A Simple Desultory Philippic

"McNamara was the archetype of a new wave of management specialists on the rise in Washington during the 1960s. He surrounded himself with a bevy of analysts who became known as his 'whiz kids,' and they played a prominent role in drafting the classified 'Pentagon Papers,' an exhaustive history of the U.S. entry into Vietnam that McNamara secretly commissioned in 1967.
"Brimming with self-confidence, McNamara transformed the Defense Department into the giant military and civilian fiefdom it remains today. Among his creations were the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Defense Supply Agency, the predecessor of the massive Defense Logistics Agency.
"But it was Vietnam that defined him, from his assertive oversight of the first contingents of Green Beret advisors sent by the Kennedy administration to South Vietnam in 1961 to his backstage qualms that led Lyndon Johnson to replace him as Defense secretary."

In the Los Angeles Times, Stephen Braun writes an obituary for Robert S. McNamara.