Item COLD WAR 27/57 - Transcript of interview with politician Robert McNamara, 1996

Typescript transcript of interview with Robert Strange McNamara, US Secretary of Defense, 1961-1968, and President of the World Bank, 1968-1981, relating to the summit meeting between Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev, First Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party, and US President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Vienna, Austria, Jun 1961; the US strategic policy of flexible response, 1961; the Berlin Crisis and the construction of the Berlin Wall, 1961; the Cuban Missile Crisis, Oct 1962; speculation on the possible US use of an air attack on the missile sites in Cuba, 1962; the US naval blockade of Cuba, 1962; the 'domino theory', a notion attributed to US President Dwight David Eisenhower, that if one country becomes communist, other states in the region would probably follow, 1954, and US involvement in Vietnam, 1961-1975; the announcement by US President John Fitzgerald Kennedy of the deployment of US military advisors to the Republic of South Vietnam, 1961; the assassination of Ngo Dinh Diem, President of the Republic of South Vietnam, 2 Nov 1963; the assassination of Kennedy, 22 Nov 1963; the attempts by the USA to stabilise the government of the Republic of South Vietnam, 1963-1967; the Gulf of Tonkin incident, the attack on the USS MADDOX by North Vietnamese torpedo boats, 2 Aug 1964; the landing of US Marines at Da Nang, Republic of South Vietnam, Mar 1965; the US bombing of North Vietnam, 1965; US reliance on combat statistics and an estimated 'body count' of enemy troops killed in action, in an attempt to measure the progress of US forces in Vietnam, 1965-1973; US public opinion against the long term deployment of US forces in Vietnam, 1965-1967; the influence of US military involvement in Vietnam on US/Soviet relations, 1965-1973; anti-war protests in the USA during the Presidency of Lyndon Baines Johnson, 1965-1968. 46pp