Robert S. McNamara - Insights into "The Fog of War"

The Evasions of Robert McNamara
What's true and what's a lie in The Fog of War?
By Fred Kaplan
Posted Friday, Dec. 19, 2003, at 3:53 PM ET

A great biography waits to be written about Robert Strange McNamara and the central role he played in 20th-century America, both as an actor in its historic dramas and as a symbol of the shattering of its postwar illusions in the wake of Vietnam. Errol Morris' documentary film The Fog of War (released in theaters today) conveys a brilliant glimmer of where that biography might go.

McNamara was the original and ultimate "Whiz Kid," who viewed the world's problems as solvable through statistical analysis. He rose to power on the buoyancy of this belief—and limped away with his beliefs in tatters. The rise took him from the Harvard Business School, where he was the youngest professor in its history; to the Army Air Forces in World War II, where he used statistics to maximize the efficiency of the bombing raids over Japan; to Ford Motor Co., where he rose to its presidency; and finally, in 1961, at age 44, to President John F. Kennedy's Cabinet, as the secretary of defense.

Running the Pentagon, McNamara applied these same statistical techniques to everything from weapons procurement to counterinsurgency tactics and nuclear-war strategy. His acumen, energy, and confidence in the rightness of his views seemed boundless.

Bio from: Secretary of Defense Histories