Vietnam Sec’y of Defense Robert McNamara Dead at 93

Posted by Dr B on 7/06/09 • Categorized as Historical,Politics

Left photo: President John F. Kennedy and Robert S. McNamara (Secretary of Defense, 1961-1968)

Right photo: Dean Rusk (Secretary of State, 1961-1969), President Lyndon B. Johnson and Robert McNamara

Robert Strange McNamara, one of the “Best and the Brightest” of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, died at his home early this morning. He was said to have suffered from a long illness but a cause of death was not given.

McNamara was an architect of the Vietnam War and a principal figure in the Bay of Pigs invasion (1961) and Cuban missile crisis (1962). In 1995, at the age of 78, he told The Associated Press: “We… acted according to what we thought were the principles and traditions of our country. But we were wrong. We were terribly wrong,” as detailed in his book In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam. An Academy Award-winning documentary of McNamara’s life and times, The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara, was released in 2003.