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00:00:00,700 --> 00:00:00,800
23.976

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Is this chart at a reasonable
height for you?

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Or do you want it lowered?

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00:00:25,900 --> 00:00:28,000
- Fine.
- All right.

5
00:00:30,100 --> 00:00:31,100
Earlier tonight...

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Let me first ask the TV.
Are you ready?

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All set?

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Let me hear your voice level,
so it's the same.

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- How's my voice level?
- That's fine.

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Terrific.

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Now, I remember exactly
the sentence I left off on.

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I remember how it started,
and I was cut off in the middle.

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You can fix it up.

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I don't want to go back, because
I know exactly what I wanted to say.

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- Go ahead!
- Okay.

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Any military commander
who is honest with himself...

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...or with those he's
speaking to will admit...

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...that he has made mistakes
in the application of military power.

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He's killed people, unnecessarily.

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His own troops or other troops.

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Through mistakes,
through errors of judgment.

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A hundred, or thousands, or tens of
thousands, maybe even 100,000.

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But he hasn't destroyed nations.
And the conventional wisdom is...

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...don't make the same mistake twice.
Learn from your mistakes.

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And we all do. Maybe we make
the same mistake three times...

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...but hopefully not four or five.

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There'll be no learning period
with nuclear weapons.

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Make one mistake
and you're gonna destroy nations.

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In my life, I've been part of wars.

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00:04:05,900 --> 00:04:09,900
Three years in the U.S. Army
during World War II.

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00:04:13,200 --> 00:04:16,300
Seven years as secretary of defense
during the Vietnam War.

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00:04:20,500 --> 00:04:23,600
Thirteen years at the World Bank.
Across the world.

33
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At my age, 85...

34
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...l'm at an age
where I can look back...

35
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...and derive some conclusions
about my actions.

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My rule has been, "try to learn."

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Try to understand what happened.

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Develop the lessons
and pass them on.

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This is the secretary of defense of
the United States, Robert McNamara.

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00:05:12,600 --> 00:05:15,800
His department absorbs 10 percent
of the income of this country...

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... and over half of every tax dollar.

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His job has been called
the toughest in Washington...

43
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... and he is the most controversial
figure that has ever held the job.

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Walter Lippmann calls him both
the best secretary of defense...

45
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... and the first one to ever assert
civilian control over the military.

46
00:05:32,400 --> 00:05:36,400
His critics call him a "con man,"
"an IBM machine with legs"...

47
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..."an arrogant dictator."

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Mr. Secretary, I've noticed
in several cabinet offices...

49
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... that little silver calendar thing there.
Can you explain that?

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00:06:27,700 --> 00:06:31,700
Yes, this was given
by President Kennedy.

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00:06:36,000 --> 00:06:39,100
... 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23...

52
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... 24, 25, 26, 27, and finally 28,
were the dates...

53
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... when we literally look ed down
the gun barrel into nuclear war.

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Under a cloak of deceit...

55
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...the Soviet Union introduced
nuclear missiles...

56
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...into Cuba...

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...targeting 90 million Americans.

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The CIA said the warheads
had not been delivered yet.

59
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They thought 20 were coming
on a ship named the Poltava.

60
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We mobilized 180,000 troops.

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The first day's air attack
was planned at 1080 sorties...

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...a huge air attack.

63
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Kennedy was trying
to keep us out of war.

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I was trying to help him
keep us out of war.

65
00:09:27,000 --> 00:09:29,100
And General Curtis LeMay,
whom I served under...

66
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...as a matter of fact,
in World War II, was saying:

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" Let's go in.
Let's totally destroy Cuba."

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On that critical Saturday,
October 27th...

69
00:10:01,500 --> 00:10:05,500
...we had two Khrushchev
messages in front of us.

70
00:10:06,700 --> 00:10:10,700
One had come in Friday night,
and it had been dictated...

71
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...by a man who was either drunk,
or under tremendous stress.

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Basically, he said, " If you'll
guarantee you won't invade Cuba...

73
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...we'll take the missiles out."

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Then, before we could respond,
we had a second message...

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...that had been dictated
by a bunch of hard-liners.

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And it said, in effect, " If you attack...

77
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...we're prepared...

78
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...to confront you with
masses of military power."

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So, what to do? We had the
soft message and the hard message.

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At the elbow of President Kennedy
was Tommy Thompson...

81
00:10:50,400 --> 00:10:53,600
...former U.S. Ambassador to Moscow.

82
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He and Jane, his wife, had lived with
Khrushchevand his wife on occasion.

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00:10:57,700 --> 00:11:00,900
Tommy Thompson said,
" Mr. President...

84
00:11:00,900 --> 00:11:04,900
...I urge you to respond
to the soft message."

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00:11:06,100 --> 00:11:09,200
The president said to Tommy,
"We can't. That'll get us nowhere."

86
00:11:10,200 --> 00:11:12,300
Tommy said,
" Mr. President, you're wrong."

87
00:11:12,300 --> 00:11:15,500
Now, that takes a lot of guts.

88
00:11:41,600 --> 00:11:45,600
In Thompson's mind was this thought:

89
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" Khrushchev's gotten
himself in a hell of a fix."

90
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He would then think to himself,
" My God...

91
00:11:50,900 --> 00:11:56,100
...if I can get out of this with a deal
that I can say to the Russian people:

92
00:11:56,100 --> 00:12:01,300
'Kennedy was going to destroy
Castro and I prevented it."'

93
00:12:01,300 --> 00:12:04,500
Thompson, knowing Khrushchev
as he did, thought:

94
00:12:04,500 --> 00:12:05,500
" Khrushchevwill accept that."

95
00:12:06,600 --> 00:12:10,600
And Thompson was right.
That's what I call empathy.

96
00:12:11,800 --> 00:12:14,900
We must try to put ourselves
inside their skin...

97
00:12:14,900 --> 00:12:17,000
...and look at us
through their eyes...

98
00:12:17,000 --> 00:12:19,100
...just to understand
the thoughts...

99
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...that lie behind their decisions
and their actions.

100
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Khrushchev's advisors were saying:

101
00:12:32,600 --> 00:12:33,700
"There can be no deal...

102
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...unless you somewhat
reduce the pressure on us...

103
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...when you ask us to reduce
the pressure on you."

104
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Also, we had attempted
to invade Cuba.

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Well, with the Bay of Pigs. That
undoubtedly influenced their thinking.

106
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I think that's correct.

107
00:12:49,300 --> 00:12:52,400
But more importantly, from a Cuban
and a Russian point of view...

108
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...they knew what, in a sense,
I really didn't know.

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We had attempted
to assassinate Castro...

110
00:12:57,600 --> 00:13:00,800
...under Eisenhower and Kennedy,
and later, under Johnson.

111
00:13:00,800 --> 00:13:06,000
And in addition to that, major voices
in the U.S. Were calling for invasion.

112
00:13:12,300 --> 00:13:15,400
In the first message,
Khrushchevsaid this:

113
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"We and you ought not pull
on the ends of a rope...

114
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...which you have tied
the knots of war.

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00:13:28,900 --> 00:13:32,100
Because the more
the two of us pull...

116
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...the tighter the knot will be tied.

117
00:13:39,400 --> 00:13:42,500
And then it will be necessary
to cut that knot...

118
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...and what that would mean
is not for me to explain to you.

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I have participated in two wars
and know that war ends...

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...when it has rolled through
cities and villages...

121
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... everywhere sowing
death and destruction.

122
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For such is the logic of war.

123
00:14:08,500 --> 00:14:10,600
If people do not display wisdom...

124
00:14:10,600 --> 00:14:14,600
...they will clash like blind moles...

125
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...and then mutual annihilation
will commence."

126
00:14:49,200 --> 00:14:52,300
I want to say,
and this is very important:

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At the end, we lucked out.

128
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It was luck that prevented nuclear war.

129
00:14:58,600 --> 00:15:01,700
We came that close
to nuclear war at the end.

130
00:15:01,700 --> 00:15:04,900
Rational individuals.
Kennedy was rational.

131
00:15:04,900 --> 00:15:08,900
Khrushchevwas rational.
Castro was rational.

132
00:15:09,000 --> 00:15:13,000
Rational individuals came that close
to total destruction of their societies.

133
00:15:13,200 --> 00:15:16,300
And that danger exists today.

134
00:15:33,000 --> 00:15:38,200
The major lesson
of the Cuban Missile Crisis is this:

135
00:15:39,300 --> 00:15:43,300
The indefinite combination
of human fallibility...

136
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...and nuclear weapons
will destroy nations.

137
00:15:51,800 --> 00:15:53,900
Is it right and proper...

138
00:15:53,900 --> 00:16:00,100
...that today there are 7500 strategic
offensive nuclear warheads...

139
00:16:00,100 --> 00:16:03,200
...of which 2500
are on 15-minute alert...

140
00:16:04,200 --> 00:16:08,200
...to be launched by the decision
of one human being?

141
00:16:25,100 --> 00:16:30,400
It wasn't until January, 1992...

142
00:16:30,400 --> 00:16:34,400
...in a meeting chaired by Castro
in Havana, Cuba...

143
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...that I learned
162 nuclear warheads...

144
00:16:39,700 --> 00:16:41,800
...including 90 tactical warheads...

145
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...were on the island at the time
in this critical moment of the crisis.

146
00:16:50,200 --> 00:16:52,300
I couldn't believe
what I was hearing...

147
00:16:52,300 --> 00:16:55,400
...and Castro got very angry with me,
because I said:

148
00:16:55,400 --> 00:16:58,500
" Mr. President, let's stop this meeting.
This is totally new to me.

149
00:16:58,500 --> 00:17:00,600
I'm not sure I got the translation right."

150
00:17:01,600 --> 00:17:02,700
Mr. President,
I have three questions.

151
00:17:03,700 --> 00:17:05,800
Number one, did you know
the nuclear warheads were there?

152
00:17:06,900 --> 00:17:07,900
Number two, if you did...

153
00:17:07,900 --> 00:17:10,000
...would you have recommended
to Khrushchev...

154
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...in the face of a U.S. Attack,
that he use them?

155
00:17:13,100 --> 00:17:16,200
Three, if he had used them,
what would've happened to Cuba?

156
00:17:16,200 --> 00:17:18,300
He said, "One,
I knew they were there.

157
00:17:18,300 --> 00:17:20,400
Two, I would not have
recommended to Khrushchev.

158
00:17:21,400 --> 00:17:23,500
I did recommend to Khrushchev
they be used.

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00:17:23,500 --> 00:17:26,700
Three, what would happen to Cuba?
It would've been totally destroyed."

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That's how close we were.

161
00:17:35,000 --> 00:17:37,000
And he was willing to accept that?

162
00:17:37,000 --> 00:17:38,100
Yes... Oh, and he went on to say:

163
00:17:39,100 --> 00:17:42,300
" Mr. McNamara,
if you and President Kennedy...

164
00:17:42,300 --> 00:17:45,400
...had been in a similar situation,
that's what you would've done."

165
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I said, " Mr. President, I hope to God
we would not have done it."

166
00:17:49,600 --> 00:17:52,700
Pull the temple down on our heads?
My God!

167
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In a sense, we'd won.

168
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We got the missiles out without war.

169
00:18:04,200 --> 00:18:07,300
My deputy and I brought
the five chiefs over...

170
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...and we sat down with Kennedy.
And he said, "Gentlemen, we won.

171
00:18:10,500 --> 00:18:13,600
I don't want you ever to say it,
but you know we won, I know we won."

172
00:18:14,600 --> 00:18:17,800
And LeMay said,
"Won? Hell, we lost!

173
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We should go in
and wipe them out today."

174
00:18:25,100 --> 00:18:27,100
LeMay believed that ultimately...

175
00:18:27,100 --> 00:18:29,200
...we'd confront these people
with nuclear weapons.

176
00:18:29,200 --> 00:18:33,200
And by God, we better do it
when we have greater superiority...

177
00:18:33,400 --> 00:18:35,500
...than we will have in the future.

178
00:18:49,000 --> 00:18:54,200
At the time, we had a 17-to-1 strategic
advantage in nuclear numbers.

179
00:18:54,200 --> 00:18:58,200
We'd done 10 times
as many tests as they had.

180
00:18:59,400 --> 00:19:03,400
We were certain we could
retain that advantage...

181
00:19:03,600 --> 00:19:06,700
...if we limited the tests.
The chiefs were all opposed.

182
00:19:07,800 --> 00:19:08,800
They said, "The Soviets will cheat."

183
00:19:09,800 --> 00:19:11,900
Well, I said, " How will they cheat?"

184
00:19:11,900 --> 00:19:14,000
You won't believe this,
but they said:

185
00:19:15,100 --> 00:19:18,200
"They'll test them behind the moon."

186
00:19:19,200 --> 00:19:21,300
I said, "You're out of your mind."

187
00:19:22,400 --> 00:19:24,400
That's absurd.

188
00:19:26,500 --> 00:19:29,700
It's almost impossible
for our people today...

189
00:19:29,700 --> 00:19:33,700
...to put themselves back
into that period.

190
00:19:34,900 --> 00:19:37,000
In my seven years as secretary...

191
00:19:37,000 --> 00:19:40,100
...we came within a hairsbreadth
of war with the Soviet Union...

192
00:19:41,200 --> 00:19:42,200
...on three different occasions.

193
00:19:43,300 --> 00:19:45,300
Twenty-four hours a day,
365 days a year...

194
00:19:45,300 --> 00:19:49,300
...for seven years as secretary
of defense, I lived the Cold War.

195
00:19:51,600 --> 00:19:56,800
During the Kennedy administration,
they designed a 100-megaton bomb.

196
00:19:56,800 --> 00:20:00,800
It was tested in the atmosphere.
I remember this.

197
00:20:02,000 --> 00:20:05,200
Cold War? Hell, it was a hot war.

198
00:20:09,300 --> 00:20:14,500
I think the human race
needs to think more about killing...

199
00:20:14,500 --> 00:20:16,600
...about conflict.

200
00:20:16,600 --> 00:20:19,700
Is that what we want
in this 21 st century?

201
00:20:51,000 --> 00:20:57,200
My earliest memory
is of a city exploding with joy.

202
00:20:57,200 --> 00:21:02,500
It was November 11, 1918.
I was 2 years old.

203
00:21:04,500 --> 00:21:08,500
You may not believe
that I have the memory, but I do.

204
00:21:08,700 --> 00:21:11,900
I remember the tops
of the streetcars...

205
00:21:11,900 --> 00:21:15,900
...being crowded
with human beings...

206
00:21:16,100 --> 00:21:18,100
...cheering and kissing
and screaming.

207
00:21:19,200 --> 00:21:21,300
End of World War I. We'd won.

208
00:21:23,400 --> 00:21:25,400
But also celebrating the belief...

209
00:21:25,400 --> 00:21:28,600
...of many Americans,
particularly Woodrow Wilson...

210
00:21:28,600 --> 00:21:30,700
...we'd fought a war
to end all wars.

211
00:21:33,800 --> 00:21:35,900
His dream was...

212
00:21:35,900 --> 00:21:39,900
...that the world could avoid
great wars in the future.

213
00:21:40,000 --> 00:21:44,000
Disputes among great nations
would be resolved.

214
00:21:48,300 --> 00:21:49,400
I also remember...

215
00:21:49,400 --> 00:21:52,500
...that I wasn't allowed to go outdoors
to play with my friends...

216
00:21:53,600 --> 00:21:55,600
...without wearing a mask.

217
00:21:55,600 --> 00:21:58,800
There was an ungodly flu epidemic.

218
00:21:58,800 --> 00:22:01,900
Large numbers of Americans
were dying, 600,000.

219
00:22:01,900 --> 00:22:05,000
And millions across the world.

220
00:22:17,500 --> 00:22:21,500
My class in the first grade was housed
in a shack, a wooden shack.

221
00:22:21,700 --> 00:22:23,800
But we had an absolutely
superb teacher.

222
00:22:23,800 --> 00:22:29,000
And this teacher gave a test
to the class every month...

223
00:22:29,000 --> 00:22:32,100
...and she re- seated the class
based on the results of that test.

224
00:22:33,200 --> 00:22:36,300
There were vertical rows, and she put
the person with the highest grade...

225
00:22:36,300 --> 00:22:38,400
...in the first seat
on the left-hand row.

226
00:22:38,400 --> 00:22:41,500
And I worked my tail off
to be in that first seat.

227
00:22:41,500 --> 00:22:44,600
Now, the majority of the classmates
were whites, Caucasians, so on.

228
00:22:44,600 --> 00:22:46,800
Wasps, if you will.

229
00:22:46,800 --> 00:22:53,000
But my competition for that first seat
were Chinese, Japanese and Jews.

230
00:22:53,000 --> 00:22:56,200
On Saturday and Sunday,
I played with my classmates.

231
00:22:56,200 --> 00:23:00,200
They went to their ethnic schools.
They learned their native language.

232
00:23:00,300 --> 00:23:01,400
They learned their culture, history.

233
00:23:02,400 --> 00:23:05,500
And they came back determined on
Monday to beat that damn Irishman.

234
00:23:05,500 --> 00:23:08,600
But they didn't do it very often.

235
00:23:08,600 --> 00:23:12,600
One congressman called you "Mr.
L- Have-All-The-Answers McNamara. "

236
00:23:12,800 --> 00:23:14,900
And there's been suggestion
from some congressmen...

237
00:23:14,900 --> 00:23:18,000
... that you come up there,
in spite of their experience...

238
00:23:18,000 --> 00:23:21,100
... prepared to give them
lessons in things.

239
00:23:21,100 --> 00:23:22,200
Is that your attitude?

240
00:23:22,200 --> 00:23:26,200
No. Perhaps they don't know
how much I don't know.

241
00:23:26,400 --> 00:23:28,400
And there is much indeed.

242
00:23:28,400 --> 00:23:30,500
I do mak e a serious effort...

243
00:23:30,500 --> 00:23:35,700
... to prepare myself properly for these
congressional discussions.

244
00:23:35,700 --> 00:23:38,900
I suppose I spend, perhaps,
100 or 120 hours...

245
00:23:39,900 --> 00:23:42,000
... in testifying before
Congress each year.

246
00:23:42,000 --> 00:23:47,200
And each hour of testimony requires
three to four hours of preparation.

247
00:23:47,200 --> 00:23:50,300
What about the contention that your
attitude is sometimes arrogant?

248
00:23:51,400 --> 00:23:53,500
Have you ever been wrong, sir?

249
00:23:53,500 --> 00:23:55,600
Oh, yes, indeed. My heavens.

250
00:23:55,600 --> 00:23:57,600
I'm not gonna tell you
when I've been wrong.

251
00:23:57,600 --> 00:24:00,800
If you don't know,
I'm not going to tell you.

252
00:24:00,800 --> 00:24:01,800
Oh, on countless occasions.

253
00:24:06,000 --> 00:24:10,000
I applied to Stanford University.
I very much wanted to go.

254
00:24:10,100 --> 00:24:13,300
But I couldn't afford it, so I lived
at home and I went to Berkeley.

255
00:24:13,300 --> 00:24:15,400
Fifty-two dollars a year tuition.

256
00:24:15,400 --> 00:24:18,500
I started Berkeley at the bottom
of the Depression.

257
00:24:18,500 --> 00:24:21,600
Twenty-five million males
were unemployed.

258
00:24:21,600 --> 00:24:22,700
Out of that class of 3500...

259
00:24:22,700 --> 00:24:26,700
...three elected to Phi Beta Kappa
at the end of sophomore year.

260
00:24:26,800 --> 00:24:30,800
Of those three, one became
a Rhodes Scholar, I went to Harvard...

261
00:24:31,000 --> 00:24:33,100
...the third went to work
for $65 a month...

262
00:24:33,100 --> 00:24:35,200
...and was damn happy
to have the job.

263
00:24:37,300 --> 00:24:40,400
The society was on the verge of...

264
00:24:40,400 --> 00:24:42,500
...I don't want to say revolution...

265
00:24:42,500 --> 00:24:46,500
...although, had Roosevelt not done
some of the things he did...

266
00:24:46,600 --> 00:24:49,800
...it could've become
far more violent.

267
00:24:49,800 --> 00:24:52,900
In any event, that was
what I was thrown into.

268
00:24:53,900 --> 00:24:56,000
I never heard of Plato and Aristotle...

269
00:24:57,100 --> 00:24:59,200
...before I became
a freshman at Berkeley.

270
00:24:59,200 --> 00:25:01,200
And I remember the professor,
Lowenberg...

271
00:25:01,200 --> 00:25:03,300
...the freshman
philosophy professor...

272
00:25:03,300 --> 00:25:05,400
I couldn't wait
to go to another class.

273
00:25:17,900 --> 00:25:21,100
I took more philosophy courses,
particularly one in logic...

274
00:25:21,100 --> 00:25:23,100
...and one in ethics.

275
00:25:25,200 --> 00:25:28,400
Stress on values...

276
00:25:28,400 --> 00:25:31,500
...something beyond one's self...

277
00:25:31,500 --> 00:25:34,600
...and a responsibility to society.

278
00:25:37,700 --> 00:25:39,800
After graduating
University of California...

279
00:25:39,800 --> 00:25:42,900
...I went to Harvard Graduate School
of Business for two years...

280
00:25:42,900 --> 00:25:45,000
...and then I went back
to San Francisco.

281
00:25:48,200 --> 00:25:52,200
I began to court this young lady that
I'd met when we were 17...

282
00:25:52,300 --> 00:25:54,400
...in our first week at Berkeley:

283
00:25:55,400 --> 00:25:57,500
Margaret Craig.

284
00:25:58,500 --> 00:26:02,800
And I was making some progress
after eight or nine months.

285
00:26:03,800 --> 00:26:05,900
I proposed and she accepted.

286
00:26:05,900 --> 00:26:11,100
She went with her aunt and her mother
on a trip across the country.

287
00:26:11,100 --> 00:26:15,100
She telegraphed me,
" Must order engraved invitations...

288
00:26:15,300 --> 00:26:17,400
...to include your middle name,
what is it?"

289
00:26:17,400 --> 00:26:19,400
I wired back,
" My middle name is Strange."

290
00:26:19,400 --> 00:26:22,600
She said,
" I know it's strange, but what is it?"

291
00:26:22,600 --> 00:26:26,600
Well, I mean, it is Strange.
It's Robert Strange McNamara.

292
00:26:34,000 --> 00:26:36,100
And it was a marriage
made in heaven.

293
00:26:39,300 --> 00:26:43,300
At the end of a year,
we had our first child.

294
00:26:43,400 --> 00:26:48,600
The delivery costs were $100,
and we paid that $10 a month.

295
00:26:49,700 --> 00:26:53,700
Those were some of the happiest
days of our lives.

296
00:26:54,900 --> 00:26:57,000
And then the war came.

297
00:27:06,400 --> 00:27:08,500
I'd been promoted
to assistant professor.

298
00:27:08,500 --> 00:27:10,500
I was the youngest at Harvard.

299
00:27:11,600 --> 00:27:15,600
And on a salary, by the way,
of $4000 a year.

300
00:27:19,900 --> 00:27:23,900
Harvard Business School's
market was drying up.

301
00:27:24,100 --> 00:27:27,200
The males were being drafted
or volunteering.

302
00:27:27,200 --> 00:27:31,200
So the dean, being farsighted,
brought back a government contract...

303
00:27:31,300 --> 00:27:34,500
...to establish an officer candidate
school for what was called...

304
00:27:34,500 --> 00:27:36,600
...Statistical Control
in the Air Force.

305
00:27:44,900 --> 00:27:48,100
We said, " Look, we're not gonna
take anybody you send up here.

306
00:27:48,100 --> 00:27:51,200
We're gonna select the people."

307
00:27:51,200 --> 00:27:54,300
You have a punch card
for every human being...

308
00:27:54,300 --> 00:27:56,400
...brought into the Air Corps.

309
00:27:56,400 --> 00:28:00,400
We're gonna run those punch cards
through the IBM sorting machines...

310
00:28:00,600 --> 00:28:04,600
...and we're gonna sort on age,
education, accomplishment...

311
00:28:05,800 --> 00:28:07,900
...grades, et cetera.

312
00:28:10,000 --> 00:28:12,100
We were looking for the best
and the brightest.

313
00:28:12,100 --> 00:28:16,100
The best brains,
the greatest capacity to lead...

314
00:28:16,200 --> 00:28:18,300
...the best judgment.

315
00:28:29,800 --> 00:28:31,900
The U.S. Was just beginning to bomb.

316
00:28:34,000 --> 00:28:36,000
We were bombing by daylight.

317
00:28:36,000 --> 00:28:39,100
The loss rate was very, very high.

318
00:28:41,200 --> 00:28:44,300
So they commissioned a study.
And what did we find?

319
00:28:45,400 --> 00:28:47,500
We found the abort rate
was 20 percent.

320
00:28:48,500 --> 00:28:49,600
Twenty percent of the planes
leaving England...

321
00:28:50,600 --> 00:28:53,700
...to bomb Germany turned around
before they got to the target.

322
00:28:53,700 --> 00:28:56,900
That was a hell of a mess.
We lost 20 percent of our capability.

323
00:28:57,900 --> 00:29:00,000
I think it was called Form 1 -A...

324
00:29:00,000 --> 00:29:02,100
...or something like that
was a mission report.

325
00:29:03,100 --> 00:29:05,200
And if you aborted a mission,
you had to write down why.

326
00:29:06,200 --> 00:29:08,300
So we get all these things
and we analyse them...

327
00:29:09,400 --> 00:29:10,400
...and we finally concluded:

328
00:29:11,500 --> 00:29:13,600
It was baloney.

329
00:29:13,600 --> 00:29:15,700
They were aborting out of fear.

330
00:29:15,700 --> 00:29:18,800
Because the loss rate
was four percent per sortie.

331
00:29:18,800 --> 00:29:20,900
The combat tour
was 25 sorties.

332
00:29:20,900 --> 00:29:23,000
It didn't mean 100 percent
would die...

333
00:29:23,000 --> 00:29:26,100
...but a lot of them were gonna be
killed. They knew that...

334
00:29:26,100 --> 00:29:29,200
...and they found reasons
to not go over the target.

335
00:29:30,300 --> 00:29:33,400
So we reported this.

336
00:29:38,600 --> 00:29:40,700
One of the commanders
was Curtis LeMay.

337
00:29:40,700 --> 00:29:44,700
Colonel in command of a B-24 group.

338
00:29:44,900 --> 00:29:48,900
He was the finest combat commander
of any service I came across in war.

339
00:29:49,000 --> 00:29:53,000
But he was extraordinarily belligerent,
many thought brutal.

340
00:29:53,200 --> 00:29:56,300
He got the report.
He issued an order.

341
00:29:56,300 --> 00:29:59,500
He said, " I will be in the
lead plane on every mission.

342
00:29:59,500 --> 00:30:02,500
Any plane that takes off
will go over the target...

343
00:30:02,500 --> 00:30:04,600
...or the crew will be
court-martialed."

344
00:30:04,600 --> 00:30:06,700
The abort rate dropped overnight.

345
00:30:08,800 --> 00:30:10,900
Now, that's the kind
of a commander he was.

346
00:30:13,000 --> 00:30:17,000
Ladies and gentlemen,
the president of the United States.

347
00:30:18,200 --> 00:30:21,300
My friends, on this Christmas Eve...

348
00:30:21,300 --> 00:30:23,400
... there are over 10 million men...

349
00:30:23,400 --> 00:30:27,400
... in the Armed Forces of
the United States alone.

350
00:30:27,600 --> 00:30:33,800
One year ago,
1, 700, 000 were serving overseas.

351
00:30:33,800 --> 00:30:40,100
By next July first, that number
will rise to over five million.

352
00:30:41,100 --> 00:30:46,300
Plenty of bad news for the Japs
in the not-too-far-distant future.

353
00:31:06,200 --> 00:31:10,200
The U.S. Air Force had a new
airplane, named the B-29.

354
00:31:17,700 --> 00:31:23,900
The B-17 s and B-24s in Europe
bombed from 15, 16,000 feet.

355
00:31:26,000 --> 00:31:29,100
The problem was that they
were subject to antiaircraft fire...

356
00:31:29,100 --> 00:31:31,200
...and to fighter aircraft.

357
00:31:32,200 --> 00:31:35,300
To relieve that, this B-29
was being developed...

358
00:31:35,300 --> 00:31:37,400
...that bombed from high altitude...

359
00:31:37,400 --> 00:31:42,600
...and it was thought we could destroy
targets more efficiently and effectively.

360
00:31:49,900 --> 00:31:52,000
I was brought back
from the 8th Air Force...

361
00:31:53,100 --> 00:31:57,100
...and assigned to the first B-29s,
the 58th Bomb Wing.

362
00:31:58,300 --> 00:32:03,500
We had to fly those planes from
the bases in Kansas to India.

363
00:32:04,500 --> 00:32:08,500
Then we had to fly fuel
over the hump into China.

364
00:32:27,500 --> 00:32:32,700
The airfields were built
with Chinese labour.

365
00:32:34,800 --> 00:32:36,900
It was an insane operation.

366
00:32:41,100 --> 00:32:44,200
I can still remember them
hauling these huge rollers...

367
00:32:45,200 --> 00:32:48,300
...to crush the stone
and make them flat.

368
00:32:50,400 --> 00:32:52,500
Somebody would slip,
the roller would roll over him...

369
00:32:52,500 --> 00:32:55,600
... everybody would
laugh and go on.

370
00:32:58,800 --> 00:33:00,800
We were supposed
to take these B-29s...

371
00:33:00,800 --> 00:33:04,000
There were no tanker aircraft there.
We were to fill them with fuel...

372
00:33:05,000 --> 00:33:08,100
...fly from India to Chengdu,
offload the fuel, fly back to India...

373
00:33:08,100 --> 00:33:12,100
...make enough missions
to build up fuel in Chengdu...

374
00:33:12,300 --> 00:33:17,500
...fly to Yawata, Japan, bomb
the steel mills and go back to India.

375
00:33:18,600 --> 00:33:22,600
We had so little training on this
problem of maximizing efficiency...

376
00:33:23,800 --> 00:33:25,900
...we actually found, to get
some of the B-29s back...

377
00:33:25,900 --> 00:33:29,900
...instead of offloading fuel,
they had to take it on.

378
00:33:33,200 --> 00:33:36,300
To make a long story short,
it wasn't worth a damn.

379
00:33:37,300 --> 00:33:40,500
And it was LeMay who really came to
that conclusion and led the chiefs...

380
00:33:40,500 --> 00:33:44,500
...to move the whole thing to the
Marianas, which devastated Japan.

381
00:34:28,400 --> 00:34:31,600
LeMay was focused
on only one thing:

382
00:34:32,600 --> 00:34:34,700
Target destruction.

383
00:34:36,800 --> 00:34:39,900
Most Air Force generals can say
how many planes they had...

384
00:34:39,900 --> 00:34:43,000
...how many tons of bombs they
dropped, or whatever it was.

385
00:34:43,000 --> 00:34:45,100
But he was the only person
that I knew...

386
00:34:45,100 --> 00:34:49,100
...in the senior command in the
Air Force who focused solely...

387
00:34:49,300 --> 00:34:53,300
...on the loss of his crews
per unit of target destruction.

388
00:34:57,600 --> 00:35:03,900
I was on the island of Guam,
in his command, in March of 1945.

389
00:35:04,900 --> 00:35:08,900
In that single night,
we burned to death...

390
00:35:09,100 --> 00:35:13,100
...100,000 Japanese civilians
in Tokyo.

391
00:35:13,300 --> 00:35:15,400
Men, women and children.

392
00:35:18,500 --> 00:35:21,600
Were you aware this was
going to happen?

393
00:35:23,700 --> 00:35:24,700
Well, I was...

394
00:35:25,800 --> 00:35:31,000
...part of a mechanism that,
in a sense, recommended it.

395
00:35:45,600 --> 00:35:49,600
I analysed bombing operations,
and how to make them more efficient.

396
00:35:49,800 --> 00:35:52,900
I.e., not more efficient in the sense of
killing more...

397
00:35:52,900 --> 00:35:56,900
...but more efficient
in weakening the adversary.

398
00:36:00,200 --> 00:36:04,200
I wrote one report analysing...

399
00:36:04,400 --> 00:36:07,500
...the efficiency
of the B-29 operations.

400
00:36:08,500 --> 00:36:12,500
The B-29 could get above the fighter
aircraft and above the air defense...

401
00:36:12,700 --> 00:36:14,800
...so the loss rate
would be much less.

402
00:36:14,800 --> 00:36:18,800
The problem was, the accuracy
was also much less.

403
00:36:30,400 --> 00:36:33,600
Now, I don't want to suggest
that it was my report...

404
00:36:33,600 --> 00:36:36,700
...that led to...
I'll call it the firebombing.

405
00:36:39,800 --> 00:36:42,900
It isn't that I'm absolving myself
of blame for the firebombing.

406
00:36:42,900 --> 00:36:45,000
I don't want to suggest that it was I...

407
00:36:45,000 --> 00:36:47,100
...that put in LeMay's mind...

408
00:36:48,200 --> 00:36:50,200
...that his operations
were totally inefficient...

409
00:36:51,300 --> 00:36:55,300
...and had to be drastically changed.
But, anyhow, that's what he did.

410
00:36:55,500 --> 00:37:00,600
He took the B-29s
down to 5000 feet...

411
00:37:00,600 --> 00:37:02,700
...and he decided to bomb
with firebombs.

412
00:37:22,600 --> 00:37:24,700
I participated in the interrogation...

413
00:37:24,700 --> 00:37:28,700
...of the B-29 bomber crews
that came back that night.

414
00:37:28,800 --> 00:37:32,800
A room full of crewmen
and intelligence interrogators.

415
00:37:33,000 --> 00:37:35,100
A captain got up,
a young captain said:

416
00:37:35,100 --> 00:37:38,200
"Goddamn it, I'd like to know who
the son of a bitch was...

417
00:37:38,200 --> 00:37:43,400
...that took this magnificent airplane,
designed to bomb from 23,000 feet...

418
00:37:43,400 --> 00:37:47,400
...and he took it down to 5000 feet,
and I lost my wingman.

419
00:37:47,600 --> 00:37:48,600
He was shot and killed."

420
00:37:50,700 --> 00:37:53,800
LeMay spoke in monosyllables.

421
00:37:53,800 --> 00:37:55,900
I never heard him say...

422
00:37:55,900 --> 00:37:58,000
...more than two words in sequence.

423
00:37:58,000 --> 00:38:02,000
It was basically, "Yes," " No," "Yep"...

424
00:38:02,200 --> 00:38:06,200
..."That's all," or " Hell with it."
That was all he said.

425
00:38:07,400 --> 00:38:10,500
And LeMay was totally intolerant
of criticism.

426
00:38:10,500 --> 00:38:13,700
He never engaged in discussion
with anybody.

427
00:38:14,700 --> 00:38:16,800
He stood up.

428
00:38:16,800 --> 00:38:18,900
"Why are we here?

429
00:38:18,900 --> 00:38:21,000
Why are we here?

430
00:38:22,000 --> 00:38:25,100
You lost your wingman.
It hurts me as much as...

431
00:38:26,100 --> 00:38:27,200
...it does you.

432
00:38:27,200 --> 00:38:29,300
I sent him there.

433
00:38:30,300 --> 00:38:32,400
And I've been there,
I know what it is.

434
00:38:32,400 --> 00:38:35,500
But you lost one wingman...

435
00:38:35,500 --> 00:38:37,600
...and we destroyed Tokyo."

436
00:38:43,900 --> 00:38:47,000
Fifty square miles of Tokyo
were burned.

437
00:38:48,000 --> 00:38:50,200
Tokyo was a wooden city,
and when we dropped firebombs...

438
00:38:51,200 --> 00:38:53,300
...it just burned it.

439
00:39:40,200 --> 00:39:43,300
The choice of incendiary bombs...

440
00:39:43,300 --> 00:39:46,400
... where did that come from?

441
00:39:47,500 --> 00:39:49,500
I think the issue...

442
00:39:49,500 --> 00:39:52,700
...is not so much incendiary bombs.
I think the issue is...

443
00:39:53,700 --> 00:39:56,800
...in order to win, should you kill
100,000 people in one night?

444
00:39:56,800 --> 00:39:57,900
By firebombing or any other way?

445
00:39:57,900 --> 00:40:01,000
LeMay's answer would be,
clearly, "Yes."

446
00:40:01,000 --> 00:40:02,100
" McNamara, do you mean to say...

447
00:40:03,100 --> 00:40:04,100
...that instead of killing 100,000...

448
00:40:05,200 --> 00:40:08,300
...burning to death 100,000 Japanese
civilians in that one night...

449
00:40:08,300 --> 00:40:11,400
...we should have burned to death
a lesser number or none?

450
00:40:11,400 --> 00:40:14,600
And then had our soldiers
cross the beaches in Tokyo...

451
00:40:14,600 --> 00:40:16,700
...and been slaughtered
in tens of thousands?

452
00:40:16,700 --> 00:40:19,800
Is that what you're proposing?
Is that moral? Is that wise?"

453
00:40:19,800 --> 00:40:22,900
Why was it necessary to drop
the nuclear bomb...

454
00:40:22,900 --> 00:40:25,000
...if LeMay was burning up Japan?

455
00:40:25,000 --> 00:40:29,000
And he went on from Tokyo
to firebomb other cities.

456
00:40:29,200 --> 00:40:32,300
58 percent of Yokohama. Yokohama
is roughly the size of Cleveland.

457
00:40:33,400 --> 00:40:35,500
58 percent of Cleveland destroyed.

458
00:40:37,600 --> 00:40:41,600
Tokyo is roughly the size of New York.
51 percent of New York destroyed.

459
00:40:42,800 --> 00:40:45,900
99 percent of the equivalent
of Chattanooga, which was Toyama.

460
00:40:46,900 --> 00:40:50,900
40 percent of the equivalent
of Los Angeles, which was Nagoya.

461
00:40:53,200 --> 00:40:55,300
This was all done before...

462
00:40:56,300 --> 00:40:57,400
...the dropping
of the nuclear bomb.

463
00:40:58,400 --> 00:41:02,400
Which, by the way, was dropped
by LeMay's command.

464
00:41:04,700 --> 00:41:07,800
Proportionality should
be a guideline in war.

465
00:41:31,700 --> 00:41:34,900
Killing 50 to 90 percent...

466
00:41:34,900 --> 00:41:38,000
...of the people
in 67 Japanese cities...

467
00:41:38,000 --> 00:41:41,100
...and then bombing them
with two nuclear bombs...

468
00:41:42,200 --> 00:41:45,300
...is not proportional,
in the minds of some people...

469
00:41:45,300 --> 00:41:48,400
...to the objectives
we were trying to achieve.

470
00:42:05,100 --> 00:42:08,300
I don't fault Truman
for dropping the nuclear bomb.

471
00:42:09,300 --> 00:42:11,400
The U.S. -Japanese War was
one of the most brutal wars...

472
00:42:12,400 --> 00:42:13,500
...in all of human history.

473
00:42:14,500 --> 00:42:17,700
Kamikaze pilots, suicide,
unbelievable.

474
00:42:18,700 --> 00:42:19,700
What one can criticize...

475
00:42:19,700 --> 00:42:22,900
...is that the human race
prior to that time and today...

476
00:42:22,900 --> 00:42:28,100
...has not really grappled with
what are, I'll call it "the rules of war."

477
00:42:28,100 --> 00:42:32,100
Was there a rule then that said you
shouldn't bomb, shouldn't kill...

478
00:42:32,200 --> 00:42:35,300
...shouldn't burn to death 100,000
civilians in a night?

479
00:42:37,400 --> 00:42:39,500
LeMay said, " If we'd lost the war...

480
00:42:39,500 --> 00:42:42,600
...we'd all have been prosecuted
as war criminals."

481
00:42:42,600 --> 00:42:44,700
And I think he's right.

482
00:42:46,800 --> 00:42:49,900
He, and I'd say I...

483
00:42:49,900 --> 00:42:52,000
...were behaving as war criminals.

484
00:42:56,200 --> 00:43:00,200
LeMay recognized
that what he was doing...

485
00:43:00,400 --> 00:43:03,500
...would be thought immoral...

486
00:43:03,500 --> 00:43:05,600
...if his side had lost.

487
00:43:07,700 --> 00:43:10,800
But what makes it immoral if you lose
and not immoral if you win?

488
00:45:37,800 --> 00:45:41,800
At some point, we have to approach
Vietnam, and I want to know...

489
00:45:42,000 --> 00:45:44,100
... how you can best
set that up for me.

490
00:45:44,100 --> 00:45:46,200
Yeah, well...

491
00:45:47,200 --> 00:45:51,200
...that's a hard, hard question.
I think...

492
00:45:53,500 --> 00:45:57,500
I think we have to approach it
in the context of the Cold War.

493
00:45:57,600 --> 00:46:00,700
But first I'll have to talk about Ford.

494
00:46:00,700 --> 00:46:02,800
I've got to go back
to the end of the war.

495
00:46:15,300 --> 00:46:18,500
I had a terrible headache...

496
00:46:18,500 --> 00:46:22,500
...so Marg drove me in
to the Air Force regional hospital.

497
00:46:22,600 --> 00:46:24,700
A week later, Marg came in...

498
00:46:25,800 --> 00:46:27,900
...many of the same symptoms.

499
00:46:27,900 --> 00:46:31,900
It's hard to believe, and I don't think
I've heard of another case...

500
00:46:32,000 --> 00:46:34,100
...where two individuals,
husband and wife...

501
00:46:34,100 --> 00:46:37,200
...came down, essentially,
at the same time with polio.

502
00:46:38,300 --> 00:46:42,300
We were both in the hospital
on V-J Day.

503
00:46:45,500 --> 00:46:46,600
A friend of mine said:

504
00:46:46,600 --> 00:46:49,700
"We're gonna find a corporation
in America that needs...

505
00:46:49,700 --> 00:46:52,900
...the advice and capabilities
of this extraordinary group...

506
00:46:52,900 --> 00:46:55,000
...l'm forming and you gotta be in it."

507
00:46:55,000 --> 00:46:58,100
I said, "To hell with it.
I'm going back to Harvard.

508
00:46:59,100 --> 00:47:01,200
Marg and I wanna do that.
I'm gonna spend my life there."

509
00:47:02,300 --> 00:47:05,400
He said, " Look, Bob,
you can't pay Marg's hospital bills.

510
00:47:05,400 --> 00:47:07,500
You're crazy as hell."
He said, " By the way...

511
00:47:07,500 --> 00:47:11,500
...the company that most needs
our help in all the U.S. Is Ford."

512
00:47:11,700 --> 00:47:14,800
I said, " How'd you learn that?"
" I read an article in Life magazine."

513
00:47:16,900 --> 00:47:19,000
Of the top 1000 executives at Ford...

514
00:47:19,000 --> 00:47:22,100
...I don't believe there were
10 college graduates...

515
00:47:23,100 --> 00:47:25,200
...and Henry Ford II needed help.

516
00:47:27,300 --> 00:47:29,400
They were gonna give us tests.

517
00:47:29,400 --> 00:47:31,500
Two full days of testing...

518
00:47:31,500 --> 00:47:35,500
...intelligence tests, achievement tests,
personality tests, you name it.

519
00:47:35,600 --> 00:47:39,600
This sounds absurd, but I remember
a question on one of the tests was:

520
00:47:39,800 --> 00:47:43,800
"Would you rather be a florist
or a coal miner?"

521
00:47:46,100 --> 00:47:48,100
I had been a florist.
I worked as a florist...

522
00:47:48,100 --> 00:47:50,200
...during some of my
Christmas vacations.

523
00:47:51,300 --> 00:47:55,300
I put down coal miner.
I think the reasons are obvious to you.

524
00:47:56,500 --> 00:48:00,500
This group of 10 people
had been trained...

525
00:48:00,700 --> 00:48:02,700
...in the officer candidate school
at Harvard.

526
00:48:02,700 --> 00:48:06,700
In some tests we had the highest
marks that had ever been scored.

527
00:48:06,900 --> 00:48:10,900
In other tests, we were in the upper
one percentile.

528
00:48:17,300 --> 00:48:20,400
From 1926 to 1946,
including the war years...

529
00:48:20,400 --> 00:48:23,600
...Ford Motor Company
just barely broke even.

530
00:48:24,600 --> 00:48:26,700
It was a God-awful mess.

531
00:48:29,900 --> 00:48:33,000
I thought we had a responsibility
to the stockholders...

532
00:48:34,000 --> 00:48:39,200
...and God knows you cannot believe
how bad the situation had been.

533
00:48:57,000 --> 00:48:59,100
They had no market research
organization. I set one up.

534
00:48:59,100 --> 00:49:01,100
Manager said,
"What do you want studied?"

535
00:49:02,200 --> 00:49:04,300
I said, " Find out who's
buying Volkswagens.

536
00:49:04,300 --> 00:49:06,400
Everybody says it's a no-good car.

537
00:49:06,400 --> 00:49:08,400
It was only selling about
20,000 a year...

538
00:49:09,500 --> 00:49:11,600
...but I want to know
what's gonna happen.

539
00:49:11,600 --> 00:49:13,700
Is it gonna stay the same,
go down, or go up?

540
00:49:13,700 --> 00:49:14,700
Find out who buys them."

541
00:49:15,700 --> 00:49:17,800
He came back six months later,
he said:

542
00:49:17,800 --> 00:49:21,800
"Well, they're professors, and they're
doctors and they're lawyers...

543
00:49:22,000 --> 00:49:25,100
...and they're obviously people
who can afford more."

544
00:49:25,100 --> 00:49:28,200
Well, that set me to thinking about
what we in the industry should do.

545
00:49:29,300 --> 00:49:31,300
Was there a market we were missing?

546
00:49:32,400 --> 00:49:36,400
At this time nobody believed
Americans wanted cheaper cars.

547
00:49:36,500 --> 00:49:39,700
They wanted
conspicuous consumption.

548
00:49:40,700 --> 00:49:43,800
Cadillac, with these huge,
ostentatious fins...

549
00:49:43,800 --> 00:49:47,000
...set the style for the industry
for 10 or 15 years.

550
00:49:49,100 --> 00:49:51,100
And that's what we were up against.

551
00:49:54,300 --> 00:49:57,400
We introduced the Falcon
as a more economical car...

552
00:49:57,400 --> 00:50:01,400
...and it was a huge success
profit-wise.

553
00:50:05,800 --> 00:50:07,900
We accomplished a lot.

554
00:50:23,500 --> 00:50:26,600
I said, "What about accidents?
I hear a lot about accidents."

555
00:50:26,600 --> 00:50:29,800
"Oh, yes, we'll get you
some data on that."

556
00:50:33,900 --> 00:50:39,200
There were about 40,000 deaths
per year from automobile accidents...

557
00:50:39,200 --> 00:50:41,200
...and about a million,
or a million-two injuries.

558
00:50:42,300 --> 00:50:44,400
I said, "What causes it?"
" It's obvious.

559
00:50:44,400 --> 00:50:46,500
It's human error
and mechanical failure."

560
00:50:47,500 --> 00:50:50,600
I said, " If it's mechanical,
we might be involved. Find out.

561
00:50:50,600 --> 00:50:53,800
If it's mechanical failure,
I want to stop it."

562
00:50:53,800 --> 00:50:56,800
Well, he said, "There's really
very few statistics available."

563
00:50:56,800 --> 00:51:00,000
I said, " Damn it, find out
what can we learn."

564
00:51:00,000 --> 00:51:03,100
"The only place we can find
that knows anything about it...

565
00:51:03,100 --> 00:51:04,100
...is Cornell Aeronautical Labs."

566
00:51:05,200 --> 00:51:07,300
They said,
"The major problem is packaging."

567
00:51:07,300 --> 00:51:10,400
They said, "You buy eggs and you
know how eggs come in a carton?"

568
00:51:10,400 --> 00:51:12,500
I said, " I don't buy eggs.
My wife does it."

569
00:51:12,500 --> 00:51:16,500
They said, "Well, you ask her,
when she puts that carton down...

570
00:51:16,600 --> 00:51:20,600
...on the drain board when she gets
home, do the eggs break?"

571
00:51:20,800 --> 00:51:22,900
I asked Marg and she said no.

572
00:51:22,900 --> 00:51:26,000
Cornell said, "That's because
they're packaged properly.

573
00:51:26,000 --> 00:51:28,100
Now, if we packaged people in cars
the same way...

574
00:51:29,200 --> 00:51:31,200
...we could reduce the breakage."

575
00:51:40,700 --> 00:51:43,800
We lacked lab facilities,
so we dropped human skulls...

576
00:51:43,800 --> 00:51:49,000
...in different packages, down the
stairwells of the dormitories at Cornell.

577
00:51:51,100 --> 00:51:55,100
Well, that sounds absurd,
but that guy was absolutely right.

578
00:51:56,300 --> 00:51:59,400
It was packaging
which could make the difference.

579
00:52:08,800 --> 00:52:14,000
In a crash, the driver was often
impaled on the steering wheel.

580
00:52:15,100 --> 00:52:20,300
The passenger was often injured
because he'd hit the windshield...

581
00:52:20,300 --> 00:52:23,400
...or the header bar,
or the instrument panel.

582
00:52:25,500 --> 00:52:29,500
So in the 1956 model Ford
we introduced steering wheels...

583
00:52:29,600 --> 00:52:31,700
...that prevented being impaled.
We introduced...

584
00:52:32,800 --> 00:52:35,900
...padded instrument panels,
and we introduced seat belts.

585
00:52:38,000 --> 00:52:41,100
We estimated if there would be
100 percent use of the seat belts...

586
00:52:41,100 --> 00:52:44,200
...we could save 20-odd thousand
lives a year.

587
00:52:45,300 --> 00:52:47,400
Everybody was opposed to it.

588
00:52:54,700 --> 00:52:57,800
You couldn't get people
to use seat belts.

589
00:52:57,800 --> 00:53:00,900
But those who did saved their lives.

590
00:53:18,700 --> 00:53:20,800
Now, let me jump ahead.

591
00:53:29,100 --> 00:53:31,200
It's July, 1960.

592
00:53:33,300 --> 00:53:36,400
John Bugas, vice president,
industrial relations...

593
00:53:36,400 --> 00:53:39,500
...clearly had his eyes on
becoming president.

594
00:53:39,500 --> 00:53:44,700
I'm the group vice president in charge
of all of the car divisions.

595
00:53:44,700 --> 00:53:47,800
Henry was a night owl.
He always wanted to go out.

596
00:53:47,800 --> 00:53:48,900
You know, it's 2 a.m. Or something.

597
00:53:49,900 --> 00:53:53,100
He said, " Come up, have a nightcap."
" I don't want one, I'm going to bed."

598
00:53:53,100 --> 00:53:57,100
John said, " I'll come up, Henry."
" I didn't ask you. I asked Bob."

599
00:53:57,200 --> 00:54:00,400
He said, " Bob, come on up."
So I finally went up.

600
00:54:00,400 --> 00:54:02,400
That's when he asked me
to be president.

601
00:54:05,600 --> 00:54:08,700
I was the first president in the history
of the company...

602
00:54:09,700 --> 00:54:12,900
...that had ever been president other
than a member of the Ford family.

603
00:54:13,900 --> 00:54:16,000
And after five weeks, I quit.

604
00:54:28,500 --> 00:54:29,500
The telephone rang...

605
00:54:29,500 --> 00:54:32,700
...a person comes on and says:
" I'm Robert Kennedy.

606
00:54:32,700 --> 00:54:35,800
My brother, Jack Kennedy,
would like you...

607
00:54:35,800 --> 00:54:37,900
...to meet our brother- in-law,
Sargent Shriver."

608
00:54:38,900 --> 00:54:42,100
Four o'clock, Sarge comes in.
Never met him.

609
00:54:42,100 --> 00:54:46,100
And he said, " I've been authorized
by my brother- in-law...

610
00:54:46,200 --> 00:54:50,200
...Jack Kennedy, to offer you the
position of secretary of the treasury."

611
00:54:50,400 --> 00:54:52,500
"You're crazy.
I know a little about finance...

612
00:54:52,500 --> 00:54:54,600
...but I'm not qualified
for that position."

613
00:54:54,600 --> 00:54:57,700
"Anticipating you might say that,
the president-elect...

614
00:54:57,700 --> 00:55:00,900
...authorized me to offer you
the secretary of defense."

615
00:55:00,900 --> 00:55:03,000
" I was in World War II for
three years...

616
00:55:03,000 --> 00:55:06,100
...but secretary of defense?
I'm not qualified for that."

617
00:55:06,100 --> 00:55:08,100
He said, "Anticipating that...

618
00:55:08,100 --> 00:55:11,300
...would you do him the courtesy
of agreeing to meet with him?"

619
00:55:11,300 --> 00:55:14,400
So I go home. I meet with Marg.

620
00:55:14,400 --> 00:55:18,400
If I could appoint every senior official
in the department...

621
00:55:18,600 --> 00:55:21,700
...and if I was guaranteed
I wouldn't have to...

622
00:55:21,700 --> 00:55:23,800
...be part of that damn Washington
social world.

623
00:55:23,800 --> 00:55:27,800
She said, "Well, okay, why don't you
write a contract with the president...

624
00:55:27,900 --> 00:55:31,100
...and if he'll accept those
conditions, do it."

625
00:55:31,100 --> 00:55:35,100
My total net worth at the time
was on the order of $800,000...

626
00:55:35,200 --> 00:55:39,200
...but I had huge unfulfilled
stock options worth millions.

627
00:55:39,400 --> 00:55:42,500
And I was one of the highest-paid
executives in the world.

628
00:55:42,500 --> 00:55:44,600
And the future was brilliant.

629
00:55:46,700 --> 00:55:48,800
We had called our children in.

630
00:55:48,800 --> 00:55:51,900
Their life would be totally changed.

631
00:55:53,000 --> 00:55:57,000
The salary of a cabinet secretary then
was $25,000 a year.

632
00:55:57,100 --> 00:55:59,200
So we explained to the children...

633
00:55:59,200 --> 00:56:02,400
...they'd be giving up a few...
They could care less.

634
00:56:02,400 --> 00:56:04,400
Marg could care less.

635
00:56:10,700 --> 00:56:12,800
It was snowing.

636
00:56:12,800 --> 00:56:18,000
The Secret Service took me
in the house by the back way.

637
00:56:18,000 --> 00:56:21,100
I can still see it. There's a loveseat...

638
00:56:21,100 --> 00:56:24,200
...two armchairs with a lamp table
in between.

639
00:56:24,200 --> 00:56:26,300
Jack Kennedy is sitting in one...

640
00:56:26,300 --> 00:56:28,500
...and Bobby Kennedy's sitting
in the other.

641
00:56:29,500 --> 00:56:33,500
" Mr. President, it's absurd.
I'm not qualified."

642
00:56:34,700 --> 00:56:35,700
" Look, Bob..."

643
00:56:36,800 --> 00:56:39,900
He said, " I don't think there's any
school for presidents either.

644
00:56:43,000 --> 00:56:45,100
Let's announce it now.
I'll write the announcement."

645
00:56:46,100 --> 00:56:49,300
So he wrote out the announcement,
we walk out the front door.

646
00:56:49,300 --> 00:56:53,300
All of these television cameras
and press, till hell wouldn't have it.

647
00:56:54,500 --> 00:56:55,500
That's how Marg learned
I had accepted.

648
00:56:56,600 --> 00:56:58,700
It was on television, live.

649
00:56:59,700 --> 00:57:02,800
All right, why don't we do some
pictures afterwards.

650
00:57:04,900 --> 00:57:07,000
I've asked Robert McNamara...

651
00:57:07,000 --> 00:57:11,000
...to assume the responsibilities
of secretary of defense.

652
00:57:11,200 --> 00:57:15,200
And I'm glad and happy to say that
he has accepted this responsibility.

653
00:57:15,300 --> 00:57:18,500
Mr. McNamara leaves the presidency
of the Ford company...

654
00:57:19,500 --> 00:57:21,600
...at great personal sacrifice.

655
00:57:22,600 --> 00:57:24,700
That's the way it began.

656
00:57:27,900 --> 00:57:29,900
You know, it was a traumatic period.

657
00:57:29,900 --> 00:57:33,100
My wife probably got ulcers from it...

658
00:57:33,100 --> 00:57:36,200
...may even ultimately have died from
the stress. My son got ulcers.

659
00:57:36,200 --> 00:57:38,300
It was very traumatic but...

660
00:57:39,300 --> 00:57:41,400
...they were some of the best years
of our life...

661
00:57:41,400 --> 00:57:45,400
...and all members of my family
benefited from it.

662
00:57:45,600 --> 00:57:47,700
It was terrific.

663
00:57:59,100 --> 00:58:01,200
October 2nd.

664
00:58:01,200 --> 00:58:04,300
I had returned from Vietnam.

665
00:58:05,400 --> 00:58:09,400
At that time, we had 16,000
military advisors.

666
00:58:11,600 --> 00:58:15,600
I recommended to President Kennedy
and to the Security Council...

667
00:58:15,800 --> 00:58:19,800
...that we establish a plan
and an objective...

668
00:58:20,000 --> 00:58:22,100
...of removing all of them within
two years.

669
00:58:58,600 --> 00:59:02,600
Kennedy announced we were going to
pull out all our military advisors...

670
00:59:02,700 --> 00:59:06,700
...by the end of '65, going to take 1000
out at the end of '63, and we did.

671
00:59:09,000 --> 00:59:13,000
But there was a coup
in South Vietnam.

672
00:59:15,300 --> 00:59:17,300
Diem was overthrown...

673
00:59:18,300 --> 00:59:20,400
...and he and his brother were killed.

674
00:59:22,500 --> 00:59:24,600
I was present with the President...

675
00:59:25,600 --> 00:59:28,800
...when together we received
information of that coup.

676
00:59:28,800 --> 00:59:30,900
I've never seen him...

677
00:59:31,900 --> 00:59:35,000
...more upset.
He totally blanched.

678
00:59:36,100 --> 00:59:40,100
Kennedy and I had tremendous
problems with Diem, but my God...

679
00:59:40,300 --> 00:59:42,400
...he was the authority.
He was the head of state.

680
00:59:43,400 --> 00:59:46,500
And he was overthrown
by a military coup.

681
00:59:46,500 --> 00:59:49,700
And Kennedy knew and I knew,
that to some degree...

682
00:59:49,700 --> 00:59:52,800
...the U.S. Government was
responsible for that.

683
01:00:05,300 --> 01:00:09,300
I was in my office in the Pentagon...

684
01:00:09,500 --> 01:00:13,500
...when the telephone rang
and it was Bobby.

685
01:00:14,700 --> 01:00:17,800
The President had been shot
in Dallas.

686
01:00:22,000 --> 01:00:25,100
Perhaps 45 minutes later,
Bobby called again...

687
01:00:25,100 --> 01:00:27,200
...and said the president
was dead.

688
01:00:29,300 --> 01:00:32,400
Jackie would like me
to come out to the hospital.

689
01:00:33,500 --> 01:00:36,600
We took the body to the White House
about whatever it was, 4 a. M...

690
01:00:36,600 --> 01:00:40,600
...and called the superintendent
of Arlington Cemetery.

691
01:00:40,800 --> 01:00:42,800
And he and I...

692
01:00:45,900 --> 01:00:49,100
...walked over those grounds.

693
01:00:50,100 --> 01:00:55,300
They're hauntingly beautiful grounds.

694
01:00:55,300 --> 01:00:57,400
White crosses, row and row.

695
01:00:57,400 --> 01:01:01,400
And finally I thought I'd found
the exact spot...

696
01:01:01,600 --> 01:01:03,700
...the most beautiful spot
in the cemetery.

697
01:01:05,700 --> 01:01:06,800
I called Jackie at the White House...

698
01:01:07,800 --> 01:01:11,000
...and asked her to come out there.
She immediately accepted.

699
01:01:11,000 --> 01:01:13,000
And that's where the president
is buried today.

700
01:01:14,100 --> 01:01:19,300
A park service ranger came up to me
and said that he...

701
01:01:21,400 --> 01:01:23,500
He had...

702
01:01:25,600 --> 01:01:29,600
... escorted President Kennedy
on a tour of those grounds...

703
01:01:29,800 --> 01:01:31,800
...a few weeks before.

704
01:01:31,800 --> 01:01:32,900
And Kennedy said...

705
01:01:33,900 --> 01:01:37,100
...that was the most
beautiful spot in Washington.

706
01:01:37,100 --> 01:01:39,100
That's where he's buried.

707
01:01:50,600 --> 01:01:52,700
I will do my best.

708
01:01:53,700 --> 01:01:56,900
That is all I can do.

709
01:01:56,900 --> 01:02:00,900
I ask for your help...

710
01:02:01,000 --> 01:02:03,100
... and God's.

711
01:04:51,000 --> 01:04:53,000
Mak e no bones of this.

712
01:04:53,000 --> 01:04:56,200
Don't try to sweep this under the rug.

713
01:04:56,200 --> 01:05:00,200
We are at war in Vietnam.

714
01:05:04,500 --> 01:05:05,600
And yet the president...

715
01:05:05,600 --> 01:05:09,600
... and his secretary of defense
continues to mislead...

716
01:05:09,700 --> 01:05:14,900
... and misinform the American people,
and enough of it's gone by.

717
01:05:40,000 --> 01:05:42,100
On August 2nd...

718
01:05:42,100 --> 01:05:45,200
...the destroyer Maddox reported it
was attacked...

719
01:05:45,200 --> 01:05:48,300
...by a North Vietnamese patrol boat.

720
01:05:48,300 --> 01:05:52,300
It was an act of aggression against us.
We were in international waters.

721
01:05:52,500 --> 01:05:55,600
I sent officials from the Defense
Department out and we recovered...

722
01:05:55,600 --> 01:05:58,700
...pieces of shells that were
clearly identified...

723
01:05:58,700 --> 01:06:00,800
...as North Vietnamese
from the Maddox's deck.

724
01:06:01,900 --> 01:06:04,000
So there was no question in my mind
that it had occurred.

725
01:06:04,000 --> 01:06:07,100
But, in any event, we didn't respond.

726
01:06:08,200 --> 01:06:10,200
And it was very difficult.

727
01:06:10,200 --> 01:06:12,300
It was difficult for the president.

728
01:06:12,300 --> 01:06:15,500
There were very, very senior people,
in uniform and out, who said:

729
01:06:15,500 --> 01:06:18,500
" My God, this president is..."

730
01:06:18,500 --> 01:06:21,700
They didn't use the word "coward,"
but in effect...

731
01:06:21,700 --> 01:06:24,800
..." He's not protecting
the national interest."

732
01:06:36,300 --> 01:06:40,300
Two days later the Maddox and
the Turner Joy, two destroyers...

733
01:06:40,400 --> 01:06:42,500
...reported they were attacked.

734
01:06:51,900 --> 01:06:55,000
There were sonar soundings.
Torpedoes had been detected.

735
01:06:55,000 --> 01:06:58,200
Other indications of attack
from patrol boats.

736
01:06:59,200 --> 01:07:03,200
We spent 10 hours that day trying to
find out what the hell had happened.

737
01:07:04,400 --> 01:07:08,400
At one point the commander said,
"We're not certain of the attack."

738
01:07:08,600 --> 01:07:10,700
Another point they said,
"We're positive."

739
01:07:10,700 --> 01:07:12,800
Then finally, late in the day,
Admiral Sharp said:

740
01:07:12,800 --> 01:07:15,900
"Yes, we're certain it happened."

741
01:07:16,900 --> 01:07:20,900
So I reported this to Johnson,
and as a result...

742
01:07:21,100 --> 01:07:26,300
...there were bombing attacks
on targets in North Vietnam.

743
01:07:39,800 --> 01:07:43,000
Johnson said,
"We may have to escalate.

744
01:07:43,000 --> 01:07:46,100
I'm not gonna do it without
Congressional authority."

745
01:07:46,100 --> 01:07:49,300
And he put forward a resolution,
the language of which...

746
01:07:49,300 --> 01:07:54,500
...gave complete authority to
the president to take the nation to war:

747
01:07:54,500 --> 01:07:57,600
The Tonkin Gulf Resolution.

748
01:07:59,700 --> 01:08:03,700
Now, let me go back
to the August 4th attack.

749
01:09:10,600 --> 01:09:15,800
It was just confusion.
And events afterwards showed...

750
01:09:15,800 --> 01:09:19,800
...that our judgment that we'd been
attacked that day was wrong.

751
01:09:22,100 --> 01:09:23,100
It didn't happen.

752
01:09:27,300 --> 01:09:32,500
And the judgment that we'd been
attacked on August 2nd...

753
01:09:32,500 --> 01:09:35,600
...which we'd made, was right.
We had been.

754
01:09:35,600 --> 01:09:38,700
Although that was disputed
at the time.

755
01:09:39,800 --> 01:09:42,900
So we were right once
and wrong once.

756
01:09:42,900 --> 01:09:46,000
Ultimately, President Johnson
authorized bombing in response...

757
01:09:47,100 --> 01:09:49,200
...to what he thought
had been the second attack.

758
01:09:49,200 --> 01:09:53,200
It hadn't occurred, but that's irrelevant
to the point I'm making here.

759
01:09:53,300 --> 01:09:56,500
He authorized the attack on
the assumption it had occurred.

760
01:09:58,600 --> 01:10:01,700
And his belief that it was
a conscious decision...

761
01:10:02,700 --> 01:10:05,900
...by the North Vietnamese political
and military leaders...

762
01:10:05,900 --> 01:10:09,000
...to escalate the conflict...

763
01:10:10,000 --> 01:10:14,000
...and an indication they would
not stop short of winning.

764
01:10:18,400 --> 01:10:20,500
We were wrong.

765
01:10:20,500 --> 01:10:25,700
But we had in our minds
a mindset that led to that action.

766
01:10:26,700 --> 01:10:28,800
And it carried such heavy costs.

767
01:10:39,200 --> 01:10:44,400
We see incorrectly, or we see
only half of the story at times.

768
01:10:45,400 --> 01:10:49,400
- We see what we want to believe.
- You're absolutely right.

769
01:10:51,700 --> 01:10:53,800
Belief and seeing.

770
01:10:54,800 --> 01:10:57,000
They're both often wrong.

771
01:11:03,200 --> 01:11:08,400
We Americans know,
although others appear to forget...

772
01:11:08,400 --> 01:11:11,600
... the risk of spreading conflict.

773
01:11:12,600 --> 01:11:15,700
We still seek no wider war.

774
01:11:36,600 --> 01:11:38,700
We introduced " Rolling Thunder"...

775
01:11:38,700 --> 01:11:43,900
...which, over the years, became a
very, very heavy bombing program.

776
01:11:43,900 --> 01:11:46,000
Two to three times as many bombs
as were dropped...

777
01:11:46,000 --> 01:11:50,000
...on Western Europe during
all of World War II.

778
01:12:08,900 --> 01:12:12,000
This is not primarily
a military problem.

779
01:12:12,000 --> 01:12:17,200
It's a battle for the hearts and minds
of the people of South Vietnam.

780
01:12:18,200 --> 01:12:24,500
As a prerequisite, we must be able
to guarantee their physical security.

781
01:15:43,700 --> 01:15:46,800
It was announced today that total
American casualties in Vietnam...

782
01:15:46,800 --> 01:15:52,000
... now number 4877
including 748 killed.

783
01:15:52,000 --> 01:15:57,300
Secretary of Defense McNamara, on
each of his seven trips to Vietnam...

784
01:15:57,300 --> 01:16:00,400
... has found some positive aspect
of the course of the war.

785
01:16:00,400 --> 01:16:03,500
The most vivid impression
I'm bringing back is...

786
01:16:04,500 --> 01:16:05,600
... that we've stopped losing the war.

787
01:16:06,600 --> 01:16:09,700
The North Vietnamese, we believe,
have nine regiments of their army...

788
01:16:10,800 --> 01:16:14,800
Some of the men had a little training
in a park in Kentucky before coming.

789
01:16:14,900 --> 01:16:18,900
But it didn't prepare them for thick et
of trees, spik ed vines, thorn bushes...

790
01:16:19,100 --> 01:16:23,100
... almost perpendicular cliffs,
90-degree temperatures, insects...

791
01:16:23,300 --> 01:16:28,500
This has changed from a nasty little
war to a nasty middle-sized war.

792
01:16:28,500 --> 01:16:33,700
The Vietnamese are still doing most
of the fighting and most of the dying...

793
01:16:34,700 --> 01:16:37,900
... but week after week,
American casualty figures go up.

794
01:16:37,900 --> 01:16:43,100
Now, America wins the wars that she
undertak es. Mak e no mistak e about it.

795
01:16:44,100 --> 01:16:49,300
And we have declared war
on tyranny and aggression.

796
01:16:49,300 --> 01:16:53,300
If this little nation goes down the drain
and can't maintain independence...

797
01:16:53,500 --> 01:16:57,500
... ask yourself what's gonna happen
to all the other little nations.

798
01:17:38,400 --> 01:17:40,400
Let me go back one moment.

799
01:17:41,500 --> 01:17:45,500
In the Cuban Missile Crisis,
at the end...

800
01:17:45,700 --> 01:17:51,900
...I think we did put ourselves
in the skin of the Soviets.

801
01:17:53,000 --> 01:17:58,200
In the case of Vietnam, we didn't
know them well enough to empathize.

802
01:17:58,200 --> 01:18:01,300
And there was total misunderstanding
as a result.

803
01:18:02,300 --> 01:18:07,500
They believed we had simply replaced
the French as a colonial power...

804
01:18:07,500 --> 01:18:13,800
...and we were seeking to subject
South and North Vietnam...

805
01:18:13,800 --> 01:18:17,800
...to our colonial interests,
which was absolutely absurd.

806
01:18:18,000 --> 01:18:23,200
And we, we saw Vietnam as
an element of the Cold War.

807
01:18:23,200 --> 01:18:27,200
Not what they saw it as, a civil war.

808
01:18:38,800 --> 01:18:42,000
There aren't many examples...

809
01:18:43,000 --> 01:18:47,000
...in which you bring
two former enemies together...

810
01:18:48,200 --> 01:18:52,200
...at the highest levels,
and discuss what might have been.

811
01:18:54,400 --> 01:18:58,400
I formed the hypothesis
that each of us could have...

812
01:18:58,600 --> 01:19:02,600
...achieved our objectives
without the terrible loss of life.

813
01:19:03,900 --> 01:19:07,900
And I wanted to test that
by going to Vietnam.

814
01:19:10,100 --> 01:19:13,200
The former foreign minister
of Vietnam...

815
01:19:14,300 --> 01:19:18,300
...a wonderful man named Thach
said, "You're totally wrong.

816
01:19:19,500 --> 01:19:23,500
We were fighting for independence.
You were fighting to enslave us."

817
01:19:25,800 --> 01:19:28,900
We almost came to blows.
That was noon on the first day.

818
01:19:31,000 --> 01:19:35,000
" Do you mean to say it was
not a tragedy for you...

819
01:19:35,100 --> 01:19:40,400
...when you lost 3,400,000
Vietnamese killed...

820
01:19:40,400 --> 01:19:44,400
...which on our population base is the
equivalent of 27 million Americans?

821
01:19:44,500 --> 01:19:45,600
What did you accomplish?

822
01:19:46,600 --> 01:19:49,700
You didn't get more than we were
willing to give at the start.

823
01:19:49,700 --> 01:19:52,900
You could've had the whole damn
thing: Independence, unification."

824
01:19:54,900 --> 01:19:57,000
" Mr. McNamara, you must never
have read a history book.

825
01:19:58,100 --> 01:20:03,300
If you had, you'd know we weren't
pawns of the Chinese or the Russians.

826
01:20:03,300 --> 01:20:05,400
Didn't you know that?

827
01:20:05,400 --> 01:20:10,600
Don't you understand that we've been
fighting the Chinese for 1000 years?

828
01:20:10,600 --> 01:20:14,600
We were fighting for independence,
and we'd fight to the last man.

829
01:20:14,700 --> 01:20:15,800
We were determined to...

830
01:20:15,800 --> 01:20:19,800
...and no amount of bombing or U.S.
Pressure would've ever stopped us."

831
01:20:37,700 --> 01:20:40,800
What makes us omniscient?

832
01:20:42,900 --> 01:20:45,000
Have we a record of omniscience?

833
01:20:50,200 --> 01:20:53,300
We are the strongest nation
in the world today.

834
01:20:54,400 --> 01:20:56,500
I do not believe we should ever...

835
01:20:56,500 --> 01:21:00,500
...apply that economic, political
or military power unilaterally.

836
01:21:02,700 --> 01:21:07,900
If we had followed that rule in Vietnam,
we wouldn't have been there.

837
01:21:12,100 --> 01:21:15,200
None of our allies supported us.

838
01:21:15,200 --> 01:21:18,400
Not Japan, not Germany,
not Britain or France.

839
01:21:22,500 --> 01:21:26,500
If we can't persuade nations
with comparable values...

840
01:21:26,700 --> 01:21:31,900
...of the merit of our cause,
we'd better re- examine our reasoning.

841
01:21:40,200 --> 01:21:44,200
Americans suffered the heaviest
casualties of the war last week.

842
01:21:44,400 --> 01:21:49,600
543 killed in action. Another 1247
were wounded and hospitalised.

843
01:21:50,600 --> 01:21:54,600
The deaths raise the U.S. Total
in the war so far to 18, 239.

844
01:21:54,800 --> 01:21:58,800
South Vietnamese put their losses
for the week at 522 killed.

845
01:21:59,000 --> 01:22:01,100
Communist losses
were not reported.

846
01:22:01,100 --> 01:22:05,100
Contributing to those casualties has
been the Communist bombardment...

847
01:22:05,200 --> 01:22:07,400
... of the Marine outpost
at Khe Sanh.

848
01:22:07,400 --> 01:22:11,400
There, the North Vietnamese have
been tightening their ring around...

849
01:22:12,600 --> 01:22:14,700
The military expects
a full-scale assault.

850
01:22:41,800 --> 01:22:44,900
To what extent did you feel
that you were the author of stuff...

851
01:22:44,900 --> 01:22:50,100
... or that you were an instrument
of things outside of your control?

852
01:22:50,100 --> 01:22:53,300
Well, I don't think I felt either.

853
01:22:53,300 --> 01:22:58,500
I just felt that I was serving
at the request of a president...

854
01:22:58,500 --> 01:23:00,500
...who'd been elected
by the American people.

855
01:23:00,500 --> 01:23:05,700
And it was my responsibility
to try to help him...

856
01:23:05,700 --> 01:23:10,900
...to carry out the office as he believed
was in the interest of our people.

857
01:23:40,100 --> 01:23:46,400
What is morally appropriate
in a wartime environment?

858
01:23:51,600 --> 01:23:54,800
Let me give you an illustration.

859
01:24:01,000 --> 01:24:03,100
While I was secretary...

860
01:24:04,200 --> 01:24:08,200
...we used what's called
"Agent Orange" in Vietnam.

861
01:24:08,300 --> 01:24:12,300
A chemical that strips leaves
off of trees.

862
01:24:13,500 --> 01:24:18,800
After the war, it is claimed that
that was a toxic chemical...

863
01:24:18,800 --> 01:24:21,900
...and it killed many individuals...

864
01:24:21,900 --> 01:24:25,900
...soldiers and civilians
exposed to it.

865
01:24:27,100 --> 01:24:33,300
Were those who issued the approval
to use Agent Orange criminals?

866
01:24:33,300 --> 01:24:36,400
Were they committing a crime
against humanity?

867
01:24:38,500 --> 01:24:40,600
Let's look at the law.

868
01:24:40,600 --> 01:24:43,700
Now, what kind of law
do we have that says...

869
01:24:43,700 --> 01:24:47,700
...these chemicals are acceptable
in war and these chemicals are not.

870
01:24:47,900 --> 01:24:50,000
We don't have clear definitions
of that kind.

871
01:24:50,000 --> 01:24:56,200
I never in the world would have
authorized an illegal action.

872
01:24:57,300 --> 01:25:00,400
I'm not really sure I authorized
Agent Orange, I don't remember it.

873
01:25:00,400 --> 01:25:05,600
But it certainly occurred, the use
of it occurred while I was secretary.

874
01:25:24,400 --> 01:25:27,600
Norman Morrison was a Quaker.

875
01:25:28,600 --> 01:25:31,700
He was opposed to war,
the violence of war, the killing.

876
01:25:32,800 --> 01:25:39,000
He came to the Pentagon,
doused himself with gasoline.

877
01:25:41,100 --> 01:25:43,200
Burned himself to death
below my office.

878
01:25:47,300 --> 01:25:50,500
He held a child in his arms,
his daughter.

879
01:25:51,500 --> 01:25:54,600
Passers-by shouted, "Save the child!"
He threw the child...

880
01:25:54,600 --> 01:25:58,600
...out of his arms, and the child lived
and is alive today.

881
01:25:58,800 --> 01:26:02,800
His wife issued
a very moving statement:

882
01:26:03,000 --> 01:26:08,200
" Human beings must stop killing
other human beings."

883
01:26:08,200 --> 01:26:10,300
And that's a belief that I shared.

884
01:26:11,300 --> 01:26:14,500
I shared it then and I believe it
even more strongly today.

885
01:26:15,500 --> 01:26:19,500
How much evil must we do
in order to do good?

886
01:26:20,700 --> 01:26:23,800
We have certain ideals,
certain responsibilities.

887
01:26:24,900 --> 01:26:31,100
Recognize that at times you will have
to engage in evil, but minimize it.

888
01:26:36,300 --> 01:26:40,300
I remember reading that
General Sherman, in the Civil War...

889
01:26:40,500 --> 01:26:44,500
...the mayor of Atlanta pleaded
with him to save the city.

890
01:26:44,700 --> 01:26:46,800
And Sherman essentially
said to the mayor...

891
01:26:47,800 --> 01:26:50,900
...just before he torched it
and burned it down:

892
01:26:50,900 --> 01:26:54,900
"War is cruel. War is cruelty."

893
01:26:56,200 --> 01:26:58,300
That was the way LeMay felt.

894
01:26:58,300 --> 01:27:00,400
He was trying to save the country.

895
01:27:01,400 --> 01:27:04,500
He was trying to save our nation.

896
01:27:04,500 --> 01:27:10,800
And in the process, he was prepared
to do whatever killing was necessary.

897
01:27:13,900 --> 01:27:20,100
It's a very, very difficult position
for sensitive human beings to be in.

898
01:27:20,100 --> 01:27:23,300
Morrison was one of those.
I think I was.

899
01:27:30,600 --> 01:27:36,800
50,000 people came to Washington
to demonstrate against the war.

900
01:27:40,000 --> 01:27:43,100
About 20,000 of them marched
on the Pentagon.

901
01:27:48,300 --> 01:27:53,500
The Pentagon is a very, very difficult
building to defend.

902
01:27:53,500 --> 01:27:57,500
We placed troops carrying rifles
around it.

903
01:27:57,700 --> 01:28:00,800
U.S. Marshals in front of the soldiers.

904
01:28:02,900 --> 01:28:06,900
But I told the president,
not a rifle would be loaded...

905
01:28:07,100 --> 01:28:09,200
...without my personal permission.

906
01:28:09,200 --> 01:28:11,200
And I wasn't gonna grant it.

907
01:28:46,700 --> 01:28:51,900
What effect did all of this dissent
have on your thinking?

908
01:28:51,900 --> 01:28:55,000
I mean, Norman Morrison is '65.
This is '67.

909
01:28:55,000 --> 01:28:59,000
Well, it was a very tense period.

910
01:28:59,200 --> 01:29:03,200
Very tense period for my family,
which I don't want to discuss.

911
01:29:06,500 --> 01:29:10,500
How was your thinking changing
during this period?

912
01:29:11,700 --> 01:29:14,800
I don't think my thinking
was changing.

913
01:29:14,800 --> 01:29:20,100
We were in the Cold War.
And this was a Cold War...

914
01:29:21,100 --> 01:29:23,200
...activity.

915
01:30:12,200 --> 01:30:17,400
Some commentators have said the
war is turning into a kind of stalemate.

916
01:30:17,400 --> 01:30:20,500
No, no. I think on the contrary...

917
01:30:20,500 --> 01:30:22,600
... as General Westmoreland
has pointed out...

918
01:30:23,700 --> 01:30:26,800
... in recent weeks in Saigon,
the military operations...

919
01:30:27,800 --> 01:30:31,000
... the large-unit military operations
continue to...

920
01:30:31,000 --> 01:30:34,100
... show very substantial progress.

921
01:30:43,500 --> 01:30:47,500
One of the lessons I learned early on:
Never say never.

922
01:30:47,600 --> 01:30:49,700
Never, never, never.

923
01:30:50,800 --> 01:30:52,900
Never say never.

924
01:30:53,900 --> 01:30:56,000
And secondly...

925
01:30:56,000 --> 01:30:59,100
...never answer the question
that is asked of you.

926
01:31:00,200 --> 01:31:05,400
Answer the question that you wish
had been asked of you.

927
01:31:06,400 --> 01:31:09,500
And quite frankly, I follow that rule.

928
01:31:10,600 --> 01:31:12,700
It's a very good rule.

929
01:31:22,000 --> 01:31:28,300
When you talk about the responsibility
for something lik e the Vietnam War...

930
01:31:31,400 --> 01:31:32,400
... whose responsibility is it?

931
01:31:33,500 --> 01:31:34,500
It's the president's responsibility.

932
01:31:36,600 --> 01:31:38,700
I don't want to fail to recognize...

933
01:31:38,700 --> 01:31:42,700
...the tremendous contribution
I think Johnson made to the country.

934
01:31:42,900 --> 01:31:48,100
I don't want to put the responsibility
for Vietnam on his shoulders alone...

935
01:31:48,100 --> 01:31:51,200
...but I do... I am inclined to believe
that if Kennedy had lived...

936
01:31:51,200 --> 01:31:55,200
...he would've made a difference. We
wouldn't have had 500,000 men there.

937
01:32:00,600 --> 01:32:02,700
Two very telling photographs.

938
01:32:02,700 --> 01:32:05,800
One of them has Johnson like this:

939
01:32:06,900 --> 01:32:12,100
You can just see him thinking,
" My God, I'm in a hell of a mess.

940
01:32:12,100 --> 01:32:14,200
And this guy is trying to tell me
to do something...

941
01:32:15,200 --> 01:32:17,300
...that I know is wrong
and I'm not gonna do.

942
01:32:18,400 --> 01:32:20,400
But how the hell
am I gonna get out of this?"

943
01:32:21,500 --> 01:32:23,600
The other photograph,
you can see me saying:

944
01:32:23,600 --> 01:32:28,800
"Jesus Christ. I love this man,
I respect him, but he's totally wrong.

945
01:32:28,800 --> 01:32:30,900
What am I gonna do?"

946
01:32:31,900 --> 01:32:35,900
Johnson couldn't persuade me,
and I couldn't persuade him.

947
01:32:38,200 --> 01:32:41,300
I had this enormous respect
and affection, loyalty...

948
01:32:42,300 --> 01:32:44,400
...to both Kennedy and Johnson.

949
01:32:44,400 --> 01:32:49,600
But at the end, Johnson and I
found ourselves poles apart.

950
01:32:49,600 --> 01:32:52,700
And I said to a very close and dear
friend of mine, Kay Graham...

951
01:32:54,800 --> 01:33:00,000
" Even to this day, Kay, I don't know
whether I quit or was fired."

952
01:33:00,000 --> 01:33:02,100
She said, "You're out of your mind.
You were fired."

953
01:33:11,500 --> 01:33:15,500
November 1, 1967.

954
01:33:18,800 --> 01:33:21,900
I presented a memo to Johnson
that said:

955
01:33:21,900 --> 01:33:24,000
"The course we're on is totally wrong.

956
01:33:25,100 --> 01:33:27,200
We've gotta change it.

957
01:33:30,300 --> 01:33:33,400
Cut back at what we're doing
in Vietnam.

958
01:33:36,600 --> 01:33:39,700
We gotta reduce the casualties,"
and so on.

959
01:33:42,800 --> 01:33:45,900
It was an extraordinarily
controversial memo.

960
01:33:45,900 --> 01:33:49,100
And I took it to him.
I delivered it myself.

961
01:33:49,100 --> 01:33:51,200
" Mr. President, nobody has seen this.

962
01:33:51,200 --> 01:33:55,200
Not Dean Rusk, not the chairman
of the Joint Chiefs. Nobody."

963
01:33:56,400 --> 01:34:00,400
" I know that it may contain
recommendations and statements...

964
01:34:00,500 --> 01:34:02,600
...that you do not agree with
or support."

965
01:34:07,800 --> 01:34:09,900
I never heard from him.

966
01:34:16,100 --> 01:34:18,200
Something had to give.

967
01:34:24,500 --> 01:34:26,600
There was a rumour I was facing
a mental breakdown...

968
01:34:26,600 --> 01:34:29,700
...I was under such pressure
and stress.

969
01:34:32,800 --> 01:34:36,000
I don't think that was the case at all.

970
01:34:40,100 --> 01:34:43,300
But it was a really traumatic departure.

971
01:34:48,500 --> 01:34:50,600
That's the way it ended.

972
01:34:55,800 --> 01:34:57,900
Except for one thing.

973
01:35:00,000 --> 01:35:03,100
He awarded me
the Medal of Freedom...

974
01:35:04,100 --> 01:35:07,300
...in a very beautiful ceremony
at the White House.

975
01:35:07,300 --> 01:35:12,500
And he was very, very
warm in his comments.

976
01:35:12,500 --> 01:35:15,600
And I became so emotional,
I could not...

977
01:35:15,600 --> 01:35:17,700
...respond.

978
01:35:29,200 --> 01:35:31,300
Mr. President...

979
01:35:32,300 --> 01:35:35,400
... I cannot find words...

980
01:35:36,400 --> 01:35:39,600
... to express what lies
in my heart today.

981
01:35:42,700 --> 01:35:45,800
And I think I'd better respond
on another occasion.

982
01:35:57,300 --> 01:35:59,400
And had I responded,
I would have said:

983
01:36:00,400 --> 01:36:02,500
" I know what many of you
are thinking.

984
01:36:02,500 --> 01:36:05,600
You're thinking this man
is duplicitous.

985
01:36:05,600 --> 01:36:09,600
You're thinking that he has
held things close to his chest.

986
01:36:10,800 --> 01:36:12,900
You're thinking that...

987
01:36:12,900 --> 01:36:16,900
...he did not respond fully...

988
01:36:17,100 --> 01:36:20,200
...to the desires and wishes
of the American people.

989
01:36:20,200 --> 01:36:21,300
I wanna tell you you're wrong."

990
01:36:22,300 --> 01:36:26,300
Of course he had
personal idiosyncrasies.

991
01:36:26,500 --> 01:36:28,600
No question about that.

992
01:36:28,600 --> 01:36:32,600
He didn't accept all the advice
he was given.

993
01:36:33,800 --> 01:36:40,100
On several occasions, his associates
advised him to be more forthcoming.

994
01:36:40,100 --> 01:36:42,200
He wasn't.

995
01:36:44,200 --> 01:36:48,200
People did not understand there were
recommendations and pressures...

996
01:36:48,400 --> 01:36:51,500
...that would carry the risk of war
with China and of nuclear war.

997
01:36:51,500 --> 01:36:54,700
And he was determined to prevent it.

998
01:36:58,800 --> 01:37:05,100
I'm arguing that he had a reason
in his mind for doing what he did.

999
01:37:08,200 --> 01:37:11,300
And, of course,
shortly after I left...

1000
01:37:12,400 --> 01:37:16,400
...Johnson concluded
that he couldn't continue.

1001
01:37:24,900 --> 01:37:28,900
At this point, how many Americans
had been killed in Vietnam?

1002
01:37:30,100 --> 01:37:34,100
About 25,000. Less than half...

1003
01:37:35,300 --> 01:37:38,400
...of the number
ultimately killed, 58,000.

1004
01:38:41,000 --> 01:38:46,200
Historians don't really like
to deal with counterfactuals...

1005
01:38:46,200 --> 01:38:48,300
...with what might have been.

1006
01:38:54,500 --> 01:38:56,600
They want to talk about history.

1007
01:38:57,700 --> 01:39:00,800
" How the hell do you know,
McNamara, what might have been?

1008
01:39:01,800 --> 01:39:02,900
Who knows?"

1009
01:39:05,000 --> 01:39:07,100
Well, I know certain things.

1010
01:39:16,400 --> 01:39:18,500
What I'm doing is thinking it through
with hindsight.

1011
01:39:19,600 --> 01:39:21,700
But you don't have hindsight
available at the time.

1012
01:39:22,700 --> 01:39:25,800
I'm very proud
of my accomplishments.

1013
01:39:25,800 --> 01:39:31,000
And I'm very sorry that in the process
of accomplishment, I've made errors.

1014
01:39:58,200 --> 01:40:01,300
We all make mistakes.

1015
01:40:02,300 --> 01:40:04,400
We know we make mistakes.

1016
01:40:07,500 --> 01:40:10,700
I don't know any military commander
who is honest...

1017
01:40:10,700 --> 01:40:13,800
...who would say he has not
made a mistake.

1018
01:40:18,000 --> 01:40:21,100
There's a wonderful phrase:

1019
01:40:21,100 --> 01:40:23,200
"The fog of war."

1020
01:40:25,300 --> 01:40:27,300
What "the fog of war" means is:

1021
01:40:27,300 --> 01:40:31,300
War is so complex it's beyond
the ability of the human mind...

1022
01:40:31,500 --> 01:40:34,600
...to comprehend
all the variables.

1023
01:40:35,700 --> 01:40:40,900
Our judgment, our understanding,
are not adequate.

1024
01:40:43,000 --> 01:40:46,100
And we kill people unnecessarily.

1025
01:40:50,300 --> 01:40:55,500
Wilson said,
"We won the war to end all wars."

1026
01:41:04,900 --> 01:41:11,100
I'm not so naive or simplistic
to believe we can eliminate war.

1027
01:41:13,200 --> 01:41:16,300
We're not gonna change
human nature any time soon.

1028
01:41:26,800 --> 01:41:29,900
It isn't that we aren't rational.
We are rational.

1029
01:41:31,000 --> 01:41:33,000
But reason has limits.

1030
01:41:50,800 --> 01:41:56,000
There's a quote from T.S. Eliot
that I just love:

1031
01:41:57,000 --> 01:42:00,100
"We shall not cease from exploring...

1032
01:42:01,200 --> 01:42:06,400
...and at the end of our exploration,
we will return to where we started...

1033
01:42:07,400 --> 01:42:10,600
...and know the place
for the first time."

1034
01:42:10,600 --> 01:42:13,700
Now that's, in a sense,
where I'm beginning to be.

1035
01:42:31,400 --> 01:42:34,500
After you left
the Johnson administration...

1036
01:42:34,500 --> 01:42:38,500
... why didn't you speak out
against the Vietnam War?

1037
01:42:41,800 --> 01:42:45,800
I'm not going to say any more
than I have.

1038
01:42:46,000 --> 01:42:49,100
These are the kinds of questions
that get me in trouble.

1039
01:42:50,200 --> 01:42:56,400
You don't know what I know about how
inflammatory my words can appear.

1040
01:43:00,600 --> 01:43:04,600
A lot of people
misunderstand the war...

1041
01:43:04,800 --> 01:43:06,900
...misunderstand me.

1042
01:43:09,000 --> 01:43:12,100
A lot of people think
I'm a son of a bitch.

1043
01:43:13,100 --> 01:43:16,300
Do you feel in any way
responsible for the war?

1044
01:43:16,300 --> 01:43:18,400
Do you feel guilty?

1045
01:43:19,400 --> 01:43:21,500
I don't want to go into
further discussion.

1046
01:43:21,500 --> 01:43:24,600
It just opens up more controversy.

1047
01:43:25,600 --> 01:43:27,700
I don't wanna add anything
to Vietnam.

1048
01:43:27,700 --> 01:43:29,800
It is so complex that anything I say...

1049
01:43:29,800 --> 01:43:33,800
...will require additions
and qualifications.

1050
01:43:38,200 --> 01:43:41,300
Is it the feeling that you're
damned if you do...

1051
01:43:41,300 --> 01:43:43,400
... and if you don't,
no matter what...?

1052
01:43:43,400 --> 01:43:45,500
Yeah, that's right.

1053
01:43:47,500 --> 01:43:51,500
And I would rather be
damned if I don't.