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Release: April 27, 1995
Contact: Tom Krattenmaker (609/258-5748)


George Ball Statement Offers New Insight Into
Robert McNamara's Handling of Vietnam Affair

Posthumous Statement of Former Under Secretary of State Published
in New Issue of Princeton Library Chronicle

PRINCETON, N.J. -- In a statement to be published posthumously in
May in the =Princeton University Library Chronicle=, George W.
Ball, the principal internal critic of the Johnson
administration's intervention in Vietnam, declares that then-
Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara "would shoot me down in
flames" whenever he argued against increasing U.S. involvement in
Vietnam.

In the statement, written just two months before his May 26, 1994
death, Ball recalls a memorandum he wrote in 1964 outlining his
opposition to the administration's Vietnam policy. The Under
Secretary of State at the time, Ball circulated the memo among the
president's senior advisers, though not to Johnson himself until
early 1965. The memo, Ball recalls, was vigorously opposed by
McNamara, who was "shocked that anyone would challenge the
verities in such an abrupt, unvarnished manner." According to
Ball, McNamara "implied that I had been imprudent in putting such
doubts on paper. All of my colleagues, in fact, seemed more
concerned with the possibility of a leak than with the cogency or
foolishness of what I had written."

Also in the statement, Ball recounts a pattern that developed
later between him and McNamara, again involving memoranda. Ball
would write a "strident" memorandum to the president voicing
opposition to the Vietnam escalation, and McNamara would assure
him that "'You and I are not very far apart. I have these doubts,
too,'" according to Ball. (Ball typically would circulate such
memos to McNamara and others before sending it on to Johnson.)
"Then I would go into a meeting with the president the next
morning, and McNamara would shoot me down in flames," Ball says.
"And he'd pull out all kinds of statistics which I'm sure he
invented on the spot."

According to Princeton Professor of Politics Fred I. Greenstein,
"Ball's statement is particularly to the point in light of
McNamara's recent public apologia. In all the discussion of the
McNamara book, there has been a startling lack of comment on
Ball's role in trying to persuade Johnson and his advisors not to
increase the U.S. troop commitment in Vietnam."

Ball served as Under Secretary of State in both the Kennedy and
Johnson administrations, and from the first argued against
American involvement in Vietnam. Like McNamara, however, Ball
believed it his duty to confine his criticism of U.S. policy to
the internal councils of the White House. The extent of his
opposition to the war was not known until the publication of the
Pentagon Papers in 1972.

Ball bequeathed his papers to Princeton, including the text of his
last statement on the Johnson administration's decision-making on
Vietnam. The statement was part of a lecture and discussion with
members of Professor Fred I. Greenstein's seminar, "Presidential
Leadership and Public Policy," held at the Woodrow Wilson School
of Public and International Affairs on March 31, 1994.

Call the above number for more information or to obtain a copy of
the Princeton University Library Chronicle.

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