( CNN ) -- Former U.S. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara , a key architect of the U.S. war in Vietnam under presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson , has died at age 93 , according to his family . Robert McNamara took a lead role in managing the U.S. military commitment in Vietnam . McNamara was a member of Kennedy 's inner circle during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 , when the United States and the Soviet Union stood on the brink of nuclear war . But he became a public lightning rod for his management of the war in Vietnam , overseeing the U.S. military commitment there as it grew from fewer than 1,000 advisers to more than half a million troops . Though the increasingly unpopular conflict was sometimes dubbed `` McNamara 's War , '' he later said both administrations were `` terribly wrong '' to have pursued military action beyond 1963 . `` External military force can not reconstruct a failed state , and Vietnam , during much of that period , was a failed state politically , '' he told CNN in a 1996 interview for the `` Cold War '' documentary series . `` We did n't recognize it as such . '' A native of San Francisco , McNamara studied economics at the University of California and earned a master 's degree in business from Harvard . He was a staff officer in the Army Air Corps during World War II , when he studied the results of American bombing raids on Germany and Japan in search of ways to improve their accuracy and efficiency . After the war , he joined the Ford Motor Company and became its president in November 1960 -- the first person to lead the company from outside its founding family . A month later , the newly elected Kennedy asked him to become secretary of defense , making him one of the `` whiz kids '' who joined the young president 's administration . In October 1962 , after the discovery of Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba , McNamara was one of Kennedy 's top advisers in the standoff that followed . The United States imposed a naval `` quarantine '' on Cuba , a Soviet ally , and prepared for possible airstrikes or an invasion . The Soviets withdrew the missiles in exchange for a U.S. guarantee not to invade Cuba , a step that allowed Soviet premier Nikita Kruschev to present the pullback as a success to his own people . In the 2003 documentary `` The Fog of War , '' McNamara told filmmaker Errol Morris that the experience taught American policymakers to `` put ourselves inside their skin and look at us through their eyes . '' But he added , `` In the end , we lucked out . It was luck that prevented nuclear war . '' McNamara is credited with using the management techniques he mastered as a corporate executive to streamline the Pentagon , computerizing and smoothing out much of the U.S. military 's vast purchasing and personnel system . And in Vietnam , he attempted to use those techniques to measure the progress of the war . Metrics such as use of `` body counts '' and scientific solutions such as using the herbicide Agent Orange to defoliate jungles in which communist guerrillas hid became trademarks of the conflict . McNamara made several trips to South Vietnam to study the situation firsthand . He , Johnson and other U.S. officials portrayed the war as a necessary battle in the Cold War , a proxy struggle to prevent communism from taking control of all of Southeast Asia . But while they saw the conflict as another front in the standoff between the United States and the Soviet Union , which backed communist North Vietnam , McNamara acknowledged later that they underestimated Vietnamese nationalism and opposition to the U.S.-backed government in Saigon . `` The conflict within South Vietnam itself had all of the characteristics of a civil war , and we did n't look upon it as largely a civil war , and we were n't measuring our progress as one would have in what was largely a civil war , '' he told CNN . Casualties mounted , as did domestic opposition to the war . In 1965 , a Quaker anti-war protester , Norman Morrison , set himself on fire outside McNamara 's office window . In 1967 , tens of thousands of demonstrators marched on the Pentagon , which was ringed with troops . By November 1967 , McNamara told Johnson that there was `` no reasonable way '' to end the war quickly , and that the United States needed to reduce its forces in Vietnam and turn the fighting over to the American-backed government in Saigon . By the end of that month , Johnson announced he was replacing McNamara at the Pentagon and moving him to the World Bank . But by March 1968 , Johnson had reached virtually the same conclusion as McNamara . He issued a call for peace talks and announced he would not seek re-election . After leaving the Pentagon in early 1968 , McNamara spent 12 years leading the World Bank . He said little publicly about Vietnam until the publication of a 1995 memoir , `` In Retrospect . '' `` You do n't know what I know about how inflammatory my words can appear , '' he told Morris . `` A lot of people misunderstand the war , misunderstand me . A lot of people think I 'm a son of a bitch . ''
Robert McNamara was key architect of war in Vietnam under two presidents . McNamara became lightning rod for his management of that war . He was member of President Kennedy 's inner circle during Cuban Missile Crisis .