The Best and the Brightest: Kennedy-Johnson Administrations (Modern Library)

by David Halberstam

That particular meeting would not help Sarris’ career; he would be known thereafter by the military as the “coup-plotter,” and he would never rise in the Department. In 1969 one of the bright young State Department officers on Vietnam whose own career had been helped by Vietnam would find that a reporter was going to interview Sarris about the 1963 period. “Sarris?” he said. “Lew Sarris? Why him? He seems to me to be a pathetic figure; why, he sits in the very same office and does the very same thing that he did in 1962.” Which was true; he still sat there years later, still making the estimates, which were still rejected and disputed; others came and were usually wrong and had their careers advanced; Sarris was right and remained there. As for Hilsman, he was bouncy, full of himself then, but someone sitting there and watching the faces of McNamara and the military would think that this was a bright and bumptious young man, and hope for his own sake that his protectors stayed around to protect him.