Francis Terry McNamara

Francis Terry McNamara (born November 2, 1927) is a retired career

Later the same year, an underaged McNamara convinced a Navy recruiter to sign him up, and he spent the latter part of World War II in the submarine service, being discharged in 1946. After the war, he entered Russell Sage College in Troy, New York. His education was again interrupted when he volunteered to return to active duty with the Navy during the Korean War, from 1950 to 1951.^[1][2]

Returning to college after Korea, Mr. McNamara graduated from Russell Sage College in January 1953 with a B.A. During this period, his summer breaks were spent at sea working as a merchant seaman. During the 1953-1954 academic year, he was engaged in graduate studies at McGill University in Canada. He continued these studies at Syracuse University from 1954 to 1956, while working for the State Bank of Albany, Albany, New York, and later as a management intern with the United States Army Ordnance Corps at the Watervliet Arsenal, Watervliet, New York.^[1]

McNamara was commissioned in the

After his retirement from the Foreign Service, McNamara continued to work part-time at the State Department for more than 25 years as the chairman of a panel adjudicating Freedom of Information Act appeals to previous departmental decisions. He also supervised elections in the Balkans, Africa and Falls Church, Virginia. As a veteran of six wars, a coup d'état and three evacuations, he consulted with the US Army's Battle Command Training Program (BCTP) and the Marines' Mission Command Training Program (MCTP) working as a subject matter expert and mentor helping to train Army and Marine commanders and their staffs for service in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Balkans, Africa, South Korea and Japan. He also worked with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology as an advisor on asymmetric warfare.^[7]

In 2003, McNamara went with a joint task force to Liberia as Political Advisor to the commanding general. JTF Liberia deployed in support of a West African force in its successful effort to end civil war in chronically troubled Liberia.

In recognition of his service, the State Department awarded the Ambassador four

McNamara's assignment to Cần Thơ, Vietnam was the basis of Escape with Honor: My Last Hours In Vietnam, written with former British diplomat Adrian Hill (Washington, D.C., Brassey's Memories of War Series, 1997). It is a vivid account of the final days of the U.S. Consulate at Can Tho, and the harrowing evacuation with his U.S. and Vietnamese employees and dependents by boat down the Bassac River on April 29–30, 1975 during the American evacuation of South Vietnam.

His publications also include France in Black Africa (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 1989), a standard work in English on France's unusually close relations with its former African colonies.

McNamara is married to the former Cong Tang Ton Nu Nhu De, and has seven children. He lives in

• Francis Terry McNamara. France in Black Africa. Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 1989.^{[permanent dead link‍]} Online by the Defense Technical Information Center.
• Charles Stuart Kennedy and Francis Terry McNamara. Interview with Ambassador Francis Terry McNamara. Arlington, VA: Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, 1993. Online by the Foreign Affairs Oral History Collection, Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, Arlington, VA, www.adst.org.
• Office of the Historian of the US State Department web page on Francis Terry McNamara
• The Journey Downriver, clip from Last Days in Vietnam, the American Experience collection: Vietnam War. PBS.
• Ronald Reagan: "Nomination of Francis Terry McNamara To Be United States Ambassador to Gabon and Sao Tome and Principe," October 30, 1981. Archived March 4, 2016, at the Wayback Machine Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project.
• George Bush: "Nomination of Francis Terry McNamara To Be United States Ambassador to Cape Verde," October 5, 1989. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project.