The Ascendancy of the Secretary of Defense

Special Study 4

Historical Office

Office of the Secretary of Defense

JULY 2013

Robert S. McNamara

1961-1963

The Ascendancy of the

Secretary of Defense
Cold War Foreign Policy Series • Special Study 4 The Ascendancy of the Secretary of Defense

Cover Photo: Secretary Robert S. McNamara, Gen. Maxwell D. Taylor, and President 

John F. Kennedy at the White House, January 1963

Source: Robert Knudson/John F. Kennedy Library, used with permission.

Cover Design: OSD Graphics, Pentagon.

The Ascendancy of the

Secretary of Defense

Robert S. McNamara

1961-1963
ii iii

Cold War Foreign Policy Series • Special Study 4 The Ascendancy of the Secretary of Defense

Historical Office

Office of the Secretary of Defense

July 2013

Series Editors

Erin R. Mahan, Ph.D.

Chief Historian, Office of the Secretary of Defense

Jeffrey A. Larsen, Ph.D.

President, Larsen Consulting Group

Special Study 4

Robert S. McNamara

1961-1963

The Ascendancy of the

Secretary of Defense
The Ascendancy of the Secretary of Defense

iv v

Cold War Foreign Policy Series • Special Study 4

This study was reviewed for declassification by the appropriate U.S. 

Government departments and agencies and cleared for release. The 

study is an official publication of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, 

but inasmuch as the text has not been considered by the Office of the 

Secretary of Defense, it must be construed as descriptive only and does 

not constitute the official position of OSD on any subject.

Portions of this work may be quoted or reprinted without permission, 

provided that a standard source credit line in included. The Historical 

Office of the Office of the Secretary of Defense would appreciate a 

courtesy copy of reprints or reviews.

Contents

Foreword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii

Executive Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix

Restructuring the National Security Council . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

State-Defense Coordination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

McNamara’s Staff Support System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

McNamara and Diplomacy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

A Succession of Crises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

Assessing McNamara’s Impact . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

About the Editors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
Cold War Foreign Policy Series • Special Study 4 The Ascendancy of the Secretary of Defense

vi vii

Foreword

This is the fourth special study in a series by the Office of the 

Secretary of Defense (OSD) Historical Office that emphasizes 

the Secretary’s role in the U.S. foreign policy making process and 

how the position evolved between 1947 and the end of the Cold 

War. The study presented here concentrates on the pivotal, even 

revolutionary, role of President John F. Kennedy’s Secretary of 

Defense, Robert S. McNamara. More influential at some times 

than at others, the Secretary of Defense has consistently been a key 

figure among the President’s senior advisors. The role and impact 

of the Secretary of Defense are not as well understood and less 

frequently studied than those of the Secretary of State. As this 

study illustrates, McNamara played a greater role in foreign affairs 

than any previous Secretary of Defense.

This series of special studies by the Historical Office is part of an 

ongoing effort to highlight various aspects of the Secretary’s mission 

and achievements. The series on the role of the Secretary of Defense 

in U.S. foreign policy making during the Cold War began as a 

book manuscript by Dr. Steven Rearden, author of The Formative 

Years, 1947–1950, in our Secretaries of Defense Historical Series. I 

wish to thank Kathleen Jones in OSD Graphics for her efforts and 

continued support.

We anticipate that future study series will cover a variety of 

defense topics. We invite you to peruse our other publications at 

<http://history.defense.gov/>.

Erin R. Mahan

Chief Historian

Office of the Secretary of Defense
Cold War Foreign Policy Series • Special Study 4 The Ascendancy of the Secretary of Defense

viii ix

Executive Summary

Robert S. McNamara became the eighth Secretary of Defense in 

January 1961. Reputedly able to master any subject he set his mind 

to and decidedly dedicated to the rule of logic and rationality, 

McNamara was nonetheless a relative amateur in government. 

His practical exposure to the subject was minimal, and he held 

conventional and unremarkable views regarding national security. 

Yet to some observers, he became the archetype of President John F. 

Kennedy’s so-called New Frontier. He projected an image of vigor, 

pragmatism, and energy from the day he took office. As former 

Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford remarked in his memoirs, 

“It is no exaggeration to say that the history of the Department 

of Defense will always be divided into pre-McNamara and postMcNamara eras.”

McNamara played a greater role in foreign affairs than any previous 

Secretary of Defense. He accepted the conventional wisdom that 

defense policy derived from foreign policy and that the Defense 

Department should serve and assist the State Department. But in 

day-to-day practice he generally followed his own lead, moving the 

Defense Department more into the forefront of the policy process 

than ever before. 

McNamara’s success in imposing his views and influence derived 

from the close and cordial relationship that he and the President 

enjoyed. More than being simply business associates, they socialized 

together and consulted regularly on all manner of issues, not just 

defense or national security. According to Robert F. Kennedy, the 

President thought more highly of McNamara than of any other 
Cold War Foreign Policy Series • Special Study 4 The Ascendancy of the Secretary of Defense

x xi

year was also a result of the predominance of political issues with 

strong military overtones during this period, combined with Rusk’s 

conscious effort to avoid intruding in military matters. 

Kennedy had intended the State Department to be his principal 

source of advice on foreign affairs, but he eventually concluded that 

Rusk was either unable or unwilling to provide effective leadership 

of American foreign policy. Ultimately, in Kennedy’s eyes, it was 

Rusk’s reserved and cautious manner that proved his undoing. 

McNamara, in contrast, exuded an aggressive, forceful “can-do” 

manner that appealed to Kennedy. 

Another reason McNamara came to cast such a long shadow over 

foreign affairs was that he had behind him perhaps the strongest 

staff of any member of Kennedy’s cabinet. McNamara had insisted 

on installing his own team at Defense, a privilege not granted other 

senior cabinet members. He selected a cadre of civilian specialists 

and professionals, among them a bright young group dubbed the 

“Whiz Kids,” who clustered mostly in the newly created Office of 

Systems Analysis. McNamara also inherited the so-called little State 

Department within Defense—the International Security Analysis 

(ISA) directorate, a responsive, experienced, and efficient foreign 

affairs bureaucracy. 

The ISA team’s forays into the policy process were not without 

consequence for others in the Defense Department, notably the Joint 

Chiefs of Staff (JCS). Along with seeing their power and influence 

at the White House diminish, the chiefs discovered that McNamara 

had no qualms about reassigning some of their traditional politicomilitary functions to ISA, Systems Analysis, or elsewhere if he thought 

that doing so would expedite the work and improve the product.

In addition to advisory and policymaking functions, McNamara 

was often busy with diplomatic matters and travel abroad. Previous 

Secretaries of Defense had also performed these duties but rarely 

became as deeply involved in them as McNamara did.

cabinet member. For Kennedy’s purposes, McNamara proved 

the ideal Defense Secretary—loyal, tough-minded, energetic, 

dependable, and successful. 

A further reason for McNamara’s influence was that he presided over 

the Pentagon at a time of weak leadership at the State Department 

and of diminished stature for the National Security Council (NSC). 

The system that Kennedy put in place stripped away some of the 

layers of bureaucracy that had effectively insulated the Oval Office 

in Dwight D. Eisenhower’s day, giving McNamara access to the 

President on virtually any problem he deemed important.

Furthermore, the nature of the problems that predominated during 

Kennedy’s presidency made it almost impossible for McNamara 

to avoid having a major role in foreign affairs. The policymaking 

environment in which McNamara operated differed markedly 

from what any previous Secretary of Defense had known. Kennedy 

wanted to relax Cold War tensions, but he was also committed 

to providing high-caliber security and thwarting Communist 

expansion. Achieving the latter objectives turned out to involve 

more reliance on military options than Kennedy anticipated, 

increasing his need for McNamara’s assistance. As a rule, it was 

McNamara’s policy to comply as quickly and as thoroughly as 

possible with whatever the President wanted, even when he may 

have personally disagreed. 

Personal rapport also played an important part in State-Defense 

coordination throughout McNamara’s tenure. Early in the 

administration, Secretary of State Dean Rusk and McNamara 

agreed to try to meet privately at least once a week to iron out 

problems. In recognition of Rusk’s senior cabinet rank and the 

principle of civil authority, McNamara acknowledged that he 

considered the military to be the “servant of foreign policy.” But in 

reality, the mild-mannered Rusk usually ended up going along with 

whatever McNamara wanted. The emergence of McNamara as the 

more influential of the two Secretaries by the end of Kennedy’s first 
Cold War Foreign Policy Series • Special Study 4 The Ascendancy of the Secretary of Defense

xii xiii

Prevailing upon U.S. allies to accept the new strategy of flexible 

response proved a more formidable task than McNamara had 

imagined. 

McNamara served during a succession of crises faced by the new 

Kennedy administration. Following the Bay of Pigs debacle in 

1961, McNamara resolved not to serve the President so poorly 

again. Thereafter, once he discerned what the President wanted to 

do in a given situation, McNamara did his best to implement those 

wishes. 

Of all the crises that occurred in the administration’s first year, the 

Berlin contingency in the summer of 1961 did the most to cement 

the Pentagon’s increasing role in the shaping of foreign policy while 

concurrently displacing Laos and Cuba as the administration’s 

central foreign policy focus. By the following year, McNamara had 

clearly emerged as the most valued official in the administration. 

His firm commitment to civilian control of the military and his 

willingness to run interference for the White House in dealing 

with the military establishment proved particularly helpful. These 

characteristics were exhibited during the Cuban missile crisis in 

October 1962. McNamara’s behavior showed a clear reluctance to 

be at odds with the President’s position.

By far the largest and most consequential of McNamara’s ventures 

into foreign affairs and diplomacy was his role in formulating 

policy toward Vietnam. What began in 1961 as a smallscale counterinsurgency exercise inherited from the previous 

administration steadily escalated into a regional conflict with a 

commitment of over half a million U.S. forces by the middle of 

the decade. During this period, McNamara began developing the 

statistical tools he would later use extensively to manage the conduct 

of the war. He approached the war as he generally approached other 

problems—he sought to measure its progress quantifiably. For the 

most part, McNamara relied on numbers. 

Throughout his tenure as Secretary of Defense, McNamara persisted 

in dealing with the Vietnam War more as a managerial problem 

than as a foreign policy concern. He believed that the United 

States would find a formula to prevail in the right combination of 

initiatives and proper monitoring techniques, honestly applied. No 

doubt such an attitude reflected his overall approach to running 

the Pentagon.

By 1963, certain trends were beginning to emerge. Not only was 

Defense operating on par with State in politico-military affairs, it 

also was undertaking policy initiatives that extended its influence 

well beyond defense-related issues. The waging of a major war 

during the five years of Lyndon Johnson’s presidency would blur 

the lines between foreign and defense policy more than ever. And 

McNamara would bear the brunt of responsibility as a leading 

proponent and chief architect of that war.
Cold War Foreign Policy Series • Special Study 4 The Ascendancy of the Secretary of Defense

xiv1

hroughout the Dwight Eisenhower years (1953–1961), the 

Secretary of Defense kept a low profile in foreign policy 

matters in deference to the President’s military and foreign affairs 

credentials. While this pattern started to change toward the end 

of the administration during Thomas S. Gates’s tenure, it was not 

until the Kennedy administration that the department achieved its 

prominent role in the making of U.S. foreign policy.

Surrounding himself in 1961 with what some considered the 

ablest collection of talent since Harry Truman’s second term, 

John F. Kennedy made some highly unexpected staffing choices. 

One decision in particular that surprised many was to look to 

the American business-industrial community for his Secretary of 

Defense after his preferred nominee, Robert A. Lovett, Secretary 

of Defense in the Truman administration, declined the position. 

At that point Kennedy turned, partly at Lovett’s recommendation, 

to 44-year-old auto executive Robert S. McNamara, who had been 

appointed president of the Ford Motor Company a month earlier.

1

For some, the McNamara selection conjured up the image of another 

industry mogul like “Engine Charlie” Wilson (General Motors) 

or Neil H. McElroy (Procter & Gamble) running the Pentagon. 

Despite a reputed ability to master any subject he set his mind to 

and a dedication to the rule of logic and rationality, McNamara was 

still a relative amateur in government. His sole exposure to national 

security affairs had been as a lieutenant colonel serving as an Army 

Air Forces statistical control officer in World War II. As for his 

knowledge of foreign policy, little could be documented other than 

his attendance at an occasional university lecture on the subject in 

his home town of Ann Arbor, Michigan. His practical exposure to 

the field was minimal; he seemed to have strictly conventional and 

unremarkable views, endorsing containment as the most sensible 

and effective Western response to Communism.

2

T
Cold War Foreign Policy Series • Special Study 4 The Ascendancy of the Secretary of Defense

2 3

forceful, and decisive image than that of the last years of the 

previous administration. Rejecting Eisenhower’s use of a tight 

chain of command for policymaking purposes, Kennedy embraced 

new procedures to help him obtain fresh ideas and creative results. 

He began by overhauling the policymaking organization he would 

be expected to deal with the most—the National Security Council.

Encouragement to do so came from a variety of quarters. Those 

in the Pentagon familiar with the NSC system, especially career 

officials in ISA, generally believed it was inefficient and that 

changes were necessary, if only to clear away some of the “dead 

wood” that had accumulated during Eisenhower’s presidency.5 

The guidance for many reformers, including Kennedy, came from 

a series of hearings conducted by Senator Henry M. Jackson’s 

subcommittee on national policy machinery along with a final 

report issued shortly after the 1960 election. The subcommittee 

criticized what it characterized as the “over-institutionalization 

of the NSC system” that had occurred under Eisenhower. 

Reflecting his Army background and experience, the system had 

been organized for a thorough vetting of all ideas and an orderly 

flow of paper. According to the Jackson subcommittee, however, 

such unwieldy bodies as the Planning Board and the Operations 

Coordinating Board (OCB) had been ineffective in facilitating the 

flow of information, thereby diminishing the President’s ability 

to assess alternative courses of action and make timely decisions. 

Although the subcommittee cautioned that organizational reforms 

by themselves were unlikely to produce miracles (“getting our best 

people into key foreign-policy and defense posts” was, it allowed, 

probably more important), it left no doubt that it considered the 

existing NSC setup woefully deficient and defective.6

Kennedy’s restructuring of the NSC, overseen by his Special 

Assistant for National Security Affairs McGeorge Bundy, amounted 

to the most extensive overhaul of the NSC system since its creation 

in 1947. Within weeks of taking office, Bundy dissolved the OCB; 

replaced the year-numbered series papers, including the annual 

Given McNamara’s background and lack of experience, there was 

every reason to believe (as some clearly did at the outset of his 

tenure) that he would end up playing a secondary role in foreign 

affairs, much as Wilson and McElroy had done. One frequently 

mentioned scenario held that, with McNamara preoccupied as 

business manager of the Pentagon, Kennedy, like Eisenhower, 

would personally direct high-level foreign and defense policy. As 

President, Kennedy intended to take a prominent part in national 

security affairs, but he also wanted dynamic, able people working for 

him—and if there was something McNamara was known for, it was 

taking charge and producing quantifiable results. Indeed, to some 

observers he became the archetype of President Kennedy’s so-called 

New Frontier, more so perhaps than even the President himself. He 

projected an image of vigor, pragmatism, and impatience from the 

day he took office.3

 

The fact that McNamara would go on to serve longer than any 

of his predecessors also contributed significantly to the large and 

lasting imprint he left on the Department of Defense. According to 

Clark Clifford, who had helped draft the original National Security 

Act, McNamara “moved the military establishment toward what 

we had intended it to be during the battle for military reform in 

the late forties. It is no exaggeration to say that the history of the 

Department of Defense will always be divided into pre-McNamara 

and post-McNamara eras.”4

 The reforms he implemented, using 

new techniques such as systems analysis and program budgeting, 

were often controversial, but there is little doubt that they gave the 

Secretary a stronger and firmer hand in both running the Pentagon 

and influencing foreign policy.

Restructuring the National Security Council

The policymaking environment in which McNamara operated 

differed markedly from that which any previous Secretaries of 

Defense had known. Before he even took office, Kennedy was 

determined that his presidency should project a more vigorous, 
Cold War Foreign Policy Series • Special Study 4 The Ascendancy of the Secretary of Defense

4 5

reviews of basic national security policy, with a new series of 

shorter, issue-specific directives known as national security action 

memoranda (NSAM); and reduced the NSC staff from 71 to 48. 

At the President’s direction, council meetings, though still frequent, 

became less regular and more informal: fewer people attended, 

and the agenda listed specialized problems.7

 Less of the general 

clearinghouse than it had been under Truman and Eisenhower, 

the NSC now became only one of several means by which the 

administration might address foreign and defense policy concerns. 

“I can’t afford to confine myself to one set of advisers,” Kennedy 

insisted. “If I did that, I would be on their leading strings.”8

For McNamara, the new system had two major advantages. First, it 

stripped away some of the layers of bureaucracy that had effectively 

insulated the Oval Office in Eisenhower’s day, granting McNamara 

access to the President on virtually any problem he deemed 

important. In addition, it expedited decisionmaking in what often 

amounted to one-on-one deliberations between the Secretary and 

the President. Roswell Gilpatric, who served as McNamara’s deputy 

from 1961 to 1964, recalled that “the net result was that all of us 

in relatively high positions, and particularly in the international 

security area, felt we knew the president, what he was thinking, and 

what he wanted.”9

For the military services, however, downgrading the NSC spelled 

a diminution of status and loss of access to White House highlevel authority except on an ad hoc basis. The biggest losers were 

the Joint Chiefs, whose advice became increasingly suspect in 

Kennedy’s eyes following the Bay of Pigs fiasco in the spring of 

1961. After Bundy abolished the OCB, the Chiefs closed down the 

existing liaison office that they had maintained in the White House 

since the early 1950s; thereafter, they conducted any business with 

the NSC through a small JCS liaison office located next door in 

the Old Executive Office Building.10 The Chiefs could only watch 

their influence ebb further after the Bay of Pigs failure. Reflecting 

his uncertainty about JCS advice, the President appointed former 

Army Chief of Staff General Maxwell D. Taylor as his White 

House–based military advisor. Taylor’s job was to double-check the 

military advice coming from “across the river.”11

While these new arrangements streamlined the policy process and 

allowed the President to respond faster and to a wider range of 

views, they also increased his workload and forced him at times 

to make hasty decisions or resort to ad hoc responses to what 

might otherwise have been seen as short-term problems. In 

certain instances—such as the Skybolt missile controversy with 

the British in 1962 and the events leading up to the overthrow 

and assassination of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem 

in 1963—the absence of a systematic review process was clearly a 

serious liability.12 As Harvard professor Richard E. Neustadt later 

acknowledged, the reforms the new administration brought in—

reforms Neustadt helped design—liberated Kennedy from the 

constraints of the Eisenhower system but yielded mixed results. 

“We aimed at Eisenhower and hit Kennedy,” Neustadt said. “We 

did away with the old and didn’t put anything in its place.”13

Probably the most notable difference between the old system 

and the new was the dearth of institutionalized mechanisms for 

policy coordination. Instead, ad hoc interagency committees or 

“task forces” (Kennedy preferred the latter designation because it 

sounded more action-oriented) met as required to address specific 

problems. Kennedy originally intended that the State Department’s 

regional bureau chiefs chair most of these groups, but as time went 

on it became more convenient for Bundy, members of the NSC 

staff, or even Defense officials to perform that job. The two best 

known of these interagency working groups were the Berlin Task 

Force (one of the few that functioned as a standing committee), 

created in the summer of 1961 to coordinate policy and defense 

plans for a threatened showdown with the Soviets over Berlin, 

and the NSC Executive Committee (ExComm), a cabinet-level 

body, formed hurriedly in October 1962 to advise the President 

during the Cuban missile crisis. Smaller and less conspicuous 
Cold War Foreign Policy Series • Special Study 4 The Ascendancy of the Secretary of Defense

6 7

interdepartmental groups (some 50 in all) dealt with policy toward 

Laos, Vietnam, the Congo, Iran, South Korea, Cuba, and various 

other politico-military problems.14

The personal relationships that developed among senior Kennedy 

administration officials and their staffs provided the most common 

means of coordination. Many who joined the administration 

already knew one another from having worked together in 

Democratic party politics, at think tanks like RAND, or at 

academic institutions, from which Kennedy drew freely to staff his 

administration. A few, like McGeorge Bundy in the White House, 

and his brother, William P. Bundy, Deputy Assistant Secretary of 

Defense for International and Security Affairs in the Pentagon, had 

familial ties. For “outsiders” like McNamara, it took longer to build 

up contacts and establish a network, but he was more than equal to 

the task. According to Roswell Gilpatric:

The reason the Cuban missile crisis was handled better . . . 

than the Bay of Pigs, was first of all, those of us who had 

responsibilities in dealing with those two situations had gotten 

to know each other. We had been in office nearly two years. We 

had been through our shakedown cruises and we came to trust 

and have confidence and understanding in each other.15

Between Kennedy and McNamara, the chemistry was practically 

ideal. More than just “business associates,” they socialized together 

and consulted regularly on all manner of issues, not just defense 

or national security. Though a registered Republican, McNamara 

had preferred Kennedy over the Republican candidate, Richard M. 

Nixon, in the 1960 election, mainly because of Kennedy’s idealism 

and positions on domestic issues. “I don’t think,” he would later 

remark, “I have admired any man that I have associated with 

more.” According to younger brother Robert F. Kennedy, the 

President thought more highly of McNamara than of any other 

cabinet member.16

McNamara also had exceptionally good rapport with McGeorge 

Bundy. The two became and remained friends and collaborators 

for life. A former Harvard government professor, Bundy was 

discreet, effective, and by all accounts unbiased in bringing 

divergent viewpoints to the President’s attention. He was also, 

in style, personality, and mode of operation, someone who rarely 

generated friction but who instead contributed greatly to fostering 

consensus among the President’s advisors.17 Though his title was 

Special Assistant for National Security Affairs, he was increasingly 

referred to as the President’s “national security advisor.” As such, 

he became an active participant in the policy process at Kennedy’s 

request. Bundy freely offered his own policy views, making sure 

that he did so in the presence of other senior advisors or in ways 

of which they were fully aware.18 At the same time, he handled 

sensitive duties, much as General Andrew Goodpaster had done 

for Eisenhower, that occasionally included liaison responsibilities 

in one of Kennedy’s favorite areas—covert intelligence operations. 

But most of the time Bundy’s tasks were generally fixed. As one 

senior aide characterized it, Bundy and his staff were the President’s 

“eyes and ears” whose job was “to keep tabs on things.”19

One of Bundy’s most lasting contributions was the creation of the 

Situation Room, a communications control center that moved 

the nuts and bolts of crisis management directly into the White 

House. After the Bay of Pigs, Kennedy wanted faster and more 

secure communications with the departments and agencies during 

crises. The job of making the necessary arrangements fell to Bundy. 

Housed in the former Map Room that had served as Franklin D. 

Roosevelt’s command post in World War II, the Situation Room 

functioned as both a conference center and a communications 

clearinghouse from which the President and selected members 

of the White House staff could monitor cable traffic to and from 

the Departments of State and Defense and, to a lesser extent, the 

Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Finished early in 1962, it saw 

extensive use during the Cuban missile crisis later that year and 
Cold War Foreign Policy Series • Special Study 4 The Ascendancy of the Secretary of Defense

8 9

became, over time, the President’s independent link to intelligence 

sources and back-channel communications.20

Exactly how McNamara felt about the existence of the White 

House Situation Room is unclear. There is no doubt that it offered 

the President and his immediate circle of White House aides and 

advisors a means of gaining ready access to DoD communications. 

Early difficulties with the installation of equipment and the sorting 

out of channels for monitoring suggest some measure of uneasiness 

in the Pentagon over the new unit’s existence. But as a rule, it was 

McNamara’s policy to comply as quickly and as thoroughly as 

possible with whatever the President wanted—not to temporize or 

make excuses—even when he may have personally disagreed. Such 

was the basis of McNamara’s relationship with Kennedy, and in 

most cases it ended up working to McNamara’s advantage.

State-Defense Coordination

Personal rapport also played an important part in State-Defense 

coordination throughout McNamara’s tenure. Like most of his 

predecessors, McNamara quickly recognized the interaction of foreign 

and defense policy, viewing them as inseparable entities. Seeking to 

build on the favorable relations he inherited from his predecessor 

Thomas S. Gates, who had worked smoothly with Secretary of State 

Christian A. Herter, McNamara found in Secretary of State Dean 

Rusk an eminently responsive and cooperative colleague who likewise 

believed that State and Defense should pull in harness. Though their 

collaboration did not always prove as productive as either might have 

liked, it was certainly one of the most cordial between a Secretary of 

State and Secretary of Defense during the postwar period.

As early as February 1961, Rusk and McNamara agreed to try 

to meet privately at least once a week to iron out problems. In 

recognition of Rusk’s senior cabinet rank and the principle of civil 

authority, McNamara acknowledged that he considered the military 

to be the “servant of foreign policy.”21 But in reality, the mildmannered Rusk usually ended up going along with McNamara. 

When someone once suggested that the Secretary of Defense was 

poaching on State’s territory, Rusk reportedly “just smiled and 

shrugged.”22 Subordinates, being uncertain whether Rusk would 

support them, quickly learned, as one put it, that there was little 

point in trying “to carry military issues to the top.”23

The emergence of McNamara as the more influential of the two 

Secretaries by the end of Kennedy’s first year is perhaps best 

explained by the predominance of political issues with strong 

military overtones during this period, combined with Rusk’s 

conscious effort to avoid intruding in military matters. Rusk had 

served in the State Department during the Truman administration 

and knew first-hand, from witnessing the feud between Dean 

Acheson and Louis Johnson, how harmful such quarrels could 

be.24 As Secretary of State, he resolved to work in partnership with 

McNamara, whatever their differences, and to steer clear of offering 

military advice. “It is not the policy of the State Department,” he 

assured McNamara, “to issue military appraisals without seeking 

the views of the Defense Department.”25

Kennedy had intended the State Department to be his principal 

source of advice on foreign affairs. His reason for downgrading the 

NSC in the first place was to turn more responsibility for policy 

coordination and execution over to State. But he effectively sabotaged 

his own plans by making State a catchall for appointees holding 

the many points of view that were then competing for primacy 

within the Democratic Party. State became a virtual battlefield 

for two groups in particular: self-styled pragmatists, led by former 

Secretary of State Dean Acheson, an occasional troubleshooter for 

the White House, who thought the United States should go easy on 

making concessions to the Soviet Union; and the idealists (derided 

as “soft-liners” by Acheson and his friends), such as Under Secretary 

Chester Bowles, Assistant Secretary G. Mennen Williams, and Adlai 

Stevenson, the Ambassador to the United Nations, who hoped to 

ameliorate East-West tensions through negotiations.26
Cold War Foreign Policy Series • Special Study 4 The Ascendancy of the Secretary of Defense

10 11

Kennedy eventually concluded that Rusk was either unable or 

unwilling to provide effective leadership of American foreign 

policy. Ultimately, in Kennedy’s eyes, it seems to have been Rusk’s 

reticence that proved his undoing. As Roger Hilsman, head of 

State’s intelligence bureau, characterized the Secretary of State’s 

temperament, “Rusk was a superb counselor, but he could not bring 

himself to be an advocate.”27 Rarely did Rusk speak up at meetings 

(like Acheson, he preferred to confer with the President in private), 

and most of the time he suffered in silence while others “with no 

responsibility were making academic comments.”28 Rusk was in fact 

a man of strong convictions, but his reserved and cautious manner 

won him few friends in the White House. McNamara, in contrast, 

exuded an aggressive, forceful “can-do” manner that appealed to 

Kennedy. Though fond of Rusk personally, McNamara was amazed 

in retrospect at how small a role he remembered the Secretary of 

State having played and how little leadership in foreign affairs 

Rusk had shown in the seven years they worked together.29 The 

more doubts the President had about Rusk, the more he seemed to 

count on McNamara. Little wonder, then, that at the time of his 

assassination in November 1963, Kennedy had reportedly decided 

to replace Rusk after the next year’s election, with McNamara 

tentatively slated to move from the Pentagon to State.30

McNamara (and Rusk, too, for that matter) concurred with 

Kennedy that the basic national security papers of the 1950s had 

grown too diffuse and general to serve a useful purpose any longer. 

Although the State Department launched an effort, spearheaded 

initially by chairman of the policy planning council George 

McGhee, to come up with a fresh policy blueprint, it was a lowpriority, intermittent project. By 1963, a policy planning draft 

report, tentatively acceptable to State but lacking agreement on 

several key defense points, was awaiting action in the Pentagon. 

But by then, having settled on other arrangements, McNamara saw 

no reason to continue, and the project died.31

McNamara preferred to supply his own foreign policy guidance, 

including it with each annual budget presentation: in classified form, 

to accompany his Draft Presidential Memoranda to the President; 

and in unclassified form, to accompany his “posture statements” 

to Congress. Not since Forrestal’s first annual report in 1948 had 

a Secretary of Defense attempted to cover so much ground or to 

do so with as much candor and authority. Going beyond a purely 

military rationale, the posture statements and draft memoranda 

offered justification for new and ongoing defense programs based on 

how they contributed to furthering U.S. foreign policy objectives. 

“It was essential,” McNamara recalled, “to begin with a discussion 

of foreign policy because that had to be the foundation of security 

policy.”32 Though the State Department routinely submitted advice 

and comments, its views often arrived too late in the process to be 

reflected in the final documents forwarded to Congress and the 

President.33

Gradually, as the Defense role in foreign policy grew, frustrations 

mounted among Rusk’s senior aides and advisors. According to 

Hilsman, a lack of leadership lay at the root of the problem: 

I can’t blame McNamara for pushing his department’s view 

as vigorously as possible. But I certainly can blame Rusk for 

not pushing his view, or our view. And always over and over 

again, it ends up with [Assistant Secretary of State W. Averell] 

Harriman and Hilsman arguing against McNamara and the 

[Joint Chiefs of Staff] and [Director of Central Intelligence 

John] McCone. And that’s not quite an equal contest.34

Despite the criticism, McNamara saw no alternative. What may 

have seemed to others a usurpation of State’s functions by Defense, 

McNamara viewed as simply a matter of necessity. One such episode 

concerned the so-called Broomfield amendment, legislation that 

required the President to certify that economic aid to certain Third 

World countries, Indonesia among them, was not being diverted 

to military purposes. At the President’s request, McNamara 
Cold War Foreign Policy Series • Special Study 4 The Ascendancy of the Secretary of Defense

12 13

conducted a thorough audit of the Indonesian aid program and 

came up with both a detailed accounting and a recommendation 

that in the future, the Secretary of Defense be placed in charge 

of monitoring the program. Despite mutterings from the White 

House and State Department at what seemed a large-scale transfer 

of responsibility for essentially political matters to the Secretary of 

Defense, McNamara’s recommendation prevailed.35

More often than not, however, Rusk and McNamara operated on 

common ground. Described by Rusk as “a staunch believer in arms 

control,” McNamara accepted without question Kennedy’s decision 

in the spring of 1961 to create the Arms Control and Disarmament 

Agency, a separate organization overseen by the Secretary of State, 

to coordinate the development of policy and negotiations. As they 

had in the past when dealing with such matters, the Joint Chiefs 

expressed reservations. They remained skeptical of arms control in 

general and feared that a separate agency would not pay sufficient 

attention to military concerns. The Chiefs thought that arms control 

policy should be made in the NSC, where it had been in the past 

and where they and the Secretary of Defense could be assured of 

having their perspectives considered. But as the President’s proposal 

gathered momentum in Congress, the JCS gave up pursuing their 

objections.36 Thereafter, as Rusk described it, “I never had to armwrestle the Joint Chiefs on this score. McNamara took care of all 

disputes with the chiefs inside the Pentagon. And the chiefs always 

participated in our discussions.”37

McNamara’s Staff Support System

One reason why McNamara came to cast such a long shadow over 

foreign affairs was that he had behind him perhaps the strongest 

staff of any member of Kennedy’s cabinet. McNamara had insisted 

on being able to install his own team at Defense, a privilege not 

granted other senior cabinet members. Aided by a strong deputy, 

the exceptionally able Roswell L. Gilpatric—a Wall Street lawyer 

who had been Under Secretary of the Air Force in the Truman 

administration—he also selected a cadre of civilian specialists 

and professionals, among them a bright young group dubbed the 

“Whiz Kids,” who clustered mostly in the newly created Office of 

Systems Analysis. Initially under the OSD Comptroller, Systems 

Analysis became a separate office at the Assistant Secretary level 

in 1965, with Alain Enthoven in charge.38 Much of the debate 

then and later over McNamara’s management style stemmed from 

charges that he placed too much responsibility in the Whiz Kids’ 

hands and that he allowed them—indeed, encouraged them—to 

interfere in military planning, using them in ways that undermined 

the authority of State. Insofar as the latter charge went, McNamara 

had a ready reply. Those who criticized him or his department, 

he argued, “failed to recognize that the top political appointees in 

Defense were more able, more active, and ran a tighter organization 

than did those in State.”39

It also was McNamara’s luck to inherit, in ISA—the so-called little 

State Department within Defense—a responsive, experienced, and 

efficient foreign affairs bureaucracy. This he further bolstered with a 

new directive, issued in May 1961, reaffirming ISA’s existing policy 

powers and granting new authority to delve into studies of longterm security needs and the politico-military and foreign economic 

implications of force structures, weapon systems, and other military 

capabilities.40 ISA gained its importance and influence as part of 

McNamara’s Pentagon from the expanded range and complexity 

of politico-military problems in which McNamara took a personal 

interest and the energetic boost the office received under Paul H. 

Nitze, Assistant Secretary for ISA from 1961 to 1963. Though at 

54, Nitze was too old to be classified as one of the Whiz Kids, he 

was every bit as active, systematic, and aggressive as his younger 

colleagues. A decade earlier, while serving as director of State’s 

policy planning staff, Nitze had overseen the drafting of NSC 68, a 

seminal paper proposing a Cold War rearmament program, for the 

Truman administration. Now in the Pentagon, he found himself 

performing similar chores for McNamara. A personal friend of 

Kennedy’s, Nitze as a rule preferred to concentrate on high-level 
Cold War Foreign Policy Series • Special Study 4 The Ascendancy of the Secretary of Defense

14 15

(NSC and White House) policy matters and NATO affairs. He 

left “all the rest,” including military assistance and regional security 

outside Europe, to his principal deputy, William Bundy, McGeorge 

Bundy’s older brother and Dean Acheson’s son-in-law. But there 

was never any doubt about who was in charge. As one senior aide 

recalled, “Mr. Nitze’s profound strategic thought dominated ISA, 

even in small specifics.”41

The ISA that Nitze took over in 1961, with a full-time staff of 

just over 300, was the second largest OSD staff group; only the 

Office of the Director of Defense Research and Engineering was 

larger. 42 While uniformed officers made up less than half the 

professional staff, they tended to occupy many of the choicest 

senior positions in ISA’s various offices and directorates. Staff 

assignments continued to be organized along functional lines, 

with policy planning (including NSC affairs), military assistance, 

bilateral security treaties, and regional politico-military affairs 

relating especially to foreign military alliances (NATO, Southeast 

Asia Treaty Organization [SEATO], Central Treaty Organization, 

and the Australia–New Zealand–United States Pact) forming the 

core of ISA’s responsibilities. Under a reorganization completed in 

1962, Nitze abolished the Office of Special International Affairs, 

a catch-all dating from 1956 that had dealt with arms control 

and disarmament, international conferences, and international 

organizations, and he reassigned its functions. Arms control, an 

increasingly important topic in its own right, became the full-time 

concern of a Deputy Assistant Secretary, with a separate directorate 

for staff support.43

Nitze once described ISA’s overall role in the policy process as “an 

umbilical cord” between the Defense Department and State, NSC, 

and other agencies concerned with national security.44 In fact, ISA 

was more than that under Nitze; it exercised authority and influence 

that seemed to place it on a par with the State Department. Many 

regarded it as more responsive and reliable, a reputation it kept 

more or less intact, Vietnam notwithstanding, under Nitze’s two 

immediate successors—William Bundy and John T. McNaughton. 

Adam Yarmolinsky, who served as a special assistant in McNamara’s 

office, relates the story of how ISA reacted to a White House official 

needing help:

When he called for briefing papers on short notice from State 

for a presidential overseas trip, his first deadline passed without 

any response. He then turned to the office of International 

Security Affairs at Defense, which responded with a complete, 

concise, and thoroughly indexed briefing book. State finally 

crashed through with several cardboard cartons of unsorted 

cables on the countries listed in the president’s itinerary.45

This and similar episodes helped assure ISA of a permanent and 

respected place at the table in most high-level policy discussions. 

As chairman of the military working group of the Berlin Task 

Force, and as a member of the ExComm during the Cuban missile 

crisis, Nitze was continuously “at the center of decision” (to use 

the description in his memoirs) in the two most celebrated and 

dangerous foreign policy confrontations of Kennedy’s presidency.46

The absence of intervening layers of authority between Nitze and 

McNamara helped gain Nitze direct access to McNamara practically 

whenever he wanted or needed it; he could generally count on 

the Secretary to back him up. Nitze had no real counterpart at 

State. Jeffrey Kitchen, who headed State’s recently created Office 

of Politico-Military Affairs, did not enjoy a rank equal to Nitze’s 

in DoD. And Kitchen rarely saw Rusk; his ties to the top ran instead 

through U. Alexis Johnson, the Deputy Under Secretary of State. 47 

Though staffed with able people who often worked closely with 

Nitze and his aides, Kitchen’s organization lacked access to the 

avenues of influence and authority that would have made it in any 

true sense a rival or competitor with ISA.

ISA’s bold forays into the policy process were not without 

consequence for others in the Defense Department, notably the 
Cold War Foreign Policy Series • Special Study 4 The Ascendancy of the Secretary of Defense

16 17

Joint Chiefs. Along with seeing their power and influence at the 

White House diminish, the chiefs discovered that McNamara had 

no qualms about reassigning some of their traditional politicomilitary functions to ISA, Systems Analysis, or elsewhere if he 

thought that doing so would expedite the work and improve the 

product. Military planning papers that once would have originated 

with the Joint Chiefs now often came out of ISA. In one notable 

instance, ISA, not JCS, drafted the so-called poodle blanket paper 

(NSAM 109) in the fall of 1961, outlining the preferred sequence 

of graduated politico-military responses to Soviet provocations 

over Berlin. Approved by the President, the poodle blanket paper 

became the framework both for the subsequent Allied planning on 

Berlin and for the administration’s initiative in NATO culminating 

in adoption of the flexible response concept.48

Although the poodle blanket paper may have been a celebrated 

example, it was not atypical of ISA’s increased presence across 

the entire range of expanding politico-military planning. While 

military alliances and assistance remained the most constant 

matters, new problems arose demanding ISA’s attention in advising 

the Secretary on ways of slowing the arms race, reducing the 

gold flow to improve the balance of payments, and assisting less 

developed countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America to become 

more stable, democratic, and anticommunist. Although by no 

means McNamara’s sole source of advice on these matters, ISA was 

clearly the dominant Pentagon organization dealing with politicomilitary affairs.49

While helping raise ISA to new levels of prominence and 

professionalism, Nitze gradually became less popular and 

influential with both McNamara and Kennedy. When apprised 

that McNamara was floating plans late in 1961 to send up to six 

U.S. combat divisions to South Vietnam, Nitze scoffed at what 

he implied was the Secretary’s naiveté, telling a friendly journalist 

that trying to keep a commitment of ground troops there from 

becoming open-ended would be about as easy as staying “a little bit 

pregnant.”50 A “dove” on Vietnam, he was a “hawk” on practically 

everything else. According to Robert Kennedy, the President 

regarded Nitze as an “effective fellow” but came to have reservations 

about the soundness of his advice, in particular because of “some of 

the answers he gave” during the Cuban missile crisis when he had 

urged airstrikes and other direct military action.51 Nitze hoped for 

the Deputy Secretary of Defense job when Gilpatric stepped down 

as planned in January 1964. Instead, Kennedy, in one of his last 

significant personnel decisions involving DoD, tapped Secretary 

of the Army Cyrus R. Vance to replace Gilpatric and nominated 

Nitze to be Secretary of the Navy, a job he accepted reluctantly and 

stayed in until 1967, when he was finally named Deputy Secretary 

of Defense.52

McNamara and Diplomacy

In addition to having advisory and policymaking functions, 

McNamara was often busy with diplomatic matters and as a factfinder on missions abroad. Previous Secretaries of Defense had 

also performed these duties but rarely became as deeply involved 

in them as McNamara did. His close ties with Kennedy carried 

weight. When he represented the United States abroad, it was 

usually with the highest authority behind him, indicating that any 

commitments or offers he made had the President’s implicit if not 

explicit endorsement. Whether foreign officials liked him or not 

(and many did consider him difficult), they often found that they 

had to go through McNamara to deal with Washington. By no 

means did McNamara represent U.S. diplomacy abroad during 

Kennedy’s presidency, but in certain crucial areas—NATO and 

Southeast Asia especially—his participation often overshadowed 

that of any of the President’s other advisors.53

Much of McNamara’s involvement in diplomacy simply went 

with the job, the result of prior consultative and institutional 

arrangements. NATO and other alliances required regular meetings 

of defense ministers. At the same time, President Kennedy himself, 
Cold War Foreign Policy Series • Special Study 4 The Ascendancy of the Secretary of Defense

18 19

showing a casual disregard for regular, established channels, often 

called on McNamara and the Defense Department to head up 

committees and task forces that traditionally had been led by the 

State Department. If it seemed more practical to Kennedy that 

Defense instead of State should fashion a particular policy, it usually 

followed that he expected Defense to explain and implement that 

policy as well. The ensuing reversal of roles, in which the Secretary 

of Defense, not the Secretary of State, often served as a leading 

administration spokesman on American foreign policy, may have 

seemed remarkable to some, but it was fully in keeping with 

Kennedy’s results-oriented approach to administration.

One of the most memorable illustrations of McNamara’s role as 

policy spokesman was his address to the North Atlantic Council 

meeting in Athens, Greece, in May 1962. That speech enunciated 

what became known as “flexible response,” the strategic concept that 

eventually brought about changes that drove NATO planning and 

procurement for the next generation. The change, in consideration 

from the day Kennedy took office, received a partial airing in 

McNamara’s remarks at the NATO ministerial meeting in Paris in 

December 1961.54 It was the May speech in Athens to a “restricted 

session” of the North Atlantic Council, however, that laid out 

the new strategy in its fullest detail. A public version, delivered 

by McNamara at the University of Michigan graduation in Ann 

Arbor, Michigan, followed a month later. On both occasions, he 

endeavored to demonstrate that, in essence, the development by 

other countries such as France and West Germany of independent 

nuclear forces would do little to alter the strategic balance; that 

U.S. nuclear weapons continued to provide adequate and effective 

protection; and that the prudent course for NATO would be to 

devote more attention and resources to strengthening conventional 

force options.55

This momentous departure from past policy, with implications both 

at home and abroad, required as credible as possible a spokesman to 

present and defend it. As a rule, Truman and Eisenhower had relied 

on their Secretaries of State to explain not only foreign policy in 

general, but also its strategic underpinnings, as John Foster Dulles 

had done in his 1954 speech to the Council on Foreign Relations 

setting forth the massive retaliation concept. Although Kennedy 

might have used Rusk for this task, he relied instead on McNamara, 

probably because he knew McNamara to be more familiar with 

the conceptual details. McNamara had been in the forefront of 

the administration’s redesign of the Defense budget to give greater 

weight to conventional forces and had spearheaded the revision 

of the Single Integrated Operational Plan—overcoming stiff JCS 

resistance in the process—to incorporate more flexible targeting 

options. At the December 1961 NATO ministerial meeting, Rusk 

and McNamara had shared the podium, their remarks carefully 

coordinated in advance to avoid contradicting one another. At 

Athens, even though Rusk also addressed the meeting, it was 

clear from prior arrangements between the White House and the 

Pentagon that Kennedy wanted McNamara’s speech to be the 

center of attention, as indeed it was.56

Although McNamara never expected the job of converting the 

Allies to flexible response to be easy, it proved a more formidable 

task than he ever imagined. Nearly five years elapsed between the 

Athens speech and the adoption by NATO of a new directive 

embodying flexible response principles in December 1967. The 

Europeans balked at the expenditures that flexible response would 

impose on them.57

The Allied deliberations over flexible response also revealed 

that McNamara rarely enjoyed good rapport with his NATO 

counterparts. While respected for his intellect and capacity to 

absorb facts, he earned a reputation of being exceedingly arrogant 

and overly analytical. Those familiar with his easygoing predecessor, 

Thomas Gates, found the contrast especially striking.58 According 

to journalist Henry Trewhitt, it was not uncommon for McNamara 

to operate “with a very heavy hand,” as in his dealings with the 

West Germans over the U.S. balance of payments problem in 
Cold War Foreign Policy Series • Special Study 4 The Ascendancy of the Secretary of Defense

20 21

1961. With no prior experience in international politics, he was 

apt to focus on immediate, tangible outcomes and overlook longer 

term, more subtle consequences.59

Probably the best example of McNamara’s less-than-subtle approach 

to diplomacy was his handling of the Skybolt missile affair with the 

United Kingdom. The experimental Skybolt was an air-to-ground 

ballistic missile being developed by the U.S. Air Force for standoff 

attacks against targets well inside the Soviet Union. Under a 1960 

agreement it would, if successful, be made available for purchase by 

the British, who viewed it as a means of extending the operational 

usefulness of the Royal Air Force’s (RAF’s) aging fleet of Vulcan 

bombers. Technical difficulties with Skybolt’s guidance system, 

however, along with McNamara’s decision in April 1961 to curtail 

the U.S. bomber program, starting with cancellation of the B–70, 

raised serious questions about the missile’s future. Although the Air 

Force continued to explore ways of adapting Skybolt to its B–52s, 

thereby keeping the missile alive, cost-performance comparisons 

done in Enthoven’s Systems Analysis organization gradually 

whittled away at its prospects.60

In approaching a decision on Skybolt’s future, McNamara faced 

more than cost and technical problems. Quite apart from whatever 

it might contribute militarily, Skybolt held immense symbolic 

and political value in British eyes. To Prime Minister Harold 

Macmillan, it was the latest in a long line of test cases for the U.S.-

U.K. “special relationship.” Should the deal fall through, it was 

the kind of issue that, if not handled carefully, might bring about 

Macmillan’s political downfall. McNamara recognized that U.S. 

nuclear support for Britain was crucial for a variety of reasons. But 

he found it utterly incomprehensible that the British would be 

so foolish as to put their trust in Skybolt, a weapon he dismissed 

summarily as nothing but “a pile of junk.”61

Skybolt’s demise, though practically inevitable once McNamara 

started looking closely at the missile’s technical flaws, proved to 

be a slower and more complicated process than it probably needed 

to be.62 What amazed and angered so many on the British side 

was McNamara’s apparent insensitivity and lack of diplomatic 

tact throughout the episode. Despite several months of informal 

warnings that Skybolt was being dropped from the budget, 

McNamara delayed officially notifying the British until he visited 

London early in December 1962. Worse, he brought with him 

nothing to offer as compensation, raising suspicions among the 

British that, as part of the policy announced at Athens and Ann 

Arbor, the United States meant to scuttle the RAF’s independent 

nuclear deterrent and coerce Britain (as some in the State 

Department were suggesting) into joining a multilateral nuclear 

force tied to NATO.63 Nor was cooperation helped by what one 

of Macmillan’s biographers has described as “mutual antipathy” 

between McNamara and Minister of Defence Peter Thorneycroft.64

Rumors fed by leaks from Whitehall promptly surfaced of a 

deepening rift in Anglo-American relations, the most serious 

breach since the Suez debacle six years earlier. 

While British expressions of consternation were doubtless sincere, 

they were also a remarkably deft and effective negotiating ploy 

that set the stage for the summit meeting later in December at 

Nassau between Kennedy and Macmillan. With Skybolt dead and 

the British in an uproar, alleging they had been misled, Kennedy 

sought to repair the damage to Anglo-American relations by 

offering the British technical help in acquiring a far superior fleet of 

Polaris submarines, which would assure Britain’s status as a major 

nuclear power for more than a generation.65 Polaris-for-Skybolt, 

with targeting of the missile submarines coordinated through 

NATO, was roughly the outcome McNamara had envisioned all 

along.66 To reach the point at which he could confidently scrap a 

weapon he deemed worthless, the United States had had to avert 

a potential rupture with its oldest and closest ally, risk bringing 

down Macmillan’s government, and work to overcome lingering 

suspicions and hard feelings all around.
Cold War Foreign Policy Series • Special Study 4 The Ascendancy of the Secretary of Defense

22 23

A Succession of Crises

Bay of Pigs

President Kennedy’s brief but eventful administration was notable 

for crises, the first—the Bay of Pigs debacle—occurring within 

three months of the inauguration. Notwithstanding McNamara’s 

involvement in the decision, if only tangentially, to mount an 

amphibious invasion of Cuba by CIA-supported exiles, the 

President increasingly relied on his Defense Secretary’s counsel. 

Chagrined at his failure to ask hard questions about the invasion 

plan, McNamara, like Rusk and national security advisor Bundy, 

resolved not to serve the President so poorly again. If there is a 

common thread to McNamara’s role during the two and a half 

years after the administration’s first great misstep, it is that after 

discerning what the President wanted to do and achieve in a given 

situation, McNamara did his best to implement those wishes.

The ill-fated invasion, perhaps the greatest international political 

blunder by a President since the advent of the Cold War, led to much 

soul-searching within the administration. McNamara tried to ease 

the onus of failure on the President by publicly taking as much of the 

blame as possible; privately, he blamed himself for not examining 

the plan carefully. While the Joint Chiefs had offered inconsistent 

or equivocal advice about the invasion plans, McNamara and his 

staff had adopted an almost hands-off approach. When the chiefs 

submitted their recommendations, McNamara had accepted them 

at face value without asking any hard questions. To the degree that 

any questions were posed, they came from lower ranking White 

House civilian advisors whose reservations were easily overridden. 

Later, the Secretary of Defense would describe his role as that of 

“passive bystander.”67 On the contentious issues of air cover for 

the invasion and whether to launch a second strike against Cuban 

airbases after D-day, neither McNamara nor the Chiefs played a 

role in those decisions. They were the President’s alone.

Although McNamara’s public and private stance was that Kennedy’s 

chief foreign policy advisors had failed him, he nonetheless “nursed 

a grievance” against the Joint Chiefs, whom he believed had let the 

President down by not articulating their reservations clearly. Along 

with the CIA, the Chiefs lost status within the administration, as 

evinced by the recall to active duty of General Maxwell D. Taylor. In 

what was perceived as dissatisfaction with the chiefs’ performance, 

Taylor became the President’s military advisor in July, tasked with 

providing direct advice and assistance, although ostensibly not in 

competition with the JCS. This curious arrangement lasted only 

until such time as General Lyman L. Lemnitzer could be eased out 

of the JCS and Taylor appointed Chairman in his stead.

Laos

A major factor that may have contributed to McNamara’s lack of 

close attention to the Bay of Pigs invasion plans was the perception 

that Laos, not Cuba, was the administration’s first genuine foreign 

policy crisis. President Eisenhower, during a meeting with Kennedy 

the day before the inauguration, had underscored the significance of 

this small, impoverished, and landlocked country, telling Kennedy 

that it was “key to the entire area of Southeast Asia.” Vietnam, 

by contrast, was hardly mentioned during the meeting, which 

McNamara attended.68

The incoming administration quickly achieved consensus over 

the need to shore up the pro-Western Royal Laotian government 

but could not agree on the means to do so. Both Britain and 

France proved loath to invoke any obligation under SEATO. 

Even unilateral U.S. military assistance could not guarantee an 

acceptable outcome, as DoD considered aid to Laos to be wasteful 

and ineffective.

After some temporizing, McNamara recommended that President 

Kennedy address the deteriorating situation on 23 March 1961 in 

one of his first nationally televised news conferences. With three 
Cold War Foreign Policy Series • Special Study 4 The Ascendancy of the Secretary of Defense

24 25

large maps of Laos as a backdrop, the President illustrated the rapid 

expansion since December of areas under control of the Pathet Lao. 

Drawing attention to Laos, of course, carried with it some risk, for 

Kennedy was more or less bluffing. According to national security 

advisor McGeorge Bundy, no serious thought was given to U.S. 

military intervention. The hope was that the presidential warning 

would help pave the way for a ceasefire followed by an international 

conference, which the British government proposed that same day.

The closest Washington came to direct military intervention was in 

late April, when it appeared the Communist powers were stalling 

on implementation of the agreed-upon ceasefire until such time 

as the takeover of Laos was complete. Tasked by the NSC to come 

up with a plausible course of action, McNamara and Gilpatric 

advocated deploying U.S. forces, after giving 48 hours’ notice, 

to protect vital centers in Laos until the ceasefire was achieved, 

despite noting that the country was “one of the least favorable 

places in the world for direct U.S. military intervention.”69 But 

the Joint Chiefs undermined this recommendation by seeming to 

temporize, while offering the same kind of hesitant or conflicting 

advice that had characterized their recent counsel on Cuba. 

Overruling the consensus expressed by McNamara, Lemnitzer, 

and roving ambassador W. Averell Harriman, Kennedy opted 

for restraint. Fortunately, the Pathet Lao suddenly accepted the 

invitation to stop fighting on 3 May, relieving the administration 

from further agonizing.70

As negotiations in Geneva to establish a neutralist government 

dragged on, the administration had to contend with a new crisis 

that diverted attention from Southeast Asia: the building of a wall 

in divided Berlin. The Joint Chiefs, exercised and frustrated over 

the administration’s devotion to a diplomatic resolution in Laos, 

made their views known to McNamara in September, restating 

the domino theory rather forcefully: the United States “must take 

immediate and positive action to prevent a complete communist 

takeover of Laos and the ultimate loss of all Southeast Asia to 

include Indonesia.” By this time, however, McNamara recognized 

the President’s strong preference for a diplomatic approach, 

and along with Gilpatric, he expressed sobering skepticism over 

contingency plans for direct intervention, effectively deflecting the 

chiefs’ appeal for action.71

Although not readily apparent at the time, the crisis over Laos 

had in fact peaked. In June 1962, the three contending factions—

royalist, Communist, and neutralist—reached an agreement for a 

coalition government that allowed Laos to remain intact, although 

incapable of controlling its borders. In the war that would soon 

engulf Vietnam, Laos would be utilized as the major supply route 

for North Vietnamese men and materiel moving south; the United 

States would employ Lao tribesmen to harass the Communist forces. 

Nonetheless, and despite its weak, nearly nonexistent government, 

Laos could claim (if barely) that it was still an independent entity. 

It ceased being a bone of contention in the Cold War as the conflict 

in Vietnam took center stage in Southeast Asia.72

Berlin

Of all the crises that occurred in the administration’s first year, the 

Berlin contingency in the summer of 1961 did the most to cement 

the Pentagon’s increasing role in the shaping of foreign policy while 

concurrently displacing Laos and Cuba as the administration’s 

central foreign policy focus. While Defense was nominally a junior 

partner to the State Department, the military considerations in the 

Berlin crisis deepened the influence of McNamara and DoD. In 

other words, Defense “emerged from the Berlin crisis at center stage 

in the formation and management of national security policy.”73

Although the divided city had long been a Cold War flashpoint, the 

immediate crisis stemmed from an ultimatum by Soviet premier 

Nikita Khrushchev in November 1958. He proclaimed that the 

Soviet Union would cede its rights and functions in East Berlin to 

the East German government and called on the Western occupying 
Cold War Foreign Policy Series • Special Study 4 The Ascendancy of the Secretary of Defense

26 27

powers to do the same. United by the notion that changes in the 

status of Berlin could be not imposed unilaterally, the Western 

Allies were otherwise divided in their policies should Moscow force 

the issue. They seemed as worried about alleged U.S. impulsiveness 

as by any unilateral actions from the East. When the Kennedy 

administration took office, it seemed that the long-simmering 

crisis was bound to come to a climax, although Washington had no 

intention of taking any hasty action.

McNamara found dependence on nuclear weapons the most 

disturbing element of U.S. contingency plans. Because Soviet 

forces vastly outnumbered NATO conventional forces, Eisenhower 

administration policy had anticipated that any Soviet military 

action would quickly and inevitably escalate to nuclear warfare. 

McNamara and the rest of Kennedy’s national security advisors 

found this doctrine, subscribed to by the JCS and NATO Supreme 

Allied Commander General Lauris K. Norstad, far too rigid and 

dangerous.

At the same time, and in parallel with the Laos situation, 

McNamara also had to fend off hard-line suggestions from senior 

statesmen of the Cold War brought in by the administration to 

enhance the credibility of its decisions. For Laos, it was Averell 

Harriman; for Berlin, it was Dean Acheson. The former Secretary 

of State advocated a buildup of conventional forces to give 

Washington more flexibility in response to a Soviet provocation. 

Yet from McNamara’s point of view, Acheson’s recommendations, 

if followed to the letter, promised to escalate the crisis, possibly 

to the brink of war. The Defense Secretary favored a conventional 

buildup in accordance with the so-called flexible response doctrine, 

but not at the pace and scale suggested by Acheson, who favored 

a presidential proclamation of a national emergency. Once again, 

McNamara was reflecting the President’s preference: to proceed 

deliberately and cautiously so as to reduce rather than increase the 

odds of a direct confrontation over Berlin.74

The building of the wall in Berlin, which caught Washington by 

surprise in August 1961, heralded the end of the crisis initiated 

by Khrushchev, and it would be three more years before a 

moderate Soviet–East German treaty was signed. Nonetheless, the 

administration could rightly claim that it had achieved its major 

objective of holding the line in Berlin against unilateral Soviet 

actions that weakened Allied rights. McNamara played a major 

role in this success by formulating a policy that, if not particularly 

consistent, managed to keep all the stakeholders reasonably satisfied 

until the crisis ebbed.

Cuban Missile Crisis

By the fall of 1962, McNamara had emerged as possibly the most 

valued official in the administration. It was not only his brainpower 

and unflagging work ethic that greatly impressed President 

Kennedy and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, the secondmost important person in the government. It was also McNamara’s 

firm commitment to civilian control of the military and his 

willingness to run interference for the White House in dealing with 

the military establishment. These characteristics would be exhibited 

in abundance during the Cuban missile crisis in October 1962.

Like nearly everyone who participated in deliberations of the 

ExComm, McNamara staked out positions that were somewhat 

erratic and inconsistent from day to day. At one juncture, he argued 

that the Soviet emplacement of missiles in Cuba did not actually 

alter the strategic balance of power and that their existence 90 miles 

from U.S. shores was primarily a domestic political problem. More 

frequently, McNamara took stances that could be described as 

belligerent. While he backed behind-the-scenes negotiations with 

the Soviet Union, he nonetheless contended that if these failed to 

result promptly in the removal of offensive weapons, the United 

States should be prepared to mount an all-out attack on Cuba—

even at the risk of thermonuclear war between the superpowers.75
Cold War Foreign Policy Series • Special Study 4 The Ascendancy of the Secretary of Defense

28 29

Overall, McNamara’s behavior was congruent with his actions 

during other crises—that is, he exhibited a clear reluctance to 

be at odds with the President’s position, to the point of doing an 

about-face once Kennedy’s preferred course of action emerged. 

Still, there were nuances to his position. The Defense Secretary 

endorsed the blockade, the President’s preferred course, even as 

other influential advisors such as Robert Kennedy and General 

Maxwell Taylor expressed great skepticism about its efficacy in 

pressuring the Soviets to dismantle missile sites that were nearly 

operational. But McNamara also advocated measures to enforce 

the blockade that might have provoked direct conflict—such as 

using antisubmarine weapons to force Soviet subs to the surface 

for inspection. On the other side of the ledger, he was also an 

early advocate of withdrawing U.S. Jupiter missiles from Italy and 

Turkey if doing so increased the chances of a peaceful settlement—

again, a position viewed favorably by the President. Nearly every 

other advisor was steadfastly against making the Jupiters part of 

any deal, but McNamara was keenly aware of the shortcomings of 

these missiles (though later he reversed himself and spoke against 

such a trade). Finally, when a U–2 was shot down over Cuba in the 

midst of the crisis, McNamara advocated taking action against one 

or more of the Soviet surface-to-air missile sites in retaliation.

McNamara’s recommendations must be seen as relatively restrained, 

given the department he was heading; the Joint Chiefs were far 

more willing to adopt measures that could initiate hostilities. The 

missile crisis represented McNamara’s greatest bow in the direction 

of military leaders’ demands for action. Still, while he bent in that 

direction, he did not break.

Early Involvement in Vietnam

By far, the most extensive and consequential of McNamara’s 

ventures into foreign affairs and diplomacy was his role in 

formulating policy toward Vietnam. What began in 1961 as a smallscale counterinsurgency exercise, an inheritance from the previous 

administration involving a few hundred U.S. military advisors, 

steadily escalated into a regional conflict with a commitment of 

over half a million U.S. forces by the middle of the decade. 

Vietnam initially was only one of several Third World trouble spots 

that drew the Kennedy administration’s attention. It came to the 

President’s notice shortly after the inauguration, when Brigadier 

General Edward Lansdale, the Pentagon’s resident expert on 

guerrilla warfare, warned of an impending Communist takeover.76 

Duly alarmed, Kennedy resolved to meet the threat to Vietnam 

head on, directing McNamara to “examine means for placing more 

emphasis [there] on the development of counter-guerrilla forces” 

and to explore turning the tables on the enemy by introducing South 

Vietnamese guerrillas into North Vietnam.77 With other matters 

competing for his time, McNamara gave the task to his deputy, 

Roswell Gilpatric, who in April 1961 created an ad hoc interagency 

task force with Lansdale as chairman. Although Lansdale had 

ambitions of staying on to head the overall effort, opposition from 

the Department of State to having someone from Defense in charge 

led in May to the creation of a new interdepartmental body—Task 

Force Vietnam—chaired by Sterling J. Cottrell, a career Foreign 

Service officer.78

Despite the existence of what amounted to a standing committee to 

monitor policy, State-Defense coordination on Vietnam remained 

haphazard and intermittent. According to William Bundy, Nitze’s 

deputy in ISA and McNamara’s principal action officer on Vietnam 

from 1961 to 1964, a division of labor emerged early on. State dealt 

with the political side and Defense with the operational and military 

side—with very few general meetings or discussions between the 

two unless a major crisis erupted. Bundy found that State, as a rule, 

doubted whether the military was sufficiently sensitive to political 

considerations, while at the same time the Joint Chiefs strongly 

resented civilian authorities, either in Washington or Saigon, 

second-guessing proposed military operations. As a means of trying 

to assure compliance all around, policymaking on Vietnam settled 
Cold War Foreign Policy Series • Special Study 4 The Ascendancy of the Secretary of Defense

30 31

into the hands of the President and a small group of advisors that 

included McNamara, Rusk, General Taylor, McGeorge Bundy, and 

a few others.79

Once McNamara became aware that Kennedy had a personal 

interest in Vietnam, the Defense Secretary decided that he should 

take a closer look.80 By the autumn of 1961, according to the JCS 

official history, McNamara had taken “personal command” of 

the U.S. military effort in Vietnam: “In matters large and small 

he made decisions that, in other times, would have been taken by 

CINCPAC [Commander-in-Chief, Pacific], the Service Chiefs, 

or the Joint Chiefs of Staff.”81 With the U.S. role embracing a 

wide range of politico-military advisory and support functions as 

well as covert operations, it was difficult for any one agency or 

individual to establish and maintain overall control of policy. This 

remained more or less true throughout Kennedy’s presidency, as 

the administration endeavored to steer a middle course that would 

preserve South Vietnam’s independence and territorial integrity 

while avoiding the direct use of U.S. military power. On balance, 

the tilt was increasingly toward the latter, giving McNamara and 

the Defense Department growing leverage in the making and 

execution of policy. 

An early watershed that helped confirm a strong Defense voice 

in Vietnam policy was the Taylor-Rostow mission to Vietnam in 

October-November 1961.82 In his written report, General Taylor 

recommended expanding U.S. assistance to include up to 8,000 

U.S. combat troops assigned to “logistical-type” units.83 In the 

ensuing debate, Rusk and the State Department cautioned against 

additional commitments, especially any involving U.S. troops, 

while McNamara, Gilpatric, and the JCS essentially warned that 

what Taylor was suggesting might be too little, too late.84 But 

within days, possibly at Kennedy’s urging, McNamara changed 

his position and joined Rusk in recommending an increase in aid 

that tacitly rejected, for the time being, the commitment of U.S. 

troops other than additional military advisors. From this point on, 

however, State’s involvement in resolving important policy details 

became less visible as the counterinsurgency effort (the core of U.S. 

policy until the escalation of 1964–1965) shifted from social and 

economic assistance to military action.85

During this period, McNamara began developing the tools he would 

later use extensively to manage the conduct of the war. Empirical 

analysis based on personal observation was one method; he took 

his first trip to Vietnam in May 1962 and made routine shuttle 

visits as the war heated up. Whether these early trips were as useful 

and enlightening as McNamara claimed at the time is questionable. 

Most were brief, lasting a few days, with the itinerary carefully 

scripted in advance. For the most part, McNamara saw what U.S. 

and Vietnamese authorities on the spot wanted him to see.86

Back in Washington, McNamara approached the war as he generally 

approached other problems—he sought to measure its progress 

quantifiably. Evidence abounds in the Pentagon Papers that while 

he routinely canvassed a range of opinion within the Defense 

Department, he tended to have the most confidence in the advice 

and recommendations that could be checked through statistical 

reckoning. Knowing McNamara’s preferences, subordinates tended 

to tailor programs and recommendations accordingly, stressing 

systems analysis techniques over less quantifiable means of assessing 

the war’s progress and possible outcome. A notable exception was 

William Bundy, head of military assistance planning in ISA, whose 

advice—usually in favor of stepped-up U.S. involvement—had 

a distinctively subjective cast. Yet for the most part, McNamara 

liked and relied on numbers. The use of statistical analysis, whether 

involving kill ratios, construction rates, frequency of incidents, 

or other indicators, proved an exceedingly controversial and 

imperfect way of monitoring the war, as McNamara himself later 

acknowledged, often because of misleading or erroneous numbers 

provided by the U.S. command in Saigon and the South Vietnamese 

government.87
Cold War Foreign Policy Series • Special Study 4 The Ascendancy of the Secretary of Defense

32 33

All the same, throughout his tenure as Secretary of Defense, 

McNamara persisted in dealing with the war more as a managerial 

problem than as a foreign policy concern. With the right 

combination of initiatives and proper monitoring techniques, 

honestly applied, he believed that the United States would find a 

formula to prevail. No doubt such an attitude reflected his overall 

approach to running the Pentagon. Given the nature of the issues 

in Vietnam, the interplay of personalities, and the demands of the 

policy process, his involvement as a principal figure in the war was 

unavoidable. He came to exercise as commanding an influence as 

he did both because he wanted to and because he had little choice.

Assessing McNamara’s Impact

As the evolution of the Kennedy administration’s Vietnam policy 

suggests, McNamara played a role in foreign affairs greater than that 

of any previous Secretary of Defense. For the record, he accepted 

the conventional wisdom that defense policy derived from foreign 

policy and that the Defense Department should serve and assist 

the State Department. But in day-to-day practice he generally 

followed his own lead, moving the Defense Department more 

into the forefront of the policy process than ever before. Whether, 

as some critics have argued, this was responsible for the further 

“militarization” of American foreign policy is questionable. Within 

the Pentagon, McNamara exercised a degree of civilian control that 

the military had never known and routinely used civilians in ISA 

and Systems Analysis to perform tasks previously reserved for the 

services or JCS.

The first and most important reason for McNamara’s success in 

imposing his views and influence was that he and Kennedy enjoyed 

a closer and more cordial relationship than that between any 

previous President and his Secretary of Defense. What started in 

effect as an official business relationship quickly blossomed into 

a personal friendship. The closer they became, the more Kennedy 

relied on McNamara’s advice and judgment, not only on defense 

and security matters but also in other areas of national policy. 

For Kennedy’s purposes, McNamara proved the ideal Secretary 

of Defense—loyal, tough-minded, energetic, dependable, and 

successful. He was everything that Kennedy wanted.

A further reason for McNamara’s influence was that he presided over 

the Pentagon at a time of weak leadership at the State Department 

and diminished stature for the National Security Council. Kennedy 

wanted to be in closer touch with what was going on “down the 

line;” he thought he could achieve this by dismantling the NSC 

and turning what remained of it into a presidential staff under his 

Special Assistant for National Security Affairs, McGeorge Bundy. 

In the process, the President sacrificed orderliness of procedure 

and a proven mechanism for interagency coordination. He gained 

greater flexibility in dealing with problems and more ready access 

to the resources of the executive branch bureaucracy, including the 

Defense Department.

The weakness of the State Department was not anticipated. In fact, 

Kennedy wanted to bolster State and restore the ranking position 

and prestige it had enjoyed under George Marshall and Dean 

Acheson. Because of Secretary of State Rusk’s muted departmental 

leadership, however, and his reluctance to show initiative in politicomilitary matters, Kennedy found himself turning increasingly 

to McNamara. Although Kennedy liked Rusk and respected his 

opinions, he considered him lacking in imagination and drive. At 

the same time, Rusk and McNamara worked well together, largely 

because there was no sense of rivalry between the two. All available 

evidence suggests they had a solid, generally productive relationship, 

but one in which McNamara was usually dominant through the 

force of his self-assured personality and his close relationship to the 

President. 

The nature of the problems that prevailed during Kennedy’s 

presidency made it practically impossible for McNamara to avoid 
Cold War Foreign Policy Series • Special Study 4 The Ascendancy of the Secretary of Defense

34 35

having a major role in foreign affairs. Kennedy wanted to relax Cold 

War tensions, but he was also committed to providing high-caliber 

security and thwarting Communist expansion. Achieving the latter 

objectives turned out to involve more reliance on military options 

than Kennedy anticipated, increasing his need for McNamara’s 

assistance. Disdainful of the professional military to begin with, 

Kennedy felt the JCS had led him astray early in his presidency, 

during the Bay of Pigs episode; thereafter he gravitated toward 

sources of advice he judged more reliable—Maxwell Taylor, and, 

of course, McNamara, who shared the President’s doubts about the 

military.

Although by the time of Kennedy’s death it was unclear whether 

McNamara’s involvement in foreign affairs was a permanent 

feature, certain trends were beginning to emerge. Not only was 

Defense operating on par with State in politico-military affairs, it 

also was undertaking policy initiatives that extended its influence 

well beyond defense-related issues. The waging of a major war 

during the five years of Lyndon Johnson’s presidency would blur 

the lines between the foreign and defense policy more than ever. 

And McNamara would bear the brunt of responsibility as a leading 

proponent and chief architect of the war.

Notes

1 Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., A Thousand Days (Boston: Houghton 

Mifflin, 1965), 129–131.

2 The most recent biography of McNamara is Deborah Shapley, 

Promise and Power: The Life and Times of Robert McNamara (Boston: 

Little, Brown, 1993). See also Henry L. Trewhitt, McNamara (New 

York: Harper and Row, 1971); Douglas Kinnard, The Secretary of Defense

(Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1980), 72–112; and Carl W. 

Borklund, Men of the Pentagon: From Forrestal to McNamara (New York: 

Frederick A. Praeger, 1966), 206–236.

3 Lawrence S. Kaplan, Ronald D. Landa, and Edward J. Drea, The 

McNamara Ascendancy, 1961–1965 (Washington, DC: Office of the 

Secretary of Defense Historical Office, 2006), 1.

4 Clark Clifford with Richard Holbrooke, Counsel to the President: A 

Memoir (New York: Random House, 1991), 460.

5 See memo, A.P. Toner, ISA, for Robert H.B. Wade, director, 

Office of NSC Affairs, ISA, “NSC—Comments and Suggestions,” 23 Jan 

61; memo, Col Edward A. Bailey, acting special assistant for NSC Affairs, 

for Wade, “Operation of NSC Structure,” 23 Jan 61; and memo, Wade 

for Nitze, “NSC,” 25 Jan 61; all in OASD(ISA) records, 330-68A4024, 

Organization—NSC folder, box 7.

6 Henry M. Jackson, ed., The National Security Council: Jackson 

Subcommittee Papers on Policy-Making at the Presidential Level (New York: 

Praeger, 1965), 3–71.

7 Theodore C. Sorensen, Kennedy (New York: Harper and Row, 

1965), 284; John Prados, Keepers of the Keys: A History of the National 

Security Council from Truman to Bush (New York: William Morrow, 1991), 

102; Stanley L. Falk, “The National Security Council Under Truman, 

Eisenhower, and Kennedy,” Political Science Quarterly 79 (September 

1964): 428–433.

8 Quoted in Schlesinger, A Thousand Days, 123. Emphasis in 

original.
Cold War Foreign Policy Series • Special Study 4 The Ascendancy of the Secretary of Defense

36 37

9 Roswell L. Gilpatric, oral history interview by Maurice Matloff, 

14 Nov 83, 12, OSD Oral History Collection.

10 Chronology of JCS Organization, 1945–1984 (Washington, DC: 

Historical Division, Joint Secretariat, Joint Chiefs of Staff, December 

1984), 178.

11 Maxwell D. Taylor, Swords and Plowshares (New York: W.W. 

Norton, 1972), 196–197.

12 William P. Bundy, “The National Security Process,” International 

Security 7 (Winter 1982/83): 100.

13 Quoted in Stanley L. Falk and Theodore W. Bauer, The National 

Security Structure (Washington, DC: Industrial College of the Armed 

Forces, 1972), 47.

14 Keith C. Clark and Laurence J. Legere, eds., The President and the 

Management of National Security: A Report (New York: Praeger, 1969), 77; 

U.S. Department of State, “Evolution of the Position of National Security 

Adviser, 1947–1980,” research project no. 1225, Office of the Historian, 

Department of State (April 1980), 4–5; and John C. Ausland and Col. 

Hugh F. Richardson, “Crisis Management: Berlin, Cyprus, Laos,” Foreign 

Affairs 44 (January 1966): 291–303.

15 Gilpatric interview, 28.

16 Edwin O. Guthman and Jeffrey Shulman, eds., Robert Kennedy in 

His Own Words: The Unpublished Recollections of the Kennedy Years (New 

York: Bantam Press, 1988), 46. For O’Donnell’s criticism, see David 

Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest (New York: Random House, 1972), 

247.

17 Joseph G. Bock, The White House Staff and the National Security 

Assistant—Friendship and Friction at the Water’s Edge (Westport, CT: 

Greenwood Press, 1987), 43–53.

18 Bundy, “National Security Process,” 100.

19 Robert Komer, quoted in I.M. Destler, “National Security 

Management: What Presidents Have Wrought,” Political Science Quarterly

95 (Winter 1980/81): 579.

20 Clark and Legere, The President and the Management of National 

Security, 73–74; Bromley Smith, Organizational History of the National 

Security Council during the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations 

(Washington, DC: National Security Council, 1987), 37–38; Prados, 

Keepers of the Keys, 104–105; Department of State, “Evolution of National 

Security Adviser,” 4.

21 Quoted in Thomas J. Schoenbaum, Waging Peace and War: Dean 

Rusk in the Truman, Kennedy, and Johnson Years (New York: Simon & 

Schuster, 1988), 329. 

22 Trewhitt, McNamara, 168.

23 See Robert H. Johnson, “The National Security Council: The 

Relevance of Its Past to Its Future,” Orbis 13 (Fall 1969): 718.

24 John P. Burke and Fred I. Greenstein, How Presidents Test Reality: 

Decisions on Vietnam, 1954 and 1965 (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 

1989), 138–139. For the impact of the Acheson-Johnson feud on Rusk’s 

thinking, see Dean Rusk with Richard Rusk and Daniel S. Papp, As I Saw 

It (New York: W.W. Norton, 1990), 207, 521.

25 Memo, Rusk to McNamara, 8 Nov 63, Mike Gravel, ed., 

The Pentagon Papers: The Defense Department History of United States 

Decisionmaking on Vietnam, 4 vol. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1971–1972), 

II, 189. Also see Dean Rusk, oral history interview by Roger Trask and 

Maurice Matloff, 17 Jul 86, Athens, Georgia, 7–9, OSD Oral History 

Collection.

26 Douglas Brinkley, Dean Acheson: The Cold War Years, 1953–71

(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 136–143; Barry Rubin, Secrets 

of State: The State Department and the Struggle Over U.S. Foreign Policy 

(New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 98–122.

27 Roger Hilsman, To Move a Nation: The Politics of Foreign Policy 

in the Administration of John F. Kennedy (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 

1967), 42.

28 Rusk quoted in Sorensen, Kennedy, 285. Rusk also later said: 

“Arthur Schlesinger wrote in his A Thousand Days that in those meetings 

I used to sit like an old Buddha without saying anything. He was quite 

accurate in that, because when people like Arthur Schlesinger were in the 

room I kept my mouth shut. My arrangement would be that I would 

meet with the president either before or after such a meeting, often with 

Bob McNamara, just the three of us; and we’d talk over what had come 

up or what was coming up before any final decision was made.” Dean 

Rusk, “Reflections on Foreign Policy,” in Kenneth W. Thompson, ed., The 

Kennedy Presidency (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1985), 

193.

29 Robert McNamara, comments at meeting in OSD Historical 

Office, 29 Apr 94.

30 Shapley, Promise and Power, 270.
Cold War Foreign Policy Series • Special Study 4 The Ascendancy of the Secretary of Defense

38 39

31 Walt W. Rostow, The Diffusion of Power: An Essay in Recent History

(New York: Macmillan, 1972), 174–175; Paul H. Nitze, From Hiroshima 

to Glasnost: At the Center of Decision (New York: Grove Press, 1989), 250–

252.

32 Robert McNamara, oral history interview by Alfred Goldberg and 

Maurice Matloff, 3 Apr 86, OSD Oral History Collection, 9.

33 Clark and Legere, The President and the Management of National 

Security, 132.

34 Roger Hilsman oral history interview, John F. Kennedy Library, 

cited in Rubin, Secrets of State, 118–119.

35 Hilsman, To Move a Nation, 407.

36 Lemnitzer testimony, 14 Aug 61, in U.S. Senate, Committee on 

Foreign Relations, Hearings: Disarmament Agency, 87:1 (Washington, DC: 

U.S. Government Printing Office [GPO], 1961), 70–78, and 28 Aug 61, 

in U.S. House, Committee on Foreign Affairs, Hearings: To Establish a 

United States Arms Control Agency, 87:1 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1961), 

78–90.

37 Rusk, As I Saw It, 251.

38 Memo, Vance for Secys Military Depts et al., 17 Sep 65, sub: 

ASD(SA), OSD Historian’s files; DoD Directive 5141.1, 17 Sep 65, 

sub: ASD(SA); Clark and Legere, The President and the Management of 

National Security, 176, 191.

39 Robert McNamara, interview by Walt W. Rostow, 8 Jan 75, 11–

12, Lyndon Baines Johnson Oral History Collection, LBJ Library.

40 DoD Directive 5132.2, 20 May 1961, sub: ASD(ISA), ISA 1961–

68 folder, OSD Historian’s files.

41 Letter, Rear Admiral John Lee, 18 May 84.

42 U.S. Department of Defense, Annual Report for Fiscal Year 1962 

(Washington, DC: GPO, 1963), 386.

43 Organization Chart, Office of Assistant Secretary of Defense 

(International Security Affairs), February 1963, OSD Historical files; 

Bigley, “The Office of International Security Affairs,” 66.

44 Outline of remarks by Nitze to Foreign Service Institute, 8 

February 1962, “ISA and Its Role in the Formulation and Execution of 

National Security Policy,” OSD Historian’s files, ISA 1961–68 folder.

45 Adam Yarmolinsky, The Military Establishment (New York: Harper 

Colophon, 1971), 34.

46 Nitze, From Hiroshima to Glasnost, 196–208, 214–238.

47 U. Alexis Johnson with Jef Olivarius McAllister, The Right Hand of 

Power (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1984), 318.

48 NSAM 109, “U.S. Policy on Military Actions in a Berlin 

Conflict,” 20 Oct 61, Foreign Relations of the United States 1961–63, vol. 

14 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1993), 521–523. Also see Jane E. Stromseth, 

The Origins of Flexible Response: NATO’s Debate over Strategy in the 1960s

(New York: St. Martin’s, 1988).

49 See Paul H. Nitze, “Office of the Secretary of Defense: International 

Security Affairs,” Armed Forces Management 10 (November 1963): 73, 76.

50 Stewart Alsop, The Center: People and Power in Political Washington

(New York: Harper and Row, 1968), 162–163.

51 Quoted in David Callahan, Dangerous Capabilities: Paul Nitze and 

the Cold War (New York: Edward Burlingame, 1990), 271.

52 “McNamara Deputy Preparing to Quit,” The New York Times, 4 

October 1963, 15.

53 Charles A. Stevenson, SECDEF: The Nearly Impossible Job of 

Secretary of Defense (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, Inc., 2006), 26–

29.

54 See “Remarks by Sec. McNamara, NATO Ministerial Meeting, 14 

December 1961,” 334 NATO Ministerial Meeting, OASD(ISA) central 

files, 330-64A2382, box 47.

55 “Remarks by Sec. McNamara, NATO Ministerial Meeting, 5 

May 1962,” 334 NATO Ministerial Meeting, OASD(ISA) central files, 

330-65A3501, box 55; “Address at the Commencement Exercises of the 

University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan,” 16 June 1962, McNamara 

Public Statements, III, 1489–1496. 

56 See cable, McGeorge Bundy to McNamara, 1 May 1962, 334 

NATO Ministerial Meeting, OASD(ISA) central files, 330-65A3501, box 

55.

57 Stromseth, Origins of Flexible Response, 175–194.

58 See Harold Watkinson, Turning Points: A Record of Our Times 

(Norwich, Great Britain: Michael Russell Publishing, 1986), 149f.

59 Trewhitt, McNamara, 186–188.

60 Alain C. Enthoven and K. Wayne Smith, How Much is Enough? 

Shaping the Defense Program, 1961–1969 (New York: Harper and Row, 

1971), 243–262.
Cold War Foreign Policy Series • Special Study 4 The Ascendancy of the Secretary of Defense

40 41

61 McNamara interview, 3 Apr 86, 25–26.

62 The best and most detailed account is Richard E. Neustadt, 

“Skybolt and Nassau: American Policy-Making and Anglo-American 

Relations,” report to President Kennedy, 15 November 1963. A condensed 

version appears in Richard E. Neustadt, Alliance Politics (New York: 

Columbia University Press, 1970), 30–55. For the British side, see Ian 

Clark, Nuclear Diplomacy and the Special Relationship, 1957–62 (Oxford: 

Clarendon Press, 1994), 338–373.

63 Harold Macmillan, At the End of the Day, 1961–1963 (New York: 

Harper and Row, 1973), 343–344, 357.

64 Alistair Horne, Harold Macmillan, vol. II, 1957–1986 (New York: 

Viking, 1989), 434.

65 See Peter Nailor, The Nassau Connection: The Organization and 

Management of the British Polaris Project (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery 

Office, 1988).

66 Neustadt, “Skybolt and Nassau,” 62.

67 Cited in Kaplan et al., McNamara Ascendancy, 180. 

68 Ibid., 228.

69 Cited in ibid., 242.

70 Ibid., 243.

71 Ibid., 251.

72 Ibid., 256.

73 Ibid., 170.

74 Ibid., 152.

75 Sheldon M. Stern, The Cuban Missile Crisis in American Memory: 

Myth versus Reality (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012), 54–67.

76 Memo, Lansdale to SecDef and DepSecDef, 17 January 1961, 

sub: Vietnam, in United States-Vietnam Relations, 1945–1967, book 

11, 3.

77 NSAM 2, 3 Feb 61, sub: Development of Counter-Guerrilla 

Forces, ibid., 17; memo, McNamara for CJCS, 10 Mar 61, sub: Use of S. 

Vietnamese Guerrillas in N. Vietnam, Vietnam 370.64 (Sensitive) folder, 

330-71A6489, box 3.

78 Memo, McNamara for Gilpatric, 20 Apr 61, Pentagon Papers, II, 

31; History of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: The Joint Chiefs of Staff and the 

War in Vietnam, 1960–1968 (Washington, DC: Historical Division, Joint 

Secretariat, Joint Chiefs of Staff, 1 July 1970), part I, chapter 2, 10–11.

79 Memo, Bundy for McNamara, 12 Feb 62, subject: State-Defense 

Relationships re Vietnam, Vietnam 1962 (Sensitive) folder, 330-

71A6489, box 3; William P. Bundy, “Kennedy and Vietnam,” in Kenneth 

W. Thompson, ed., The Kennedy Presidency (Lanham, MD: University 

Press of America, 1985), 243.

80 Robert S. McNamara with Brian VanDeMark, In Retrospect: The 

Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam (New York: Times Books, 1995), 41.

81 JCS and Vietnam, 1960–1968, part I, chapter 3, 12.

82 At the time Walt Rostow was deputy special assistant to the 

President for national security affairs.

83 Taylor to Kennedy, 1 Nov 61, U.S.-Vietnam Relations, book 11, 

337–342.

84 Pentagon Papers, II, 105–109.

85 Ibid., 110–116.

86 Halberstam, Best and the Brightest, 248–249.

87 Pentagon Papers, II, 128–159; McNamara, In Retrospect, 34, 

47–48. Also see Neil Sheehan, A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and 

America in Vietnam (New York: Random House, 1988), which deals at 

length with the corrupt and inept reporting coming out of Saigon.
Cold War Foreign Policy Series • Special Study 4 The Ascendancy of the Secretary of Defense

42 43

About the Editors

Erin R. Mahan has been Chief Historian for the Secretary of Defense since 

2010. Previously, she worked in the Center for the Study of Weapons of 

Mass Destruction at National Defense University and in the Historian’s 

Office at the U.S. Department of State, where she was an editor of the 

Foreign Relations of the United States series. Dr. Mahan holds a Ph.D. in 

history from the University of Virginia.

Jeffrey A. Larsen is president of Larsen Consulting Group and a senior 

scientist with a major U.S. defense contractor. He also serves as an 

adjunct professor at Denver, Northwestern, and Texas A&M universities. 

Widely published, Dr. Larsen holds an MA in national security affairs 

from the Naval Postgraduate School and an MA and Ph.D. in politics 

from Princeton University.
Cold War Foreign Policy Series • Special Study 4

44

Historical Office

Office of the Secretary of Defense

Washington, DC