In 1966, The Atlantic assigned the NBC News correspondent Douglas Kiker to take the measure of the late president's brother and political heir, who, seeing the presidency as his destiny and his due, was biding his time until Lyndon B. Johnson was out of the way.
The second most powerful man in Washington is also the second most controversial, writes Douglas Kiker, the ATLANTIC’S Washington columnist. How six years in the Pentagon have changed Robert McNamara is detailed in these pages; how McNamara has changed the Pentagon is described, beginning on page 56, by his onetime special assistant.