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derivative filename/jpeg
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363-04750 to 363-04751.pdf
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Digital Object Identifier
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363-04750 to 363-04751
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Title
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As Saigon Saw Him: Intimate Glimpse of McNamara the Man
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Description
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Article published in the New York Herald Tribune about Robert S. McNamara, Defense Secretary of the United States, and his role in Vietnam, page unknown
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Transcript
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March 15, 1964
South Viet Nam's army took the war
to the Viet Cong yesterday in a day-long
land, sea and air attack near the Cambo-
dian border, 90 miles west of Saigon. Only
three Viet Cong Communists were killed,
19 captured. Some 500 suspected Viet
Cong were also rounded up, but many of
these were probably villagers fleeing the
battle area. Two American advisers and
four government troops were wounded.
Another tough day in a long, tough war.
Saw Him:
As Saigon
Intimate Glimpse of
McNamara the Man
By Beverly Deepe
A Special Correspondent
SAIGON.
The only thing that Defense Secretary Robert S. Mc-
Namara refuses to tolerate from anyone giving him in-
formation is-emotion.
Last year, during an intensive briefing on Vietnamese
strategic hamlets, he asked a senior United States aid
official to document his statements.
"The guy said he used 'intuition,' and McNamara
almost dropped his teeth," one observer reported.
In another case, McNamara asked a Pentagon gen-
eral for an important study on troop rotations. The Gen-
eral said it was impossible, and vociferously expounded
the viewpoint of his service. McNamara asked if he could
rotate one man. The general agreed he could. "Then go
back and re-study the problem and tell me how to rotate
a thousand," McNamara reportedly told him.
In addition, the 46-year-old Secretary believes a man
who cannot explain to him clearly and lucidly a subject
probably does not understand the subject at all. One night
in Washington he was helping his son with his mathe-
matics. His son said he understood the problem, but could
not explain it. "Then you don't understand the problem
at all," his father replied. McNamara has put a premium
on being articulate..
All this has given ammunition to the idea that Mc-
Namara is "an IBM machine with two legs," that he is
oiled three times a day instead of taking food.
Is this true?
COLD, CALCULATING MIND
Close associates of his say this is a superficial view-
point. And disinterested American officials who have seen
him operate in Viet Nam agree. "McNamara is not Mr.
IBM," one of them explained. "He has a cold, calculating
mind, but he's interested in the proportion and ratios of
the picture and then the logic and common sense should
follow. One of the intangibles here is motivation. You
can't IBM that. But he recognizes it as one of the fore-
most problems."
The computer idea has also grown up because of Mc-
Namara's oft-repeated remark that he's on the right track
"if I know more about the subject than anyone else." And
he has spared no effort to learn.
"He does his homework better than anyone else," one
American official here observed. "In the 8-hour session I
was in he took more notes than anyone in the room-and
there were 60 in the room. He also had his notes from
previous trips, and he would stop a provincial advisor and
ask him to explain changes from his other trips."
McNamara first visited Viet Nam in May, 1962, but
his most intensive fact-finding trip was 15 months later
when he spent days visiting all four corps areas, helicopter-
ing to isolated hamlets and battlefield command posts,
sloshing through red mud and being briefed by field officers
on the spot.
Yet, when he left Viet Nam, he publicly stated that
though the political situation was serious the war was going
well and that 1,000 American advisors would be withdrawn
in three months. But the war was then going so badly the
military substructure collapsed a month later.
WHY THE ERRORS
Why had he been mistaken?
1. His American officers had relied, without first-hand
checking, upon statistics of their Vietnamese counterparts.
These statistics were designed more to please the Vietna-
mese President than to pinpoint accurately where they
stood in the war effort. Even now, most American statistics
are gathered from Vietnamese military officers.
2. Almost all civilian and military Americans in Viet
Nam are applying the yardsticks of United States to Asia
and come out with the wrong conclusions. This will
remain a standard problem.
3. Many knowledgeable officers avoided specifying
the problem and corrective measures so their opinions
would not clash with those of their senior officers or hurt
the feelings of their Vietnamese counterparts.
An almost unbelievable example of how McNamara
happened to hear some vital viewpoints occurred on his
last field trip in September when he visited the southern-
most province of An Xuyen, one of the toughest Viet
Cong strongholds.
For the allotted one-hour briefing, the Vietnamese and
American top brass in the area gave such a "general and
glossy" version of the local situation that one low-ranking
officer admitted "we were in tears." When the top brass
could not answer specific questions, McNamara broke his
rule of punctuality, stayed an extra hour to hear low-
echelon field officers tell him, while the Saigon commanders
glared, that:
The Viet Cong strength was increasing, the war was
going badly, the strategic hamlet program was fizzling and
the Viet Cong had so much support from the population
"they were running out of recruiting forms."
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MORE THAN FACT-FINDING
During a delay in the anteroom of the rest room,
McNamara motioned one of the local young officers away.
from the Saigon generals so he could talk in private to
him. All this led one brusk sergeant, in an exaggerated
way, to exclaim, "When the Secretary of Defense has to
get his information in the latrine, something's wrong with
the system."
This unscheduled briefing was a grim foreboding. Only
a month later, a military coup d'etat crushed President
Ngo Dinh Diem, and amidst a whirlwind change of military
commanders and provincial officials, the Viet Cong
launched their toughest offensive which smashed the vital
strategic hamlet program and caused hundreds of villagers
and armed militia to desert the government side. Six weeks
ago, the first military junta was replaced by goateed Gen.
Nguyen Khanh and more military and administrative
changes have resulted.
What has McNamara done this trip? On the fact-
finding side, he has done in the conference room what he
had done previously in provincial headquarters, except
that now, after four trips to Viet Nam, he does have his
own terms of personal observation and reference.
But there is much more to this trip than fact-finding.
McNamara and the Johnson administration-is trying
something totally new in Asia-the New Hampshire method
of campaigning in the boondocks.
McNamara and Gen. Khanh have barnstormed from
the Mekong Delta to the northern plains to win the support
of the Vietnamese people and to assure them that the
United States is behind Viet Nam-and Gen. Khanh. It was
ironical that while his New Hampshire ballots were being
counted, Henry Cabot Lodge watched McNamara make the
victory sign with outstretched arms and shout "Viet Nam
muon nam" (Long live Viet Nam) before a tumultuous-even
though staged-demonstration. Many observers wondered
if McNamara or Lodge was the politician of the moment.
Even if McNamara is gathering better information the
question is whether the new method of U. S. campaigning
in Viet Nam is going to succeed or fail.
Some argue that nothing else is working in Viet Nam
and this campaigning might build a spirit of nationalism
in the people. Those against argue, "This is not New
Hampshire. Votes don't count here and you can't win a
war kissing babies." The Johnson administration has
gambled on the first argument and may prove right. But
in this country where bullets replace ballots, only time
will tell.
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Date
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1964, Mar. 15
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Subject
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McNamara, Robert S., 1916-2009; Vietnam War, 1961-1975; United States. Department of Defense. Office of the Secretary of Defense
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Location
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Saigon, South Vietnam
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Coordinates
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10.8231; 106.6311
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Container
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B4, F6
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Format
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newspaper clippings
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Collection Number
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MS 363
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Collection Title
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Beverly Deepe Keever, Journalism Papers
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Creator
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Keever, Beverly Deepe
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Copyright Information
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These images are for educational use only. To inquire about usage or publication, please contact Archives & Special Collections.
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Publisher
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Archives & Special Collections, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries
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Language
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English
