my own introduction to bob mcnamara happened in february of 1961. i had known the deputy secretary just briefly, because we'd been on a board together, and he offered me the job when i first walked into his office, and i said, gee, i'm not really ready for that right now. and he said, well, you have to take things when they're offered, or maybe they might never come back to you again. then i took that lesson. at the beginning, i think he saw me as a scientist or engineer, and looked instead to his systems analysis group with whom he felt an empathy, because he'd been an operations analyst during world war ii. but as a consequence of considerations early on of the zoo system and the whole issue of mutual deterrence, he turned to the office that i ran as part of the office of the secretary of defense, the office of the director of defense research and engineering, to play a bigger role in programmed decisions. early on mcnamara was still learning about issues of grand strategy. for example, i guess early in 1961 he had espoused the idea of damage limi

lost an enormous amount of weight and the only person in his life that never mentioned it was bob mcnamara, who thought of this man in the functional role and never even made the observation about the change in the person's appearance. so mcnamara, i think, wanted to keep me compartmentalized as this person who brought in documents and interviewed him and was going to write the book. and that was fine. c-span: did he ever get more friendly as the 20 interviews went on? >> guest: well, he was friendly all along because we actually found we could communicate quite well. i like being careful about what the record shows. i was trying to be careful about what inferences i needed to know about his motivations and why he did things. and he's so complicated and non-obvious in the way that he went about things, that if he hadn't explained things -- a great deal of what's in this book is told, to some extent, from his point of view because if you're writing somebody's biography, you have to get in their skin. you have to imagine that you're them. now i don't i think i have that much in common with h

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 natur

bob mcnamara is the ablist man in government. but when he makes a basic decision and gets up a head of steam, he does not always keep the sharpest eye out for new evidence. others of us could have been more alert than we were to guard against this one weakness of this extraordinary man. as secretary brown said, robert mcnamara made his decisions after marshalling the available facts. normally quantifiable data and statistics. he believed that the more facts or information that you gathered or collected, the better you could reduce risk. but if we recall ecclesiasticus at least in abbreviated form, the race is not to the swift nor the battle to the strong, nor does come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learn ed, but time and chance happen to them all. time and chance happened to robert mcnamara, too. thank you very much. [ applause ] >> thanks, ed. you've actually put your own book in context. i appreciate that. the english man of letters, samuel johnson, once wrote, the business of a scholar is to think in s

bob: okay. yo, we're going to show videos now. this first one is garrett mcnamaraet this dude surfed. a wall of water, last november off the coast of portugal. but it was just certified now of the biggest surf wave of all times. can you imagine that? eric, did you ever surf? >> greg: 78 feet tall? i'm thinking 700 feet. that is nothing! >> eric: it's something. you know, one of those jet skis to get on the wave. the best surfer in the world, the guy that died on one. >> bob: c'mon. dana, what do you think? would you fete on a wave like this? >> dana: no. >> bob: smart. >> greg: you would but like a bathtub, like a tiny smurf. >> andrea: i get panic attacks watching that video. >> dana: i don't like water, fish. anything. >> bob: check out the little girl. she is 3 and she is from utah and caught singing her favorite carry underwood tune. ♪ ♪ >> dana: her dance moves could use a little -- >> andrea: i love it. i do the same thing, sadie! >> greg: this is a terrible lesson for kids. encouraging them to sing. >> dana: what whatted to if you don't shut up i'll pull the