ROBERT MCNAMARA TRAVELED to Vietnam in October 1966. As always, the closer he got to the war, the worse it looked.
On the long flight back to Washington, D.C., he stood in the back of his windowless military airplane, arguing about the situation with Bob Komer, one of President Johnson’s aides on Vietnam. They were going back and forth about whether any progress was being made, when McNamara realized there was someone on the flight who could help settle the argument, someone who’d been on the ground in Vietnam for over a year.
McNamara walked up the aisle to where Daniel Ellsberg was sitting. Ellsberg, who was heading home for a short leave, got up and followed the secretary to the back of the plane.
“Komer here is saying that we’ve made a lot of progress,” McNamara began. “I say that things are worse than they were a year ago. What do you say?”
“Well, Mr. Secretary, I’m most impressed with how much the same things are as they were a year ago,” Ellsberg said. “They were pretty bad then, but I wouldn’t say it was worse now, just about the same.”
“That proves what I’m saying!” McNamara shouted. “We’ve put more than a hundred thousand more troops into the country over the last year, and there’s been no improvement. Things aren’t any better at all. That means the underlying situation is really worse!”
“You could say that,” agreed Ellsberg.
“We are approaching Andrews Air Force Base,” the pilot announced. “Please take your seats.”
When the plane door opened a few minutes later, McNamara walked down the steps into a foggy Maryland morning. A crowd of reporters pointed microphones and cameras and television lights.
“Gentlemen, I’ve just come back from Vietnam,” McNamara told the group, “and I’m glad to be able to tell you that we’re showing great progress in every dimension of our effort.”
Ellsberg walked behind the gathering, unnoticed. He was thinking, I hope I’m never in a job where I have to lie like that.
* * *
A month later, McNamara headed to Boston for a scheduled visit to Harvard University. He was not expecting a friendly welcome.
The students on the roofs of campus buildings were the first to spot him. Watching through binoculars, communicating over walkie-talkies, they tracked the secretary of defense’s car across the campus. McNamara couldn’t see them from the backseat of his car. But he could see the hand-painted signs hanging in dorm windows:
“Mac the Knife”
“How many people have you killed?”
This was becoming routine. At ceremonies at Amherst College and New York University, students had turned their backs when he stepped on stage. They’d heckled him at his daughter’s college, where he’d been invited to give a commencement address. Another time, he’d been sitting at a restaurant with his wife, Margaret, when a woman walked up shouting, “Baby burner! You have blood on your hands!”
Now he’d been invited to Harvard to speak to the graduate students of Henry Kissinger, a professor of international relations. A crowd of protestors—tipped off by the rooftop observers—surrounded the car the moment it came to a stop. The students rocked the car back and forth, challenging McNamara to come out.
The panicked driver shifted into reverse and moved his foot to the gas pedal.
“Stop!” McNamara yelled. “You’ll kill someone!”
The driver lifted his foot.
“I’m getting out,” McNamara said.
“You can’t do that,” the driver insisted. “They’ll mob you.”
McNamara pushed the door open and stepped out. When he saw one of the protest leaders shoving his way forward with a microphone, he suggested they both climb onto the hood of the car.
“I want you to know,” McNamara announced from the hood, “I spent four of the happiest years of my life on the University of California, Berkeley, campus doing some of the things you are doing today.”
November 1966. Robert McNamara faces an angry protest during a visit to Harvard University.
The crowd booed and bunched tighter.
“I was tougher than you then, and I’m tougher today,” McNamara called out. “I was more courteous then, and I hope I am more courteous today.”
More jeers, more sharp questions:
“Why didn’t you tell the American people that the Vietnam War started in 1957 and 1958 as an internal revolution?”
“How many innocent women and children have been killed?”
McNamara tried to speak, but was drowned out by the shouting.
Beginning to feel he was in actual danger, the secretary jumped off the car, pushed through the crowd, and sprinted toward a nearby building. A student led him into a system of tunnels running beneath the campus. McNamara made it to Kissinger’s classroom just in time.
At dinner that night, while chatting with faculty members, the day’s unnerving events sparked a new idea in McNamara’s mind. “For the first time,” he later recalled, “I voiced my feeling that, because the war was not going as hoped, future scholars would surely wish to study why. I thought we should seek to facilitate such study in order to help prevent similar errors in the future.”
It was a thought that would have consequences far beyond anything he could possibly have imagined.
* * *
Back in Vietnam later that year, Ellsberg sat with an elderly couple in the living room of their home. An American Army captain and an interpreter also sat in the wooden chairs arranged beneath the couple’s sleeping loft. This village was supposedly “pacified”—cleared of Viet Cong activity. Ellsberg had come to see for himself.
As they sipped tea, Ellsberg asked the husband when he thought the war would end.
“I have only a few years left. The war will not end while I am alive.”
“Who do you think will win?”
The man pointed to the sky. “Heaven will decide.”
A thunderous boom of artillery fire shook the building. Ellsberg watched sunlight shimmer on the quivering surface of a hanging mirror. He was amazed by the couple’s reaction, or lack of it. They didn’t even blink. This is their life, he realized. This is normal.
Daniel Ellsberg in a Vietnamese village, 1966
The Viet Cong controlled the village down the road, the man explained. The Americans shelled the village. The Viet Cong fired back.
Ellsberg asked the man which side he would like to see win.
“He does not care which side wins,” the interpreter said. “He would like the war to be over.”
There were several bursts of small-arms fire. They seemed to be getting closer. The captain said it was time to leave the pacified village.
“Now, before you go, he would like to ask you one question,” the interpreter said.
“What is his question?”
“You are Americans,” the man began. “In your opinion, when will the war end?”
Ellsberg was unsure what to say. There was more gunfire outside. The old man smiled with polite patience. He was waiting for an answer.
* * *
Daniel Ellsberg felt himself slipping into a deep depression. The break-up with Patricia was a big factor. So was his sense of utter powerlessness to change the course of events in this failing war. He tried to snap himself out of it by focusing on happier things. “I would make myself think about my future, my career, but nothing made any difference,” he later said. “Not even when I thought about my children.”
There was just one thing left to do in Vietnam. One thing left to understand. It might end up costing him his life—but that didn’t trouble him.
“I’m thirty-six,” he told himself. “I’ve lived long enough.”
On December 23, Ellsberg flew by helicopter to the Mekong Delta, south of Saigon. The Viet Cong had a strong presence in the region. American forces were just beginning a major offensive to clear them out. This would be a good place to see combat up close.