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LISA MULLINS: I’m Lisa Mullins, and this is The World. President Barack Obama went to Moscow to help reset the relationship between the United States and Russia. Well today, he met with Russian President, Dimitry Medvedev, and then the two leaders announced a major component of that reset process. It’s an agreement to reduce the number of the two countries’ nuclear warheads. The new accord is due to replace the 1991 start treaty between Washington and Moscow. President Obama says, this agreement announced today is an important step toward stopping the spread of nuclear weapons.

BARACK OBAMA: This starts with the reduction of our own nuclear arsenals. As the world’s two leading nuclear powers, the United States and Russia must lead by example, and that’s what we’re doing here today.

LISA MULLINS: President Obama said the accord will reduce US and Russian nuclear warheads and delivery systems by up to a third from current treaty obligations. The presidents of the United States and Russia also agreed on a variety of other issues. Russia, for instance, will allow the US military to fly troops and weapons across its territory to Afghanistan. And Washington and Moscow agreed to work together on the challenges posed by North Korea and Iran. President Obama said that is in everyone’s interest.

BARACK OBAMA: That’s why I’m pleased that we’ve agreed on a joint statement on cooperation on missile defense and a joint threat assessment of the ballistic missile challenges of the 21st century including those posed by Iran and North Korea.

LISA MULLINS: Despite the agreements announced today, Mr. Obama faces challenges in dealing with Russia, notably the two-headed nature of its power structure. President Medvedev is nominally the head of state, but former President, Vladimir Putin still exerts significant power as the country’s prime minister. The World’s Jeb Sharp reports.

JEB SHARP: In the days leading up to this week’s summit, statements from all sides have been scrutinized, and there was even a little ripple of apprehension and excitement when President Obama seemed to attempt to define the difference between Medvedev and Putin in this Associated Press interview.

BARACK OBAMA: Prime Minister Putin still has a lot of sway in Russia, and I think that it’s important that even as we move forward with President Medvedev, that Putin understands that the old Cold War approaches to US-Russian relations is outdated, that it’s time to move forward in a different direction. I think Medvedev understands that, I think Putin has one foot in the old ways of doing business and one foot in the new.

JEB SHARP: Putin brushed off the criticism.

PUTIN: [SPEAKS IN RUSSIAN]

JEB SHARP: [TRANSLATES WHAT PUTIN SAID] “We have a popular saying, which is not very literary.” Putin said. “We can’t stand legs akimbo. We are firmly standing on our feet and always look to the future.” Prime Minister Putin went on to say that he was looking forward to President Obama’s visit with warm feelings. President Obama will meet Putin for breakfast tomorrow, but today it was all about President Medvedev. The US and Russian presidents were business-like but also generous towards each other in their news conference today, as they rattled off areas of agreement and disagreement. President Obama was asked directly whether he trusted Mr. Medvedev. He said he did. He was also asked whether he had figured out who was in charge in Russia, Medvedev or Putin.  He didn’t exactly answer.

BARACK OBAMA: My understanding is that President Medvedev is the president, Prime Minister Putin is the prime minister, and they allocate power in accordance with Russia’s form of government, in the same way that we allocate power in the United States. And, so, my interest is in dealing directly with my counterpart, the president, but also to reach out to Prime Minister Putin, and all other influential sectors in Russian society.

JEB SHARP: But in meeting with Prime Minister Putin, President Obama is actually doing a little more than just reaching out. Kathryn Stoner-Weiss of Stanford University says Mr. Obama actually has no choice but to meet with Mr. Putin, because he still holds so much power.

KATHRYN STONER-WEISS: I think it would be wrong to think that, first of all, there’s any departure in thinking between Putin and Medvedev, and that it’s important to go to the source of the thinking in Russian foreign and domestic policy, and I think it’s safe to say that the source is Mr. Putin.

JEB SHARP: But Stoner-Weiss says that knowledge hasn’t stopped the Americans from poking and prodding a little bit to see if there is any space at all between Medvedev and Putin.

KATHRYN STONER-WEISS: Testing to see whether or not there could be any way of creating some kind of schism in dealing with Mr. Medvedev, who’s viewed as a friendlier, easier partner, or bolstering him somehow domestically. Honestly, I don’t think there is much hope in [LAUGHS] pursuing that strategy.  Mr. Putin chose, handpicked Mr. Medvedev as his successor, as President on purpose, and it’s because Medvedev is very, very dependent on Mr. Putin to stay in office.

JEB SHARP: Having said that, Stoner-Weiss thinks the meeting has gone relatively well, with modest goals on arms control and Afghanistan cooperation that have been largely met. Jeff Mankoff of the Council on Foreign Relations says the United States and Russia still have serious differences.

JEFF MANKOFF: They’re still very far apart on Iran. I think they’re going to be agreeing to disagree on the question of missile defense. And probably the most explosive issue, which is the status of the former Soviet Union and Russia’s influence over its one-time colonies or satellites, I think, is to a large degree insoluble.

JEB SHARP: To be sure, neither President Obama nor President Medvedev shied away from their differences today, but they did both vow to work hard to find more common ground. For The World, I’m Jeb Sharp.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

LISA MULLINS: Barack Obama has gotten used to warm receptions during his overseas travels, but Russia, the President is not quite the rock star he is in other parts of the world. From Moscow, Jessica Golloher reports that Mr. Obama is winning some Kremlin minds, but not many Russian hearts.

JESSICA GOLLOHER: Russian President, Dimitry Medvedeve had said he was looking forward to Mr. Obama’s trip. President Medvedev’s video blog address even showed him getting a personal call from the American President. Mr. Medvedev said he was glad that President Obama was coming to Russia, and that he was excited to with him, but many Russians don’t seem to share their president’s feelings. Olga Saburova works at a Russian dating service. She has no trouble containing her enthusiasm about Barack Obama.

OLGA SABUROVA: I’m not very interested in your President. A lot of President of all countries come to Moscow, for me, he’s not special. Maybe he’s special for Kremlin, but not for me.

JESSICA GOLLOHER: Saburova is not alone. A poll conducted by the Levada center, at the University of Maryland found that fewer than one-fourth of the Russians surveyed have confidence in President Obama to do the right thing when it comes to International Affairs. Saburova says she doesn’t think American’s care about Russia at all. Infact, she says, they don’t think about anyone but themselves.

OLGA SABUROVA: I have impression that American people think they are number one in the world, but I don’t think so. It is not good behavior of your nation, George Bush spoiled the reputation of United States.

JESSICA GOLLOHER: And Barack Obama has not reversed that perception here. That’s largely because Russians don’t see or hear much of him in the state-run media, according to urban planner Daria Kramtsova.

DARIA KRAMTSOVA: He received very limited press coverage here, I think it’s very tightly controlled. Even on TV it’s always like short paraphrasing of what he says. So they don’t know how powerful his personality is perhaps. Yeah, they know that he has like two daughters and a dog, but I don’t think they know much beyond that.

JESSICA GOLLOHER: But they may know more about Mr. Obama in a day or two.

ANREY KORTUNOV: A lot will depend on the coverage of his trip.

JESSICA GOLLOHER: Andre Kortunov is the President of the Moscow based New Eurasia Foundation.

ANREY KORTUNOV: I’m sure that Obama and his team would like to have an aggressive PR Campaign here in Russia, for a number of reasons. So that we’ll see how it plays out in the Russian media.

JESSICA GOLLOHER: Mr. Obama’s PR team has done a pretty good job of crafting his image as a family man who’s at ease in his own skin. Back at the dating service, Anna Bogaslovskaya thinks that image could sell in Russia. Unlike her more skeptical colleague, Bogaslavskaya is excited about the Obama visit.

ANNA BOGASLOVSKAYA: [TRANSLATED TO ENGLISH] I think it’s very important for US-Russia relations. I think it’ll be good for Russia to have this contact with the leader of the United States. I’d really like to meet him, to see how he lives.

JESSICA GOLLOHER: Bogasloskaya’s enthusiasm for Mr. Obama is still not shared by her co-worker, Olga Saburova. But, Saburova does have to think for a minute, when I ask her if she’d rather go out with her pals for a drink, or meet the President.

OLGA SABUROVA: It is not my daydream, [LAUGHS] to get acquainted to meet him. Maybe I will meet Barack Obama with my friends. [LAUGHS]

JESSICA GOLLOHER: For The World, I’m Jessica Golloher, in Moscow.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

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LISA MULLINS: Meeting with your friends and bringing Barack Obama along, well, you’d definitely want to put that up on your Facebook page. But, as you may have discovered, people sometimes post a little too much information on the networking site. Shelley Sawers may be guilty of that. She posted pictures of where she and her husband live, and noted the names of their friends and relatives. Now that would ordinarily be okay, except that Lady Sawers is the wife of the head of Britain’s spy agency. Sarah Lyall is the London correspondent for the New York Times. Sarah, the Facebook site included photos of the new MI6 head, this is Sir John Sawers. He’s playing Frisbee in a Speedo bathing suit. Is this really a breach a security, or just plain embarrassing?

SARAH LYALL: Well, it’s a little bit embarrassing. By the time everyone else got to look at this page, it had been put under some kind of lock so you can’t actually access it unless you have special permission from the page owner. So we have to sort of go on what the mail on Sunday, the tabloid that broke the story says. They say that the photographs that were on the site show the MI6 chief, who takes over in November, with his family, with his children, with his mother, that it reveals details about where they live. They ran a smattering of photographs on the page, and they didn’t seem so bad, they were like any normal people, you know, on various vacations. And the truth about it is, he didn’t look so bad in his Speedo.

LISA MULLINS: [LAUGHS] Which I’m sure more than you noticed as well, but you wrote in your column for The Times, you said it’s as if suddenly the internet were a wash with pictures of CIA director, Leon Panetta, cowering half naked on vacation. Now I’m sure there’s an audience for that as well, but what’s the real concern here regarding what happened on this particular Facebook site?

SARAH LYALL: Well, it divided people in Britain as whether this was a huge issue or it wasn’t. Some members of the opposition said, pointing out that this security agency MI6 was shrouded in secrecy until a couple years ago that the government barely admitted it existed. Never revealed the name of its chief, and certainly never let photographs of the person being [INDISCERNIBLE]. And they said, you know, that so much money has been spent insuring these people’s safety, and their security, that this kind of wrecks every effort that’s been made. The government itself, at least overtly, doesn’t seem to be that upset. The initial reports were that the family had to take down the Facebook page. And then when I went in last night, it seemed [INDISCERNIBLE] that they put it under some kind of lock, but didn’t take it down all together. So it couldn’t have been that bad, really.

LISA MULLINS: Alright. Well to quote David Miliband, the foreign secretary in Britain, it’s not a State secret that he, meaning the new intelligence head, wears a Speedo swimming trunk. For goodness sake, let’s grow up.

SARAH LYALL: [LAUGHS] Exactly.

LISA MULLINS: Alright. Thank you very much. Sarah Lyall, London correspondent for The New York Times. Thanks again.

SARAH LYALL: Thank you so much.

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LISA MULLINS: I’m Lisa Mullins, and this is The World.  The White House says it is concerned about the violence and death in China’s autonomous region of Xinjiang, and it called on all sides to show restraint. Riots broke out in the region Sunday night. Local officials say those riots left at least 156 people dead and more than 800 injured, mostly in the capital, Urumqi. And local police are said to be rounding up hundreds of Uighurs. Uighurs are a Muslim, ethnically Turkic group that’s losing its majority status in Xinjiang to Chinese immigration. The World’s Mary Kay Magistad reports from Beijing.

MARY KAY MAGISTAD: Last night’s riots appear to have started as an orderly demonstration of a few hundred people.

[SOUND CLIP OF THE RIOT]

MARY KAY MAGISTAD: A video, taken on a shaky hand-held camera, was posted online, showing demonstrators marching in the middle of an Urumqi street. Uighur exile groups say these were Uighur college students, who were calling for an investigation into a June 26th fight between ethnic Han Chinese and ethnic Uighur workers at a toy factory on other side of the country, in Guangdong. It left two Uighurs dead. At the end of this video, you can hear the sirens of police arriving.  Eyewitnesses say, that’s when the demonstration turned into a riot.  Uighur groups say it was the police that used violence first.

ZHANG YULAN: Hello, and welcome to this news update on CCTV International. I’m Zhang Yulan, Beijing.

MARY KAY MAGISTAD: The Chinese State-run media blame the Uighurs, and say the riots left 260 vehicles burned, 200 shops destroyed, 140 people dead, and more than 800 injured.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: An initial investigation shows the violence was masterminded by the separatist Group, World Uighur Congress.  The group is led by Rebiya Kadeer, a former businesswoman in China.  The group has recently been instigating unrest via the Internet, and by other means, calling on the rioters to be braver and to do something big.  The Xinjiang regional government says terrorism, separatism and extremism are behind the violence.

MARY KAY MAGISTAD: The World Uyghur Congress has issued a statement saying Rebiya Kadeer had nothing to do with Sunday’s protest. But Kadeer, now in exile in Washington, D.C., has long been a voice for Uighur rights. She served years in prison for complaining to the government that Uighurs are treated as second-class citizens in their own land, by Han Chinese migrants, and by the government. She complained about this to me, in an earlier interview:

REBIYA KADEER: [TRANSLATED TO ENGLISH] So the Chinese settlers, they come to our land, take advantage of our natural resources, at the same times, they hate us for no reason. It’s the same in Tibet and in our own homeland.  And Chinese, they come, take advantage of everything that we have, and take away everything that we have, and they think they’re highly civilized than us.  They look down upon us.

MARY KAY MAGISTAD: She said Uighur children are made to go to Mandarin Chinese schools, where they’re told that their own language is backward and useless.  She said, even Uighurs who learn Mandarin and graduate from college have a hard time getting hired by Han Chinese companies because they’re Uighurs

REBIYA KADEER: [TRANSLATED TO ENGLISH] And those who can’t get a job and complain about it write this or that about the government policy, is arrested one way or another by the authorities as even as a terrorist, then arrest, sentenced and tortured, some cased even executed.

MARY KAY MAGISTAD: Kadeer said, the last time there were large-scale riots in Xinjiang, 12 years ago, some 15 thousand Uighurs protested, but four times that many were arrested, because the government went after not just the protesters, but also their relatives and friends. She said, some 11 thousand Uighurs were sentenced to life in prison, and more than 400 were executed. This time, the local government is also talking tough.  Nuer Baikeli is the chairman of the Xinjiang government.

NUER BAIKELI: [SPEAKS IN CHINESE]

MARY KAY MAGISTAD: He said, Sunday’s riots were obviously instigated from abroad, and carried out here.  People from different ethnic groups must open their eyes and not do things that make our enemies happy.  Here in Xinjiang, he said, security comes first. What that means today, on the ground, is that hundreds of Uighurs have been rounded up, police have cordoned off the city of Urumqi, and Internet service there has been suspended for three days. Nicholas Bequelin, a China researcher with Human Rights Watch, says it’s important to watch what happens next.

NICHOLAS BEQUELIN: I think a key concern about this incident is to have some measure of accountability, about who is arrested, where people are detained, whether they’re given legal process.  In the case of Tibet, what we saw, on the opposite, was massive arrests and security sweeps for weeks. And up to today, there’s still hundreds of detainees that are unaccounted for.

MARY KAY MAGISTAD: There have also been reports of torture of detainees, as well as a general crackdown on religious and cultural activities. Taking the same approach in Xinjiang isn’t exactly going to help the Xinjiang government with what it says is its goal of promoting ethnic happiness and harmony in the region. But it may help with the central government’s goal of ensuring security for the all-important 60th anniversary of the Communist Party’s rule, on October first. That short-term thinking may cause more Uighur anger and frustration in the future, but the Party shows no sign of changing its approach. For The World, I’m Mary Kay Magistad in Beijing.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

LISA MULLINS: There are more commercials for more things in more places than ever before. And yet, there’s still new advertising ground to be broken.

[SOUND CLIP OF VATICAN RADIO]

LISA MULLINS: Yes, there is a Vatican Radio, and Vatican Radio will soon air its first ever commercials. The Roman Catholic Church has been running in the red. So its radio station is about to broadcast ads by an Italian gas and electricity company called Enel. Vatican Radio’s Sean Patrick Lovett says the folks at Enel will produce ads appropriate for the Catholic Church.

SEAN PATRICK LOVETT: They will be tailor-making an advertising campaign for us. And so that campaign will talk about good wholesome things like clean energy, and respecting the environment. So there’s almost an implicit moral law ethical message within the commercial message as well.

LISA MULLINS: Sounds like an infallible strategy. There is another bit of advertising news today. This one relates to beer, now that’s a product we probably won’t be hearing advertised on Vatican radio any time soon. But beer commercials are airing for the first time on North Korean T-V.

[SOUND CLIP OF NORTH KOREAN TV AD]

LISA MULLINS: The ad is for the pride of Pyongyang, Taedongkang Beer. The Taedongkang is a river in North Korea. Now, the captions of the ad assure viewers that the beer will taste good – and get rid of stress.

[SOUND CLIP OF NORTH KOREAN TV AD]

LISA MULLINS: As if that weren’t enough, another caption adds that Taedongkang Beer will, quote, ‘make a contribution to our people’s lives, and become more familiar with our people.’ News headlines from around The World are next, on PRI – Public Radio International.

[SOUND CLIP OF NORTH KOREAN TV AD]

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

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LISA MULLINS: I’m Lisa Mullins, and this is The World, a co-production of the B-B-C World Service, P-R-I, and W-G-B-H, Boston. One of the architects of the Vietnam War died today, Robert McNamara was 93 year old. He passed away this morning at his home in Washington. Robert McNamara had a varied career, but his legacy lies in the advice that he gave two US Presidents. McNamara was the Secretary of Defense for John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. The World’s Jason Margolis has this remembrance.

JASON MARGOLIS: Robert McNamara had a long and distinguished career. He was President of the Ford Motor Company. He ran the World Bank, where he expanded programs to combat poverty. But McNamara will primarily be remembered as an architect of the Vietnam War. Presidential historian Robert Dallek says at first, McNamara honestly thought that American forces would overwhelm a small undeveloped country.

ROBERT DALLEK: The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche said convictions are a greater enemy of truth than lies. And that’s what I think operated with, happened with McNamara. He had this conviction that they could manage this war, Johnson believed this. They just didn’t think they could lose that conflict. Who the heck were they fighting?

JASON MARGOLIS: Dallek says by 1967, however, McNamara came to understand that the war in Vietnam was a quagmire. And this realization got to him. His boss couldn’t help but notice.

ROBERT DALLEK: Johnson was troubled by how uneasy and upset actually McNamara seemed to be over his continuing service as Secretary of Defense. And Johnson said to some people, he was afraid that McNamara was having some kind of collapse or breakdown. So he was as eager to push McNamara out, as McNamara was eager to go.

JASON MARGOLIS: McNamara later said he wasn’t sure if he quit or was fired as Defense Secretary. McNamara was a brilliant man, but he also didn’t seem to completely understand his enemy. And it showed.

BUI DIEM: His attitude is very, very insensitive about the Vietnamese people.

JASON MARGOLIS: Bui Diem served as the South Vietnamese ambassador to the US from 1966 to 1972.

BUI DIEM: We South Vietnamese people, we think that when the US intervene in Vietnam, it would be more, well human, if I can use that term, to think in terms of the suffering of the Vietnamese people too and the consequences of the US intervention in Vietnam.

JASON MARGOLIS: Many Americans also hold McNamara in part responsible for the deaths of 58 thousand US troops. McNamara felt compelled to act in Vietnam though, to contain the threat of communist expansion. McNamara also helped build up the nation’s nuclear arsenal to thwart the Soviet Union. Here he is speaking in 1963. That was the year after the Cuban missile crisis brought the US and Soviet Union to the brink of nuclear war.

ROBERT MCNAMARA: I don’t regard the present communist leaders as wholly reckless. But recent experience in Cuba, and on a lesser scale in Berlin, has not persuaded me that I can predict with any confidence the sort of challenges that communist leaders will come to think prudent and profitable. If they were to again to miscalculate, as dangerously as they did last year at this time, it would be essential to confront them wherever that might be, with the full consequences of their decision.

JASON MARGOLIS: Later in life, McNamara spoke frequently about how close much of the world had come to annihilation. Steven Miller of Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs says McNamara came to believe that nuclear weapons served no military purpose.

STEVEN MILLER: Because the level of destruction was be so great. The implications and consequences would be so massive of any even limited use of nuclear weapons that they were essentially useless devices. And that’s one of the reasons why he became more and more passionate as his life went on about nuclear arms control.

JASON MARGOLIS: This stance reflects a tension between McNamara, the Secretary of Defense, and the man in his twilight years. In 1995, McNamara published a memoir, largely accepting responsibility for the failings in Vietnam.  Many saw the book as admirable, others were less generous. A New York Times editorial said McNamara offered the war’s dead only a prime-time apology and stale tears, three decades late. For the World, I’m Jason Margolis.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

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LISA MULLINS: Errol Morris directed a documentary film about Robert McNamara. The Fog of War came out shortly after the war in Iraq began. The film consisted primarily of interviews with McNamara. Morris says he and the former defense secretary were not an obvious pairing.

ERROL MORRIS: Like many people who grew up or came of age during the 60′s, I most certainly was not a friend of Robert McNamaras. He was an anti-war demonstrator, at both University of Wisconsin and at Princeton. Although it’s a little bit after the time that he was Secretary of Defense. But certainly, Robert McNamara was the face of the Vietnam War. Rightly or wrongly, when we think about that war, we think about him. And, making the film, a surprise, because I came to like him. My feelings about the war, I should add, really haven’t changed over the years. I feel as strongly about it as I did 40 years ago. But my feelings about McNamara, the man, certainly changed.

LISA MULLINS: Was it what he said, how he conducted himself?

ERROL MORRIS: I often was asked, this about the film, did he ever show genuine remorse for what he had done? Had he ever apologized? I think that the entire film itself is an expression of remorse, and much of his activities in the last part of his life was his unending attempt to deal, to grapple with his past, to come to terms with it. And I don’t believe he ever did. Maybe, that kind of thing, given the enormity of the issues involved could never really happen. I do truly believe that there was something noble about his attempt, even if it was ultimately a failure, to try to come to an understanding of what had happened, and the role that he had played in the escalation of the war, in the 60′s.

LISA MULLINS: The role that he played, that he saw himself playing, was quite different from the way his critics saw him. How would you describe Mr. McNamara’s view of his own role in Vietnam?

ERROL MORRIS: One of the ongoing controversies is whether it was McNamara who was the hawk, and Lyndon Johnson the dove. Whether it was McNamara who coerced the President into escalating the conflict. I truly believe on the basis of much evidence that has come out in the last 10, 15 years, that it was much closer to the opposite. That it was not McNamara lying to the President of the United States, it was McNamara serving that President.

LISA MULLINS: Meaning that McNamara did not hold all the cards, but his policy was followed.

ERROL MORRIS: If there is a tragedy in his story, it’s the tragedy of a man torn between following the two Presidents he served, and grappling with his own feelings of right and wrong. I myself do not share that view of McNamara that he was a technocrat devoid of human feeling, devoid of moral concern. I just simply do not believe that was true. It’s very easy for us to divide the world into good and evil, much, much harder to look at people, the reasons that they had for what they did, their own attempts to grapple with their history. I find McNamara, I still find him, an unendingly complex and interesting figure.

LISA MULLINS: The subtitle of your movie, The Fog of War, is 11 Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara. Can you summarize one or two of the lessons that perhaps you learned, and that you’d like us to take away?

ERROL MORRIS: Perhaps it’s an ambivalent lesson for me. Can we really expect to learn from the past? Well, we can’t, unless we make that effort. One of the strange, perhaps the strangest thing for me in making this movie, was making it at a time when the United States was about to go to war. And, here are these 11 lessons. And they’re as relevant to that conflict as they were to Vietnam. The grotesque thing was that we seem to be repeating all of the errors of the past, all over again. Maybe this is the cynical part of me, but I started re-phrasing famous Santayana quote, those who are unfamiliar with the past are condemned to repeat it. My version was, those who are unfamiliar with the past are condemned to repeat it without a sense of ironic futility.

LISA MULLINS: Errol Morris’ documentaries include The Fog of War: 11 Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara. He spoke with us from his office in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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