Departure of a Titan

To ally and adversary alike, Robert Strange McNamara has always seemed a man of diamond-hard will and titanium physique. When his forthcoming departure from the Pentagon was announced last week, it seemed almost as if the Washington Monument had toppled from marble fatigue.

McNamara ruled the Defense Department longer and more efficiently than any of his seven predecessors, constructing the world's most powerful nuclear arsenal while fighting a limited war in Viet Nam and a seemingly limitless conflict with hard-nosed generals and fractious legislators at home. His administrative reforms became a model for other department chiefs while he performed a multiplicity of miscellaneous chores for the President. There was talk of his becoming Secretary of State, or perhaps czar of domestic programs and, in 1964, Vice President. In the years since, his tenure had become an American institution.

Thus, when the news broke--or crumbled bit by bit--that the Defense Secretary would soon leave his post for the relative backwater of the World Bank's presidency, the shock waves were felt around the world./- Given the morose mood of the moment, it was also understandable that many should reach the instant conclusion that Lyndon Johnson had dismissed McNamara out of hand, presumably to appease the generals whom the Secretary had held in check, and as a prelude to a wider war in Asia. Columnist Mary McGrory mourned "the last human barrier within the Government against the harsh and drastic steps recommended by the generals." Arthur Schlesinger Jr. said it was "ominous and scary." Another old New Frontiersman, Economist John Kenneth Galbraith, conjectured that the Administration had yielded to the Joint Chiefs of Staff and "conservatives on the Hill" who wanted a "more compliant man" in the Pentagon.

Bismarckicm Parallel. Between the time that news tickers carried the first word to Washington on Monday afternoon and the public confirmation on Wednesday evening, McNamara's reassignment had been inflated into a palace revolution comparable to Kaiser Wilhelm II's dismissal of Otto von Bismarck in 1890, partly because the Iron Chancellor had opposed his sovereign's militant foreign policy.

The conspiracy theory was vigorously espoused by Senators Robert and Edward Kennedy and their aides. McNamara has retained close personal ties with the Kennedys (a fact used to support the argument that McNamara had been canned), and on Monday evening Bobby spent an hour with McNamara at the Pentagon. Next day, as Bobby passed him notes, Ted took the Senate floor to say: "I have heard that it is not a question of his having submitted his resignation." He went on to ask for the facts while Kennedy aides kept feeding misinformation into Washington's ever-ready fantasy factory.

Actually, the facts were reasonably clear, although the Johnson Administration, which habitually handles personnel changes ineptly, was at a considerable disadvantage in trying to set the record straight. Also the complicated relationship between two proud men could not easily be conveyed in the official statements that both at last made.

The Finest. McNamara has given absolute loyalty to both Presidents he has served, as well as a superlative performance in his job. Johnson was fully appreciative of his value from the time he surveyed the new Kennedy Cabinet in 1961 and called McNamara "the best of the lot." Whether imposing industrial techniques on the Pentagon (see box, preceding page), helping the President fight an aluminum price rise and settle a railroad labor dispute, or making practical contributions to racial equality in the services, McNamara seldom belied Johnson's description of him as "the finest public servant I have ever seen." On two occasions before the 1964 Democratic Convention, L.B.J. discussed the vice-presidency with McNamara, who declined the offer.

But even the best is not infallible; even the smoothest of relationships can wrinkle in Washington's political heat. The Secretary's constant scrapping with Congress, though in behalf of Administration policies, became a more serious problem as Johnson's own rapport with the Hill lessened. And like some other high officials, McNamara occasionally made euphoric prophecies about Viet Nam that, while politically appropriate at the moment, later turned into ammunition for Johnson's critics. The most unfortunate boomerang was tossed in the fall of 1963, when McNamara and General Maxwell Taylor predicted that most U.S. troops could be withdrawn from Viet Nam by the end of 1965.

Recently Johnson was heard to acknowledge that "McNamara has made some mistakes." One of these, in Johnson's opinion, was the 37-day bombing pause in the winter of 1965-66, which McNamara advocated over the President's misgivings. Yet neither the calculated gamble of the bombing pause --an attempt to induce negotiations with Hanoi--nor his increasingly obvious reservations about the air war against North Viet Nam made McNamara a dove. On the contrary, he was involved in every major U.S. move in Asia, and his voice--still being heard in the White House last week--was often the decisive one. Nonetheless, the doves who once twittered about "McNamara's war" came to look on him as their man because of the emotion-fraught question of bombing the North.

No Release. The change in his own view was manifest. In June 1966, after the U.S. attacked oil dumps around Hanoi and Haiphong, McNamara predicted "a lower ceiling on the number of men that can be supported in the South." By the following January, he was telling Congress: "I don't believe that the bombing up to the present has significantly reduced--nor any bombing that I could contemplate in the future would seriously reduce--the actual flow of men and materiel to the South."

In the President's more popular days, McNamara was a lightning rod for criticism. Now he had become a more direct conductor into the White House on the eve of a very tough election-year battle. He is too intelligent not to have realized this and not to recognize that he had lost a mite of the influence he had previously commanded.

McNamara was also keenly aware that his own internal resources were diminishing. Indeed, he has been telling intimates for some time that the moment was coming for him to move on --the moment when, as he put it last week, "there would be benefits from the appointment of a fresh person." He is only 51, but for six years and eleven months McNamara has usually worked a six-day week, twelve hours or more a day, with scant vacation for physical relaxation and no mental release at all from the relentless pressure of running an establishment now spending some $76 billion a year and employing 4,500,000 people. This year he has had to bear the added strain of his wife Marge's illness. "She has my ulcer," McNamara has said casually, hinting that his worries have rubbed off on her.

No Rush. Thus McNamara's problem was an intensely personal one. Doubtless a man of his drive, dedication, and desire to win--whether at chess, squash or disputes over great public issues--feels an emotional anchor to his job and to seeing the war through. But McNamara is also supremely rational; his reason could not ignore the logic in favor of a change in jobs. Thus, while his heart said stay, his mind said go.

But how was he to quit? There was no gracious or easy way, either for McNamara or the President, to arrange the order of his going. A firm request from the Chief to stay on, probably half expected by McNamara, would have settled things; but it never came. From the President's viewpoint, McNamara's reasons for wanting to leave were sound. Tactical political considerations dictated that the closer to Election Day the resignation occurred, the more serious its impact.

Yet on neither side was there a disposition to rush matters. It was last April 18 that George Woods, the World Bank president, whose term expires Dec. 31, sounded McNamara out about taking over the job. McNamara went to Johnson with the idea, said he was interested but added that he would stay at the Pentagon as long as Johnson wanted him there. "You can have anything you want," Johnson responded.

"The country owes it to you. I owe it to you." No firm decision was made, and there the matter rested for a time. Although Woods had made himself available for an extension of service of up to one year, Treasury Secretary Henry Fowler in September told his fellow World Bank governors that the U.S.--which has always supplied the bank's president--would nominate a new one in October. When Fowler suggested that he give the bank a choice, including McNamara, Douglas Dillon and David Rockefeller, the President replied that his first, second and third nominees were all named McNamara.

Ego Reflex. Around the middle of October, Johnson asked McNamara if he was still interested. "I answered in the affirmative," McNamara said last week, and there was another exchange of assurances--McNamara's that he would serve as long as the President desired, Johnson's that McNamara could have any job he wanted, specifically the presidency of the bank. Yet both men were probably troubled.

Johnson's ego reflex is such that he regards any subordinate's departure, no matter how well-intentioned, as a personal hurt. McNamara was probably taken aback because Johnson did not implore him to stay. Again, the mechanics of the departure were not discussed, but they did talk about possible successors. Around the time of the October conversation, World Bank documents began piling up on McNamara's desk.

McNamara seems to have had 1... part in subsequent arrangements, which were being carried out by Woods and Fowler. Woods recalls that on Nov. 8 he shared a car with McNamara and informed him that the nomination would be made soon. "You're still my horse," Woods said. Then, on Nov. 19 or 20, Woods says he telephoned McNamara with the news that the nomination was about to be formally presented on Nov. 22. For some reason, McNamara was not told the schedule for approval and was rudely shocked when the leaks from the bank set off last week's furor.

More Guesses than Hints. Within an hour after the bank's executive directors announced their unanimous approval of McNamara, both the Defense Secretary and the President issued statements designed to halt the rumor mill. McNamara spoke of the "unfailing support and friendship" he had received from the President. Johnson praised McNamara as a "wise, resourceful and prudent originator and collaborator with respect to policies and programs of vital importance to this nation and the world." As to McNamara's offers to remain at his post, Johnson said he could not justify asking McNamara "indefinitely to continue to bear the enormous burdens of his position."

On the crucial point of what policy differences McNamara's departure for the World Bank will instigate, the President declared: "The course of our participation in the war is firmly set; major defense policies are clearly defined, and it will be possible for Secretary McNamara's successor to continue his able and effective administration."

There were plenty of guesses, but no real hint, as to who that successor might be. Johnson need not hurry to pick one because McNamara will stay on for some weeks, perhaps months. The new Secretary's identity and the amount of power that Johnson allows him will be much better indications of the significance of McNamara's departure than last week's speculative rhetoric.

That McNamara chose to go to the World Bank for a tax-free salary of $40,000 when he could have had his pick of six-figure posts in private industry is a clear expression of his innately humane outlook. Set up 22 years ago, the bank specializes in loans to less affluent countries, last year lent $1.2 billion to 40 nations. McNamara has long believed in what he calls the "irrefutable relationship between violence and economic backwardness." In his celebrated Montreal speech last year, McNamara argued: "Security is not military hardware, though it may include it. Security is development."

Now McNamara will have the chance to back that belief with money, to broaden the bank's somewhat limited activities, and to seek new sources of revenue and more imaginative outlets for its funds. And, if his temperament permits, he can do it while working banker's hours.

/- Washington's press corps was roundly scooped. The Miami Spanish-language paper Diario Las Americas published the story first on Sunday, but was ignored. Next day, apparently from other sources, London's Financial Times carried the news, and in Tulsa, Okla., station KRMG got its own report from Washington Correspondent Malvina Stephenson, who was tipped by House Majority Leader Carl Albert. KRMG fed the story to the Indian Nations Network, an Oklahoma chain whose dissemination of the story finally got things moving in Washington.

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