McNamara, Robert Strange (1916-2009), was United States secretary of defense from 1961 to 1968. He served under Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. As secretary, McNamara became an important adviser to the presidents in economic and foreign affairs as well as in military matters. American military involvement in the Vietnam War became a major U.S. foreign policy issue in the 1960’s. McNamara promoted increasing the involvement. Years later, in 1995, he said he and other government officials had been wrong in getting the United States deeply involved in the Vietnam War (1957-1975). He dealt with the issue in his book In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam (1995). McNamara was also the subject of the documentary The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara (2003).
McNamara was born in San Francisco on June 9, 1916. He graduated from the University of California and the Harvard Business School and taught at Harvard from 1940 to 1943. He was in the U.S. Army Air Forces in World War II (1939-1945) and then served as an executive at the Ford Motor Company from 1946 to 1961. He was named president of Ford in November 1960, shortly before he became secretary of defense. From 1968 to 1981, after his government career, he was president of the World Bank. McNamara died on July 6, 2009.
