Interview with Robert McNamara, 1986 [1]

Item Information

Title:
Interview with Robert McNamara, 1986 [1]
Description:
When Robert McNamara moved from president of Ford Motor Company to secretary of defense in 1961, he brought his very active management control and systems-planning philosophy to the Kennedy administration. Reports from mid October 1962 confirmed that the Soviet Union was installing intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Cuba, ninety miles off the shore of Florida. McNamara recalls this pivotal moment in the Cuban missile crisis and reads from the first of two letters that Soviet general secretary Nikita Khrushchev sent President John F. Kennedy. After careful deliberation, the president and his advisers crafted a reply that became the turning point in the crisis: it triggered Khrushchev's decision to remove missiles from Cuba. The period from November 1962 to the end of the Cuban missile crisis is generally seen as the most dangerous period of the entire Cold War. In his interview conducted for War and Peace in the Nuclear Age: "At the Brink," McNamara traces the thirteen-day crisis that closed this chapter: the secret, high-level debates within the Executive Committee; his firm oversight of the quarantine of Soviet ships heading to Cuba; the U-2 reconnaissance plane lost over Siberia; and the pressures for prompt military action that mounted daily. McNamara concludes with lessons he learned from the crisis, which he regards as the "watershed that divides the pre-nuclear and the nuclear age."
Interviewee:
McNamara, Robert S., 1916-2009
Date:
February 20, 1986
Format:
Film/Video
Location:
WGBH
Collection (local):
WGBH Open Vault
Series:
War and Peace in the Nuclear Age
Subjects:
Middle East
Massive retaliation (Nuclear strategy)
Nuclear weapons
Flexible response (Nuclear strategy)
Soviet Union
North Atlantic Treaty Organization
LeMay, Curtis E.
Photographic reconnaissance systems
Bundy, McGeorge
Mutual assured destruction
Nuclear arms control
United States. Navy
United States. Air Force. Strategic Air Command
Intermediate-range ballistic missiles
Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962
U-2 (Reconnaissance aircraft)
Khrushchev, Nikita Sergeevich, 1894-1971
Kennedy, Robert F., 1925-1968
Kennedy, John F. (John Fitzgerald), 1917-1963
Castro, Fidel, 1926-
McNaughton, John T. (John Theodore), 1921-
Places:
District of Columbia > Washington
Cuba
Turkey
Israel
Extent:
01:16:32:15
Link to Item:
https://openvault.wgbh.org/catalog/V_DF35A31CD90545FE83A077DE010DD044
Terms of Use:
Rights status not evaluated.
Contact host institution for more information.
Publisher:
WGBH Educational Foundation
Identifier:
V_DF35A31CD90545FE83A077DE010DD044