Key phone calls between the late Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and Presidents Kennedy and Johnson were recorded in 1963 and 1964. They detail America’s deepening involvement in Vietnam throughout the 1960s.
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1. Following his return from a conference on Vietnam with key military and civilian figures, Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara briefs President John F. Kennedy on plans to withdraw U.S. troop from Vietnam by 1965. McNamara and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Maxwell D. Taylor would formally present Kennedy with a withdrawal plan in early October 1963; this May conversation marks the earliest instance in which McNamara and Kennedy discussed such planning. It reveals McNamara’s interest in curbing the expanding cost of the Vietnam counterinsurgency and Kennedy’s reluctance to withdraw troops under adverse military conditions.
2. In the aftermath of an attack on the U.S.S. Maddox, a destroyer conducting intelligence operations off the coast of North Vietnam, Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara and President Lyndon B. Johnson discuss potential U.S. retaliatory measures against the North Vietnamese should U.S. ships again be attacked in the Tonkin Gulf. Roughly 80 minutes after this conversation, McNamara relayed reports of another such attack to President Johnson, an attack that was later determined never to have taken place. Yet it was that second attack that led to the U.S. response outlined in this conversation as well as to the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, which provided congressional support for administration policy toward Vietnam.
3. In the context of formulating an administration statement on Vietnam for use that evening, President Johnson and Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara discuss the wisdom of McNamara’s earlier recommendation to President Kennedy that the United States should publicly declare its intention of withdrawing U.S. troops from Vietnam. As vice president, Johnson had been critical of Kennedy policies that led to the overthrow of South Vietnamese president Ngo Dinh Diem and was equally dubious of statements about the pullout of American forces.
Marc Selverstone is an Associate Professor with the Presidential Recordings Program at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center of Public Affairs. He specializes in the Vietnam War, the Cold War, and U.S. foreign relations after 1945.