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1 results

  • 1 - The History of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, 1947–1961

  • Aurélie Basha i Novosejt, University of Kent, Canterbury
  • Book:
    ‘I Made Mistakes’
    Published online:
    26 February 2019
    Print publication:
    14 March 2019, pp 15-36

  • Summary

    When Robert McNamara accepted President Kennedy’s offer to serve as the United States’ eighth Secretary of Defense, the role was still new, a barely decade-old innovation emanating from World War II. As a young agency, the OSD was still defining its place in the national security decision-making landscape and, in so doing, trying to find the appropriate balance of power between civilian and military authorities. President Eisenhower had left the new administration with the Defense Reorganization Act of 1958, a congressionally mandated program for change at the Department of Defense. McNamara recognized its sweeping potential to pave the way for his bureaucratic revolutions as the longest-serving Secretary of Defense.