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
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 25 October 2025
⏱️ 8 minutes
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1968
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| 0:00.0 | Building a coffee business? |
| 0:02.0 | Serving the best Americano in town is up to you. |
| 0:04.0 | But winning back time and growing your business, |
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| 0:15.0 | you'll always know when you're running low on your best-selling blends. |
| 0:18.0 | Visit sumup.co.uk to learn more. |
| 0:30.0 | This is CBSI on the world. I'm spending time with Professor Bill Talbot of Amherst College. With his brother Philip Talbotan, they've published a book filled with information |
| 0:35.4 | not seen before, really good information. However, |
| 0:39.9 | McNamara remains often a cipher, often a cipher to this amateur reader, a new history. |
| 0:47.3 | After the Pentagon, there is the World Bank. He becomes president of the World Bank. He arrives |
| 0:52.5 | very early in the morning, leaves late at night, |
| 0:54.8 | travels the world, is repairing himself after years of struggle at the Pentagon. However, |
| 1:03.7 | Professor, the World Bank at this point, what is its job? Because when he first takes over, |
| 1:08.9 | he's surprised at how little it's doing, a very small portfolio. |
| 1:13.9 | Well, he's in charge, although he's in charge in part because he's appointed by the American |
| 1:20.4 | president, which is the, the U.S. is the biggest contributor to the World Bank. But he has a council |
| 1:26.2 | of people from all other countries who are contributing to the bank. |
| 1:30.3 | And he sees that he wants to be individually running the bank. |
| 1:36.3 | And the first thing he decides is it's giving too little money to the poorest of the poor. |
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