McNamara on Instability in South Vietnam - HISTORY

Robert McNamara, the U.S. secretary of defense since 1961, testifies at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings in February 1966 on escalating U.S. military involvement in Vietnam.

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The secretary of Defense Robert McNamara appeared before the press to defend the bombing of the Major North Vietnamese cities of Hanoi and Haiphong. The bombings were supposed to deprive the military from essential supplies. The bombings showed the United States the resilience of the North Vietnamese, and that the war wasn't going to end as quickly as they hoped.

In a recorded meeting at the White House on May 7, 1963, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara briefs President John F. Kennedy on the uprising in Vietnam, laying out a timetable for the withdrawal of American troops and warning that he doesn't want to see Vietnam turn into "another Korea".

In a recorded phone call on February 26, 1965, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and President Lyndon B. Johnson discuss possible airstrikes in Vietnam.

On August 4, 1964, as events in the Tonkin Gulf unfold, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara apprised President Lyndon B. Johnson of the situation in a series of phone calls. In the third secretly recorded phone call of the day, McNamara reports that two U.S. destroyers deployed in the Gulf east of Vietnam are under attack. While McNamara did not know it at the time, the information he relayed was later determined to be false.

On October 29, 1963, President John F. Kennedy meets with the National Security Council to discuss whether to support the overthrow of South Vietnam's President Ngo Dinh Diem. During the secretly recorded conversation, Secretary of State Dean Rusk and the president craft a detailed plan involving Henry Cabot Lodge, ambassador to South Vietnam, Gen. Paul D. Harkins and the general of the South Vietnamese military, hoping to avoid setting off a civil war in the country.

Following the January 27, 1973 signing of a ceasefire agreement to end the Vietnam War and the subsequent departure of U.S. troops, the U.S. military prepared the South Vietnamese to take over operations. A U.S. officer who remained in Vietnam to help with the transition is interviewed on October 11, 1973, about the process of bolstering South Vietnam's economy and self-sufficiency.

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