Talk:George Whelan Anderson Jr.

The account in this article of Anderson's conflict with Robert McNamara during the Cuban Missile Crisis was basically McNamara's version. Several years ago I became familiar with Anderson's version from US Naval Institute publications, which gives a fairly negative view of McNamara's actions (despite how justifiable they might have been due to the high stakes of the Crisis). McNamara was also a consummate liar, so his account should not stand alone.

BTW, Anderson actually had a very good working relationship with Kennedy. He was influential in the drafting of Kennedy's speech to the nation that made the Crisis public; he consistently advised Kennedy and Ted Sorenson to soften the language to retain flexibility and reduce bellicosity. This advice was the opposite of a rabid war hawk, and directly contradicts the charge that he was insubordinate to Kennedy.^[1] IMO McNamara's account of the conflict with Anderson is not accurate, with the result that Anderson was effectively defamed in the historical record. Tfdavisatsnetnet (talk) 03:34, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

The article states:

Decades later, the role of Vasily Arkhipov became widely known, as the last person standing in the way of Admiral Anderson's procedures unintentionally triggering nuclear war.

Which procedures? One example of the conflict between Anderson and McNamara was Anderson's attempt to reassure McNamara that the Navy had long experience (and therefore well established training and procedures) with blockade operations; McNamara retorted that he didn't care. Anderson's procedures were standard Navy procedures, nothing else. McNamara basically wanted to leave open the possibility of the development of ad-hoc procedures, a desire certainly driven by the high stakes of the Crisis, but rather impractical.

This statement from the article is subtly non-NPOV. It implies a personal deviation by Anderson of unknown nature that never happened. Tfdavisatsnetnet (talk) 04:00, 7 May 2025 (UTC)