relations keeps him in the top rank of our scholars. his book entitled "lbj in vietnam: a different kind of war," creates an almost perfect perch from which george can review ed drea's book. and that's what he's going to do for us now. george? [ applause ] >> thank you very much, john, for that kind introduction. one of the really nice things about doing affairs like this is to be able to get together with old friends. and i see a number in the audience. and it's been nice to spend time with john and maria over the last couple of days. it's also been quite an experience to come back in this building.

i spent the summer of 1966 here. exactly where, i could not begin to identify for you. i went through various elevators and other areas, and i was working on lynn leaf, and when i went to the register, there was one other guy working in the room, and when i sat at the register, i saw to my horror that he was working on lynn leaf. oh, my god. dissertation book, that sort of thing. well, we moved around each other warily for a couple of days. and finally one of us had the nerve to make an introduction. we started talking. and it turned out that his study ended march 11th, 1941, when the lind lease act was passed, and mine began on that day. that was the beginning of a 50 -- almost 50-year friendship

with warren kimble. so it's very nice to be back here. secretary of defense robert mcnamara came to personify the united states commitment in vietnam, and indeed, in many ways the ethos of the 1960s. he was the can-do man in the can-do society in the can-do era in david halverstam's phrase. in the early kennedy and johnson years, he managed the american commitment in vietnam almost as a desk officer, whether slogging through vietnam in army fatigues, spewing out statistics, or presiding at a press conference, and he came to embody what was known as secretary brown suggested as mcnamara's war. whatever the difficulties of the moment, he exuded a certainty that promised eventual success. in fact, we now know his public confidence far outlasted the emergence of profound private

doubts about both the winnability of the war and indeed ultimately its purposes. and his departure from the pentagon in 1968, as much i think as lbj's march 31st speech of that year marked the glorious end of an era once bright with promise. as the war provoked increasingly nasty divisions in the united states, mcnamara became a target for critics from both left and right. unaware of his muted tightly constrained and largely internalized descent, doves viewed him as the technocrat as his blind faith in technology and statistics plunged the united states into a destructive quagmire. hawks, on the other hand, announced with growing venom his alleged refusal to give the military the freedom and the means to win a war, in their view, imminently winnable.

in my experience, talking with veterans over the last 40 years, only the name jane fonda is likely to provoke more anger than that of robert mcnamara. the publication of his memoir in 1995, and his admission that in his words we were wrong, terribly wrong, ignited the war over the war yet again. for both sides once more raising the issue of how the secretary of defense could have stuck with a war he had come to see as futile, if not indeed wrong. the book that i'm privileged to discuss today thus focuses on one of the most controversial men of one of the most controversial events of an era any of us recall as rife with catastrophe. the title of dr. ed drea's book is aptly chosen, "mcnamara, clifford and the burdens of

vietnam." burdens is an especially appropriate word to describe mcnamara's travails at the defense department. the burdens of this war effuses the 540 pages of the book. they impact every issue discussed. they destroyed mcnamara's dreams of bringing the pentagon and its gargantuan budget under some sort of rational control. they tarnished his reputation in ways from which he would never recover. they took a huge toll on him personally as is evident simply from comparing photos, say, in 1963, '63, or in 1969. it's very difficult, as you might imagine, to do justice to such a large and important book in a short period of time. what i will do is simply offer a few remarks to try to give you an idea of what it's about, what

it seeks to do, and how well it does it. let me say first that, in the words of the -- my teenage grandchildren, the research is flat out awesome. i'm one of those strange creatures who loves to read footnotes. not many do, i'm sure. in this book, the footnotes comprise almost 100 pages of very, very fine print. i know the source material for the vietnam chapters very well, and i can categorically state that these chapters are firmly grounded in the essential documentary sources.

i did note one thing, that i would like to know more about, simply out of curiosity, and out of earlier frustrating experiences of question of access and declassification back in the '90s. dod documents are cited in the chapters, but in the former not as much as one might expect in a book dealing with the department of defense. so i wonder first if the d.o.d. documents noted here, cited here are generally available to scholars or if they're still classified. no mcnamara papers are cited. that raised my curiosity whether any such collection exists. finally, that larger, perhaps impertinent question based on my experiences with the

declassification panels in the cia back in the '90s. in those days dod seemed to us, in regard to access and declassification, sometimes a tougher nut to crack even than the impenetrable cia. and i'm wondering whether that has changed, or put another way, maybe more politely, what is the status of d.o.d. documents on the vietnam war today. that's off my chest, now i can go ahead and talk about the book. let me affirm at the outset, it is admirably comprehensive. the coverage is wonder of comprehensive. lyndon johnson once adamantly insisted that vietnam was not his war, it was america's war. and i think there's a lot of

truth in that. but the war dominated his presidency, and continues to shape his reputation. it should, therefore, come as no surprise that more than half of the chapters in this book focus on vietnam. how we got there, what we did, why we failed, and the consequences thereof. and of course, the subjects dealt with in other chapters, defense budget, for example. obviously are influenced in critical ways by vietnam. this said, i think it's essential to keep in mind that mcnamara, dod and the government had to deal with many other critical issues.

and the book, i'll say, very briefly simply does that. there are chapters, three chapters dealing with military budgets. not a subject i must confess i find personally compelling, but one that is obviously essential, especially in time of war. mcnamara's budget expertise was supposed to be the hallmark of his management of the pentagon, and as this book so well illustrates, paying for what one top johnson administration once said with no apparent sense of paradox, called vietnam an all-out limited, war, without mobilization and tax increases, eventually got mcnamara in trouble with congress. there are chapters on many other important topics. the intervention in the dominican republic in 1965. issue of arms control agreements. the nuclear proliferation treaty.

often assumed that these were nixon things, and in fact they were, but they began during the johnson administration. nato experienced huge challenges during this era, as a result of the de gaulle's departure from the alliance, and growing economic woes in the united states. these problems are very well covered in chapters dealing with nato. a chapter on the middle east focuses on the six-day war, and properly notes how this hugely significant conflict changed greatly for the worse. the contours of the arab-israel conflict and nature and extent of u.s. commitment in that troubled region. the discussion of israel's shrewd, clever management of the united states in executing its preemptive strike against egypt had for me something of a chilling effect in light of where we stand today with israel and iran. i would have liked to have seen more about the liberty episode, another one of those great secrets back in the history of the '60s, even if it were in the helm of educated speculation. there's a chapter dealing with essentially domestic issues. the draft, mcnamara's project 100,000 and many other topics. in short, the coverage is very comprehensive, and quite inclusive. and what it does, those of us who are already tending to focus on vietnam, to remind us of how many other difficult and different challenges mcnamara and dod faced during these tumultuous years.

it culminates, of course, with a chapter on 1968, a year for those of us who lived through it, that remains beyond belief, when things came together in so many ways, and also came apart. clifford remembered it as a year that lasted five years. his counterpart, dean rusk, called it a blur, and claims to have survived only with the help of aspirin and scotch. for lbj, it was like living a nightmare. and you can go through the spring of '68, the invasion of czechoslovakia, all of the things that are going on domestically, including the assassinations of robert kennedy and martin luther king. let me turn now a little bit to the real essence and the substance. the book is wonderfully written,

clear, crisp. this is not your standard bland official history that simply recounts the events. drea offers regarding mcnamara, johnson and to a lesser extent clifford shrewd and to my mind generally persuasive judgments. his analysis provides, i think, a more balanced critique of mcnamara than you're likely to find in the standard account from left to right. from others who have attempted to assess mcnamara's record, drea acknowledges his genius,

especially his ability to analyze complex problems, the grasp the workings of the pentagon. he is one of the few secretaries that has come close to mastering the budgeting process. it is interesting to speculate how his reputation might look today had he been spared the burdens of vietnam, or as secretary brown has suggested, had he left office in 1965. but history doesn't work that way, of course. vietnam was mcnamara's war in many ways. like his boss lbj, it fixed his reputation, just as it dominated his last years in office. for most of those years, drea writes, mcnamara powerful filled the off-role of deputy commander in chief to the president. he played a key part in the decisions to go to war, on how the war would be fought, he oversaw the day-to-day conduct of the war. in drea's view, the fundamental flaw of mcnamara and johnson's management of the war was the absence of a coherent strategy to achieve the nation's aims. preeminently concerned about gaining a congressional support for his great society, lbj hoped

to contain the deteriorating situation in south vietnam without mobilizing the nation for war, without provoking a larger conflict. this measure essentially political approach also reflected theories of limited war currently in vogue among academic defense analysis. they produced, according to drea, a balancing act that failed completely to take into account the unyielding, unremitting determination to prevail of the north vietnamese. johnson and mcnamara then violated what many consider the first rule of war, know your enemy. i would also suggest, just in passing, that drea's argument here begs the comment of, was there a workable strategy, and i'm inclined to agree with secretary brown on this, that

there most likely was not. mcnamara prided himself on his ability to manage the process of escalation and sending and receiving of nuanced signals that was fundamental to the strategy escalation. in fact, drea observes, the war gained a momentum of its own, that mcnamara feared but was unable to check. in his handling of the signals that were supposed to either intimidate or entice hanoi into negotiating a settlement was often marked by ineptitude and outride bungling. the way johnson and mcnamara went to war was then notably idiosyncratic, suggesting that even in the complex world of the 20th century, late 20th century, i suppose this is reassuring. the role of the individual still counts. two different leaders might well

have handled the situation quite differently. raises the question of how we explain the repetition 40 years later of this same experience by simply the fact of another texan in the white house, and another slick secretary of defense. is there something more in our national character that leads us to behave in this way. johnson and mcnamara also launched a war without providing a way to pay for it. to be fair, of course, this, again, is more lbj's doing than mcnamara's. again, primarily to protect his domestic programs. as drea points out, the economic advisers naively believed that they could manipulate the business cycle in ways that would pay for the war without having to raise taxes.

here, of course, the secretary of defense's job was to implement his boss's wishes. and in doing so, in drea's words, he put his loyalty to his president above truth and transparency. he repeatedly misled congress about the size of the involvement in vietnam and the prospective costs. his efforts to keep costs down, procuring the minimum necessary military hardware fell victim to the relentless escalation of this war, and also in turn produced shortages of critical items that provoked fury in the military and in congress. the man who set out to impose order on the pentagon, drea concludes, ultimately found wartime defense budgets as difficult to control as the south vietnamese countryside. let's notice, but well detailed here, mcnamara's defense department also failed to create an equitable and effective

method to raise the manpower to fight a steadily expanding war. this, i think, is an important point to keep in mind. and also, the methods chosen to fight the war failed. the bombing, for example, is a case in point that drea focuses on. it's an on-again, off-again gradually escalating sort of situation that in time alienates people in the united states on the left and the right and never reaches the point where it brings north vietnam around. there's one episode involved here that i asked dr. drea about, and which still intrigues me, and he sort of dismiss it, that famous episode in 1967 where the joint chiefs actually discuss resignation in maas. so if he has anything to add on

this, i'd be interested in it. it has intrigued me for a long time. drea is equally critical, persuasively so, in assessing the consequences of what he calls this ill-be-gotten war. it devastated the u.s. economy, undercutting the strength of the dollar, disrupting domestic programs, creating undreamed-of, at least in those days, deficits, and triggering an inflation that would bedevil the nation for the next two decades. it negatively affected many of the other areas touched on in the book, arms control, negotiations with the soviets, nato's defense capabilities, a war then to demonstrate the credibility of u.s. commitments left the nation's defense structure in tatters. his final assessment of mcnamara is fair, i think, but unsparing.

he acknowledges the secretary's brilliance, his grasp of detail, his tireless energy. no one, quote, has approached the mastery of the enormity and complexities of the pentagon ultimately, however, he is done in by the war that came to bear his name. again, i quote, daring, inventive, dominating, he could not dominate the obstacle that came to define his career, coping with the vietnam war. and for all his luminous achievements, his choices that led to the vietnam disaster will forever remain his enduring legacy. the purpose of this series, as stated in the forward, is to reflect a new sharper focus on

the secretary of defense and his immediate staff, to explain how they contributed to the larger national security policy of the presidents under which they served. mcnamara, clifford and the burdens of vietnam splendidly achieves this goal. it represents a major contribution to our understanding of one of the most tumultuous periods in history. a very brief postscript. i had the privilege of accompanying bob mcnamara in the to vietnam in 1997. we met with lower vietnamese and viet cong officials. major events between 1961 and '67. a follow-up this was to mcnamara several conferences on the cuban missile crisis. sort of group oral history designed to elaborate what we know about events and help us understand them better. in this case, mcnamara was set

on proving his theory that there were numerous missed opportunities for peace between 1961 and '67, that if we had just sat down with each other, been able to understand each other better, the war could have ended much sooner, and at far less cost of life. during the time we spent in preparation and in hanoi, i got to know the secretary a bit. i found him engaging. sometimes more witty than i might have imagined. his legendary energy put me, a much younger person, not in bad shape to shame. his enthusiasm and commitment to the task was admirable. typically, i suspect, the schedule he set in hanoi left absolutely no time free for

sight-seeing or anything of such a frivolous nature. it was all work. luckily, the first day we were there, the vietnamese government and mcnamara and the top people in our delegation got into a spat about how much cnn could cover of the conference of those of us who were flunkies, got a wonderful day and a half to see a lot of a fascinating city. mcnamara himself significantly, i thought at the time, seemed to have little interest in learning more about the nation, and the people who had had such an influence on his life. i was also troubled by his view of history, what seemed to me a rather mechanistic ideas that lessons could be extracted. that could be applied with some level of exactitude and produce successful policy. the conference produced a lot of interesting, exciting moments. we actually learned some new things. mcnamara found in them confirmation of his views about missed opportunities.

the vietnamese were not convinced, nor was i when i made plain my dissent, i was dropped from the team. to my grief, if not my surprise, this was a real penalty, i was not invited to a follow-up conference in bellagio, italy. i learned to keep my mouth shut the next time, i suppose. his determination to learn from the past i thought was impressive, but the way he went about it, it seemed to me, reflected some of the problems that dogged his administration of the department of defense. thanks. and congratulations, ed, on a great book. [ applause ] >> thank you, george, for a great review. you're going to give ed much to respond to and think about. ed is the author of the book just reviewed. he obtained his ph.d. from kansas and served in the military in japan and vietnam. he has had a distinguished

career teaching and writing in the official military history world. he's made substantial contributions, and improving the way we teach our military professionals military history, and he's written a series of important books and articles. in addition to being the author of the book under review, he is the author of also japan's imperial army, its rise and fall, which won the society for military history's distinguished book award in 2010. and he has also written in the service of the emperor essays on the imperial japanese army. he currently works as contract historian for the joint history office, joint chiefs of staff. ed? [ applause ] >> thank you, john. i would also like to thank secretary brown and professor herring for taking time to think about mcnamara once again, and

to offer useful and insightful comments for us to consider. i'd also like to thank one other person. the former osd historian, dr. alfred goldberg, is the person who hired me for this project. al oversaw the project, he shaped it, he edited it, he critiqued it. and along the way, he taught me a great deal about history, writing, and the department of defense. george herring raised the point about the availability of sources that i used to academic and other scholars, not in the defense community. unfortunately, it's not a

straightforward answer. many of the files that i worked with, while i was in the office of secretary of defense historical office, were held by the osd records management office. that office was preparing to transfer these files to the washington national records center in maryland. there were also other osd records for the period at suitland awaiting secessioning by the archives and records administration. the difference is, that the records at suitland still

belonged to the originating agency. while those at session formally by the national archives belonged to the national archives. i know that several years ago they were secessioning osd documents from 1965 and perhaps from 1966. but it's my understanding that nara does not necessarily succession the collections in chronological order. so speaking hypothetically, after the 1965 batch of osd documents, the next group of osd records to be accessed mine from 1978. so it's very complex. it's not an attempt to hide things, it's just, this is how unfortunately, or fortunately,