Robert McNamara, a UC Berkeley alumnus whose career of public service remains overshadowed by fierce criticism of his role in orchestrating the Vietnam War, died in his Washington home Monday. He was 93.

As Secretary of Defense for presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson,

McNamara oversaw the military buildup in Southeast Asia that escalated into the controversial Vietnam War, a failed effort to protect the US against the threat of communism that claimed the lives of 58,000 Americans.

Prior to taking office as secretary in 1961, he had quickly risen through the ranks at Ford Motor Co. to become president.

When he left the Pentagon in 1968, it was to serve as president of the World Bank, where for 13 years he worked to provide financial resources to developing countries.

Born on June 19, 1916 into a working-class family, McNamara grew up in the Bay Area and enrolled at UC Berkeley when he found he could not afford Stanford, said Mark Danner, writer, reporter and journalism professor at UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism.

Danner interviewed McNamara on several occasions and knew him personally.

At Berkeley, McNamara was elected to the honor society Phi Beta Kappa after his sophomore year and inducted into the Order of the Golden Bear, a campus organization founded in 1900 that discusses issues affecting the well-being of the campus. McNamara was eventually elected to head the order as warden.

As a fellow in the order, McNamara would have had to pledge lifelong service to UC Berkeley. Danner said that McNamara exhibited throughout his life a "strong attachment" to the campus.

At a reception at the Chancellor's house in 2004, McNamara told Danner how as a freshman, he remembered coming there to take one of the chancellor's daughters out on a date, a testament to his ambition, Danner said.

He added that this ambition helped him break into the Eastern elite, becoming part of the Vietnam-era "best and brightest" generation of heads of state.

"But more than others of his generation, he remained his whole life haunted by (Vietnam)," Danner said.

McNamara remained largely reserved until his repentant 1995 memoir of the war, "In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam."

"He was a very complex personality and a man driven by two contradictory ways of thinking," said Harry Kreisler, executive director of the UC Berkeley Institute of International Studies and director of the video interview series "Conversations with History," for which he interviewed McNamara in 1996.

Kriesler said McNamara had a New Deal-era idealistic faith in American values, set off against a firm belief in the nation's right to build up its military to protect itself and police the world.

In one wartime misstep, McNamara insisted upon using statistics from Pentagon charts that showed the United States was winning in Vietnam. In doing so, he paid little attention to the strong nationalistic sentiment of the Viet Cong, which would make the U.S's war effort difficult to control.

"He had a ... highly logical mind," Danner said. "This enormous logical power helped lead him to a problem he couldn't fathom, and he spent the rest of his life trying to dig himself out of it."

Kreisler said he thinks it was McNamara's idealistic side that caused him to eventually publicly question his role in Vietnam.

His delay in divulging his feelings on Vietnam may have stemmed from a larger unease about revealing himself emotionally, or possibly he was safeguarding his reputation, Kreisler said.

"I think what will always be remembered is the darker side," he said. "He embodies the American empire at the height of its power, and that is something we as a country have a great problem coming to terms with."

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