I hadn't anticipated that question. Very early, I think. In the book, you may have noticed, there's a pictorial section, and I was under contract to...

Where'd you grow up?

So I literally went to school in a shack, a wooden shack, but we had a fantastic teacher. In the first grade she gave the class a test every month,...

Well, my parents, my father was Irish. As a matter of fact, many, if not most, of my uncles and aunts, his sisters and brothers on my father's side,...

I was going to -- well, that's not quite correct.

You're almost right, but let me put it slightly differently. In a sense, the best was thought to be Stanford at the time. It wasn't the best, but that...

I really had, in a sense, three majors. The primary major was economics. But in a sense, the two more important majors were philosophy and mathematics,...

That's a photograph of what were called the Whiz Kids. There were 10 of us. We had served in the Army together. This is long story, and I don't know...

Let me say one further thing about that photograph. Hold it up again just one second. There are 10 individuals in that photograph, and I'll tell you...

Twenty-nine.

I'd graduated from the business school and then I'd gone to San Francisco for a year after I graduated, and the dean at Harvard called me and asked...

She died 14 years ago. There's one photograph of her. I want to show, well, several of them. It may take a second. She's speaking at the University...

So she kept probing and finally she concluded the kids weren't learning to read because they weren't interested in reading, so she thought, how can...

Three. They're 45, 48 and 54.

One in California, another here, and a third lives in Atlanta, Georgia.

The older two are girls and the middle one's a boy.

Oh, I have. I didn't have copies of the book until last Friday, and so I shipped them to them. They haven't read it yet, but one of them was with me...

When did you literally say to yourself, "I'm going to do this book"?

It's the "Little Gidding?"

To come back now to your question, after I left the department I went to the World Bank. I was there 13 years. After I left that, I've been involved...

"Well," he said, "I would be willing to do the research and, moreover, I would be willing to review everything you write and adhere to the strictest...

It had nothing to do with it. I've glanced at it; I haven't read it.

Well, to tell you the truth, I'm so pleased to be here, because I've been trying to tell a very complicated story with nuances and sound bites, and...

I read as much as I can. I haven't had breakfast the last three days because I've been on the morning shows, and I've gone from morning until close...

Well, there's been a lot of controversy. Some of the articles are very, very thoughtful. Some have, I think, been quite superficial. There are still...

I believe it was 1965. The child is alive today. The mother of the child, the wife of Morrison, wrote me a note, and I'd like to read it if I can. It's...

She lives in North Carolina. He and she, the man who burned himself, were members of the Stony Run Friends Meeting House in Baltimore at the time, and...

I live here in Washington. I live in the same house I've lived in for 35 years, a wonderful house.

Yeah. I'll be 79 in three or four weeks, five weeks.

You won't believe this. A month ago I was on the Continental Divide. I crossed the Continental Divide at 12,500 feet on skis, and I'd wish you'd open...

Well, let's deal first with the "crimes against humanity," "ranks with Hitler and Stalin." I think that's a basic point that needs to be addressed,...

The profits -- to tell you the truth, I really haven't had time to focus on them. I don't know what they'll be, but I didn't think they'd be very much,...

Well, I don't know. I don't know what the profits are, to tell you the truth, and I don't know what I'm going to do with them. There's one project that...

Oh, my God, no. My God, no. You know, long ago, I mention in the book, that money has never been a motivating factor for me. Now, people say I'm wealthy,...

The second point on this same kind of an issue. You've been asked to come to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the Wall, and confront the veterans.

Let me go back to this. If it turns out that the two things that bother people the most after this book, that you say you want to help, are that you're...

Regular viewers think we're out of time, but this is a two-hour conversation.

I just want to mention it because I'm sure folks who watch us say, "He hasn't talked about this war yet," and I'm going to get to that. I do want to...

How did you leave?

Before I get to that, though, the Edsel. I know you deal with it in the book.

Tell me what the Edsel was.

So, that's why, in effect, -- we were at Ford. I didn't get to finish the story about that picture of 10. At the end of the war, Tex Thornton -- he...

Whiz Kids. We can run anything in this country. So, he, in a sense -- who needs our help? He had read in Life magazine that Edsel Ford had died in 1943....

You both had polio?

At one point, John Bugas said to Henry, "Well, now Henry, if you want to hire ..." And Henry said, "What are you talking about? What do you mean, if...

Oh, I'm sorry. I'm terribly sorry; I got way off. The point is that I go on and finally I'm appointed general manager of the Ford Division. What I started...

In the second part of this two-hour conversation about the In Retrospect book by Robert S. McNamara, we'll talk about Vietnam. Part II

Oh, yes. I blush to even think about it.

Well, this is going to take a little while, too. The 1960 campaign -- President Kennedy won the election against Nixon -- was fought in part on Kennedy's...

The same man you mentioned, Arthur Sylvester, who was your press spokesman, allegedly said at one time the government has a right to lie.

One of the things that you find in the book was you say many times that you stretched the truth or didn't tell the truth or lacked candor.

On President Kennedy, you said he had announced that all troops would come out by '65, but you quote a comment that he made shortly before he was shot,...

Twenty-second.

I got it here. "I think we should stay. We should use our influence in as effective a way as we can. We should not withdraw."

You speak very highly of John F. Kennedy, and in the book, at almost every point, you say that he was your favorite and that ...

He's not?

You say Mac Bundy, the head of the National Security Council in the White House, was the best public servant you'd seen in that job in 40 years, except...

No, but you've got an asterisk on Henry Kissinger.

You can hear the folks saying, if he was so good as the National Security Adviser, and if Henry Kissinger was so good as Secretary of State, why is...

No, you say you did.

In June of 1967, the Egyptians were determined to erase Israel from the face of the earth. They thought they'd have the help of Syria and the Soviets....

Well, I think two things. Number one, this was the first war -- and people don't understand this to this day -- the first war in which the press acted...

Well, I mention other press. What I was trying to say was -- this is a rather subtle point, but it's true. Let me digress. I'll come back to Halberstam...

Yes. And Fulbright was an early -- well, he managed the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, which, in effect, gave the president authorization, although neither...

That's a libel. Max Taylor was one of the greatest soldiers this nation ever produced. He put his life at risk for us over and over again. He was a...

The article is written by Colonel Hackworth. Colonel Hackworth is today the most decorated soldier alive. He has 101 medals. He was wounded four times...

I'll just give you a figure off the top of my head. Vietnam or Honolulu? Because we sometimes brought our Vietnam personnel into Honolulu at the CINCPAC...

I did, but only once or twice were they significantly different, and I mentioned one of them.

This is a good point. One of the things I've learned in my life is you can't compartmentalize your audience. When I was asked planeside in Saigon or...

By the way, how long will you talk about this? In other words, in the next weeks, are you going to do another book on this?

Are you going to speak on the circuit? I mean, how far do you play this string out? How long will people listen to this?

Having the discussion on the book, what has surprised you about the process?

Because this is a book show and it's a special two-part series, we didn't ask you to sit for calls. It might be an interesting thing for you come back...

Good morning, Brian.

Would you please indulge me this morning. I'm both nervous and angry at the same time.

Well, I'm calling about the Bob McNamara book, which I haven't read nor do I intend to, not because I want to be ignorant but because it would hurt...

No, and that's another part of the confliction of Vietnam, isn't it? There are both sides, and, you know, I respected those that demonstrated out of...

Yes, I did. I hadn't heard, I sort of heard rumors about the book here and there on the television, and then I happened to watch Diane Sawyer, not intentionally,...

That's a very moving statement, and I quite understand her and I think, I hope, she would find some healing if she read the book. Earlier in the program,...

No, but I -- well, I think the answer is no. The reason I say I'm a little uncertain is I did talk to Henry Kissinger. When I was president of the World...

That began in July of '67, and out of it came a formula that ultimately did lead to peace negotiations in May of '68 after I'd left the department....

I won't comment on that. I'm just going to comment on my days. I'm responsible for enough. I'm not going to put it off on anybody else.

Well, leave me out of the category. They were the best and the brightest, and that's the point of the book. Not only were they the best and the brightest,...

I list 11 lessons. That's right.

Oh, I can't. You know, I don't know how much more time we have, but there's not enough time to get into that.

Let me say this. In relation to today, I think there's several lessons we need to learn, and one of them is the strength of nationalism. Across the...

Not might have been -- he was!

Look, I don't know whether you had a chance to really read the tale. The way Kissinger and I got going on this, I'll call it, peace initiative that...

A Frenchman. Two Frenchmen, Marcovich and Aubrac. They said, "If the U.S. wants to send a message to Ho Chi Minh, we'll get it to him." So Kissinger...

Have you ever sat down with a group of veterans?

Recently? As you know, there are so many audiences out there watching this.

Go back, though, the lesson. In 1967, troops surround the Pentagon; people march on the Pentagon. You refer to the fact that had they been Gandhi-like,...

What would you say to people about demonstrating? You talk about going to your ski lodge in Aspen and finding people waiting for you and your son.

What year was that, by the way?

And what did you do about it when you got there?

Do you remember when the kids came from Voluntown, Connecticut, and camped outside the War Room? They laid down on the floor. They were peaceful.

About '67. As I remember, you left them in there for a couple of days and you said, "Out!" and they eventually had to ...

Would you say that demonstrating works or doesn't work?

The second point I wanted to ask you about was truth. This is page 148: "Of course, total candor is not customary for politicians under such circumstances,...

You were also offered, what, Secretary of the Treasury at one point?

Weren't you also offered something called an executive vice-president role in the new Johnson administration?

Let me go to another issue, the Rolling Thunder, March 1965. Bombing of the north. If I read you right, there was a plan by President Johnson not to...

Near the end when you resigned in '67, you testified before Senator Stennis. It was a week of hearings, off the record. You were not in front of cameras.

Why did Senator Stennis have those hearings called?

But, Westmoreland was there, McGeorge Bundy was there, a lot of other people were there. And Westy said at the end, he said, "You know, I felt at the...

Often -- I said often. That's not quite true. He was falsely accused of trying to deceive the president and me. Westy and I had many, many arguments....

I don't want to say it hasn't hurt. Of course. I don't like to be criticized, whether it's right or wrong, any more than anyone else does. But, so many...

No, it was not my idea, but I went to the Kennedy Library -- and we surely don't have the time. I went there to listen to the tape of the October --...