chiefs of Staff General Maxwell Taylor and General H.K. Johnson, McNamara overrode their recommendations and sent another 200,000 troops to Vietnam in June 1965. In November 1966, he advocated and sent another 200,000 troops and in 1967, another 200,000. He refused to be contradicted by others and his rigidity proved fatal for the regard of his colleagues. He was arrogant and aloof and when convinced of his own righteousness, ruled by fear, continuing to stick to his position no matter the consequences.
In 1968, he left the Pentagon and became the president of the World Bank. In the aftermath of his departure, people viewed McNamara as a victim, not the perpetrator of a tragedy that cost the lives of many Americans and Vietnamese and the disturbance of the country’s national unity. At the World Bank, he tried to eradicate poverty in the third world. He continued his distant manner, separating himself from his coworkers and masterminding grandiose designs. The World Bank bureaucracy grew and loans escalated to third world leaders who misused the funds. Slowly the truly poor in the desperately poverty-ridden countries sank into worse situations. By the early 1980s, the orgy of lending ended in an international debt crisis hurting the poorest of the poor. He left his office at the World Bank in 1981.
n 1995, McNamara wrote his memoirs, “In Retrospect,” which spoke of his policy doubts about choosing the wrong path in a conflict the U.S. could not win. Even with his misgivings, another 19 months passed before McNamara gave up on his hawkish position. With strong emotions, the man publicly cried mea culpa.
McNamara married Margaret Craig, whom he had met at UC Berkeley. and raised two daughters and a son. All three of his kids were opposed to the war. His favorite leisure activity was mountain climbing. She died in 1981 of cancer and he was devastated.
McNamara was the subject of the Errol Morris documentary, “Fog of War,” released in December 2003, in which McNamara talks about his role in the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations and the decision-making process during the VietNam War.
At age 88, the former Secretary of Defense married his Italian-born sweetheart, Diana Masieri Byfield, age 70, on September 16, 2004 in Assisi, Italy. She has also been married once before.
He died in his sleep at 5:30 AM on July 6, 2009 at his Washington, DC home according to his wife. He was 93.
Link to Wikipedia biography