(See Cover)
Defense Secretary Robert McNamara stood at complete and unmilitary ease behind the lectern on the stage of the State Department auditorium. In cool and well-punctuated sentences, with never an uh or an er, he recited fact after fact, figure after figure, in response to the blunt questions of newsmen.
McNamara's manner was that of a professor patiently explaining a simple matter to a slightly backward class. Yet his audience, over television, was the U.S. itself. And his mission, undertaken at the specific order of President Kennedy, was to tell the nation...