Robert McNamara was secretary of defense during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. He was a key architect of U.S. strategic defense policy at the time and a central figure in the development of the doctrine of mutual assured destruction (MAD). McNamara was interviewed for this episode of COLD WAR in June 1996.

On the "missile gap":

[When I came to Washington] I hardly knew the difference between a nuclear weapon and a conventional weapon. But my introduction and indoctrination was swift, because a major element of the election campaign that President Kennedy had just won was the charge by the Democrats, including President Kennedy, that Eisenhower had left a missile gap; that the Soviets had been permitted, by inaction on the part of the U.S., to build up a superior nuclear missile force.

So clearly my first responsibility as Secretary of Defense was to determine the degree of the gap and initiate action to close it. So my deputy Ros[well] Gilpatric and I immediately began to work on that, on January 21st, 1961. And it took us about three weeks to determine [that] yes, there was a gap. But the gap was in our favor. It was a totally erroneous charge that Eisenhower had allowed the Soviets to develop a missile force superior to the U.S.

Now how did it come about? Was President Kennedy lying? No. The problem was that, at that time, there was no unity in our intelligence service. The CIA presented one report of Soviet versus U.S. forces, the Air Force presented another. And the Air Force report -- and it was not deliberate lying on their part, don't misunderstand me -- the Air Force report stated that the Soviet force was superior. That report was leaked to a former Secretary of the Air Force, Senator Symington, who leaked it to President Kennedy. Kennedy, believing he was speaking the truth, put that forward as a campaign charge against Eisenhower. It was totally erroneous and took me about three weeks to learn that and then to my great embarrassment then and today, I presented this to the press at the request of my Press Secretary in a way that I thought would simply inform our public of the truth. Instead, it led -- you won't believe this -- it led, the next day, to Senator Dirksen, the Republican minority leader of the Senate, charging the election had been a fraud and asking it be re-run! (laughs) It was a terrible situation! ...

What it really led me to do was to immerse myself in the foundation of our nuclear policy, or the foundation of NATO's nuclear policy, and to draw conclusions that have influenced me over the past 35 years and which I am still working with. Conclusions regarding the role of nuclear weapons in this world. And the NATO policy, I believe, has been founded on on false premises for 35 years. And it's just becoming apparent. There was a report published here in Washington about six or eight weeks ago issued by the Stimson Center, signed by four retired four-star officers including a former SACEUR, General Goodpaster, along with Paul Nitze and myself, and some others, which recommends over a period of time ... elimination of nuclear weapons. And we recommend that because we believe it's contrary to the interests of the world to continue to have these weapons used and incorporated in strategic planning the way NATO has planned to use them for the 35 years I've been familiar with it.

On the doctrine of "flexible response":

I began to examine under what circumstances NATO could use nuclear weapons in accordance with NATO policy. The NATO policy then was that in the event of Soviet conventional attack, in a sense overrunning NATO's Western European forces, NATO would respond by initiating the use of nuclear weapons. The Soviet Union had nuclear weapons at the time. What would they have done? They would have responded with nuclear weapons.

And I concluded very quickly that, as Helmut Schmidt later said ... NATO's nuclear policy, if implemented, would have destroyed NATO instead of defending it. That was the conclusion I came to. And therefore, later in 1961, I spoke very privately to President Kennedy, and after President Johnson took over in late 1963 I said the same thing to him, that under no circumstances should NATO ever ever initiate the use of nuclear weapons. I believed it then, I believe it today. Nuclear weapons have no military utility whatsoever, excepting only to deter one's opponent from their use. Which means you should never never, never initiate their use against a nuclear-equipped opponent. If you do, it's suicide. ...

As a derivative of that conclusion, in April of 1962 at the NATO foreign ministers and defense ministers meeting which I think was held in Athens, we put forward what was called "Flexible Response" -- a major change away from what NATO was then pursuing: "massive retaliation." It took NATO five years to debate the issue and they never really fully agreed with it and it was limited in itself. And to this day, NATO still has has that policy [of massive retaliation]. It's wrong.

On the doctrine of "mutual assured destruction" (MAD):

It's not mad! Mutual Assured Destruction is the foundation of deterrence. Today it's a derogative term, but those that denigrate it don't understand deterrence. If you want a stable nuclear world -- if that isn't an oxymoron -- uh, to rephrase it: to the degree one can achieve a stable nuclear world, it requires that each side be confident that it can deter the other. And that requires that there be a balance, and the balance is the understanding that if either side initiates the use of nuclear weapons, the other side will respond with sufficient power to inflict unacceptable damage. Mutual Assured Destruction. So Mutual Assured Destruction is the foundation of stable deterrence in a nuclear world. It's not mad, it's logical.

On the ABM treaty:

The only way we were able to obtain agreement on the Anti-ballistic Missile Treaty -- and we began working toward that by contacts with the Soviets in November 1966, [and] negotiation didn't really begin until late 1968 -- the only way we were able to obtain the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty was to prove to the Soviets that we couldn't limit offensive nuclear forces [in] the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty unless we had a companion limit on defensive forces.

Just think now, if you're trying to ensure you have a second-strike capability and you decide you need, let's say, a thousand Minutemen for that and then they put in a defense. If you had a second-strike capability before they put in the defense, after they put in the defense you've got to increase your offense, otherwise you've lost your deterrent. So we finally proved that to the Soviets and that understanding ultimately led to these two treaties -- the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty. The Offensive Force Limitation Treaty could not stand without the Defensive Force Limitation Treaty.

On nuclear confrontation:

During my seven years as Secretary, on three occasions we -- and I include you -- came very close to war with the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. ... In the summer and fall of 1961, when the Soviets put intense pressure on West Berlin -- sought to in a sense "take" West Berlin from NATO -- we came very very close to military conflict then.

Again in October 1962, over Cuba -- when they introduced missiles into Cuba. And what we have learned since, when they actually introduced tactical nuclear warheads into Cuba, at a time when our CIA was reporting there were no nuclear warheads -- we had photographs of launchers but the CIA said there were no nuclear warheads on the island of Cuba. We now know there were roughly 162, including tactical nuclear warheads, at that time. Had Khrushchev not, on Sunday the 28th of October 1962, announced he was withdrawing those missiles, on the following day or so, the majority of President Kennedy's military and civilian advisers would have recommended an attack, including invasion, of the island of Cuba, not knowing that that invasion almost surely would have been confronted with the use of nuclear weapons. We came very very close. You came very close to nuclear war at that time. Again in June 1967, the Six Day War between Israel and Egypt. And as a part of that, the hotline was used for the first time; and one of the messages from Kosygin to President Johnson was, "If you want war, you'll get war." These were very very tense times. So while I think, in hindsight, we exaggerated the threat at times, and we certainly misunderstood the objectives of the Soviets and, I think, the Chinese, nonetheless we faced very real threats.