This is CBSI on the world. I'm John Batchel. The book is McNamara at War, a new history. Philip and William

Taubman, the authors. I'm speaking to Professor Bill Taubman of Amherst College. It is 1965.

Lyndon Johnson has been successful in domestic policy to a degree that it must be protected,

his successes of the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act,

and other legislation that we now call the Great Society.

However, the Vietnam War puts all of it at risk.

It puts him in a position where he believes that he must be successful in everything

to maintain his advantages in the Congress to maintain his domestic policy.

That's the tangle from the president's side.

Bill, the tangle from McNamara's side is that increasingly with his

control of data, he sees that the war is not going to be easily resolved. He sees that, and he

tells that to his companions, his colleagues. He does not tell it to the media or to the American people.

Do we know why he held back and was not candid? He was certainly candid about the missile

gap when he first became Secretary of the Treasury. He was certainly candid, a truth teller

in meetings in which he upset the general staff, the admiral's, he disappointed everybody

in the building because he would

speak candidly. Why did he hold back about telling the public about how the Vietnamese, the South

Vietnamese government was rotten? Just that, as opposed to talking about the battlefield,

talk about the bad management that we're

protecting. Before I tell you why I think he didn't speak that in public or to President Johnson,

let me point to the moment that proved to us that he secretly opposed the war. We know first

that in the spring and summer of 1965, he was the fiercest

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