k 4 4 4 4W ' . What he says and does destroys many of THE MYTHS ABOUT McNAMARA By MARK R. KILLINGSWORTH Washington SECURITY depends on far more than military power, but Congress some- times closes its eyes to that fact. They recently added $1 billion to Defense De- partment appropriations, believing that they thereby are buying more security. But we're beyond the point of incremental gain on military expenditures-while we'- re not beyond that point for non-military expenditures." The man spoke to his Ann Arbor visi- tor in a voice which suggested very clear- ly that his conclusion could only have come from the most careful calculation of the "incremental gains" to which he re- ferred. There is, indeed, nothing sur- prising or unusual about the conclusion- except that the man who pronounced it is the Secretary of Defense of the United States. Robert S. McNamara has always been controversial. From the IFX and Sky- bolt programs to the greater integration of the armed services, McNamara's ef- forts have been surrounded by debate. Each program is a major national de- fense issue; controversy over such im- portant policy decisions is to some extent inevitable. BUT McNAMARA has recently become controversial for an entirely new set of issues. Four terse paragraphs-inserted almost at the last moment in a speech McNamara gave in Montreal in May-sparked inten- se discussion on non-military alternatives to the draft. Several brief McNamara comments about dissent, at spring commencements at Amherst, New York University and Chatham College, came in sharp contrast to President Johnson's references to "Ner- vous Nellies" and added a refreshing per- spective on "the freedom of dissent." A single McNamara speech in August announcing a program to help 100,000 men each year meet Selective Service physical and mental standards revived old criticisms of a "Moron Corps" and promp- tecU concern that the military might take over education in this country. Pentagon aides insist that these are is- sues which a Secretary of Defense is per- fectly entitled to discuss, that they are clearly related to matters within his jur- isdiction. But McNamara's statements on these issues have prompted "The Wall Street Journal" to schedule an article on what its prospective writer calls the "non- Pentagon McNamara." McNamara's statements moved James Reston of "The New York Times" to comment that McNamara had opened up will, or should, be debated seriously on Capitol Hill and in the newspapers and on the university campuses long after he is gone." THIS REPORTER had an unusually frank interview last month with Mc- Namara in which the Secretary elaborat- d on his comments-which will indeed be debated seriously on university cam- puses if only because so many of them are directly relevant to their students and faculties. McNamara's statements and his elaboration on them in this in- terview suggest that while a "new" Mc- Namara may not have been born, some old myths about him can be laid to rest -and that the realities reflect a remark- ibly broad and deep human being. As an assistant professor of business improve their physical condition, and thereby "salvage tens of thousands of men . . . first for productive military ca- reers and later for productive roles in so- ciety." The speech aroused some Congressional criticism because a similar 1964 Penta- gon proposal had been rejected by the Congress-and here was McNamara in 1966 announcing a later variant of it. More intense criticism came from such ,disparate personalities as Barry Goldwa- ter and Fred M. Hechinger, education editor of The New York Times, who both raised fears that the Pentagon's attempt to make up for the failures of the pub- lic schools had strong overtones of a military takeover of American education. Ironically, the refutation to Messrs. Goldwater and Hechinger is in McNa- "But the image of McNamara as a bomb-happy Mac the Knife,' according to informed observers, is far from the real- ity. One assistant, declining to discuss his chief's feelings on the war in Viet Nam in detail, would only say, in a soft, voice, that McNamara is 'careful ... cautious . . and very concerned' and that the Mac the Knife' image is 'the farthest possible thing from the truth.' . . . Under-Secretary of State George Ball, according to highly reliable sources, has been telling friends that McNamara was the major force behind the second pause in U.S. bombings of North Viet Nam early this year." "some fundamental questions, and these administration at Harvard from 1940- 1943, a resident of Ann Arbor in the 19- 30's and a fairly active speaker on the .ommencement circuit, McNamara has had continuing contact with education ind educators-contact which he thinks is extremely valuable. Says an assistant, "An academic set- ting is one in which he's at his best - I've seen him in it, and it's great to watch." This interest in education - for itself and for its talent - has been close- ly bound up in the "new" issues he has been discussing. ON THE MORNING of August 25 Secre- tary McNamara strode to the plat- form of the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention, denounced poverty in Ameri- ca for making America less secure, and announced that the Defense Department would thereafter accept 100,000 men an- nually who currently are unable to qual- ify for the selective service. The program would, he said, upgrade their skills and mara's speech itself: the armed services provide professional training for 65,000 officers and sponsor correspondence schools for a million students; the De- fense Department runs 327 dependents' schools for 166,000 students; the Armed Forces Institute has 258,000 students cur- rently enrolled in studies from graduate school level to college. All in all, McNa- mara noted, the Defense Department al- ready "is the largest single educational complex that the world has ever possess- ed"-and it does not seem that an addi- tional 100,000 students added to it will have the effect some fear it would. ET McNAMARA'S most interesting comments in the speech were not the announcement of the new "salvage" program but his description of the effect poverty has on educational achievement. "There is now ample evidence that many aptitude evaluations have less to do with how well the student can learn than with the cultural value-system of the educa- tor," he said. "We have already discov- ered, within the Department of Defense, that the prime reason many men 'fail' the aptitute tests given at the time of induction is simply that these tests are geared to the psychology of traditional, formal, classroom, teacher-paced instruc- tion." McNamara added, ". . . these tests in- evitably reflect the cultural value-systems and verbal patterns of affluent American society. That is why so many young men from poverty backgrounds do poorly in the test. It is not because they do not possess basic-and perhaps even brilliant -intelligence; but simply because their cultural environment is so radically dif- ferent from that assumed by the test- designers. "It is, for example, a generally-accepted value of American society to want to achieve' something in life. That is a sound value; but it is a value many young people from poverty-encrusted en- vironments simply have not been exposed to. In their world, achievement is seldom advanced as a value, only because it does not exist as a realistic possibility." McNamara's examination of poverty has, in fact, changed his opinion of its influence. "I'm not as concerned as I was a decade ago about the effect of income n college attendance. I'm much more con- cerned that income has such major ef- fects on grammar school and high school attendance and performance," he says. "There are two states where 70 percent of the Negroes can't pass our draft tests -that's largely a function of income lev- els." F McNAMARA'S concern about primary and secondary education has grown over the years, his interest in universities has scarcely diminished. McNamara feels that universities "can't stand aside from issues-the students and the professors are often among the best-informed on policy questions"-and he praises the role men like Felix Frank- furter of Harvard played in involving stu- dents and faculty in national issues in the 1930's. "They were participants in decid- ing policy, and they were well-suited to do so," McNamara comments. Indeed, McNamara believes strongly that students should take a greater part in public affairs. "We lived in Ann Ar- bor in the fifties, during the McCarthy period," he recalls, "and we could see the dampening effect that it had on partici- pation in public affairs-it affected not only students, but faculty members, too." But he feels times'have changed-for the better. "It's disturbing to see the irre- sponsible criticism that comes from some of the young. But it's very encouraging to see their greatest interest in national and international affairs." AND McNAMARA adds: "The greatest criticism I have of the young is that not enough are interested in national and international affairs-and that some are so poorly informed on what they're talk- ing about. But my basic point is that there's much greater interest in these is- sues, and I hope that can be encouraged." As a frequent speaker at college com- mencecents-McNamara spoke in Ann Arbor in 1962-McNamara has recently observed the younger generation's "great- er interest" in public affairs at first-hand, and not always under the most pleasant circumstances: In the space of less than a week this spring, faculty and students at New York University and Amherst walked out as he was awarded honorary degrees, and when he addressed the gra- duating class at Chatham College-which included one of his two daughters-he was picketed. But McNamara's Chatham speech - a rambling and somewhat whimsical com- parison of present relations between young people and their elders with the way they were in the middle ages and in Plato's time - had some comments on student protest which must have surpris- ed the picketers. "There IS a serious di- inension to the protest among some stu- dents today," he said; and while "some of the extremist-protest" may be comfort- ing Hanoi, we should "be perfectly clear about our principles and our priorities. This is a nation in which the freedom of dissent is absolutely fundamental." McNAMARA RECENTLY elaborated on this, too, and his feelings about student protest and the right to dissent are refreshing. "I don't think we can have a democracy without dissent," he says, almost as if he were pronouncing the obvious. "The idea of dissent is in- herent in a democracy. We can't expect anything other than that different peo- ple will have different views, and that those views will conflict." He does stress, however, that dissenters ought to know the facts, which he feels quite strongly. "In my meetings with stu- dents I've been amazed how little some of them knew. If they had any conception of the issues involved, they might not change'their minds about them-but you have a duty to master the issues before you discuss them." McNamara is tolerant of dissent and even maintains that, while irresponsible Viet Nam dissent "does damage us," the damage is "no greater than irresponsible discussion of any other major issue." But he also stresses the value of res- ponsible dissent-because, he feels, when dissent is responsible, "it adds because it informs. Some dissent has been irrespon- sible because it's ill-informed." McNa- mara feels, for example, that most criti- cisms of President Johnson's Viet Nam policy simply fail to take into account the numerous peace initiatives the Presi- dent has conducted. ~ONCLUDING a long summary of its - drawbacks and disadvantages, McNa- mara says that uninformed debate "can even stop action on a plausible proposal by presenting such a weak case for it that it dies earlier than it deserves." Informed debate, then, is something McNamara believes very deeply in as a productive element in national decision- making: "We should protect the right to dissent, even to irresponsible dissent. But I do emphasize that informed debate pro- duces far more progress-and I don't think that informed people will always have the same opinions." But McNamara's Chatham speech dealt not only with dissent, but also by impli- cation with the New Left's oft-expressed fears that technology, bureaucracy and complex organization are destroying the concept of participatory democracy and are alienating modern man himself." McNamara disagrees. Arguing that problems have been arising more rapidly than man's ability to cope with them, McNamara declared: "It is possible that some of our gravest problems in society arise not out of overmanagement; but precisely out of undermanagement. It is possible that democracy can become non- participatory precisely to the degree that organic and hierarchial management breaks down." He mentioned urbanization as just one of many problems which do not test our capacity for reducing organ- ization but for improving it. McNamara's thesis: Management of our problems is a very real form of participa- tion in democracy. The clear implication is that it should be both the-responsibility and the opportunity of young people to help restore participatory democracy and to attack our problems by' getting invol- ved in their management. W ITH BURKE MARSHALL'S Advisory Commission on the Selective Service preparing to make a major set of recom- mendations on the draft, McNamara does not want to discuss possible ways to im- plement his May 18 Montreal proposal that the government "move toward" re-, medying the "inequity (of the draft) by asking every young person in the United States to give two years of service to his country-whether in one of the military services, in the Peace Corps or in some volunteer developmental work at home or abroad." But he will explain a remark he made in 1965 to a group of returned Peace Corps volunteers-"We have three and three-quarters million people in the De- fense Department today but I doubt very much that we have influenced the peace of the world as much as the small hand- ful of you in this room and your col- leagues have." "Security," he explains, "is much more than military strength-military hard- ware of which we have almost too much. Security depends not only on -our mili- tary strength, but on our relations with other countries." THERE ARE three major groups of countries, McNamara said in Mon- treal: "Those who might be tempted to take up arms against us," nations "who can and should share international peace- keeping responsibilities," and the develop- ing nations. 'The greatest possible guar- antee of our security is greater stability cold, that he is an insensitive technician. "It's been a delightful and inspiring ex- perience," one close associate said recent- ly of his work. "He's absolutely the most pleasant and direct person I've known, and he completely lacks any stuffiness." The aide knew whereof he spoke. As an associate recalls the story, the aide got an invitation to go sailing to Florida for a week with a friend. The aide was eager to go, but said he didn't think he should take the time from his job. The friend mentioned this to McNamara, whereupon McNamara called his aide to tell him if he didn't take the opportunity he, Mc- Namara, wouldn't take his customary week off at Christmas. The aide finally agreed, his associate adds. "It is perhaps ironic that a former president of the Ford Motor Co. who became Secretary of Defense would gain the greatest opposition fron the so-called imilitary-industrial com- plex,' but that is the way matters have worked out, from anonymous Pentagon officers to General .Nathan Twining's recent blast. McNa-nara concluded his interview with this correspondent by conceding that a problem in running the Defense empire 'is the constant harrassment of the one who makes a decision if that decision is opposed to powerful parochial interests.'" THE MYTHS ABOUT McNAI Last m veral pc "Report Hemingw much be jold's "1 den is th books on and Pier of McNa reference .man as he has b insights while res FT ALS Namar Arbor ra field Hi] cutive rc executive commim to him," versity f naras pi versity c circles, a neople w- McCrai azine rer ter Presi mara's e tary: 'HE insights 'This eli of the n Detroit- him'." "UT M A - circ Namara informal M/IcCrack Hatcher Democra Staehle'. An- Arh, the irea HL-e the the 1ates His nrm trons of 4nr som But as ad-ds a s unusuall; lectual b with hin in our 'relationship with other countries and more stability within these countries. That's what the Peace Corps promotes, and that's why it's so valuable." Despite his silence on ways to imple- ment the national service plan, McNa- mara emphasizes that there are presently ample opportunities for participation in public affairs, not only in voluntary ser- vice but work for government and private agencies," and notes his daughter Mar- garet will be a salaried worker for the New Haven, Conn., poverty program this fall. He adds that national service falls in the broad category of non-military ef- forts like development aid, along with in- creased contacts with the Communist Chinese and the. East European countries and disarmament negotiations, where - unlike military expenditures-"we're not beyond the point of incremental gain for our expenditure." THE NATURE of the human being be- hind the public figure is almost as controversial a subject as his public acti- vities. But McNamara is a human being, those who know him insist. They scoff at the familiar charges that he is a computer, that he is abrasive and Adam Yarmolinsky-who many feel was closest to McNamara during his stint in the Pentagon and is now about to start teaching at Harvard Law School - en- countered McNamara's concern at hear- ing he had been involved in a serious automobile accident. McNamara and his wife Margaret came at once to the hos- pital and stayed with Yarmolinsky and his wife through the night. QTHER FRIENDS and associates have a similar, seemingly inexhaustable personal fund of such vignettes, ranging from McNamara's delight in playing cha- rades to his marathon conversation with Robert Lowell-until 5 a.m.-whom he had just met for the first time at a party given by the Paul Mellons. But with his charm and feeling for people go a vast amount of intellectual curiosity and energy. As Prof. Paul Mc- Cracken of the business administration school-who has known McNamara since his early days with the Ford Motor Co.- puts it: "He's not the kind of guy who will spend hours reconstructing the after- noon's football game at the party after- wards." In mid-1965, McNamara explains new Viet Nam develop- ments to newsmen. He leaves today on his eighth trip there in five years. Page Four THE MICHIGAN DAILY MAGAZINE SATURDAY, OCTOBER 8, 1966