r 8 _4- THE MYTHS ABOUT (from page five) the job, and in some ways off the job, McNamara is fundamentally more inter- ested in ideas than in people. A more po- litically-inclined man might be more in- terested in people as people, but McNa- mara isn't," a top assistant commented recently. "And people who aren't like that often find this quality very hard to take." As Mrs. McNamara has remarked, her' husband "suffers fools badly, especially if they impede his work." A conversation with McNamara in his office is likely to be somewhat unsettling; he is so direct, perceptive and focused on the matter at hand that he is likely to get the gist of a question when about half of it has been phrased; he then answers it directly, without preliminaries or persiflage. "And that man speaks so damned fast," com- ments one reporter, "that I barely have time to get it all down and think about what I'm going to ask next." NOT ONLY does McNamara slice imme- diaitely to the core of a problem or a question; he is also generally informed to a formidable degree about the problem itself. As one assistant puts it in a mas- sive understatement, "He immerses him- self in the facts more than most mana- gers." McNamara goes easily from the current production rate of the UH-1B/D helicopter to the infiltration rates in Viet Nam to the projections for airlift to 1973. Indeed, this penchant for extensive pre- paration is nothing new. One manage- ment consultant who worked with Mc- Namara when he was at Ford recalls, "All the other executives would ask for the summary of my report and my conclu- sions. McNamara would ask for the whole report, including the statistical tables, and several days later would tell me his conclusions-and ask me if I thought they were justified." Underlying this way of operating is a fundamental McNamara belief in ration- alism the idea that reason can ulti- mately settle most problems, no matter how confusing and complex they seem at first glance. "Quantifying" problems, or MAGAZINE Magazine Editor-Robert Moore CONTRIBUTORS ANDREW LUGG is a graduate stu- dent in Physics. He came to Ann Arbor from the University of London, and has been a long- time follower of avant-garde film. CHARLOTTE WOLTER, who will coordinate the series on new movements in the arts, is a senior in English and As- sociate Editorial Director of the DAILY. THE SPORTS STAFF is a collection of poets and would-be athletes who love to write about sports. Associate Sports Editors JIM TINDALL and JIM LaSOVAGE compiled these rankings from ballots by the staff-one of the largest newspaper sports staffs in the country-and wrote the accompanying stories. MARK R. KILLINGSWORTH, a se- nior in Honors Economics, is Editor of The Daily. He spent the summer in Washington as a legislative intern and inter- viewed Secretary McNamara last month. ROGER RAPOPORT, a junior ma- joring in Journalism, is a DAILY night editor. He has written for several magazines and worked this summer as a Wall Street Journal reporter. PICTURE CREDITS Aseociated Press, p.8, p.4, p.5 Charles Boultenhouse, p.3 Purdue, p. 2 Daily, p. 2 ESP-Disc Records-p. 6 Page Eight NcNAMARA'S APPOINTMEN HOW DID McNamara become Secre- tary of Defense? One insider remembers the story this way: "McNamara had been suggested as a possible chairman of a Businessmen for Kennedy-Johnson' group in the 1960 campaign, but, because the Ken- nedy organization wanted to get Henry Ford II to head it up and was unsuc- cessful, nothing much happened. Sar- gent Shriver, who was in charge of this operation, remembered McNa- mara, though, and shortly after the election called Democratic S t a t e Chairman Neil Staebler of Ann Arbor and told him, 'We want to offer Mc- Namara a job. It's an advisory job in- volving some amount of contact with Congress. Can you find out how he voted? "Staebler, a little dubious that Mc- Namara would let anything interfere with his new position at Ford, talked to him about it, told him Shriver would call him, and was told by McNamara that the idea was out of the question. Shortly thereafter, however, after calls from Shriver and Adam Yarmolinsky -who was working with Shriver and who later would join McNamara at the Pentagon-McNamara called a friend and asked him to stop over at his house. "McNamara told the friend, 'What a surprise-they want me to be.,ecre- tary of Defense! ((He had already turned down the Secretary of the Treasury-the other part of Shriver's double-barreled offer.) McNamara added he didn't have the slightest idea of whether he'd hold his own in Wash- ington. Learning of this, Staebler got in touch with Senator Philip Hart and Congressman Jam gan to see what t new Defense Secre "McNamara, to elect Kennedy wa consolidation of1 was told by Hart count on any c Armed Services C Carl Vinson (D-G under any circum was strong enoug] McNamara also1 Pentagon officials, ers. "About a weel called the friend McNAMARA T his chief's feelings on the war in Viet Nam in detail, would only say, in a soft es O'Hara of Michi- voice, that McNamara is "careful . . he prospects for the cautious . . . and very concerned" and etary might be. that the "Mac the Knife" image is "the ld- that President- farthest possible thing from the truth." nted a considerable Those who have studied his Montreal the armed services, speech closely are inclined to agree; and and O'Iara not to Under Secretary of State George Ball, onsolidation--House according to highly reliable sources, has ommittee Chairman been telling friends that McNamara was a.) wouldn't have it the major force behind the second pause stances and no one in U.S. bombings of North Viet Nam early h to overcome him. this year. According to these informants talked with former -including key McNamara aides-Mc- newsmen, and oth- Namara pursued this proposal with Presi- dent Johnson for some time, and finally won acceptance of the pause in bombings k later, McNamara after a dramatic trip to see the President again and told him at the L.B.J. Ranch. VOL. XI110 NO. 1 M1r4ga11 EatiltI MAGN SATUR[ r I've got to decide tomorrow. I now know some of the things I can't do; I'm not at all sure of my ability to cope politically; all the other ques- tions like money and my family's in- terest in moving are settled. But I've still got some nagging doubts. That job at Ford has been tailor-made for me, and it would be a dirty trick and a wrench to the company to have them try to reconstruct it for somebody else. (McNamara was President of Ford for only 42 days.) But it's a tremendously important job at the Pentagon, and people are saying you can't turn the President down.' "The friend then repeated to Mc- Namara what Hart had been saying: that Defense was the second biggest job in Washington; that McNamara was the man who could do the best job at it though nobody could handle it perfectly; that-as a result-it was McNamara's fate to take the job. So with that cold consolation, McNamara took it." -M.R.K. McNAMARA'S CONCERN about Viet Nam, it is also understood, extends to the U.S. buildup in Thailand. Thailand has been slated for over $200 million in American military construction (most of it to support the Viet Nam effort) and $40 million in civic action assistance; Ambassador Graham Martin is known to be pleading for helicopters and supplies for the Thai army, which is trying to cope with an insurgency problem in Northern Thailand-and he is also asking for U.S. pilots and troops to operate these weapons until the Thai army can be trained to do so. McNamara, according to reports con- firmed by top Pentagon aides, is will- ing to provide hardware for the Thais but is unequivocally opposed to sending Am- erican pilots and troops to use it too. One source says he is "not only opposed to the idea-he's stone-walling it. He may have to manage the war in Viet Nam, but he'll be damned if he'll start another one." * * - -- - -- - I measuring their extent, is a key part of "rationalizing" decision-making: Alain Enthoven, the Assistent Secretary of De- fense for Systems Analysis, perhaps ex- emplifies how McNamara is "rationaliz- ing" and "quantifying" Defense matters. "He's the kind of man who wants to make a matrix even if he can't find all the squares," says one key McNamara aide. McNAMARA'S TALENT is so formidable that men like Durward G. Hall, a Republican Congressman from Missouri, have been moved to remark acidly that he has the reputation of being a "brilliant executive, manager, master planner, su- preme coordinator, computer-user, whiz kid and all-around superman capable of doing no wrong." An aide rates McNa- mara's personal input into the Defense decision-making machine somewhat dif- ferently. "He doesn't concentrate power in his own hands or in the Pentagon it- self. In fact, he eliminates the duplica- tion of authority-which curtails power empires by limiting them. He tries to de- centralize decision-making as much as possible; and his operating procedure seems to be that 'when you delegate, you delegate without condition; when you re- view you review without prejudice'." Des- pite his confidence and talents, McNa- mara can also change his mind, the aide adds: Six months went by after the aide tried unsuccessfully to change McNa- mara's mind on a policy issue, and then one day McNamara said to him, "I've changed my mind about that. I think you're right." The results of McNamara's efforts and talents, it seems safe to say, have revo- lutionized Defense Department operations and American military strategy. The old Eisenhower strategy was essentially bas- ed on "massive retaliation" through nu- clear power to all military and political aggression; now, as McNamara said in 1964, "We believe in a strategy of con- trolled and flexible response, where the military forces of the U.S. would become a finely-tuned instrument of national policy, versatile enough to meet with ap- propriate force the full spectrum of pos- sible threats to our national security, from guerrilla subversion to all-out nu- clear war." Along with the theory of "flexible response" -much of which is unveiled in an address at the University's commencement in 1962-McNamara adds two more ideas: "assured penetration" for our missiles even after a surprise at- tack, and the "conventional option" of troops and planes to permit "flexible response." McNAMARA'S OPERATIONAL reforms have been no less significant, and again; three major points summarize them. First, he has reorganized the De- fense Department by program and by function rather than by service-which has meant a major change from the old Army, Navy and Air Force divisions. Sec- ond, he has changed planning and bud- geting to reflect the fact that defense needs and expenditures cannot fully be °xpressed in calendar-year terms-which has resulted in a five-year forecast of military requirements and costs. Fin- ally, McNamara has introduced "cost- effectiveness," the "'quantification" and measurement of military effectiveness, as a major element in Defense decision- making-which means that each piece of "hardware" is carefully analyzed and compared with other possible "hardware" combinations to see which, for a given expenditure, is most effective. McNamara's changes have not always made him popular. Military officers and members of Congress have growled and complained in private, and have filled the pages of newspapers and magazines with their grievances. Gen. Nathan G. Twining last week published a book which severely criticizes the McNamara strategy and implies that the country is heading for disaster; many old-line military offi- cers echo Twining's charges. AND McNAMARA himself is not infall- ible. After he and Gen. Maxwell G. Taylor, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, returned from a trip to South Viet Nam in October, 1963, the White House issued a statement saying the pair thought that "the major part of the U.S. military task (in South Viet Nam) can be completed by the end of 1965 . .. McNamara himself has said that "the only real regret I have, lookingback over the last five years," is his advice to Presi- dent Kennedy on-the Bay of Pigs inva- sion. "I told President Kennedy after- ward, 'You know damn well where I was at the time of decision-I recommended it. But the image of McNamara as a bomb-happy "Mac the Knife," according to informed observers, is far .from the re- ality. One assistant, declining to discuss HENCE, AFTER more than five years in office, McNamara can look at a long string of reforms, accomplishments, and achievements, many of them known and some of them unknown. Rumors about his future recur periodically, but it seems safe to say that it appears he will remain as Secretary of Defense until the Viet Nam war gets much better or much worse; to do otherwise, he is said to feel, would be to shirk his responsi- bilities. In the exercise of those responsibilities McNamara has gained some powerful ene- mies. It is perhaps ironic that a former president of the Ford Motor Co. who became Secretary of Defense would gain the greatest opposition from the so-called "military-industrial complex," but that is the way matters have worked out, from anonymous Pentagon officers to General Twining's recent blast. McNamara con- cluded his interview with this correspon- dent by conceding that a problem in run- ning the Defense empire "is the constant harrassment of the one who makes a decision if that decision is opposed to powerful parochial interests." R UT HE ALSO SAID he disagrees with Dwight D. Eisenhower's description, made in his 1961 farewell address, of an increasingly powerful and dangeous 'military-industrial complex": Is it a growing danger? "I don't think so if one is willing to be decisive in making a deci- sion in the national interest group or branch of the services." He added, "I don't think the lobby of individual groups is that influential. The Secretary has the legal power to act in the national interest, and he should do so." It is perhaps sym- bolic that the office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is a floor below McNamara's in the Pentagon. Whether McNamara has acted in the national interest in his reorganization of Pentagon procedures and United States military strategy is beyond the scope of this report-although most observers feel McNamara has wrought a veritable revo- lution in these areas. But that McNamara has broadened the context of public dis- cussion, that he has made more meaning- ful the concept of "national security," is the conclusion one must make of the "new" McNamara. And whatever hap- pens, it does not seem extravagant to agree with Stewart Alsop that the man with the steel-rimmed glasses and rasp- ing voice "seems likely to go down in his- tory as one of the very greatest public servants this country has produced." THE MICHIGAN DAILY MAGAZINE -Still from Ed Emshwiller's "Relativity" The New American Cmn "Underground" film-makers have beei dium, fitting old controversies into nc stroying barren traditions of 'objectiv process, they have shocked, confused aboveground public. Yet the roots of ti back to the beginnings of the movies, s a sudden awareness--affirmation--th whatever they want it to be, that all th be reconciled into new unities. See page Social Commentary-P What do you do when the police confisc close your bookstore, just because every sell is obscene? One thing you can do band of New York poets and off-key I a rock and roll group specializing in grophy. Which is exactly what happei a lower East Side group now branchinc are wryly political, lyrically pornograph funny, which may be why they are sucl See page six. Big Ten Football All right, th'ey ask who IS going to. w year? The ever-daring DAILY sports sta time and the conventions of caution by Ten finish and, for good measure, cons Ten team. Their blithe excursion into 1 mayhem will surprise not only the press tain East Lansing coach with a strong ti defensive line. The predictions were r See page two. The Myths About McNamara The many critics of Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara have been confounded recently by reports that contradict the 'war-happy statistician' image they have made of him. He has been credited with the pause in Viet Nam bombing, early this year; he is reported to oppose military buildup in Thailand; he has made decidedly un-military proposals on such diverse subjects as poverty, education and the draft. A DAILY editor combines what he has learned from Mc- Namara's aides with what he learned from an interview last month with the Secretary, to make a controversial pic- ture of a controversial figure. See page four.