Video: 'The President: February 1968. MP893.' (Feb. 28, 1968, at 22:57)

(Wednesday, February 28, 1968, 1:20 p.m. EST; during the Vietnam War, part of the Indochina Wars and the Cold War) — President Lyndon Johnson gave the Medal of Freedom today to his departing Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, and praised him as a “brilliant and good man.”

McNamara, head of the defense establishment for seven years, was choked with emotion.

“I cannot find words to express what lies in my heart and I guess I better respond on another occasion,” he said during a ceremony in the East Room at the White House.

Clark Clifford, a Washington lawyer and adviser to Democratic presidents for two decades, would be sworn Mar. 1, 1968,, to succeed McNamara.

Video: 'American Experience LBJ 2' (Mar. 1, 1968, at 1:24:32)

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