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The John Batchelor Show

26: McNamara at War: Loyalty, Secrets, and the Vietnam Conflict. Professor William Taubman discusses Robert McNamara's complicated role during the LBJ years. McNamara enabled the Vietnam War escalation, notably misrepresenting the Gulf of Tonkin incidents to

The John Batchelor Show

John Batchelor

Arts, Society & Culture, Books, News

4.52.8K Ratings

🗓️ 25 October 2025

⏱️ 11 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

McNamara at War: Loyalty, Secrets, and the Vietnam Conflict. Professor William Taubman discusses Robert McNamara's complicated role during the LBJ years. McNamara enabled the Vietnam War escalation, notably misrepresenting the Gulf of Tonkin incidents to Congress. Despite later secretly opposing the war ("I want so badly to bring the boys home"), he remained silent due to loyalty to Johnson and the presidency. Taubman also details McNamara's role spying on the Kennedys for LBJ and his "loving" relationship with Jackie Kennedy. His post-Pentagon role at the World Bank served as a form of repentance.
1968



Transcript

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0:00.0

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0:28.0

This is CBS Eye on the World.

0:29.8

Here's John Bachelor.

0:34.4

This is CBSI on the world.

0:40.2

I'm John Bachelor, continuing with Professor William Taubman, Bill Taubman of Amherst College,

0:46.6

with his brother Philip Taubman, and published a new book about McNamaran War. It's revelatory,

0:52.4

however, of the whole of the catastrophe of Vietnam. In addition, it tells us a deal about the Kennedy administration and the Johnson administration

0:55.0

that this poor reader has never seen before, and I believe there is information here that no one's seen before,

1:02.1

about the relationship of the cognizante, the elite, of the Kennedy years and the Johnson years, which tend to have overlaps.

1:11.3

We begin, however, with the man at the center now,

1:15.5

Lyndon Baines Johnson, who never expected to be president.

1:20.0

He was morose as vice president because his job he thought in his life was to be number one.

1:27.2

He's born to a man named Sam and a mother named Rebecca.

1:32.5

That relationship, Rebecca and Sam, are something that is inside Lyndon and Baines Johnson,

...

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