Local farmer Craig McNamara grew up during the Vietnam War and was witness to many of the events and personalities that defined the era.

None loomed larger than his father, former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara.

Craig joins us today to talk about his new book, Because Our Fathers Lied, chronicling the relationship with his dad and his own journey in making sense of Vietnam and its impact on his life.

My life has been lived through the lens of Vietnam.

And so, the writing of my memoir was an opportunity to explore that relationship, the relationship with my father... consequently, the relationship that I have to Vietnam.

The relationship that my father and I had throughout his life was one of love, of kindness, of exploration of the wilderness.

We explored the Sierras, we explored the Rockies.

We climbed, we hiked, we skied.

And so, here I am today, recognizing that this human being, Robert McNamara, had this capacity for love and kindness and, um, a tremendous belief in Mother Nature.

How could he have taken those beliefs and misled us so profoundly?

I wrote my memoir for my father.

It doesn't seem obvious.

You would think that I wrote it for myself, but it's what I wish that I had said to my father.

And now, it's there.

It's there for other fathers and other sons to read and to learn, to be humbled, and have the integrity to ask the questions during our lifetimes that we shy away from asking.

Craig, thanks for joining us again, and I know that we've talked about this subject in the past, but your father passed away in 2009.

Why this book, and why now?

Well, Scott, thank you so much for being together today.

It means the world to me.

And this book that I've written has been in me all of my adult life.

When I look at my life, my entire life has been lived through the lens of the Vietnam War and, consequently, my relationship with my father.

So, I had an opportunity in 2018 to attend a program at Stanford which really gave me the time and the research ability to look into not only the war, but take a deep dive into this personal relationship with my father.

And it was also a time to tell my family and to tell our readers a story, a bit of a story about a person who's 72 years old.

I...

I grew up during the Vietnam War.

I was born in 1950.

So, when my family moved to Washington, D.C. in 1960, I was ten years old.

So, the formative years, the eight years that my father served as Secretary of Defense, were my growing up years.

So, this has been with me a long time.

When you talk about your father throughout the book- And... and and the book is an amazing journey.

It... it... it... it... it focuses a lot on your relationship with him, and within the context of the Vietnam War, but it's so much more about your own life's journey as well.

But going back to that relationship, what was the essence of in the book, you were trying to reconcile with your father and the work that he did and your own feelings about it?

Well, I think you're absolutely right.

Um, I'm the son of a wonderful father, a man who was incredibly bright, who had a significant career long before he served eight years as secretary of defense, and he had an amazing career as president of the World Bank, uh, until his retirement in 1980.

He brought to the Defense Department, um, a term of the best and the brightest.

He was... he was a whiz kid.

And yet, he had a sense of loyalty to the president.

And I asked him, um, after he had written, uh, his memoir, "In Retrospect," in the early 1980s- excuse me, in the 1990s- "Why couldn't you have written this earlier, Dad?

And why could you not have gone further in not just apologizing and not just saying you were wrong, but an attempt to correct the war atrocity that you were the architect of?"

So, the... the problem is my father- maybe because of his generation- had a firewall that was just inpre- impenetrable.

I...

I...

I tried as a teenager, I tried through my twenties to continue the conversation and encourage him to share with me and, in essence, share with our nation how he made his decisions, why he made his decisions, and to correct the errors that... that he made.

Craig, throughout the book, it comes across as if you really are looking for this full-throated apology and maybe, inclusive in that, is an explanation from your father.

What is it about that apology, and you seeking it through so many chapters of your life, that made it so important for you to hear that?

Scott, I think what really, um, meant so much to me is that so many people's lives were thrust to thunder in... in the Viet... Vietnam War, and they are still, to this day.

I think that's the importance of why I wrote this book today, not just to find healing, but to find... find a... a way of changing the future of our society, so that we don't tell lies, that we- so that we don't create aggression and... and get into conflict, both in this country and abroad.

I was beginning to say that when I asked my father why he did what he did, the issue of loyalty continued to come up.

And I found a very- As I was researching my book, I found a very interesting quote from my father.

Just after he either was fired or resigned in February of 1968, Life Magazine did a full spread on Robert S. McNamara.

And I want to quote you something that he said in May- on May 10th of 1968.

"Around Washington, there is this concept of the 'higher loyalty.'

I think...

I think it's heretical concept, this idea that there's a duty to serve the nation above the duty to serve the president, and that you're justified in doing so.

It will destroy democracy if it's followed.

You have to subordinate part of yourself, a part of your views."

And very interestingly enough, I went back into the oath of office that my father took while joining John F. Kennedy's administration back in 1961, and that oath is the same one that I believe con- uh, Cabinet members take today.

They say, "I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic."

Well, he took an oath to the Constitution of the United States, not an oath of loyalty necessarity- necessarily to the two presidents.

And my question for him is, "If you knew, Dad, that the war was unwinnable, if that was part of your consciousness and part of the data that you were getting from the war zone, and if you knew that by 1965, your loyalty should have been to our nation and not to telling the President's truths that weren't truths."

It's interesting in you... you stating that, and thank you for sharing that oath and how that oath remains consistent across the generations.

I recall in the book, though, as well, in a conversation that you had with your dad, you talked about his choices and his response was that, uh, "Gray is everywhere, especially when we think we know the truth."

His choices and that gray, do you see, as a... a... a man, um, and you- at your age today, and in the era that we're in, has there been any evolving over time as to how you viewed his actions and how he made those choices that he perceived maybe as more gray than black and white?

Scott, perhaps our viewers have seen The Fog of War, which is a documentary made by Errol Morris of my father.

Errol and my father spent 22 hours filming this over the course of a year.

And it's a documentary that is the closest thing that we have to my father drawing lessons from the miscalculations and the errors that... that... that... that he, uh, made during his term as secretary of defense.

And one of those always resonates with me, and that is to empathize with your enemy.

Clearly, we had no clue of who our enemy was in Vietnam.

We didn't really fathom that Ho Chi Minh had really wanted peace for his country, that the civil war and the unrest that they had experienced for generations was something that they wanted to solve.

They didn't want the French, they didn't want the U.S. to help solve their problems or reunify their country.

So, those ten lessons that come forward, um, during The Fog of War documentary are profound.

And basically, what they tell me is that what President Kennedy, what President Johnson what Robert McNamara and the Joint Chiefs of Staff thought they knew about Vietnam, they did not.

And they had concerns that may have been legitimate, in their frame of reference, of the fear of communism.

But we know today that the domino theory, which was one of the stated reasons to- for our country to send troops to Vietnam, was a false- um, was a false premise.

So, empathize with your enemy.

Learn from your enemy.

Study the hi... the history before you send troops into a country.

Well, it's interesting that you say that.

In the book, you... you made a reference in a conversation you had with the son of a very significant general, someone who would be the peer on the other side of the war to your father.

Yes.

And it's the first time I've ever heard this.

Yeah.

We refer to the conflict as the Vietnam War.

And you state in the book that the conflict, from their perspective, is the American War.

Yes.

And when you went over there and you spent time with the son of this general... Yeah.

...it really goes to that point that you're making about the lessons that your father, uh, shared in the Errol Morris documentary.

What did you learn, though, when you had that interaction and... and really saw and when you had that interaction and... and really saw and interacted with someone who, effectively, was kind of like your counterpart?

Very much so.

His father, General Zapp, was the revered general that Ho Chi Minh had selected back in the late 1950s to lead the military campaign to reunify the country.

It was basically General Zapp, representing Vietnam, and Robert S. McNamara, representing the United States.

These two men took us to war.

And let me just pause for a second.

Pause for a second, Scott.

58,000 men and women from the United States died in conflict.

Two to 3 million Vietnamese, Laotians, and surrounding area people died.

We dropped 7.5 million tons of bombs, in a ten year period, on Vietnam and the surrounding countries.

That's three times the amount of ammunitions that we dropped in World War Two.

We used 11 million gallons of Agent Orange to defoliate the forests, and we utilized 388,000 tons of napalm.

All of that, that we used on Vietnam, still lives on today.

Generations later, children are affected, birth defects are occurring because of napalm.

Our own soldiers, our own people who have returned, who are my generation- a little older than I am- have lifelong impacts of the atrocities, uh, of our actions in Vietnam.

Certainly the shroud of Vietnam has fallen very heavily on all of those that the conflict touched.

One of the people that the conflict touched, that I had never heard about before, was your mother.

Yes.

And your mother, who, uh, was not only the wife of the defense secretary and... and mother to you and your sisters and all that that entailed, but she also did important work on her own and was one of the founders, or the founder, of the RIF program, "Reading Is Fundamental," that... You're absolutely right.

...many of us who grew up in the late sixties and seventies benefited from.

Absolutely.

And I'm curious, uh, what is it that your mother- How did your mother make her way?

Oh, that's a wonderful question.

Wonderful question.

My understanding and the story that... that, actually, my father would tell is when the new cabinet- when... when JFK's new cam- ca, uh, cabinet assembled, they were all men.

And one day, the president called the cabinet members' wives into the White House to say, "Look, your husbands are going to be working nonstop on policy and issues dealing with this country, and we want you to find something that is meaningful to you."

Well, my mom did exactly what you said, Scott.

She founded a program, "Reading Is Fundamental," in the nation's capital, um, which is divided- Uh, Anacostia is in the southeast district of Washington.

It was an extremely poor district, and illiterate, within the sight of the nation's capital.

And she started a program that utilized Bookmobiles.

She went to Congress and was able to secure funding, uh, went to publishers- Random House and others- to start this program.

And I hear from people, like you said today, who benefited from Reading Is Fundamental, RIF.

And that program is still going today.

I wanted to just read you, um, a dedication.

I...

I dedicate my book to my mother, and it says, "To Margaret McKinstry Craig.

She gave me her maiden name, her Pacific blue eyes, and her love of nature.

It is... it is her love that has guided my life's journey."

So, my mom was an incredibly important person to me and died early in... in her life, at age 65.

So, we miss her tremendously.

Well, she looms very large in the book.

Yes.

And one of your journeys, which was amazing, was at a very young age, you and two buddies took off on motorcycles, started in Palo Alto, and while they didn't go with you the entire journey, you went down the Pan-American Highway down to, uh, Chile.

We did.

I did.

And at... at one point- I think you were on Easter Island at the time- your mom actually came all the way out to visit you for a moment.

Yes.

Well, first of all, let me correct "young."

We were- I turned 21 on the road.

So, you know, maybe that's young, um, but it was an amazing journey.

And let... let's just pause here for a second.

Why did three of us drop out of Stanford in 1971?

Because we were all disillusioned with the direction that our country was headed in.

And, um, was it the right decision?

21 years old.

Trying to find ourselves.

Myself.

Trying to find myself, as the son of the architect of Vietnam.

It was an amazing, uh, journey for me because I found my career.

I found my love of farming.

I met subsistence farmers along the way.

They took me into their farms.

They showed me how they grew their crops, how they fed their families.

And you're right, I did eventually- Actually, I left my motorcycle in Colombia, because it was difficult traveling, and I hitchhiked the rest of the 2,000 miles all the way to Chile and Tierra del Fuego.

I met people along the way.

Craig, part of that journey down into South America, you encountered someone who had, it appears, a dramatic impact on your life, Fidel Castro.

And that... that first, uh, interaction, where you were in- heard Castro speak and saw him live, seemed to answer some questions for you, or give you a different perspective.

What was that moment like?

Scott, it was an amazing moment.

It was, uh, September of 1971 and, uh, the socially elected president, Salvador Allende of Chile, his- was celebrating his first years as president.

And Fidel Castro came to join in the celebration and ended up staying almost three weeks in the country.

I was a 21-year-old and it was... it was spring in... in Santiago, Chile.

And I was fascinated.

Uh, Fidel would speak at the universities.

Many, many students would come to hear his speeches.

He was a very long speaker.

Um, typically a speech would be 3 to 4 hours or, excuse me, 2 to 3 hours.

And I was fascinated by this leader, this global leader.

And I think that what he said resonated with me at that time, at that age in my life.

He spoke about social justice.

He spoke about poverty.

He spoke about universal health care for people not only in Cuba, but around the world.

He did many things that were right at that time in his country, and he did many things that were wrong in that country.

Well, I...

I actually wanted to ask you a little bit about that because later on in your book, you have another encounter where you actually get to speak to him.

And it... it appears that you... you revise your view a little bit of that initial glow that you had in thinking about Castro.

Can you tell us a little bit more about that?

I can.

And, uh, you're referring to the World Food Summit in 1996.

I was asked by Richard Rominger, who at that time was the, uh, Undersecretary of... of Agriculture in the U.S.

Agricultural Department, to represent- to be part of a team that represented the United States in Rome, Italy.

And, um, Fidel Castro was arriving to the conference.

And what you might not understand today is the aura that this leader had, globally, whether you agreed with him or not, was to be celebrated.

People were going crazy recognizing Fidel Castro.

Because my father and Fidel Castro were the leaders during the Cuban Missile Crisis in October of 1962, and because our world almost came to an end because of nuclear arms that had been shipped to Cuba, I had always been fascinated- as I think my father was fascinated- by the thinking of Fidel Castro.

So, here we are, when I'm 46 years old.

I'm in Rome, Italy, representing, um, a team from the United States.

I wanted to see if I could possibly meet the leader, Fidel Castro.

And I did.

So, when I met Fidel, introducing myself as an organic walnut farmer from Northern California, and that my father was Robert McNamara, a smile appeared in his bearded face.

And he quietly said in Spanish, which I understood, "I have great admiration for your father."

Now, here are two men who almost brought the world to the edge of nuclear war, and one says about the other that "I have great admiration for your father."

It's very remarkable.

So, what- Is- Oh, go ahead.

Go ahead.

No.

So, I think, you know, we temper our... our points of view and we learn life is a... is a matter of discovery.

And that's what my journey in life has led me, and that's what my journey in writing this memoir has taught me.

Um- I want to go...

I want to go to another little vignette within the book.

You talk a lot about how there was this wall that you couldn't get past, in terms of having a level of intimacy with your father that you were able to have, um, with your own son.

You talk about one time when your... your son tells you it's time to head back when you were looking for your mother's ashes.

But in one moment, there's an evening where he meets Alice Walker and he presses a walnut from your farm into her hand... Yeah.

...and there were so many layers of meaning to that.

But because of that, his stoicism, what is it that we can read into that one moment, that maybe communicated more than what was obviously on the surface?

Scott, you're a very perceptive reader.

And I think what you're, um, focused on is actually the love that my father had for me, and the love that I have for my father.

And therein lies the complexity of father-son relationships, or father-daughter relationships, or parent and child relationships.

How- There's no question that my father and I loved each other tremendously.

Can you love a person and also realize that they have lied to the world and taken the world to an incredibly aggressive place where many, many millions of people died?

Where do you place that person?

Where... where do you- How do you reconcile that person?

Was my father compassionate at that time that he gave the walnut to Alice Waters?

Yes, because that was coming from his child, from his son, from his farmer to an amazing chef and restaurateur and visionary.

So, at that moment, he was compassionate.

I didn't see that compassion during the time that he was the architect of the Vietnam War.

Thank you, Craig, for sharing your story and for this amazing book.

Uh, it... it was one of the quickest reads that I've had in a while because I couldn't put it down.

Good luck.

And we hope to hear more from you.

I'm honored to be here.

I'm honored to have written it.

And the next chapter of my life is beginning right now.

Thank you so much.

All right.

We'll leave it there.

And that's our show.

Thanks to our guest and thanks to you for watching Studio Sacramento.

I'm Scott Syphax.

See you next time right here on KVIE.

All episodes of Studio Sacramento, along with other KVIE programs, are available to watch online at KVIE.org/video.