Kennedy appointments. His appointment was unusual: he was one of the few Pentagon leaders handpicked by the new President. Fearing that the new Secretary of Defense, Robert S. McNamara, was inexperienced in Washington's ways, Kennedy chose Gilpatric to add experience to his Defense team. McNamara was known as a "whiz kid", a Midwestern industrial production wunderkind. But Kennedy sensed that McNamara would need a strong lieutenant who was savvy in the ways of Washington. Kennedy chose Gilpatric as the Pentagon's number two, passing over Paul Nitze, Gilpatric's old classmate from Hotchkiss, who had wanted the job. It was a propitious appointment: within a few months, the dashing Eastern lawyer and his Midwestern boss were finishing each other's sentences. McNamara frequently started out with the expression: "Ros and I...." As the Cuban crisis began to unfold, Gilpatric was appointed to the EXCOMM team, the top-level working group appointed by Kennedy to assess the Soviet missile threat in Cuba. At one point during the tense standoff of the Cuban Missile Crisis, McGeorge Bundy was arguing for United States bombing of Cuba to eliminate the threat of a Soviet nuclear attack. McNamara countered, arguing that there should be no bombing because the Soviet Russian response was unpredictable. It was at this critical moment that Gilpatric stepped in to settle the argument. "Essentially, Mr. President," Gilpatric was recorded telling Kennedy, "this is a choice between limited action and unlimited action, and most of us think it is better to start with limited action." It was Gilpatric's intervention that changed the direction of the discussion, according to Harvard professor and former Department of Defense official Graham T. Allison, who authored a book, Essence of Decision, about the crisis. Proposing the blockade was McNamara and Gilpatric's solution to providing President Kennedy with a strong response – but short of the airstrike that McGeorge Bundy and others were pushing. By crafting their solution, and with the normally reticent Gilpatric speaking up forcefully for it, the two managed to change the thrust of policy. The President followed Gilpatric and McNamara's recommendation. Gilpatric was not always so dovish. He often took a hard line against the Communist threat, and was not above using force in other matters of international security. In the Eisenhower administration, Gilpatric headed a secret task force charged with "preventing Communist domination of Vietnam." Gilpatric argued forcefully for U.S. commitment to halt the Communist threat in