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10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Robert S. McNamara.md
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---
updated: 2026-10-08
aliases:
- Robert McNamara
category: "Intelligence & Government"
@ -12,8 +13,15 @@ died: 2009-07-06
location: "San Francisco, California, USA"
---
Robert S. McNamara served as the Secretary of Defense under President [[John F. Kennedy]] and later under President [[Lyndon B. Johnson]]. He was involved in discussions regarding [[Israel]]'s nuclear program and the sale of advanced U.S. fighter aircraft to [[Israel]]. [[Abraham Feinberg]] directly intervened with McNamara, insisting that the [[United States]] should not interfere with [[Israel]]'s nuclear activities. McNamara cryptically acknowledged the basic problem of [[Israel]]'s existence as a question mark in history, which he understood as a reason for [[Israel]]'s desire for a nuclear bomb.[^1]
Robert S. McNamara served as the Secretary of Defense under President [[John F. Kennedy]] and later under President [[Lyndon B. Johnson]]. He was involved in discussions regarding [[Israel]]'s nuclear program and the sale of advanced U.S. fighter aircraft to Israel. [[Abraham Feinberg]] directly intervened with McNamara, insisting that the [[United States]] should not interfere with Israel's nuclear activities. McNamara cryptically acknowledged the basic problem of Israel's existence as a question mark in history, which he understood as a reason for Israel's desire for a nuclear bomb.[^1]
### The USS Liberty attack
In an affidavit released in October 2003, [[Ward Boston]] states that the president of the Navy's 1967 Court of Inquiry into the attack on the [[USS Liberty Incident|USS Liberty]], Admiral [[Isaac C. Kidd Jr.]], told him that McNamara and President Lyndon B. Johnson ordered the court to conclude that the attack was a case of mistaken identity.[^2] [[A. Jay Cristol]] quotes McNamara's July 1967 statement to the [[Senate Foreign Relations Committee]] that "it was the conclusion of the investigatory body headed by an Admiral of the Navy [Isaac C. Kidd, Jr.] in whom we have great confidence that the attack was not intentional. I read the record of investigation and I support that conclusion."[^3] The Chicago Tribune reported in 2007 that J. Q. Hart, a chief petty officer at a Navy relay station in Morocco, recalled hearing McNamara order Rear Admiral Lawrence Geis to recall the carrier aircraft sent toward the Liberty, and quoted Hart as recalling McNamara's words: "President [Lyndon] Johnson is not going to go to war or embarrass an American ally over a few sailors." McNamara, then 91, told the Tribune he had "absolutely no recollection of what I did that day."[^4]
### Footnotes
[^1]: Hersh, Seymour M. *The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy*. Random House, 1991. Chapter 8.
[^1]: Hersh, Seymour M. *The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy*. Random House, 1991. Chapter 8.
[^2]: Ward Boston Jr., affidavit as printed in the Congressional Record, Extensions of Remarks, October 11, 2004, pp. E1886-E1889, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CREC-2004-10-11/html/CREC-2004-10-11-pt1-PgE1886-3.htm; the same sentence is paragraph 16 of the declaration dated January 8, 2004, https://archive.org/download/boston-declaration/BostonDeclaration.pdf. Sole source for the Kidd conversation.
[^3]: A. Jay Cristol, History News Network, June 12, 2007. Cristol quotes the testimony with ellipses and cites it as released by the U.S. Government Printing Office in 1967. https://www.historynewsnetwork.org/article/why-you-shouldnt-pay-attention-to-the-claims-that-
[^4]: "New revelations in attack on American spy ship," *Chicago Tribune*, October 2, 2007. Hart's and McNamara's statements are as the Tribune reported them. https://www.chicagotribune.com/2007/10/02/new-revelations-in-attack-on-american-spy-ship/