Robert Mcnamara

Place: San Francisco

Born: 1916

Death: 2009

Biography:

Robert Strange McNamara was an American businessman and government official who served as the eighth United States secretary of defense from 1961 to 1968 under presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. He was born in San Francisco, California, and graduated from the University of California, Berkeley and Harvard Business School. He served in the United States Army Air Forces during World War II. After World War II, Henry Ford II hired McNamara and a group of other Army Air Force veterans to work for Ford Motor Company. These 'Whiz Kids' helped reform Ford with modern planning, organization, and management control systems. After briefly serving as Ford's president, McNamara accepted appointment as secretary of defense. He played a major role in promoting the U.S.'s involvement in the Vietnam War and became a close adviser to Kennedy and Johnson. He also advocated the use of a blockade during the Cuban Missile Crisis and instituted a Cold War defense strategy of flexible response. McNamara consolidated intelligence and logistics functions of the Pentagon into two centralized agencies: the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Defense Supply Agency. He grew increasingly skeptical of the efficacy of committing U.S. troops to South Vietnam and resigned as secretary of defense in 1968 to become president of the World Bank. He served as president until 1981, shifting the focus of the World Bank from infrastructure and industrialization towards poverty reduction. After retiring, he served as a trustee of several organizations, including the California Institute of Technology and the Brookings Institution. In his later writings and interviews, he expressed regret for the decisions he made during the Vietnam War.